As Claude entertained Frank, Scotty, Felicia, John, and Darezzo, Schulke poked his head in and asked how Claude felt. Throughout Claude’s answer Schulke wore a slight grin. Scotty and Frank exchanged glances, but as quickly as Schulke and his grin arrived they were gone. Schulke told Claude he was happy to see him looking well again, then held up the videotape and excused himself.
“I’ve got to run along now,” Schulke said. “Gotta go show this to the right folks. Rock on, everyone.”
Schulke left. John and Darezzo burst into laughter.
“Rock on everyone?” Darezzo said. “What the fuck is that about?”
“He’s just trying to show Felicia how cool he is,” John said.
Felicia folded her arms and leaned against the time clock. “I’m already getting used to it.”
Scotty took her by the elbow. “Let’s sit at the computer and teach you everything there is to know.”
“No,” Darezzo said, “first you gotta learn to handle a forklift, Darezzo style.”
“Later,” Scotty said. “Right now it’s the computer.”
Felicia followed Scotty to the office. As the group started to break up, Frank yanked Claude by the shirt and pulled him off to one side.
“Don’t buy it,” Frank said. “Schulke’s the worst poker player I ever seen, and he’s hiding something, something good. I could see it in his face. I don’t know what it is, but be careful, Bugsy, especially around him be careful. He’s up to something, and it’s got to do with you.”
“I can take care of myself,” Claude said. “But thanks, Franko. You’re a good man. Sometimes I wonder where I’d be without you.”
#
Jim Shepard took rest time from the hurricane Friday instead of coming in to work, leaving Schulke feeling like a six-year old with a ticket to a rained-out ballgame. Schulke considered taking the video to human resources. He almost played it for Feeney. He wanted to show it to Felicia, but “hey, do you want to see an interesting video?” brought a terse “no thanks.” In the end, he stuck the tape in his satchel and forced himself to wait the weekend.
When he made it to Monday morning, Schulke went to see Shepard, catching Shepard in the union office, sipping coffee and going through the morning paper. Much like the line shed, it was taboo for a management person to hang around the UUW office, so Schulke stuck his head through the door and asked if he could see Shepard in the overhead lines conference room. Shepard left the paper but took the coffee.
“Did you get my message?” Schulke said as they walked down the hall.
“Nah,” Shepard said, “I don’t even know how to get messages off the machine. That’s for the vice-president to do. If I didn’t let her do that, she wouldn’t have anything to come to the office for and I’d never see her. And believe me, I like seeing her.”
They reached the conference room and Schulke closed the door behind them. He wheeled a television on a tall, black, metal stand from the far corner to the edge of the large conference table and turned it on. With gray and black static behind him, he held up the videotape.
“Claude Amognes faked his headache,” Schulke said, “and this tape shows it. Now Jim, I’ve brought this to you first, before Clarke, before Feeney, before anyone, because I want you and me to be on the same page with this. I want to be sure whatever we decide to do with Claude Amognes, we decide to do together, because this is our chance and I don’t want to blow it. I want to make sure the correct procedure is perfectly followed. Want to see it?”
Shepard nodded, and Schulke slid the tape into the VCR. As he waited for the tape to begin, he rested one hand on the table and set the other on the side of the television. An image from the stores department popped on the screen, and Schulke narrated.
“Ok, this is a couple minutes before he hit the floor,” Schulke said. “See, he and Dave Darezzo are goofing around, and there’s Darezzo dancing or something, and look at Claude laugh. That’s a real laugh, not a laugh forced by someone with a splitting headache.”
“And here you come to squash the laughter,” Shepard said with his arms folded and a smile across his face.
Schulke frowned. “Yeah, yeah, here I come. Very funny. Let me just fast forward a bit...to here, with Claude alone on the forklift. Okay, he’s sitting on the forklift, then he starts to look around. And then, right there! He gives the middle finger toward the office, and he doesn’t just give it, he gives it like he’s shoving it up someone’s ass seven or eight times. Look like he has a debilitating headache yet? All right, now he’s easing himself off the lift, and look how carefully he lowers himself to the floor. He doesn’t flop to the cement like you’d think he would if he were in agony, he goes down in stages, first to a hand, then to his butt, then full out before he rolls over.”
