The Jig of the Union Loller

by Michael Burnham

  #

  At the hospital, Joan and Jamie were told Claude had been taken for tests to determine if he were having a stroke, heart attack, cerebral hemorrhage, or other life-threatening episode. About ninety minutes after Joan and Jamie arrived, they saw Claude walking down the hall with an ice pack pressed to his temple. A young doctor accompanied him. Jamie lept up.

  “Are you okay, daddy?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” Claude said softly. “I was working, and all of a sudden my head felt like it was going to explode.”

  “Is he all right, doctor?” Joan said.

  “We’re not sure,” she said. “I’m Dr. Huckaby.”

  She shook hands with Joan and Jamie, and then continued.

  “We’ve ruled out any imminent danger, Ms. Amognes. Your husband’s CAT scan looked fine, his vitals are normal, and there’s certainly no reason to admit him, so we’re sending him home to rest. I’ve already contacted your family doctor, Dr. Corrigan, and he’s going to bring your husband in tomorrow to look at things in more detail than I can justify here in the emergency room.”

  “What could it be?”

  “Almost anything. I know that’s no answer, but violent headaches can be associated with a number of maladies. It could be as simple as him needing glasses. What’s important is there’s nothing life-threatening.”

  Joan thanked the young doctor, who as she walked away called to Claude to be sure to rest. Jamie helped her father into the back seat of the Buick, where he slumped against the far door. On the way home, Joan dropped Jamie at the front gate at Rhode Island Electric so she could retrieve the truck. When Jamie had trouble finding it, she went to the office in stores, gave a report on her father’s condition, and asked where he’d parked. Schulke engaged her in polite conversation, then volunteered to lead her to the vehicle. On the way out she waved good-bye to the men.

  “That’s Bugsy’s kid?” Gino said. “Some bod. You know, she’s not half bad. She’s a fine looking little kitten.”

  “Once you get past the face,” Darezzo said.

  “Yeah,” Elton said. “I could never do her because of the face. The whole time I’d think I was banging Bugsy.”

  “That’s enough,” John said. “I could’ve lived my whole life without hearing that.”

  As dusk approached, the members of the stores department itched for the end of storm duty. The collective adrenaline rush brought with the winds died with them too, and the dull routine of restocking the department led even the most conscientious worker, Scotty Williams, to seek an out-of-the-way pile of boxes to recline for a spell. The others nagged Schulke to send them home even though, technically, he lacked the authority to do so.

  At last Schulke grew weary of their griping and sauntered over to overhead lines to get a read on the restoration. He didn’t find anyone, so he walked toward dispatch, where he knew someone had to be working. On the way, he waved to Doug in security, but twenty yards beyond the closet-like room where Doug worked Schulke stopped, wheeled around, and scurried back down the hall. When he arrived at the security room, he took a moment to scan the bank of televisions on the wall in front of him, searching for the stores screen and watching as it flipped from one camera to the next before repeating the sequence again.

  “Hey Doug,” Schulke said. “How long are the loops on the security tapes?”

  “Twenty-four hours. Unless we know in advance you want something longer.”

  “No, no,” Schulke said, “twenty-four hours is good. Can I get two copies of the view looking down onto the office?”

  Doug reached to the controls for monitor eleven, punched a green button, and twisted a black knob. The view from the ceiling stayed on the screen as the day’s activities sprinted in reverse.

  “Come back in an hour,” Doug said.

  As Schulke turned to leave, Feeney saw him in the tiny room.

  “Send ‘em home, Tom,” Feeney said. “We’ve wrapped it up pretty good. Nobody’s to return until eleven tomorrow morning. We’ll have a nice easy day to ease us into the weekend, then come back Monday ready to go.”

  “I’ll tell them,” Schulke said.

  He then turned to Doug. “But I’m not going home quite yet, because I’ll see you in an hour.”

  #

  Schulke returned to stores, and when he gave the word, the men rushed to the time clock, punched out, and hurried out the door. Within two minutes of his announcement, Schulke stood alone in the department.

