Remo stood on his chair but could not see the action described.
"I don't see any one special spot guys are going to," he said.
"It's there. It's there. Look." said Bludner.
"Hey, siddown," came a voice from behind Remo, 'I can't see."
Remo peered twenty rows ahead, saw the New England state signs, but no one person was the center of attention.
"Hey, buddy. I asked you nice. Now will you siddown?" came the deep voice.
"Siddown, Remo. You can walk over," said Bludner. "And you, leave the kid alone. He'll sit down in a second."
A ball of a man in white sports shirt and trousers that looked like sheeting for a zeppelin wended his way down the Massachusetts row. Maybe he was going to stop to talk.
"Hey buddy. How about it?" came the voice, and Remo felt a tap on his backside. He caught the hand with his own, splitting the knuckle joints. He wasn't too interested in what was going on behind him. Up front the ball of a man was about to speak to someone. He was leaning over. No. He was sitting down. Damn. Where the hell was McCulloch? He'd have to go over to the delegation. Remo stepped down from his seat. Bludner was looking at him, funny. A tall rock of a man behind him was clutching his right hand with his left as though cutting off blood and nerves to his knuckles. His face was agony. He jumped from one foot to another. Remo looked at the hand. The knuckles. Someone had split the knuckles. That must be the man who had touched him on the backside. Of course, that was he.
"Put some cold water on it," said Remo. He excused himself to Bludner, whose large mouth hung open.
"Don't mess wit da kid," said Bludner. "Don't mess wit him."
Remo wended his way to the Massachusetts delegation. He looked for McCulloch. He called for McCulloch. He even insulted McCulloch. But no McCulloch.
"Hey, where the hell is McCulloch?" asked Remo.
The fat man he had seen move through the row veiled back:
"Who wants to know?"
"Remo Jones. New York delegate."
"He ain't here."
"Where is he?"
"He's gone."
"Is that a Jethro button I see?" said Remo.
"No. It's a Wendell Willkie button."
"You're pretty smart for someone who's illiterate," said Remo, lost for a more effective insult.
"I'm not illustrated," yelled the man. "You're illustrated. Faghead."
So much for a dialogue on union politics.
Bludner found the information about the button very interesting. He listened to how nobody would say where McCulloch was; he saw how New England people were now wearing Jethro buttons.
"You know I could have sworn I saw some New Englanders in that Jethro demonstration," he said. He signalled for the microphone at the end of the row. He jumped up on two chairs to a cracking sound of the wood. He waved an arm above his head.
"Point of order," he yelled. "Mr. Chairman. Point of order. The New York delegation of joint councils and locals wishes to make a point of order."
The chair recognized the brother delegate from New York City.
"Mr. Chairman, brothers from all the states, fellow drivers. It is a disgrace. It is an outrage. It is an injustice," boomed Abe 'Crowbar' Bludner, president of Local 529, New York City. "That the picture of one of the greatest union men ever to stand up for the rights of working men is not prominently displayed at this convention. I am talking about the finest, stand-up, all around wonderful guy in the entire International Brotherhood of Drivers, Eugene V. Jethro, the next president of the international…"
Bludner's voice was drowned in cheers, which precipitated another frenzied demonstration. The chairman banged his gavel, calling the New York delegation and the demonstration out of order, but with little effect.
Abe Bludner sat down proudly, amid the chaos he had instigated.
"Thanks for the info, kid," he said.
But Remo hardly heard him. He was wondering whether the beam upon which the banner fluttered was new or was installed when the convention hall was built. It made a difference if you were going to drop it on someone's head.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Three brass bands blared rock hits six months old. Portly women with lacquered hair and just as stiff faces held the arms of their bulky husbands in black tuxedoes, white formal shirts and black bowties. Here and there someone wore a checkered tux. Here and there a woman wore a black sheath. Here and there people were not middle aged and middle class and middle bored. But only here and there.
The Gene Jethro victory celebration was a middle-class, husband and wife party that, with the help of a few horns and a few hats, could have substituted for countless New Year's Eve parties across America.
For the drivers were family men, and so were their union delegates. Men with homes and cars and television sets and all the worries and comforts of a working class unique in the history of man. No other nation had ever given the worker so much. And in no other nation had the worker taken so much. In return for this hard-won largesse, these workers had put a man on the moon and had won wars on two oceans simultaneously. No other nation had done that either. Some workers would steal a case of whisky from a truckload. A small, very small, fraction would help a hijack. But the flag flew at all conventions, and if you were in trouble, these were the men who would stand by you. They put food on their tables, dresses on their wives, and hands on their hearts when 'The Star-Spangled Banner' was played.
Few of them, if any, could figure out how a Gene Jethro type had won their presidency. A few privately confessed, but only to close friends, that if they thought he was going to win it, they would have voted for someone else. On the third rye and ginger or bourbon on the rocks, the future of the International Brotherhood of Drivers brightened immeasurably. Jethro had won the presidency. That took brains. He had made good deals. That took brains. He had good press. That took brains. So he talked a bit funny and dressed funny. So what? Didn't Joe Namath act kind of faggy? But look at him on a football field. This mood of hopefulness lasted until Gene Jethro, the youngest president in the history of the drivers union, appeared with his mistress at the victory celebration in the Sheraton Park ballroom.
The initial cheers, an automatic response to new power and victory, died on the lips of the driver delegates. It was the wives who stopped cheering first. Gene Jethro was bad enough. He wore a blue velvet one-piece jump suit opened to the navel.
His young, blond mistress's dress was not opened to the navel. It was open from it. With a see-through fishnet over bare flesh. Her blond hair flowed gloriously long as she blew kisses to the delegates.
Wives nudged husbands. Some with sharp elbows. Others with icy stares. One woman erased her husband's smile with a champagne cocktail she had been nursing all evening.
"Disgraceful," said one.
"I thought he would at least marry her once he became president," said another.
"I don't believe it," said another.
It was not that these men or their wives were without natural reproductive drives. Sex, however, was not for mixed company, 'mixed' being husband and wife. Almost all the men had their outside arrangements even if it were a local prostitute twice a month. For the women, there were long talks with their girl friends and chocolate candy substitutes. But to bring something like this to a mixed affair—well, that was too much. It just wasn't done.
"Your president," snarled Mrs. Sigmund Negronski to her husband. "Your president and his, his tramp. I don't know what sort of dirty minds have taken over the drivers, but let me tell you, Siggy, it will be a cold day in August before you'll ever lay one of your filthy hands on me."
Negronski shrugged. It was not exactly the worst threat in the world. What was bad about it was that his wife would stop talking to him also, as though the two things went together.