Table Money

by Jimmy Breslin

  “I’ll get the mortgage with my cash rating, don’t worry about it,” the father said.

  On Sunday morning Owney woke with his limbs covered with nerves. In attempting to deal with the confusion inside him, he thought of Vietnam, but discounted that, unless it was coming from someplace so deep in him that he wouldn’t know how to find it anyway.

  He could taste a beer as he got dressed.

  At the nine o’clock Mass at St. Pancras, he held the baby and his mind wandered too much to permit effective prayer. He thought of the union meeting, which was scheduled for eleven that morning, and became elated at the idea that he could be out of the house on official business on the day belonging to the Lord in the morning and children in the afternoon.

  When Owney stopped in front of the house after church, Dolores didn’t move.

  “I’ll go with you,” she said.

  “Go where?”

  “I want to watch.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “No, it isn’t. We did the letter together. Look what happened: Let’s try the same thing again.”

  “There’s no place there for a woman.”

  “I’ll go upstairs. Nobody’ll know I’m there.”

  They drove to Manhattan and parked in the silent morning on the empty business streets around the Polish Hall. There was nothing open on either side of the hall, and the closest distraction was the White Rose bar on 14th Street, which did not open until noon; therefore those arriving for the meeting had no place to go except where they were supposed to be, at the meeting.

  “Brother Morrison!” Harry Kellerman stood in the old lobby with so many newspapers under his arm that he looked like an old packhorse.

  Owney didn’t answer. Kellerman suddenly dropped the papers on the floor and pulled a folded paper out of his suit jacket, a gray pinstripe with a dark patch on the underside of the left sleeve, the result of misreaching for a glass and consigning the cuff to constantly flopping onto bars wet with beer and whiskey.

  “Magnificent!” He unfolded the Wall Street Journal and waved the editorial page.

  “Isn’t that great?” Dolores said.

  “Magnificent,” Kellerman said. “May I introduce myself? I’m Professor Harry Kellerman.”

  “I’m Dolores Morrison. Of course I’ve heard of you. And this is our daughter, Christine. Who is right now sort of asleep.”

  “Saving her strength for the battles ahead!”

  “I guess so.”

  “And there shall be many.”

  Dolores made a face. “You can forget about us in battles.”

  “Oh, no. We’re going right into the trenches.”

  “Not with my husband you’re not.”

  “The front lines, then.”

  “Put him down for the Peace Corps.”

  “It’s just language,” Kellerman said.

  “I could do without it.”

  “But make no mistake, there shall be a struggle throughout all of labor.” His voice rose to intimidate her.

  “I’m for that,” Owney said.

  “And I take it you’re ready to help,” Kellerman said to Dolores.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “I must tell you a story, little lady. At the time the Pennsylvania and the New York Central railroads were talking merger, I was hired by Mike Quill of the Transport Workers. He had twelve thousand track-workers involved with the merger. Well, anyway, I was hired by him to go to Washington to the ICC and attempt to protect his interests. You can’t believe the ICC. It’s set up like a French courtroom. When I walked in, the man pretending to be a judge was sitting up there on the highest bench I’ve ever seen. A French court! I had to look to the ceiling to see the tip of his nose. I start presenting my matter to him. He treated me like I was scum. For four days I fought for those twelve thousand workers while the big sharks sent their lawyers in and out as if they owned the place. Of course they did. While I was there, looking up until I got a neck ache, what do you think was happening in New York?”

  “The union pulled something,” Owney said.

  Kellerman waved a hand at him and looked directly at Dolores. “This is for you, little lady. What do you think was happening here in New York?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “Then let me tell you, little lady. The head of the railroads came to Quill’s house himself. Up on Seventy-second Street. And here was Quill’s lovely wife, smiling, bringing big drinks filled with ice out of the kitchen. Then, smiling, always smiling, and never listening, she wouldn’t dare presume—dare presume!—to listen to the men, she slipped out. But those drinks settled that labor dispute. I was in the French king’s court in Washington. With all my brains and all my energy and persistence I could not get done at the ICC what this woman accomplished in her kitchen.”