  The UUW contract contained a provision that gave mandatory rest time to anyone who worked more than 24 hours during an emergency, in effect granting them special vacation time based on the hours they put in. The men had worked almost two complete eighteen-and-sixes—though the first shift fell short of a true eighteen hours—so each man had earned a full day of rest time to use at his discretion. Schulke wondered how many of his men he’d see the next day, and how many messages he’d have from people taking rest time.

  Schulke thought about calling Doug and telling him he’d pick up the tape later, but decided against it. Instead, he walked to the back entrance and secured it, moved a forklift to the parking area, brought down the bay doors, and turned out the main lights, leaving just the dim security lamps to illuminate the department. Schulke returned to the semi-dark office, stared at the pile of work clothes he’d tossed behind his chair a full day earlier, and wished he had a locker like the union employees. For a moment, he leaned toward leaving the pile as it lay, even though he knew he shouldn’t, until at last he summoned the energy to stoop down, gather in his arms the scuffed-up black shoes with the toes that bent upward, the polyester slacks and shirt, the cotton briefs, and the two black nylon socks, and cram the whole wad into his gym bag. After he zipped the bag closed, Schulke flopped into his chair and dialed home. He got the machine.

  “Hi Win,” he said after the tone, “it’s me. I’ll be another hour or so, and don’t expect much from me when I get home, because I’m beat. I’m probably heading straight to bed. See you then.”

  After he hung up, he dialed Shepard’s office and left a voice mail message.

  “Hi, Jim, it’s Tom in stores. Listen, if you’re in tomorrow, I need about an hour of your time. I have something you may find very interesting, very interesting indeed, and I want to go over it with you and talk about the implications. It might even be the break we’ve been waiting for. Anyway, give me a shout and I’ll fill you in. Bye.”

  Schulke checked his watch. It hadn’t even been ten minutes since he sent everyone home.

  Chapter 31

  Friday morning, Dr. Corrigan gave Claude a simple eye exam. When Claude demonstrated 20-20 vision, Dr. Corrigan led him down a long corridor in the medical building where he kept his office. As they walked, Claude imagined the giant gizmo Dr. Corrigan would connect him to and grew excited, feeling a little like an astronaut, all wired up with machines beeping his bodily functions while pretty nurses fussed to keep him comfortable.

  But the last door in the hallway led only to a small room, with a desk against the wall, a single chair facing the desk, and a standard metal examination table looming in the far corner. A tiny sink and cabinet lay between the desk and the table, and a rack of medical supplies stood near the cabinet. The walls featured the usual assortment of anatomical diagrams and lessons in good health.

  “Sit down, Claude,” Dr. Corrigan said. “I can see you were expecting something different, so on behalf of the world of medicine I’d like to apologize. When it comes to headaches, I use three main tools. One, machine stuff, like CAT scans, x-rays, and MRIs. Two, eye exams. Three, interviews.”

  “Interviews?” Claude said.

  “Yes. Old-fashioned, to be sure, but you can’t beat the classics. The CAT scan is an excellent tool, but I’ve looked at yours from every diagnostic angle I can think of and see nothing wrong, so although it’s fancy and expensive and high-tech, it’s only telling us what’s not wrong with you, not what’s wrong with you, because like
I said the CAT scan shows nothing. Now I’m not telling you you didn’t have a serious headache, because of course you did, I’m just saying there’s no abnormality or trauma that seems to be causing it, and that’s a good thing, because it means there’s no brain tumor or intracranial hematoma or what-have-you.”

  Dr. Corrigan picked up a clipboard and focused on it. “I’m just going to run down the list, here,” he said. “Some of these we already know the answers to, so let me just bop them off first. Let’s see, blow to the head, no. Sinus infection, no. Menstrual symptoms—hey, what do you think?”

  Claude smiled. “Probably not.”

  “Good. No nausea. No speech problems. No medication. You’re not 55. Too many beers on Friday nights, I suspect, but we’ll get into that later.”

  “It definitely wasn’t a hangover headache,” Claude said. “I’m an expert in those.”

