"I've got to spread that work around for the high school team. I'm doing all I can for you, Jimmie," I said.
"Well," he said. And he hesitated again. "I got to have some more money."
"There's no way I can give it to you," I pointed out. "You're classified as a relief operator. The union only allows me to work you twenty-four hours a week."
"You mean that's what you pay me for," he snapped. "I'm actually workin' about sixty!"
"That's all I can pay you for," I said. And it was true. The unions really keep an eye on social security records. "If you don't want the job perhaps you'd better quit."
"Yeah?" he grunted. "Where the hell would I get another one?"
"As a projectionist?"
"That's my line. It's the only thing I've ever done."
"Well, that makes it tough," I said. "If you had a couple grand for transfer and initiation fees, you might get into another local. But the chances are all against it."
He gave me a sore look, started to say something, then turned back to the machines. I went back downstairs and outside.
I was standing out near the curb, just lighting a cigarette, when a big black roadster pulled up and Mike Blair got out. He was the last man in the world I wanted to see. He's a business agent for the projectionists' union, and I'd seen more than enough of him six years before when this town was in his territory. We shook hands, neither of us putting much pressure into it, and I asked him where he was headed. He pushed his hat back on his head, taking his time about answering and giving me a mean grin.
He took the cigar out of his mouth, looked at it, and put it back in again.
"I'm already there, Joe. This town's back in my district."
"Yeah?" I said. "I mean-it is?"
"Nice, huh?" He waggled the cigar in the corner of his mouth. "In fact, it's been back in my district for three days. I was over here last night, looking the old burg over, and the night before."
"Well," I said, "it's funny I didn't see you."
"It'd been a hell of a lot funnier if you had. Don't kid me, Joe. I like you in a nasty sort of way, but I don't like to be kidded. You were out of town."
"I couldn't help it. I-"
"I don't give a damn about that. You remember what I told you at the time I left here? What I told you a dozen other times?"
"Well-"
"I'll tell you again for the last time. You're an indie. You can run your own projectors and use a card man for reliefs, and we'll carry you on the fair list. You do that or else. You do it or put two men in the booth. Full time."
"Now, look, Blair," I said, "let's be reasonable about this. You-"
"We ain't got time to reason, Joe. Jimmie Nedry's already run over his twenty-four hours."
"But how can I run the projectors and the house, too? Just show me how, Blair, and I'll-"
"Maybe you can't. I'll send you down another operator, and you keep out of the booth. How's that?"
He knew how it was without asking. Two full-time operators would cost me a hundred and eighty bucks a week.
"Look," I said. "Where did you get that two men to
the booth and ninety-dollar scale to begin with? I'll tell you. Panz palace framed it for you to freeze out city competition. They could carry four men at a hundred and fifty if they had to, but the indies couldn't, so you guys threw in with them. I-"
"Look who's talking," he said. "Well?"
"I can't pay it," I said. "Goddamit, you know I can't."
"Get up in the booth, then, and stay there. All but twenty-four hours of the week."
"I can't do that, either."
He grinned, nodded, and walked off. I had to follow him out to his car.
"You're going to pull the house?"
"You know I am, Joe."
"After all I've done for union labor in this town, you're going to-going to-"I couldn't goon. The look on his face stopped me.
"Why, you chiseling son of a bitch," he said softly. "You got the nerve to talk about what you've done for union labor. You get them to practically put you up a new house for nothing, and-"
"I paid scale all the way through the job."
"Sure you did. With coupon books. And the coupons weren't even good for full admissions; just a ten-cent discount. The boys put in an eight-hour day for you, and got out and sold tickets at night. That's what it amounted to. They built you a new house and then kept it packed for you."
"They all got their money. I didn't hear any of them kicking about it."
"Okay, Joe," he said. "It's none of my business, anyway. But this other is. You're off the fair list starting tomorrow."
Maybe you don't know what it means to have a house struck in a town like ours. It means you settle fast or go broke. There'd be spotters from every local watching out front. Any time a union man or a member of his family bought a ticket, it would mean a twenty-five buck fine for him. Consequently, in a place where everyone knows everyone else, there wouldn't be any bought.
"All right," I said. "But I'd like to ask you a couple of questions, Blair."
"As many as you like, Joe."
"When did your men take out cards in the bricklayers' union?"
"Huh?" He blinked. "What do you mean?"
"I'm talking about the job your boys did in the house over at Fairfield last week."
"Oh, that!" He forced a laugh. "Why that wasn't a bricklayer's job. All it amounted to was putting a few bricks under the projectors. Leveling them up. They had to make a longer shot, see, and-"
"It was brick work, wasn't it?"
"But the bricklayers couldn't have done it. The operators had to!"
"Then you should have had bystanders in from the bricklayers," I said. "You know what I think, Blair? I think the bricklayers are going to file a complaint against you with the state federation. I think that brick work at Fairfield is going to have to be torn out and done over by the proper local."
He stopped grinning, and his face fell a little. "You get around, don't you, Joe?"
"More than you'd think," I said. "More than you do, apparently. Did you know that the projectionists at View Point installed over fifty seats in the house there?"
"Sure I know about it," he snapped. "There wasn't enough carpenters to do the job so the projectionists finished it up."
"Why didn't the carpenters work overtime?"
"Because the chairs had to be in for the night show!"
"I get you," I said. "Rules are rules until they start pinching you. Then you throw them out the window." He stood at the side of his car, thinking, bobbling the cigar around in his mouth. The bricklayers and carpenters are our two biggest locals; they're usually the biggest locals in any district. If they took a notion to-and Blair knew they would after I got through needling 'em-they could make him wish he'd never been born.
"Okay, Joe," he said, finally. "Maybe I was a little hasty."
"I thought you'd see it my way," I said. "No hard feelings?"
"All kinds of 'em." He looked down at my hand and shook his head. "I'm not through with you, Joe. Some day I'm going to hang one on you that you can't squirm out of."
7
Our house, our residence, sits out on the edge of town, almost a hundred yards from the highway. It's all that's left of the old Barclay homestead, just the house and a couple acres of ground and the outbuildings.
It was a little after midnight when I got there. I parked the car in the yard, in back of Elizabeth's, locked it up, and went in the kitchen door. The coffee percolator was going, and there was some cheese and pickles and other stuff sitting out on the table. I went through the door to the dining-room and started up the stairs.
"Oh, there you are, darling!" called Elizabeth.
She was sitting in the living-room with a book in her lap, and the light turned low.
"Wasn't it nice of me to wait up for you?" she said. "I've even fixed a lunch. I know you must be famished." She had on a little gingham house dress, and she was smiling, and for a minute I was crazy enough to think she wasn't giving me a rib. Then I thought of all the times in the past she'd picked me up just to slap me down; and I went on upstairs without speaking. I washed, combed my hair, and went back down again.