And at this very moment, I was sure, my father was analyzing my uncle’s deficiencies for the benefit of his captive audience, sympathizer, and ally—none other than my unfortunate brother-in-law.
The more things change—
SIX
Murray Hill and the shipyard may have been a world apart in most regards, but geographically they were no great distance from each other. At three o’clock, stuffed with my uncle’s lunch, conversation, and good will, I tugged my forelock and said good-bye to him and the world of philosophy; at three thirty I sauntered into the plate shop of the yard, back home for my final tenure in the world of industry. The scene there was both familiar and unfamiliar; I found myself viewing it with the eye of the tourist who in the middle of some quaint and slummy locale may view it with comfortable detachment. And why not, when for the next week or two my union card was for me what the tourist’s travel credit card was for him? After that the union card would be tucked away in a box along with the other curiosa of my past, and I, too, would be a man with a credit card. No longer a proletarian, hey ho, but a shiny new commissioned officer in the Brooks brigade.
When I got near the lockers I saw that there was only a handful of men around instead of the usual noisy mob. Most of the night shift were accounted for, but not many of the day shift. I went to my locker and got into my work clothes. Little Noonan sat before the locker in his underwear gloomily studying the shriveled remains of an old welding glove.
“Where is everybody?” I asked him.
“Down by the drydock. They’re bringing the Karen in, and they’re hanging around to watch.” He held up the glove before me. “You got a glove you can lend me? This goddam thing burned through last night and left me blisters all over the back of my hand.”
“You had plenty of time all day to buy a pair, didn’t you? What do you do with all the money you make, Noonan?”
“The same as you, you wise bastard. I spend it.”
I pulled a spare glove out of my locker and gave it to him. “That’s for knowing the right answer,” I said. “And you don’t have to worry about giving it back. I won’t be needing it in a little while.”
I left him to wonder about that and went out into the glare of the late afternoon sun. There was a crowd down by the drydock, but the rest of the yard was nearly deserted. On the ways to my left, the 181, ablaze in her still wet undercoat of yellow rustproof paint, the launching cradle already fixed under her round bottom, waited for the big event tomorrow. In the Basin to my right, Voorhees Number 7 lay dead still in the glassy water waiting for her eventual call to duty. All the action at present was centered around the drydock.
I slung my gear over my shoulder and walked across the yard to join the silently watching crowd there. The dock was already submerged, but the wounded Karen was not yet in it. She lay at its entrance still secured to the big, seagoing Willem Voorhees, the pride of the Voorhees fleet, and, with the glass of her portholes and pilot house all shattered, her davits and rails twisted, her stack askew, and the hole in her side sealed by a clumsy-looking mat, she gave the appearance of a diminutive, drunken woman being helped into the house by a large, disapproving dowager. I could imagine Jacob Voorhees’ feelings as he stood leaning on his stick at the head of the dock, his eyes fixed on her. But there was nothing he could do about it now, and, for that matter, this was one time when he was not even allowed to do anything. The dock may have been one of the oldest and crankiest floating drydocks in the port of New York instead of one of Slade’s Goliaths, and the boat entering it may have been a pygmy tugboat instead of an ocean liner, but when the pumps of the drydock started their thud thud it was Mitchell, the dockmaster, who was in charge. He was captain of this monstrous, timbered, tar-smelling, landlocked craft, and while he was at its helm old Jacob was just another onlooker kindly allowed the privilege of admiring his skill. That was not merely the rule of the house. It was in every gesture of Mitchell, the whole look of him as he stood behind his sighting rod, loudspeaker in hand, and gave his commands.
Inside the submerged dock the yard’s launch moved like a water-bug in a box of dirty water. It brought the long towing line from the winch in front of Mitchell out to the Karen. The line was made fast to the Karen’s bow. The launch scooted around behind the Karen and was fastened to her, stern to stern, so that she became the Karen’s brake. The Willem Voorhees cast loose and drifted clear. The towing line tightened. The Karen, listing a little toward her wound, started to move into the dock. From other winches along the lofty heights of the dock walls on both sides, steadying lines were heaved aboard the Karen and made fast. Pulled taut, they would keep her fixed in the exact center of the dock ready to fit her ladylike curves into the blocks waiting to receive them when the dock rose under her.
Somebody tapped me on the shoulder, said, “Your snapper’s looking for you, Egan,” and when I turned I saw Joe on the outskirts of the crowd, the omnipresent sheaf of work orders in his hand, a wrathful expression on his face. I pushed my way through to him.
“What the hell do you think they’re doing, putting on a show for you?” he said. “Don’t you know it’s ten minutes after starting time?”
“Time flies,” I said, trying to pass it off lightly, but he would have none of that.
“Not tonight it don’t fly,” he said. “Andy’ll be here all night, and even if he keeps one eye on that tug he’s got another one to watch you with. He’s doing it right now out of that office window. Come on, let’s get going. All the jobs are on the Centrale.”
I walked with him at a quickstep, a little angry myself that one of the rare times I was late on the job he was making such an issue of it. Yet, I couldn’t altogether blame him. Andressen addressed himself only to his snappers, so Joe would be the one to get told off for my sins, not me.
