CATCHING OUT by DICK J. REAVIS

Author:DICK J. REAVIS
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SIMON & SCHUSTER
Published: 2010-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

11

COLLEGE BOYS

Sometimes a workingman can’t do what he’s asked, and sometimes he’s a fool to try: That’s the conclusion I drew one Tuesday after reporting to work for a crew from the generation that will lead, guide, or manage the nation’s future.

Four of us from Labor-4-U arrived about half an hour before starting time, 7:45, at a job site just blocks from the labor hall, on the wooded grounds of a nearby university. Its proximity meant that we’d have no fares to pay. The job description Dolly gave us, “unloading a truck,” sounded promising too.

It was the kind of job, I figured, whose crew would ordinarily include Real Deal and a couple of his acolytes, but he hadn’t been at the hall. Maybe he was in jail again, somebody said.

Since we were early, we found spots to sit and to recline. I struck up a conversation, first, with one of the two fortyish men on our crew, a lanky, pockmarked black named Lamar. For more than two years, he said, he’d been working a weekly ticket on a garbage crew. He’d started at six dollars an hour and had been promoted to an eight-dollar rate when he took on a tougher route, with more cans to lift.

The job had been lucrative, as far as Lamar was concerned, because it usually required fifty, sometimes sixty, hours per week. He had made $25,000 during the previous year, he said contentedly. But the trash-collecting company had decided not to renew its contract with Labor-4-U, and as an employee of a day-labor agency, he was not entitled to jobless benefits. Now he was working with the likes of me.

Also on the crew was Jamal, a young man in his late twenties or early thirties whom I knew from Automax outings. He was one of the hot-rodders, when his hands weren’t fiddling with his hair. He wore it in a style of thousands of twists, or ties, which he reviewed or revised constantly. It was a nervous habit, I suppose—better than smoking anyway.

A third member of the crew was a husky white in his forties. The ticket was his first at the labor hall. The day before, he told me, he’d been working as a volunteer at a charity thrift shop, discharging a community-service sentence for driving while intoxicated.

About 8:15 a cream-colored rental van drove by, followed by an 18-wheeler, slowly and cautiously navigating down the narrow campus street. We followed the truck.

The van parked. Six young men piled out. They were fresh-faced and tousle-headed. Five were white, one black. One of the whites wore a gray T-shirt whose back bore the legend “Supervisor.” The other T-shirts said “Installer.” It was summertime. They wore short pants.

We greeted them, but they merely nodded. They didn’t have time to bother with us yet. The 18-wheeler was backing into an even narrower street, lined by cars, parallel-parked on one side. The boys waved and whistled for fifteen minutes while the trucker wrestled with his rig. Its long trailer was a tight fit.

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