“Okay. But before you do that,” his father said, “I want you to consider this.” The older man was still staring out the window. “Say you come to work for me again. But not part-time, not as a helper. As a pipefitter this time. Gradually, working together, we can take on a few bigger jobs. Schools. Maybe a hospital or something. Apartment houses. You know a few things about engineering now, and I know a lot about installation.” He paused, as if waiting for Alvin to answer.
When his son remained silent, he went on. “We can get capital from the bank or the government. In a few years we can turn this one-man plumbing business into a regular contracting outfit. Fifteen, twenty, thirty men laying pipe. Maybe doing some good-sized jobs all over the state.”
Again, the older man paused, as if to gauge his son’s response, and getting none, continued speaking, but more rapidly. “Here’s the deal. You go to work for me on Monday, day after tomorrow, as an apprentice pipefitter. I can get you into the union. Easy. The Loudon local. I’ve already talked to the business agent over there. I’ll pay you apprentice wages, what anybody else’d pay you. It’ll take you five years before you can get your journeyman’s license. If you’re still at it then, and if you’ve given all you’ve got to make this into a solid, medium-sized plumbing and heating company, I’ll make you an equal partner in the business. Where it goes from there depends on what we both decide. Together. In fifteen years or so I’ll retire. Then the whole thing’ll be yours. Assuming you’re still at it and want it.” He finally looked over at Alvin’s face. “How does that sound to you?” he asked somberly.
Alvin sighed and rubbed his cigarette out in his saucer. He looked up and saw that both his parents were looking down at him, waiting for an answer. “Starting Monday, eh?”
“I already spoke to the union brass over in Loudon. They’ve got a couple of openings for new apprentices coming up this month. They’ll hold one of them for you, if you want it.”
“Five years?”
“Five years. On the job as a pipefitter early every morning. But doing a hell of a lot of estimating, too. And paperwork, engineering at nights and on weekends, too — making this operation into a regular contracting business. You can go on living here if you want to. Or you can get your own place. Up to you.”
“Can I have till tomorrow, before I give an answer?”
“Sure. Take all the time you need. Between now and Monday morning.” That was a joke, and Alvin’s father smiled to indicate it.
Alvin laughed. “Ha!”
Then his father got up from the table, put on his old green cap and coat, and went out the door. After a few seconds, Alvin heard the pickup truck start and rattle past the house, down the dirt road toward town.
“Has he been planning this a long time?” Alvin asked his mother, who had gone back to work, this time at the sink, washing dishes.
“A long time,” she answered over her shoulder.
HE ACCEPTED HIS father’s offer. It didn’t appear to him that he had much of a choice, so he accepted the offer with a certain reluctance and with the type of resentment that gets felt by everyone concerned but never expressed by anyone at all. He worked for his father — dutifully, methodically, punctually — but never more than was specifically required of him. His father told him, “Far as I’m concerned, you’re just another apprentice pipefitter. A helper. And I’ll treat you the same’s I treat anyone else I hire out of the local. And if you don’t do your job, pal, you can pick up your pay and head on down the road. Either you cut it, or you’re down the road. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” Alvin thought that was fair enough as long as he, for his part, was free to treat his father the same way he’d treat any boss he happened to be working for, any foreman whose crew he ended up on. He thought that, he decided it, but he never mentioned it to his father, his employer, his foreman.
The offer, then, almost as soon as it had been made and accepted, was corrupted. The bargain, sealed, was instantly broken open again — with the father treating his son like an employee but demanding in return filial loyalty and commitment, the son treating his father like an employer but resenting any demands placed on him which were not covered specifically in the union contract. Neither party, naturally, was satisfied. Each felt he was being cheated by the other.
Throughout the fall they worked together this way — father and son, boss and helper. Most of the work they did was small repair jobs, the kind of work Alvin’s father had always done, jobs which Alvin hated because the work was often difficult, usually dirty, and frequently unacceptable to the customer. They replaced burst water pipes, cleaned out the drainage system in a supermarket, and installed several new oil burners in old furnaces. They repaired half a dozen water pumps, countless leaking faucets, clogged traps and toilets; installed washing machine drains, garbage disposals, drainage vents, lavatories, laundry tubs and bathtubs. They built furnace fireboxes, set toilets, installed radiators, piped up hot water heaters, and repaired sump pump systems. And in practically every case they were working on the plumbing or heating system of an old house, renovating or, worse, often merely repairing facilities, fixtures, equipment and pipes that had been used for several generations. Consequently, the work was filthy — in cobwebs, dust, soot, mucky water, shit and garbage. And it was always difficult, exacting work, trying to make an old piece of equipment work like a new one, trying to install pipes and fixtures where an architect had planned a closet or a stairwell, trying to run sharp-edged metal heating ducts where there was no basement, no light, and barely enough room between the floor joists and the cold ground for a man to crawl in. And because it was repair or renovation work, it inevitably took more time than the customer expected it to take, the equipment never functioned quite as well as it did when it was brand-new, and more parts and material were used than the customer had thought necessary. “Why can’t you guys use more of the pipe that was already there?” was the typical complaint. And of course the bill always came to more than the customer thought the job was worth. Exhausted, filthy, Alvin would write out the bill and hand it to the customer, who would look at it, cluck his tongue, and say, “Jee-suz! I used to want my kid to grow up to be a doctor, but now I think I’ll tell him to become a plumber!” In a way that Alvin couldn’t quite name, conversations like that always left him feeling slightly humiliated.
Two or three nights a week Alvin and his father pored over blueprints, specifications, price books and long columns of figures, estimating and bidding on the kind of work they both wanted to do, each for his own reasons — shopping centers, filling stations, apartment houses, small schools, small-town office buildings. For Alvin, new construction meant work that was not dirty and was difficult only in a technical, interesting way. It was also somehow less demeaning than repair work. For his father, no such nice distinction seemed to exist. For him, the difference was strictly money. “All you can make on a repair job is your time and maybe a few pennies on the materials,” he would grumble. “And for every job where you make a little more than what the job costs, you have two more that you lose money on, because either you took the job too cheap in the first place or the damn customer’s a deadbeat.”
On new work, however, there was a clear profit to be made. The two men would estimate all the costs, materials, time, overhead — and then they’d add up the figures and tack fifteen percent on top. That fall the Stock & Son Plumbing & Heating Company put out bids on six jobs — a school in Gilmanton, a filling station in Laconia, two garden apartment buildings in Loudon, and two ski lodges, one in Belknap and one in North Conway. But they were too high on all six. Not by much, but enough to be out of the running and in no position after the bids had been opened to bargain secretly with the general contractor against the other subcontractors, as was the practice. “Those fuckers all play footsie with each other,” Alvin’s father explained to him. “And the only way to get in on the game is to get in on the game fair and square. On your own. Prove you can do the job on time and for what you said you could. Next time, the big boys, the general contractors, will know to play footsie with you, too. But you still got to get that first job or two on your own. After that, you’re golden.” So they continued to estimate and bid for jobs two or three nights a week, Saturdays and Sundays, working the rest of the week “out of the pickup,” as his father put it.