Schulke sat on the edge of the table, put his left foot on a chair, and rested his left elbow on his knee. The tape continued, with no sound, a clock in the bottom right corner ticking off the seconds as the scene unfolded. Shepard watched. At the end, Schulke tapped the off button, and gray static returned to the screen.
“Well Jim? What do you think?”
Shepard leaned back. “Depends what you’re after.”
“What I’m after?” Schulke said. “I’m after his termination, Jim, nothing less. Don’t forget, one more strike and he’s gone, and I’d say faking a headache during storm duty qualifies as a last strike.”
Shepard did not display the emotion Schulke hoped, sitting motionless and relaxed. What Schulke expected to spark discussion only led to silence. Schulke shook his head.
“Look, you care about this place,” Schulke said. “I know you do. The union means something to you, and you put a lot of sweat into making it the best it can be. You shouldn’t let some chronic goldbricker give it a bad name, and let’s face it, Claude Amognes is goldbricker number one. You know it.”
“Maybe I do, maybe I don’t,” Shepard said. “National don’t like terminations, Tom. It’s not what we’re about. Hell, we fought Warren Taylor’s termination, and he stole $50,000 worth of wire, spent it on cocaine, and damn near killed a police officer. An alleged fake headache looks pretty pale in comparison, don’t you think?”
Schulke lifted his hands and dropped them to his lap as he turned away from Shepard. He punched the television’s power button to kill the static, stood, and ran his hands over the top of his head. He swung around and returned to his spot on the table. Shepard twirled his coffee stirrer in small, slow circles.
“Come on, Jim,” Schulke said at last, “Claude Amognes is a cancer, on your union, on my department, on this entire company. The script is too easy to read: he got a DML, he saw he was doomed, he cooked up this headache scheme to buy himself some time. If he goes out, he collects how-many-ever weeks of sick pay when he isn’t really sick, and all the while his eighteen month clock is ticking in his favor. If we don’t tackle him now, we may never catch him, because if he can play-act well enough who knows how far he can take this—maybe the entire eighteen months if he’s real good, and god, I can’t take him coming back with a clean slate. I can’t. I’m trying to run a department, and yeah, I get various attitudes from different guys, but Amognes is even way beyond that. He constantly challenges my authority, he’s always on his soapbox about his father this and his father that, he doesn’t do shit in the department, and whenever he does try to do something he usually louses it up so bad it takes three guys to correct it.”
Shepard set the coffee cup on the table. “No offense, Tom, but some people say you’re slightly short of perfection yourself.”
Schulke’s body heaved forward to scream a reply, but when Schulke saw Shepard’s sly smile, he rocked back to the table and grinned himself. “You’re unbelievable,” he said. “Look, I know I’m not perfect, that the company has me so overloaded that some days I don’t know if I’m coming or going, but I can tell you that every day I make an honest effort to do what I can as best I can. That’s true for most guys in stores, but not for Amogne
s. He’s ignorant, and he’s arrogant, and I just can’t stand to see a guy who knows the difference between right and wrong choose wrong and then thumb his nose at me because he knows I can’t do a damn thing about it. It’s an insult. Hell, he’s an insult—I mean, do you ever listen to the guy? There’s no such thing as evidence with him, because what he says is right. The way he sees the world is the only way, and everything else is wrong. I don’t even think he realizes how stupid he sounds, yet he expects everyone to worship him as a fountain of wisdom, but I could even live with that if he’d only work once in a while. I mean, isn’t the basic premise of any business a fair day’s effort for a fair day’s pay?”
“Fair’s a hard thing to cut, Tom. You think Munson works harder for his half million a year than Junior does for his $75,000? No way, Jose. Listen, I’m no fan of Bugsy Amognes. I’ve had to sit at union meetings while he took over the microphone and tore me a new asshole for not doing things to his liking, and I’ve had to survive one challenge after another from people he’s convinced to run against me. He always paints me in the worst possible light—you don’t know how much time I’ve spent before the company brass defending myself against rumors that probably came from that son of a bitch. But even so, I need to proceed with caution here. This isn’t you coming to me with some cockamamie performance issue; termination’s the real deal. I need to taste the soup a little, you know, give a few people a whiff to see how they react. If it smells right, who knows, maybe we’ll lean toward termination. But if it doesn’t, well there’s no way I’m going to commit political suicide over anything involving that chump.”