  “Did your parents have headaches?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Do you sleep well?”

  “Usually.”

  “How many hours a night?”

  “It depends,” Claude said. “Most of the time, I don’t know, six or seven hours. Once in a while I can’t sleep, but usually I go right out.”

  Dr. Corrigan nodded. “Do you eat a lot of sugary things?”

  Claude tipped his head to the side as he pondered the question, returned it upright, and repeated the movement. “I like cupcakes. I drink soda, and eat quite a bit of candy. I have sugar in my coffee. Yeah, I’d say I eat some sugary things.”

  “Possible trigger number one,” Dr. Corrigan said. “Is your coffee or soda decaffeinated?”

  “No.”

  “Possible trigger number two. You said your headache came while you were on hurricane duty, so I’m going to list barometric pressure as possible trigger number three, job stress as possible trigger number four, and fatigue as possible trigger number five. Don’t worry, these aren’t in order of importance, I’m just ticking them off as I go along. How about red wine, Chinese food, milk, or cheese?”

  “I like ‘em all.”

  “Ok. Immediately before your headache, did you see anything unusual, like flashing sparkles or zigzag lines?”

  Claude took a deep breath, and hoped the doctor didn’t notice. Although he realized it was probably already too late, he did not want the doctor instructing him to avoid soda and sweets and Chinese food, telling him the things Claude ate and drank—and really liked, dammit—had caused the headache and would cause more unless he cut them from his diet. He wanted to slap himself for telling so much truth, and wished he’d said his parents had had headaches. Shit, I need some fucking symptoms or he’s going to send me back to work and force me to become a teatotaller. Claude started nodding his head.

  “Come to think of it, I did see sparkles before my headache,” he said. “First I saw sparkles, then wavy lines.”

  “How long before the headache?”

  “A long time,” Claude said. “A good five minutes. Definitely, five minutes.”

  “And you don’t think it could’ve been closer to the actual onset of the headache?”

  “Maybe. It’s hard to say.”

  “But not longer than five minutes, right?”

  Claude shook his head.

  Dr. Corrigan scribbled something on the top sheet of the clipboard. “Dr. Huckaby’s notes are wrong. She said no sparkles. Any numbness in your extremities, Claude? Right before the headache, I mean.”

  “A little,” Claude said.

  “Where?”

  “Um, I think in my hands. Just a little tingly, like when you fall asleep on the couch and the circulation to your arm gets cut off.”

  After scribbling a few more notes, Dr. Corrigan spun his chair in a half circle, opened a desk drawer, and pulled out a small black book. He handed the book to Claude.”

  “A diary?” Claude said. “You want me to keep a diary?”

  “Ignore the cover,” the doctor said with a slight smile. “They were on sale, and well, you know, cost-cutting and everything. But the truth is, yes, I want you to keep a diary. A headache diary. The next time you have a headache, I don’t care how minor it is, I want you to take a couple minutes to write down everything we just discussed. Did you just eat cheese before the headache began? What was the weather like? Did you have a good night’s rest? All that. Before long, we might be able to determine your triggers, and from there we can help you to avoid them.”

  “I don’t think a lot of those things are my triggers,” Claude said. “I’ve drank soda and coffee for years, and I’ve never had even the slightest headache. I’d say it’s probably job stress. We work awful hard, and it can get pretty ugly in there.”

  “But that’s nothing new, is it?”

  “It’s been worse lately.”

  Dr. Corrigan stood. “Well, we’ll see. Keep that journal, even at work—especially at work—and I’ll make you an appointment to come back here in a few weeks and talk about what’s in it. In the meantime, if you have another severe headache, get down here as soon as you can—as soon as you can, understand? We’ll give you an injection of Imitrex, and if your blood pressure doesn’t go off the chart, that might be something we can use as a lynchpin of your treatment program.”

  “How long should I stay out of work?” Claude said.

  “No reason you can’t go back Monday,” Dr. Corrigan said. “Until we’ve identified your triggers, don’t do anything different. Work, eat, and sleep just the same. And keep that journal.”

