Pride (33 page)

He has my pole ready again and new bait on it. I know I'm going to fish the rest of the day hoping nothing bites on my line. I make a cast and it backlashes a little bit and I only get the line out about half as far as the last time, but it's O.K. with me. I pull out the line from the reel and Dad helps me wind it on the reel straight again.

Then Dad goes over and reels in his line. The bait on both hooks is gone.

“I think I'm just feeding crabs.”

He kneels down and cuts more bait for his hooks.

“You know, Dickie, sometimes
people
can be more dangerous than any other animal. There are sharks and lions and stingrays in the hearts of some people. You have to learn to recognize them and stay clear so you won't get hurt.”

“You mean like the J.I. people and the union people?”

“Yeah, I guess that's a pretty good example. J.I. didn't want to hurt me, Dick Kettleson, personally, they're just trying to scare the shop steward, to chase out the union, and I got in the way. They're business people. They want to make a good profit with their factory the same way that lion or that stingray wants to eat. It's their nature. If I get in the way I could get eaten and they'd hardly notice. It's the same way with the unions. It's like lions fighting tigers or sharks fighting stingrays. They both want to win, and if somebody tries to stop them, they can get hurt.”

We sit down on the edge of the pier again. Dad takes out some sandwiches Mom packed for us before we left. My sandwiches are peanut butter and jelly. Dad's are Lebanon baloney. He has them packed in the lunch pail he takes to work, and there's a Thermos bottle. Mom's put hot cocoa in it. He pours some out for me in the top, and drinks from the bottle himself. It's still steaming hot.

“But everybody isn't like that, are they, Dad? Everybody isn't just trying to beat everybody else, are they?”

“The way I see it, there are three kinds of people, Dickie. There are the
‘get by'
people, who won't do anything unless you make them do it. They don't care about anything or anybody except themselves, to me they're the lower-lower class. Then there are the ‘
get along
' people. They get along with others and they want the job to get along, too; they want to get it done right. That's the upper-lower class. That's what we are.

“The last bunch is the
‘get ahead'
people. They're almost worse than the
‘get by'
people. They only look out for themselves, and they don't care about the job any more than the ‘
get-byers
'; just so long as they come out ahead and make more money. They're all the rest of the classes.

“But don't you worry about it. Just stay away from
‘get-byers'
and
‘get-aheaders'
whenever you can.”

“You aren't doing it, Dad. You're working at J.I. and you're a steward with the union. Why do you stay with these people if they're so bad?”

Just as I'm saying this, Dad casts his line. He doesn't wink this time. He shoots that sinker and those hooks straight up and out way over the water. It keeps sailing until it hits almost twice as far as he threw it the first time. He tilts his reel to show me there's almost no line left. He's smiling a really big smile.

“Boy, I almost outdid myself. That must be the longest cast I've ever made.” He reels in the slack, sits down, takes another bite of his sandwich.

“You're right, Dickie. But there are other things to think about. We've got our family and we've got to live. With the Depression and all, we got behind; we couldn't pull our own weight and fell into debt for the rent and things. Then, J.I. offered me all that money and it was hard to resist. I got back my seniority, too, nine years of it. That means they have to fire other people before they can fire me and I make more money than if I was just starting on the job. I had to think about all that.”

I know he's looking at me while he's talking but I can't look back. This is partly because I still think he was wrong going back to J.I. and partly, too, because my mind has run off again and is thinking about that darned lion.

One part of me feels guilty because a man got killed but another part is glad the lion is free and I'm hoping they don't catch him, even if he freezes or starves to death; it'd be better than putting him back in a cage.

“Do you understand me, Dickie? I
had
to go back. I joined the union because I thought I could fight against J.I. that way and be a little bit free from them, but that didn't work. The union people are only more bosses,
‘get-aheaders.'
You see, your Daddy makes mistakes, too.”

“Why don't we stay here in Wildwood, Dad? It'd be like vacation all the time. There are plenty of broken porches I see everywhere. You and I could go around fixing them up and just take the money from the people and never worry about anything.”

Dad pulls suddenly as if he has a bite, then reels in slowly. I wonder if he might have something on his line.

“Nothing but a crab nibbling again. They'll steal your bait every time.

“Dickie, it's not that simple. During this last while at J.I., what with our rent already paid, we've been able to put the money we used for the porches back into our emergency fund and some extra besides. It won't be long before we'll be able to buy a better car.”

Now Dad's looking out over the water. Maybe he's only feeling if he really has a bite or it's just crabs again. I think I get a bite but I don't pull too hard. If some fish wants to bite itself onto my hook that's O.K. but I'm not going to hook any fish on purpose.

“A married man has to think about security. And, I don't think anybody gets any security without giving up some freedom. Sure we'd all like more freedom. I'd love working for myself, being my own boss, but then I wouldn't have any security at all. We can't afford that. Mom would worry all the time and I'd worry, too.”

“Sure, Dad. But some people do, don't they? How about Mr. Greene, the paperhanger? He doesn't work for anybody and he pays his rent all the time; we even built a porch for him. He doesn't work for any J.I. or anything and I'll bet he doesn't belong to any union either. Why can't we be like him?”

“You're right, Dickie. Maybe I just don't have what it takes to step out on my own. When I was a kid, I watched my dad lose his farm, then his store. He tried contracting and building houses with us boys helping, but he lost all that in the Depression. It's hard not to get scared.”

I knew most of those things about Granddad. I never thought about how my dad felt about them. I don't think enough.