Shepard sipped his coffee, but scrunched his face and tossed the quarter-full cup into a nearby wastebasket. “Cold as ice,” he said. “Come on, let’s go to the cafe and get another one.”
Schulke pressed the eject button on the VCR to retrieve the tape. He left the television stand near the corner of the desk, and didn’t turn off the lights as he followed Shepard out the door. After the two walked the length of the corridor without speaking, they went through the glass door, took a right, and trotted up a flight of stairs to the second floor. As they neared the cafeteria, Shepard paused to read a new posting on the union bulletin board. Schulke stood with him. When Shepard continued down the hall, Schulke fell in step.
In the cafeteria, Shepard poured himself a medium hazelnut supreme. He picked up an empty styrofoam cup and pointed it toward Schulke, who nodded. Shepard poured a second hazelnut supreme, held both up to the girl at the register, and asked her to put them on his tab as he moved toward the nearest table. Aside from the two men, the cashier, and the grill cook, the cafeteria was empty. Although he hadn’t put cream or sugar into his coffee, Shepard stirred the drink anyway, running the thin plastic stick in circles near the rim until he’d created a small whirlpool. When he had it going good he held the stick stiff, braking the current, before stirring hard in the opposite direction to create another whirlpool. Schulke cleared his throat.
“Here,” he said, handing Shepard the videotape. “This is your copy. Show it to whoever you need to show it to. If you think we can use it to terminate Amognes, we’ll take it to Clarke together.”
Shepard sipped his steaming beverage. “Ah, that’s better,” he said. “Let me ask, you, Tom, why come to me first? I mean, Clarke’s the human resources manager. Why not go straight to him?”
Schulke cradled his cup. “Clarke never listens to me. I hate reporting to the guy—Christ, who ever heard of aux services reporting to human resources?—and ever since they took us away from Feeney, it’s been hell. He hands me more and more assignments, and when I say I’m overloaded he doesn’t want to hear it. I beg him to come down and spend a day in stores, to see how much is going on, how much we do in a day, but he won’t. He won’t listen to me, and he won’t open his eyes to see the truth for himself, and it’s frustrating, because what ends up happening is he only measures us on the things we don’t get done, not on all the good things we do. It’s like he tells us to put twenty pounds of potatoes into a five-pound bag, and when we manage to squeeze eighteen pounds into the bag, we get chewed out because we left the other two pounds on the floor. And not only that, with our luck some fucking vice-president probably tripped over them on his way to the golf course.”
Shepard smiled. “Tommy boy, serves you right for deserting the union.”
Schulke rolled his eyes and leaned his elbows on the edge of the table. “Anyway, if I go without you, Clarke will laugh in my face.”
“Of course he’ll laugh in your face,” Shepard said without a hint of a smile. “He doesn’t respect you, or anyone else who works beneath him. Why should he? What can you possibly do to make his life difficult? If you give him too much lip, he can just hand you your walking papers, fuck off, nice knowing you. But us, he respects us, because we can hold his ass to the fire. Let him try to treat me like he treats you, even for one second—I’d make him so goddamn miserable he’d wish he’d grabbed hold of something in his mother’s womb and never let go. See, Clarke doesn’t give a damn if you’re swamped. His concern is to keep us happy, because if we’re happy we’re off his back, and if we’re off his back his job is very, very easy. Peace with us is prosperity for him. He’s gotten into such a rut that he doesn’t even consider manpower issues any more. Doesn’t give a hoot. If it shuts us up, we get it. ‘Don’t worry,’ he’ll tell us, ‘whatever it is, my people will find a way to get it done.’ Never once says, ‘hey, you know what? We don’t have the manpower to do that.’ And the union isn’t stupid. If he’s going to fold when he sees that card, then we’re going to play it, and sure, we’ll pile the work onto management. Why the hell wouldn’t we? Whenever anything new goes into place, we ask the company to give an initial notification to our members in writing. We ask for periodic written reminders. We ask for quarterly reports, monthly if we can get them. We set it up so management has to chase our guys if something goes wrong and not the other way around, and whenever we negotiate that kind of crap, there’s Clarke, nodding his head and saying ‘Not a problem, my people will get it done, not a problem, my people will get it done.’ And I say great. No sense having management sitting around doing nothing all day—crank out some paperwork, especially you, you bastard, jumping the brotherhood for a few extra bucks. I bet you’ve wished a zillion times that you were back in the line department with me to protect you from the company’s bullshit.”