  He rocked back. His eyes sparkled. When Dolores did not answer, his eyes narrowed for an instant. Then he said cheerfully, “Well, that’s my story about good union wives. I guess we can let you get home now.”

  “Oh, I’m not going home. I’m staying.”

  “You’re staying here?”

  “Sure.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll sit up in the balcony with the baby. I can’t wait to see what’s going on.”

  “Oh, your husband can tell you when he gets home.”

  “I’d prefer to be here myself.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of being in the way?”

  “No, I’m not afraid.”

  “Not at all?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I am.” Kellerman snorted.

  “She’ll be fine,” Owney said.

  Kellerman put his face so close to Owney’s that their foreheads almost touched. “Brother Morrison, this is a serious business. You have shown aptitude for this business. I am here to see that you go to the top. I shall brook no interference.”

  He touched the baby under the chin. Then he put a hand gently on each of Dolores’s arms. His eyes were riveted on hers. “Now, little lady, I must explai——”

  “I think there’s a bit more to my life than me being a little lady.”

  His eyes rolled and then returned to hers. “You must realize that I think your husband is on the verge of something. The entire union movement is wide open. As a good union wife it is your duty to assist him in every way you can. The main way is never to force yourself on the union men.”

  “Is sitting in a seat forcing myself?”

  “Inhibit! That is the word. You inhibit and then you impede. A girl like you belon——”

  “She stays,” Owney said suddenly.

  Kellerman shut up.

  “I don’t mean to intrude,” Dolores said, “but I do think I have my life kind of tied up with his. Uhm, the two of us have this baby, not just me, you know, and I really think I’d like to at least see some things for myself. See you.” She walked up the staircase to the balcony.

  Kellerman fell silent. Finally he said, “We’ll discuss this at another time.”

  “I don’t know what’s so bad about it,” Owney said.

  “If I am to manage you, I must have freedom of decision,” Kellerman said.

  He bent down and picked up the piles of newspapers. Watching him, Owney tried to remember when he had agreed that Kellerman would run his union endeavors.

  Kellerman now walked with Owney into the back of the old hall. Kellerman took a great breath of air.

  “I smell union. Take a breath. Some men walk in here see a hall. I see a temple. Magnificent, brother! Look at this place. See the windows?” The windows along one side of the hall began at a point higher than anybody’s reach and went almost to the ceiling. “They make a joke out of these windows. They say they’re placed high out of reach in order to protect the usual denizens of this hall, the Polish people, from themselves during their most joyous moments. The windows are too high for anybody to be thrown through them. Slander at its most despicable. I stood in this very hall and atta
cked this story. The Polish might be my favorite people. Great union men. Housewreckers Local Two Thirty-seven. And what culture streams through their blood. Chopin! Paderewski! Incredible people, these Polish. Let someone tell a Polish joke in my presence!”

  Abruptly, he dropped the papers and slipped out of a large wooden door, which he shut after him. Owney stood for a few moments. When Kellerman came back, he was reeking of whiskey.

  “You got a bottle,” Owney said.

  “I don’t use a bottle,” Kellerman said. “What do you think I am, some degenerate bum in the gutter? I carry a flask.”

  Owney nudged him and Kellerman went through the door with Owney following. In the shadows at the head of the stairs, Kellerman pulled from his jacket pocket a flask as big as a canteen. He tapped a large dent on the side.

  “From the Crimea campaign.”

  The whiskey rushed like bad medicine into Owney’s mouth. He gagged and bent over in case he threw up.

  “Rugged in the mornings,” Kellerman said.

  Owney held his breath and took a large swallow. It barely got down.

  “What ails you?” Kellerman said.

  “I’m all right.”

  “Of course you are. Have another before we go.”

  Owney took a swallow and handed the flask back to Kellerman. Kellerman had it to his mouth as Owney tried to choke without sound.

