by Orrie Hitt
“I’m sick of this hanging around,” Digger announced. “I put in my application at the cork company this morning and they said they’d call me next week.”
“You’ll miss hopping bells,” the dishwasher said.
“Yeah, but I miss that now. And I miss the money more.”
“I wish I were Paul,” Felix said, but there was no envy in his voice. “Paul’s father could get him a job with that insurance company any day he wants it. Right, Paul?”
“I suppose he could.”
“And insurance agents make good money; you know that? Better than bakers — or storekeepers. The agent who works my neighborhood always drives a new car.”
I ordered more beers around and thought about it. Everybody, it seemed, had the idea that all insurance agents made a great deal of money. But this wasn’t true, any more than it was true that all lawyers were famous. Some agents made plenty of loot, some didn’t. Much depended on a man’s aptitude for the job. I felt sure that I didn’t have it and I felt even more positive that my father didn’t have it either. It was just a job with him; slave labor that required him to batter his knuckles on doors. He was not, in any sense, a hardened salesman. If some slob of a housewife asked my father to come back nine times in one week for a lousy dollar premium, he went back. If the assistant manager in the branch office refused to pay him on Friday unless he went out and got an application, he’d scrounge around until midnight to come up with a ten-cent weekly industrial. I’d seen too much of my father’s frustration, heard about too many ulcers in his office, to be interested in dropping dead over somebody’s lapse. Besides, I guess, I didn’t believe much in life insurance. My father, like many agents, carried only what the company gave him.
“You ready to go?” I asked Felix. “I’ll drop you off at your house.”
The four of us got up and walked toward the door. Digger said to hell with this strike business, he wasn’t coming around to picket any more. The dishwasher blew his nose and agreed with the bellhop.
“What about you?” Felix asked me. “Do you think it’s worth it, Paul? Name me one thing worth fighting for.”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “If the union got behind us and stayed there, it would be different. But they don’t. We can’t win much by walking in the cold.”
Ellen, of course, was getting sick of the whole affair. The longer I was out of work, the longer it would be before we could get married. Lately, she had been after me to see one of the accounting firms in the city. I had a degree from Pace, one that I’d earned before going into the army, and she argued that I ought to put it in motion for us.
“Well, hell,” Felix said.
Two uniformed cops pushed the door open and entered the bar. The loud talk in the room stopped almost immediately.
“No trouble,” one of the cops assured the bartender. “We’re just looking for a fellow.”
“What fellow?”
“Paul Jackson. Know him?”
I can’t say that I was shocked or frightened; it happened much too quickly for that. My first thought was that the truck driver had taken the license number of the car after all, that there had been some damage that Ellen hadn’t known about and that there was going to be trouble over it.
“I’m Paul Jackson,” I said, stepping forward.
The cop lit a cigarette and blew out the match.
“Your father Fred Jackson? An insurance agent?”
“Yes.”
The cop extended the pack of cigarettes but I shook my head.
“Your mother said we might find you down here.” He puffed on the cigarette, filling his lungs, and blew out the smoke. “I’m afraid we’ve got some bad news for you, Paul,” he said. “Your father was killed less than an hour ago.”
I heard Felix’s sharp intake of breath and then my own. A cold fluid seemed to drip out of my guts and spread through my body.
“How — what happened?”
“Hit by a car,” the cop said. “They had a union meeting near his office and after he left there he stepped off the curb right in front of this car.”
“Christ!” I said. “The poor old guy.”
“Tough.” The cop nodded sympathetically. “Funny thing, too — the car that hit him was being driven by the guy who had just masterminded the union meeting. Isn’t that something, though?”
I guess I excused myself to Felix and thanked the cop. Anyway, I went on outside, hardly feeling the night air at all, and walked down the street to the Merc.
Other than sadness, I felt only two things.
Pity for my mother, because she would be so lonely without him.
And a burning hatred for the unions. They had fouled up my job at the hotel, busted my bank account and now they had killed my father.
In that moment I hated the whole damned world.
Read more of Dolls and Dues
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eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4050-9
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