  The doctor looked at his watch. “Oy, the time,” he said. “Excuse me, but I’ve got a few more headaches to deal with, no pun intended, before I can start my weekend. Thanks for coming in. Say hi to Joan and Jamie for me.”

  Chapter 32

  That day, among the union employees in stores only Scotty and Felicia reported for duty. While Scotty reviewed the work orders trickling in, Schulke gave Felicia his account of the company’s recycling efforts.

  “I’m chair of the recycling committee, you know,” Schulke said. “I set the whole thing in motion, and saved the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. Of course copper from old wire is our big money-maker. We sell it by the ton, and it’s melted down and made into all kinds of things, though usually not more copper wire, if you can believe it. About the only thing we send to the recycling plant that comes back as it left is aluminum cans. We collect them, they’re melted down, then they’re made into new aluminum cans, same as before. It’s called closed-loop recycling.”

  Felicia glanced to Scotty and rolled her eyes. Scotty smiled, but didn’t give her away.

  “When the trucks come in today we’ll show you the bins and what goes where,” Schulke continued. “The only things we recycle that never actually come into the building are utility poles and motor oil. We keep the poles out in the yard, and the oil in big barrels near the garage. But we’re still responsible for them.”

  “No we’re not,” Scotty said. “The garage handles oil now.”

  “Since when?” Schulke said.

  “Last year. Maybe longer. I don’t even know what company they’re using now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah boss,” Scotty said. “I’m sure.”

  Schulke frowned, but when he realized Felicia noticed, the smile returned.

  “Anyway, a lot of the stuff we recycle isn’t truly being recycled, it’s being burned at trash-to-energy plants to make electricity. But it’s still better than dumping the stuff in some landfill. Take newspapers, for instance. You see newspaper recycling bins everywhere, but newspaper has long fibers that make it difficult to reuse. It’s really a joke. Our newspaper is burned, and we don’t pretend it isn’t. Another example are the utility poles I talked about. They have petroleum in them, to keep them from decaying and being eaten by insects, so you can’t just burn them or you’d release all that oil into the air. They have to be burned at plants that have special filters to catch the petroleum. Ours are trucked all
the way to Virginia.”

  “Pennsylvania,” Scotty said.

  Again Schulke frowned. Felicia stood up, and Schulke stood up too. He pointed to a banner on the wall that said “Why Recycle?” in big letters. Beneath it, the banner read “To Save Mother Earth.”

  “See that,” Schulke said. “A guy from our department came up with that slogan. You know Frank Dombrowski, don’t you? He won $100 first prize for that one.”

  “And was totally pissed off at you,” Scotty said. “You abbreviated his entry.”

  Schulke shrugged his shoulders and tossed his palms in the air. “I had to,” he said. “I couldn’t use the original.”

  “Why not?” Felicia said. “What did the original say?”

  Scotty stood up too. “Q: Why Recycle? A: To Save Mother Earth for Future Generations of Whiny, Undereducated Americans.”

  Scotty and Felicia excused themselves, and went to lunch.

  Chapter 33

  Claude’s instinct was to call in sick Monday and stay out until the company dragged him back to the property. But as he sat in his recliner Sunday evening, Claude thought of the Guru Knox and decided this war would be won by brains, not balls. He’d do it right. As Malcolm set up his headaches over a period of time, so too would Claude, and although he didn’t recall Malcolm mentioning a how many episodes he used in his jig, Claude figured at Rhode Island Electric three would do the trick, which worked well since he already had one in the books. And his little diary was going to point to stress at his number one trigger, not caffeine or booze or Chinese food or the weather. At the first hint of extra effort at work, Claude was coming down with another onto-the-floor headache.

  “Could be something that happens to me any time, any place,” Claude told the group gathered around the time clock Monday. “My doctor’s still working to pinpoint all my triggers, but he’s pretty sure stress from this shithole is a top candidate. This time I was lucky, since I’d already brung the forklift to a stop. I hate to think what’ll happen if the next one hits when I’ve got the bugger in full cruise and loaded to the hilt. Could be ugly.”