  Kellerman put the flask back in his pocket and looked around. “See how they keep the ceiling lights off out here? No windows here, either. That’s by design, brother. They wanted these Polacks to fight in the dusk. They might miss a couple of punches, the ignorant bastards.”

  On the stage, there was a table with four men in business suits that were wrinkled from trying to stretch across too much belly. One of the men, Billy Callahan, the business agent for the union, stood up and took off his suit jacket, loosened his tie, and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt.

  “I got dressed up for church this morning, but I don’t need no tie on for you people,” he said.

  The crowd of about one hundred fifty laughed. Most of them smoked cigarettes.

  Kellerman whispered to Owney, “We’ll take seats in the back and play this cool. Today, we’ll just watch. They know about the Wall Street Journal. Don’t worry, I made sure of that. We’re taking care of your career.”

  Owney found the pronoun “we” strange, but said nothing. “I want to sit further up,” he said. “I got something to say.”

  “Say what, brother.”

  “I don’t know.”

  He walked up the middle aisle and grabbed a seat. Looking back, he saw Kellerman alone on a chair in the back. Owney threw a glance up at the balcony, but Dolores had made certain to sit away from the railing and therefore remain out of the line of sight. Owney regarded this as a retreat from her earlier boldness. She was a girl having her moment. The next meeting she won’t even come.

  On the stage, Billy Callahan gripped a microphone and called out, “Now let’s get on with it. Meeting come to order. The first thing we got is a letter from the Safety and Health Committee concerning safety and health.”

  At the table, a vice-president, Hennehan, tugged at a shirt collar that was barely making it around a neck the size of a truck tire, adjusted a pair of half glasses so that they covered his fat eyes, and began reading a long report about men failing to attend Monday morning safety meetings. As the speaker droned on, Owney thought about his father. He should be here to talk about these short gangs. Then his eyes glanced at Jackie Donnelly, who wore a shirt and tie, had his dark brown hair brushed neatly, and was leaning forward, his face reacting eagerly to each monotonous word. He was an ass kisser in school. Oh, bet your life on it. And then he walks around like a tough guy, Owney thought. He is so tough that he’s exactly my age, and he didn’t go near the service. Plenty of heart.

  When the report was finished, Callahan said, “I want to say one thing about Brother Danny Murphy. He got picked up by the cops on account of he was walking with his shopping bag and they said there was numbers in it and of course he don’t admit there were even slips in the shopping bag, much less slips with numbers on them. He didn’t say nothing to the cops, but he wants to say something here in this room.”

  Danny Murphy stood up. He, too, was dressed for church, in a light brown suit and a white shirt and flowered red tie. He clearly was not used to this attire. He hooked a finger into his shirt collar and gazed at the ceiling.

  “Brother Murphy.”

  The finger kept tugging at the collar and the eyes remained on a point overhead.

  “He’s afraid,” somebody said.

  This shook Danny out of his reverie. “I’m not afraid to put my foot in your face.”

  “Brother Danny Murphy, now that you have broken the ice, will you tell us what’s bothering you?”

  “We got a lot of guys here who have cops for friends,” Danny said. “I’m not calling a good union man a rat. But you could meet a cop friend in the hardware store or in the bar on the way home and you mention somethin’ to them about the job. Maybe you say you play a number. It’s all by accident, you don’t mean nothin’ by it, but then the cop goes right out like the rat that he is and they come after me. What I mean is that we all should keep our fucking mouths shut when we talk.”

  Callahan now roared, “All right. That takes care of that. Remember what you just heard. Now I want to discuss with you the three-cents-an-hour donation to the Political Action Committee. I want to tell you that the three-cent PAC is pride in your union. Look at the Veterans Day we put on. We give out our T-shirts to the kids and Chris Doyle give out hot dogs to the members. If we didn’t have the three-cent PAC, we would’ve been assholes at the parade. Brother McNamara, you got something to say?”