I start looking out over the ocean some more myself. It's getting to be warmer and warmer. It's going to be a good day for the beach. I hope Mom and Laurel will want to go, too. Dad starts reeling his line in fast. At first I think he's caught something, but his pole isn't bending so he's just reeling in to check his bait.

“Let's call it off for the day, Dickie. I don't think we're going to catch anything more after that stingray. He was enough to last the whole season for me, maybe my whole life.”

I begin reeling in. It's only then I realize I do have a fish on my line. I'm not sure, but it's pulling and swirling back and forth that way. I won't say anything until I'm sure. Dad pulls his line in; the bait's still on each hook so the crabs didn't get it.

“One more idea. The union bosses at the meetings keep talking about the class war, about the working class and all that. Most of the people I work with aren't workers. They just do something, anything, for money, and they don't care what they do or how well they do it. They get no pride at all from doing something right. They wouldn't do a lick if somebody didn't watch them. It makes me discouraged working with them, locked in that grease-smelling brick cage of a building all day.

“I
like
to work, even in that stinking, rotten J.I., and I feel good when I've done something the way it ought to be done.”

I pull in my line and there
is
a fish on it. Dad's all excited. He wiggles it off the hook. It's a kingfish, about a two-pounder.

“Hey, there, Dickie, you're quite a fisherman. We can all have a nice little fish dinner from this fellow.”

Dad takes out his knife, scrapes off the scales, cuts off the head, pulls out the insides, and throws all that stuff over the side. Cut up like this, the fish doesn't look very big, but Dad hefts it in his hand and hands it to me.

“Feel that, Dickie. That pays our rental fees for the poles and for the bait. We got a whole morning's fun fishing for nothing. That fish'd cost at least fifty cents in a market.”

I hold it a minute. It feels wet and cold. Dad takes it back, wraps it in one of the sandwich wrappers, the baloney one, and slides it into his lunch box.

“Another thing, Dickie. Most of the people who get to be bosses, whether it's with the company or with the union, are people who
don't
like to work. Now they want me to be shop foreman at J.I. That's what the union people are worried about. If I quit the union it'll look as if I'm going over with the company people. To be honest, I don't think I'd even
like
being a foreman, telling other people what to do.”

“You tell
me
what to do when we're working on the porches. That's a little bit like being a foreman, isn't it?”

“It's not the same, Dickie. You
like
working the same as I do. We got satisfaction out of building those porches fast and right, getting ahead of the game with our own hands. These people I'd have to boss around wouldn't be that way. They'd always be trying to duck out of work and I'd be a kind of policeman and slavedriver forcing them to do what has to be done. But we were a team, right?”

He puts his hand on my shoulder from the front not around the back of the neck the way you do with a little boy. He puts his hand on my shoulder the way a king does when he makes a regular soldier into a knight.

“Dad, I still think we could make a better living working for ourselves. We could do all kinds of things. You can fix anything. We could put papers under everybody's doors telling them about our fix-it business and put an ad in the Upper Darby newspaper. We could call it Kettleson's Fix-it Shop.”

“But we'd have to have a phone then; that'd cost money.”

“Sure, Mom could take all the messages and keep the bills straight and everything. I could help you and pick up or deliver all the things that are close by. There are hundreds of things that need fixing, and people wouldn't be throwing so much stuff away in the trash. I could even go around picking through the trash early in the morning and find things for you to fix up and sell. That'd be fun.”

Dad's got everything packed up. We're walking back along the pier. I'm just behind him. I'm so interested in talking about Kettleson's Fix-it Shop I'm not even afraid of the holes. The water's not as far in as it was when we first went out. I think Dad's even listening to me.

“It'd be fun all right, Dickie. I could fix up the truck to go around and fix things right in people's homes. I'd have our Kettleson's Fix-it Shop sign painted on both sides. How'd you like that?”

“That'd be terrific. We could cruise around in the truck looking for work and I'd carry your tools. I could even learn to help, little things at first.”

“Yeah, but how about school? If you don't go to school you'll never amount to anything.”

“Oh, come on, Dad. I hate school. I'm not learning much there. I learn more out fishing with you or fixing porches than I ever learn at school. Do you think Sister Anastasia knows about stingrays or unions or
‘get-byers'
? She doesn't teach us anything except religion and civics and diagramming sentences. Those things don't mean anything to me.”

“Maybe not; but you have to go to school. You could help me weekends and after school if you want.”

Heck, I knew I'd have to go to school. My dad and mom have this idea that your whole life will be different if you only go to school. What'll happen is I'll probably just get to be another one of those
“get-aheaders.”
They don't think about that.

T
uffy wakes and rolls over on his back. It's dark and warm in the attic. He gnaws awhile on the untattooed arm he's dragged with him. He's thirsty, but not thirsty enough to go looking for water. There are probably two factors involved in his lack of mobility. One, he's lived in a cage most of his life; moving around searching for food or water is not part of his normal experience. His tendency is to wait until Cap brings him what he needs. Tuffy is probably not totally aware he isn't in a cage. Secondly, a lion's natural state when it's satiated is inertia. Tuffy has moved only twice in the two days since he killed and ate Jimmy, each time to excrete in another corner of the attic. This was at night so no one heard him or was aware of his heavy, muffled movements.

Tuffy falls asleep on his back, his legs spread, his paws cocked loosely outward. He is feeling no threat at all, perfectly comfortable in the quiet darkness.