“Why does he have to be here all night?” I said. “It won’t take that long to get the Karen set up in the dock. She’s almost in now.”
“Yeah, but he’s got a job to do on her before he knocks off. The divers got Cusick out all right, but that other guy, Pereira, he’s still down there in the engine room. Anyhow, what’s left of him is. They told Andy he was right up against the shell near where the tanker hit, and they couldn’t get him out. The whole number nine webframe is wrapped around him. Only way to do it is cut him loose or maybe burn him out with a torch.”
“And who’s elected for that?”
“You don’t have to worry. It’s not a yard job; the police emergency are coming in to do it as soon as Andy calls them. They can have it, the poor bastards. When I was in the Navy there was a bomb came down on this tub I was riding, and I had to burn a dead guy out of the chain locker. Jesus, what a smell. And the way that goddam torch can cook you. They kept wetting him down and I kept cooking him until I had to give up and somebody else finished off.”
There had been a time when I dreamed nightly of bodies burning, of heroes stretched out on a littered lawn, their sightless eyes staring up at me, and for a moment I saw all that before me in a waking dream.
“What’s the matter?” Joe said. “That kind of talk too strong for you?”
“It’s not the talk, it’s my imagination. Sometimes it works too hard.”
“Then you’re lucky you weren’t in the Navy. It’s no place for anybody with an imagination.” He spat hard to punctuate that. “I was down the union today about the layoffs.”
“And?”
“And it’s the way Andy said. As far as the night gang goes, we put the one eighty-one in the water, we finish the one eighty-two, and that’s the end of the line. It’ll be tough on the day gang, too. You’ll need twenty years seniority here to stay on.”
“Any other yards around town hiring?”
“Are you kidding? Guy at the union told me the only place he knows could use some first-class men is a back yard up in City Island where they make those small boats, thirty-forty footers. You know, that light-gauge stuff for the family trade. And that’s way to hell and gon
e at the other end of the city. You get winded just driving there.”
“It’s better than nothing.”
“Not much,” said Joe. “Anyhow, don’t you go telling Shirley about this, but after I got out of the union I went and talked to Voight about doing ironwork again. You know, he’s foreman of that construction job the tribe is going on downtown. So he said he could put me on, and when I asked about you he said maybe he could fix you up, too.”
“How? It’s a whole different union setup, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but Voight swings a lot of weight there. And you get along fine with him and the rest of the tribe, which is the main thing. Maybe they want to keep you around for those poker games. The way you play, they all figure to buy new cars next year.”
“That’s nice of them, but I’ve already got my job lined up.”
“Your uncle?”
“That’s right.”
“So it panned out after all,” Joe said. “He’s loaded with dough, isn’t he?”
“He spends a lot. I don’t know how much he’s got. What he’s got that I need is connections, and that’s what I’m cashing in. You can’t blame me, can you?”
“What the hell do I have to blame you about? I told you long ago that’s what you should have been doing with yourself.”
There was something about the way he said it that stirred resentment in me. “You don’t sound too happy about it,” I said. “Do you think if I take that kind of job it’ll stand between us?”
“All I think is that any college guy can get a nice office job is crazy to go on construction work. One thing is sure, Shirley won’t have to worry about you if you’re in an office. It’ll be tough enough telling her I might go back on construction. I’m just as glad I don’t have to tell her you’re coming along.”
“What happens if the next job the tribe goes on is out of town?”
“I’ll worry about it when it happens. Right now all I’ve got to worry about is the Centrale.”
Yet, I knew that things were already different between us. The building he would be working on might be next door to the one I would be working in, his paycheck might be as much as mine for a while at least, but if we met we would have little to share, little in common to talk about. Once we went our separate ways he would be more kin to an ironworker who worked in a foreign land and spoke a strange language than he would be to me. And it was not a case of class difference. It was a case of a man’s job being more vital in defining what he was than his race, religion, or language.
I had time to think that out in detail while I did my own job on the Rio de Centrale. It turned out to be a painless enough job for the whole shift. The ship had been given a temporary berth in the canal, and since that was the coolest part of the yard and all work to be done was above decks, no one had any serious complaints to make. I least of all, because my partner for the night was Jorgensen, one of the hardest-working men of the gang as well as the most silent, and I was in a mood for hard work and silence. So I worked with him, fitting plates, fairing rivet holes, backing up rivets for him, and thinking of the future now rushing toward me.
The work went steadily, no one taking much of a break for the first few hours, because Andressen was in the yard and might appear on board at any time without notice. He had that effect on everyone—even on MacPherson, who had been an apprentice along with him thirty-eight years before—although it was hard to say why. You weren’t going to be fired for taking a few minutes’ rest on the job, but if you happened to be doing so, happened to be sitting back against a bulkhead and lighting a cigarette, and then found him standing there looking down at you, the cigarette had no taste. And after he had given you that long, sad, Basset hound look that was peculiarly his, and had walked away, you found that there was no joy in your brief repose, none at all, and that there was nothing to do about it but crush out the tasteless cigarette and go back to work. It was one of the few things for which the day shift envied us, the infrequent entrance of Andressen into our lives. They had to live with him all day long and hated him with a virulent hate.