  McNamara had a shock of white hair and he wore a blue knit shirt that was tight around a body that still was hard. He stepped into the aisle and spread his feet and rocked back and forth.

  “I want to ask you, Brother Callahan, as our business agent, do those men that don’t put up the three cents an hour still get an official union T-shirt for their kids and then get hot dogs free at our official union affairs?”

  Callahan made a face. “What am I, a business agent or a fucking cashier at a lunch counter? How do I know who eats what? We got twenty guys in the whole union who don’t put up for our PAC. What am I supposed to do, check a dues book before I let them put mustard on a fucking hot dog for somebody?”

  Callahan started to say something else, but Crawford, a black man, fat and his hair gray, stood up without raising his hand. He took a cigar out of his mouth and looked down at it. “What about dis mon Eddie Meagher?”

  Callahan shook his head. “May the Lord help the poor fuck. Now we better not start talkin’ about this matter in public, either. These insurance lawyers hear anything, they’re worse than cops.”

  “I agree wit’ you on dat. But de mon die because somebody tell him to go to de shaft on account of de gang was down dere short-honded and dis mon Meagher, he could get on and work.”

  Callahan’s eyebrows went up and his lips pursed to show doubt.

  “I look around on my job,” Crawford said. “Sometimes de gangs are short.”

  Owney felt his feet move involuntarily, the left forward and the right backward. The man seated next to him glanced at Owney.

  On the other side of the room, a hand was raised. On the stage, Callahan called out, “Brother Donnelly.”

  Jackie Donnelly looked around the room, his face pleasant and relaxed, and then began talking. “Brothers. We are bonded together in a union that would not permit one brother to work harder than a human should, or to risk his body any more than we all risk ours every time we go down into the hole. Now there are times when the deployment of personnel makes it seem as if somebody is missing from a gang assigned to, well, to give an example, assigned to helping run in an air line. Perhaps when you are on the platform drilling the face, there appears to be a man short or something
, but there surely is not. I can’t believe that anybody would send union men down in short gangs.”

  Crawford still had not sat down. He examined his cigar and then his head rose again. “Dey say on de ot’er gangs a mon is missing here, a mon is missing dere. When dey check up, to see if dey is on some duty like you say, dey find de mon simply is not dere.”

  Donnelly smiled. “Perhaps Brother Morrison …”

  Owney looked up, startled. Donnelly in his white shirt and dark tie, a smile doused with olive oil. A mutt, Owney said to himself.

  “What?” Owney said.

  Donnelly began talking, his head turning to all corners of the room, regularly and mechanically. He stopped and looked directly at Crawford.

  “I can understand your anger about a man, any man, being lost on a job. Naturally, we hope there is something or somebody to blame. So that we can prevent it from happening next time. But I just can’t help but feel that we should see if the men simply aren’t exercising the necessary precautions. Well. Here. Brother Morrison’s father is the shop steward for the job of which you are pointing these things out. Unfortunately, his father isn’t in attendance today. But Brother Morrison here, Brother Owney Morrison, can certainly tell us that it is a lie about gangs going down there short-handed. I can’t imagine such a thing happening if there is one Morrison alive. Isn’t that right, Brother Morrison?”

  Donnelly, eyebrows up and smile slick. Owney stood up. “I can’t speak for any other Morrison because I’m the only one here,” he said. “I don’t know what to say about short gangs on our job except that if they are short it is a mistake that can be explained. But while we’re waiting for the explanation, we’re going to see to it that there are no short gangs tomorrow morning. About Brother Meagher, I can tell you that I was there when he got killed. I dogged it.”

  Still on his feet, looking at Owney, Donnelly cut in: “I don’t know of any man in this room, or in this whole country, who can use that word in your presence. I also would like to point out to the members that like a good union man, Brother Morrison wrote a personal letter to the Wall Street Journal. They printed it nice. I’m sure you all saw his nice letter in the Wall Street Journal.”