Читать книгу Cold Type - Harvey Araton - Страница 12

Chapter Six

“Molly, has Louie called yet?”

Morris waited ten seconds for an answer that didn’t come. That could only mean his wife was in the back bedroom, on the phone again with their daughter. Their marathon conversations exasperated Morris because Becky lived in the downstairs apartment of their two-family home.

“What’s the big deal?” Molly would say. “If someone calls, it’ll beep and I’ll get off.”

It had been weeks since Becky’s last failed attempt at getting pregnant. That meant another mourning period could commence at any moment, leaving Becky in bed, depressed and refusing to report to her teaching job. Molly’s maternal mission was to talk her back on her feet.

Next to Jamie’s divorce and his living more than an hour from his ex-wife and son, Becky’s unrelenting infertility was the family’s worst source of tension. The most benign baby chatter risked sending her on a tearful trail to a bedroom with her husband Mickey in immediate and reluctant pursuit.

Molly’s prescription for her first-born child seemed to be inexhaustible patience. “Next time,” she would say. “You’ll see.”

Morris sat on the living room sofa, facing the old console he stubbornly refused to part with. The color on its television faded in and out like out-of-town AM radio. The stereo had not been touched since the kids flap-jacked those revolting Rolling Stones albums on it.

The radio was on, set to the all-news station. Morris was dressed in his standard home uniform—boxer shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt covering but in no way hiding his pot belly. He needed a shave and a comb for his thinning gray hair. His calloused bare toes were perched on the wood trim of the glass coffee table.

He had already heard several updates on the Trib story, one every twenty-two minutes, hoping for a new nugget of news.

Next to him on the couch was the New York Sun. Its front page, ignoring the mid-term election, screamed in red banner delight—“CLOSED!!”—of its rival’s sudden shutdown.

Morris only bought the Sun because the other option in town, the Times, was out of the question. He couldn’t handle the microscopic print and the constipated writing. So he indulged the Trib’s tabloid competition, read it for its excellent coverage of baseball, the only sport he followed.

Even now, confronted with his own work stoppage, he was fuming over the baseball strike that had forced the cancellation of the World Series—and just when it looked as if his beloved Yankees were making a run. Morris’ head told him the players were spoiled and overpaid. His union heart could not root for an owner.

Molly called out to him from the bedroom to pick up the telephone in the kitchen.

“It’s your brother,” she said.

Morris rushed to the phone. “Louie, where are you?” he said.

“Kelly’s,” Lou said.

“What’s going on down there?”

“Cops are everywhere. There’s barricades and broken glass from the trucks all over the street in front of the docks. I haven’t heard from Stevie yet but someone said that the Alliance and some of the other unions were meeting today to decide what to do.”

Louie was breathing hard, talking a mile a minute. When Louis Kramer was troubled, independent thoughts crashed into each other like bumper cars. It was that way since they were kids, two grades apart, walking home from school in East New York.

Lou was the talkative one, forever pestering his older brother with questions that followed no narrative pattern. Do you think I could take that kid who cursed me out in gym? Why do you like the Yankees and not the Dodgers when we live in Brooklyn? What should I tell mom about that D, the one I got in History?

Morris would listen until he’d had enough. Then he would hold up one hand like a stop sign. “Don’t worry about it, Louie, OK?”

Lou hated to admit it, but as long as Morris was around, he felt calmer, safer, better.

“Mo, listen, I’m a little concerned here,” he said. His hushed voice meant he was using the pay phone near the bathrooms at Kelly’s Pub, a few feet from the back room table that for years had been unofficially reserved for Trib printers.

Morris didn’t respond. Lou kept talking.

“Some of the guys are here. Red, Tommy Isola, couple of others. The word going around is that Brady’s a maniac, swearing up and down that he’s not going to let the unions shut the paper. Tommy’s heard that they’ve got a shitload of scabs to drive the trucks, even more after what happened last night.”

“Lou, just because he says he wants to put out the paper doesn’t mean he puts it out,” Morris said. “He didn’t put it out last night, did he?”

“Yeah, but they’re saying the cops are going to make sure the trucks get out tonight, that the Mayor won’t let them turn the other cheek and let the drivers do—well, you know, what they do. As long as Brady keeps the paper open, whether it gets out or not, we’re in a bind, with the lifetime job guarantee thing.”

“So…”

“So a couple guys are saying that we might have to…”

“Who said that?”

“Naw, forget who. It’s just…”

“No way.”

“Yeah, but…”

“You hear me, Lou? No friggin way do we cross anybody’s picket line!”

Lou took a deep breath. “Mo, I’m not telling you that I think we should cross.”

“Good, Louie, because you know me well enough to know I’m not going to do that.”

“I know, Mo. I know. But I’m just telling you that these guys are wondering what’ll happen with our deal if we don’t. Some of the guys want to meet this afternoon. You should get down here, soon as you can because they’re pushing me for answers and I keep telling them, ‘Talk to Mo.’ They’re not going to listen to what I say like they do with you, you know what I’m saying?”

“I do, Louie.”

Lou waited for his brother to offer something more. Uncomfortable moments passed.

“Louie, don’t worry,” Morris said.

“OK, Mo,” Lou said. “But please come, OK?”

Morris hung up the phone and returned to his seat on the couch. He picked up the Sun again but his mind wandered far from the sports page. He would never admit this to his brother, but this time Morris Kramer was worried.