When he finally did show up on the Centrale there seemed no point to the visit, because we were in the middle of dinner, sprawled around on the forecastle deck, too tired to move, and entitled to be. But he was on business bent.
“I need two men, Indian,” he said abruptly. “Is the crane fired up?”
“Sure,” said Joe. “We’ve been using it.”
“All right, I need one man to run it.” Andressen looked around. “Who’s good on the crane?”
“Me,” said Big Noonan. It was a lot easier handling the crane than fitting plates.
“And,” said Andressen, “I need one man to go on top of the drydock wall for signals.”
This time there were no volunteers. Everyone was winded, and that wall was fifty feet up and down a ladder. Andressen did not wait long. “You got a good bunch here,” he said coldly to Joe. “All right, pick me a man.”
I knew who the man would be as soon as Joe’s eyes met mine. After all, who can resist an opportunity to make the punishment fit the crime? “You go, Danny,” he said. “You’re a guy likes to hang around the drydock, aren’t you?”
No use raising any objections, certainly not with Andressen waiting there. I stood up and started to put together my gear.
“How are things going over there?” Joe asked Andressen.
“Bad,” said Andressen. He was not so much Basset hound now as angry and disgusted with the whole world. “Even with the hull out of water there is still two feet of water in the engine room, and the frame is holding him down under it. The police emergency don’t have equipment with them for underwater cutting and we don’t, so the doctor just went in there to do it his own way. Sometimes it’s good not to be a doctor. And that Mrs. Pereira, she’s waiting in my office with some of her people. They’re all waiting so they can have hysterics when we get him out. Women upset me when they get like that. She has no right to be here at all.”
“It’s her husband,” said MacPherson.
“She still has no right to be here. She should be home. I don’t even want to go near that office now.” Andressen waved an impatient hand at Noonan and me. “Come on, let’s get it over with.”
We had first-class passage to the drydock, riding in the cab of the crane as it thundered over its slack rails, clattering heavily over switching points and crossovers. As we passed the drydock I saw that while the day men had long since departed, there were other spectators to take their place. About a dozen of them in jackets or shirt sleeves, civilians all, and from the cameras a couple were holding I guessed that most of them were newspapermen ready to bestow on the Karen her moment of glory. They stood among the cars parked there and waited for that enchanting moment when Mrs. Pereira would first catch sight of her husband’s mangled and dripping remains. Still, as any of them would be glad to tell you, it was a living.
A short distance away from the cars stood the police emergency truck and an ambulance, and Noonan motioned at them. “Kind of late for an ambulance, ain’t it?” he said, and Andressen said, “They do it their own way. They do what they want. No, you don’t stop here. We want to go alongside midships where the tug is. Egan, you set the switch.”
I dropped from the crane, levered the railroad switch over with the big bar, and when the crane rumbled past me I stepped on the platform and rode it the rest of the way. Now we were in the shadow of the towering drydock wall, but the wall itself looked on fire in the light of the setting sun. It was very quiet there. The only sound was a dull, rhythmical thudding underfoot, the sound of the drydock pumps still at work, and when I looked at the watermark on the wall I saw that it still had inches to go before the floor of the dock would be entirely above water. That was when I first realized that Andressen’s shoes, braced on the sill near my shoulder, were spongy wet, and that his dungarees were soaked through up to the knees.
He said to us, “This is how you do it. When the doctor gets him loos
e there is a kind of basket to carry him in. You make a sling for it and set it down on the tug, and then you swing it back over here so the police can do what they want with it. You understand? I’ll have them bring the basket down here now.”
Noonan looked up at the jib of the crane rising tall and skeletal before us, and he looked at Andressen. “For chrissake, Andy,” he said. “This jib’ll never reach over the wall to the tug. This is a short jib. That’s what work orders said we’d need tonight. You want to get over to the tug you’d have to put up another twenty-thirty feet on it.”
“There’s no other crane with a long jib fired up?” said Andressen. “That number three crane?”
Noonan shook his head. “Nobody told us to do it.”
Andressen said nothing. The pumps thudded, a sea gull screeched overhead and came to rest on the pilings of the drydock and stood there posing haughtily, a free soul without a care in the world. Still Andressen said nothing. Finally he spoke. “You know,” he said gently, “what I would like to do now? I would like to go in the old man’s office and leave him a note to tell him what he can do with his yard, and then I would like to walk out and get myself so drunk I wouldn’t know what was happening.”
Noonan glanced at me with concern. This was a side of the super new to us, and it worried him. “Look,” he said, “even if the crane can’t reach the tug, it can reach the top of the dock. You get him that far, and I’ll take over the rest of the way.”
“Get him that far how?” said Andressen. “Everybody is falling all over that dock floor the way it is now. To carry a load—no, wait.” He studied the wall. “I tell you what. We string a line between the tug and the catwalk on top of the wall, and we lay him on a cabin door maybe and run it across. Then Egan can put the crane sling around it, and you bring it down here with the crane. Egan, you come up with me and help with that line.”
The Winter After This Summer Page 42