Schulke gave a minute shrug. “Next time I want to lighten my burden, I’ll come to you, the almighty savior.”
Shepard laughed. “Now you’re talking sense. Maybe someday Clarke will cut your workload down to something sane, but don’t bank on it. People at this company don’t care about right and wrong, they only care about power, and that’s why you came to me, because you’re powerless and the union has thump. Let me make the rounds with this tape. If I think it’ll fly, I’ll let you know.”
Chapter 34
A delivery truck full of just about every kind of electrical insulator Claude could think of idled in the first bay as John Carrollton fussed over the packing slip, forcing the driver to count the eleven boxes in the delivery three different times. Frank leaned on the bar up in the crane. Claude sat in the seat of a forklift, and Gino lounged on a pile of crates, tossing chewy chocolates into the air and catching them in his mouth, leaving the ones he missed to become gummy additions to his coworkers’ bootsoles. With Schulke off to parts unknown, none of them asked where Scotty, Felicia, Elton, and Darezzo were, but just as John okayed the packing slip and handed it back to the deliveryman, Darezzo bounded around the corner and lept to the loading dock. He walked just short of running, smiling like he wanted the world to see the small chip on the corner of his front tooth.
“Salutations, Bugsy,” Darezzo said as he scurried past the forklift. “How’s that head a-feeling?”
Darezzo hustled over to Gino, swatted a midair chocolate halfway to the time clock, and bent low to whisper to Gino. Gino jumped to hi
s feet and ran with Darezzo toward the back entrance. Claude looked to John. They both shrugged.
A few minutes later, Scotty, Felicia, and Elton also appeared around the corner. Felicia wore an ear to ear smile, tried to compose herself when she came into view, and cracked up laughing when she failed. She fell into Elton’s arms, briefly, and then stepped ahead of him so he could put his hands around her waist and boost her up to the platform. Again she tried to suppress her smile.
“Hi Bugsy,” she said with a quick wave.
She pressed her lips together and hustled to the office, closing the door with a thud and disappearing, it seemed to Frank, toward the floor. Elton walked around the office and entered through the other side.
Scotty hoisted himself up to the platform and looked neither left nor right. He was not smiling. He walked between Claude and John without speaking, stomping long strides across the dusty floor until he came to the time clock, where he punched himself back in from break, wheeled around, and marched toward the far corner of the department. Again Claude and John exchanged shrugs. Before long, Felicia and Elton emerged from the office, smiling, but lacking the same pent-up fervor as before, and punched in. Elton searched the rack for Darezzo’s card and punched him in too.
Claude wondered what the big secret was. He sauntered toward Felicia, but every time he got just about close enough to speak with her, she moved away. Oh well, Claude thought, if they haven’t told Frank it can’t be any big deal. He looked for John, but couldn’t find him. Elton told Claude John had stepped over to the union office for a second and would be right back.
#
At 11:30, a crowd gathered at the foot of the ladder as Frank climbed down from the crane. They giggled, and poked each other. When Frank stepped to the floor, Gino slid in front of him.
“Man, you’re the only one who hasn’t seen it,” Gino said. “You gotta go to Shepard’s office and see the tape. You got to.”
Frank held a stare for a second, then smiled and shook his head. “Thanks, Gino, but I don’t need to see nothing. I’m going to lunch with Claude and Scotty, just like always.”
The Jig of the Union Loller Page 27