Matt got his coffee and a sinker and sat down at one of the small tables with Runt. Runt was rarely caught eating. He seemed to consider the need for solid food something of a disgrace, a sign of weakness. Whiskey and beer and maybe once a day a corned-beef sandwich — that was Runt’s diet, and in the face of medical science it had kept him wiry and resilient at fifty-five.
“What kind of a boat we got today?” Matt asked. Runt lived in a two-dollar hotel above the Longdock Bar and he was usually up on his shipping news.
“Bananas,” Runt said, drawing out the middle vowel in disgust.
“Bananas!” Matt groaned. Bananas meant plenty of shoulder work, toting the heavy stalks out of the hold. A banana carrier was nothing less than a human pack mule. There was only one good thing about bananas: the men who worked steady could afford to lay off bananas, and so there was always a need for extra hands. The docker who had no in with the hiring boss, and even the fellow who was on the outs with the Keegan mob, stood a chance of picking up a day on bananas.
By the time Matt and Runt reached the pier, ten minutes before the 7:30 whistle, there were already a couple of hundred men on hand, warming themselves around fires in metal barrels and shifting their feet to keep the numbness away. Some of them were hard-working men with families, professional longshoremen whose Ireland-born fathers had moved cargo before them. And some of them were only a peg above the bum, casuals who drifted in for a day now and then to keep themselves in drinking money. Some of them were big men with powerful chests, large, raw-faced men who looked like throwbacks to the days of bare-knuckle fights-to-a-finish. Some of them were surprisingly slight, wizen-faced men in castoff clothing, the human flotsam of the waterfront.
Fisheye came out of the pier, flanked by a couple of the boys, “Flash” Gordon and “Blackie” McCook. There were about three hundred longshoremen waiting for jobs now. Obediently they formed themselves into a large horseshoe so Fisheye could look them over. Meat in a butcher shop. The men Fisheye wanted were the ones who worked. You kicked back part of your day’s pay to Fisheye or did favors for Lippy if you wanted to work regular. You didn’t have to have a record, but a couple of years in a respectable pen didn’t do you any harm.
“I need two hundred banana carriers.” Fisheye’s hoarse voice seemed to take its pitch from the foghorns that barked along the Hudson. Jobs for two hundred men at a coveted $2.27 an hour. The three, maybe four hundred men eyed one another in listless rivalry. “You — and you — Pete — okay, Slim...” Fisheye was screening the men with a cold, hard look. Nearly twenty years ago a broken-down dock-worker had gone across the street from the shape-up. “No work?” the bartender had said, perfunctorily, and the old man had answered, “Nah, he just looked right through me with those blasted fish-eyes of his.” Fisheye — it had made the bartender laugh, and the name had stuck.
Anger felt cold and uncomfortable in Matt’s stomach as he watched Fisheye pass out those precious tabs. He didn’t mind seeing the older men go in, the ones he had shaped with for years, especially family men like himself. What gave him that hateful, icy feeling in his belly was seeing the young kids go in ahead of him, new-generation hoodlums like the fresh-faced Skelly kid who boasted of the little muscle jobs he did for Lippy and the boys as his way of paying off for steady work. Young Skelly had big ideas, they said around the bar. One of these days he might be crowding Lippy himself. That’s how it went down here. “Peaches” Maloney had been Number One — until Lippy dumped him into the gutter outside the Longdock. Matt had seen them come and go. And all the time he had stood up proud and hard while lesser men got the work tabs and the gravy.
Fisheye almost had his 200 men now. He put his hand on Runt Nolan’s shoulder. “All right, you little sawed-off rat, go on in. But remember I’m doin’ ya a favor. One word out of line and I’ll bounce ya off the ship.”
Runt tightened his hands into fists, wanting to stand up and speak his mind. But a day was a day and he hadn’t worked steady enough lately to keep himself in beers. He looked over at Matt with a helpless defiance and went on into the pier.
Matt waited, thinking about Fran and the kids. And he waited, thinking at Fisheye: It ain’t right, it ain’t right, a bum like you havin’ all this power. Fie couldn’t keep it out of his face. Fisheye flushed and glared back at him and picked men all around Matt to round out his two hundred. He shoved Matt’s face in it by coming toward him as if he were going to pick him and then reaching over his shoulder for Will Murphy, a toothless old sauce hound whom Matt could outwork five for one. There never had been enough caution in Matt, and now he felt himself trembling with anger. He was grabbing Fisheye before he had time to think it out, holding the startled boss by the thick lapels of his windbreaker.
“Listen to me, you fatheaded bum. If you don’t put me on today I’ll break you in two. I got kids to feed. You hear me, Fisheye?”
Fisheye pulled himself away and looked around for help. Blackie and young Skelly moved in.
“Okay, boys,” Fisheye said, when he saw they were there. “I c’n handle this myself. This bigmouth is dumb, but he’s not so dumb he wants to wind up in the river. Am I right, Matt me lad?”
In the river. A senseless body kicked off the stringpiece into the black and secretive river, while the city looked the other way. Cause of death: accidental drowning. Dozens and dozens of good men had been splashed into the dark river like so much garbage. Matt knew some of the widows who had stories to tell, if only someone would listen. In the river. Matt drew away from Fisheye. What was the use? Outnumbered and outgunned. But one of these days — went the dream — he and Runt would get some action in the local, some following; they’d call a real election and—
Behind Matt a big truck blasted its horn, ready to drive into the pier. Fisheye thumbed Matt to one side. “All right, get moving, you’re blocking traffic, we got a ship to turn around.” Matt spat into the gutter and walked away.
Back across the street in the Longdock, Matt sat with a beer in front of him, automatically watching the morning television: some good-looking, fast-talking dame selling something — yatta-ta yatta-ta yatta-ta. In the old days, at least you had peace and quiet in the Longdock until the boys with the work tabs came in for lunch. Matt walked up the riverfront to another gin mill and sat with another beer. Now and then a fellow like himself would drift in, on the outs with Lippy and open to Matt’s arguments about getting up a petition to call an honest union election: about time we got the mob’s foot off’n our necks; sure, they’re tough, but if there’s enough of us... it was the old dream of standing up like honest-to-God Americans instead of like oxen with rings in their noses.
Matt thought he was talking quiet but even his whisper had volume, and farther down the bar Feets and Specs were taking it in. They weren’t frowning or threatening, but just looking, quietly drinking and taking it all in.
When Matt finished his beer and said see-ya-later, Specs and Feets rose dutifully and followed him out. A liner going down-river let out a blast that swallowed up all the other sounds in the harbor. Matt didn’t hear them approach until Feets had a hand on his shoulder. Feets was built something like Matt, round and hard. Specs was slight and not much to look at. He wore very thick glasses. He had shot the wrong fellow once. Lippy had told him to go out and buy a new pair of glasses and warned him not to slip up that way again.
“What d’ya say, Matt?” Feets asked, and from his tone no one could have thought them anything but friends.
“Hello, Feets, Specs,” Matt said.