Bomber's Law by George V. Higgins Read Free Book Online Page B

then, in their sixties, most of them back when he was that age looked like over seventy today. Those store managers took a close look at him and they said themselves: ‘Uh-uh, no part of this guy. He comes in, he lasts three weeks, and then: “Uh-oh, I hurt my back.” And he goes off to see his doctor, that he went to grade school with, and the next thing that we’re hearin’ is that he’s disabled. On our insurance plan. Which is where he’s gonna stay, the next twenny years or so. Guys like this guy don’t get better. Once they get disabled the only best thing left that they can ever hope to get is the one where they get dead. And when they’re on your insurance, that can seem like it’s taking a very long time. A hell of a goddamned long time.’ So it’s: ‘Sorry, we got nothin’ open just now. Drop by some other time.’
    â€œBut that isn’t what they mean,” Brennan said. “What they mean, what they meant then: that they never dared to say, and they never would today. Because then they would get sued, if they said what they meant: ‘Not today, old buddy, nope. Not in our lifetimes. You’re over the hill now, Granpa. Road-kill. Dead meat. Fossil City and long gone.’ Even though Dad never would’ve done that, pretended he washurt if he wasn’t really hurt. He was the type of guy that wouldn’t even fake a real bad cold into a case of flu, take three or four days off and maybe catch up on his sleep. He was ’way too honest. To him that was just stealing; my father didn’t steal.
    â€œBut those strangers that he talked to, that were interviewing him? Had no way of knowing that. You couldn’t blame them at all. But you still couldn’t blame him, either. There wasn’t anything he could do. It wasn’t anything he’d done. It was just something that’d happened and then gone on and left him there, helpless, where he stood. He maybe smelled like beer those nights, like he didn’t come straight home? Well, that was the reason. He knew what he was up against, and what he could do about it. Nothing. So on the way home he’d stop off at Sweeney’s. Sweeney’s at the bridge. It’s gone now, years ago. Sweeney’s ain’t there any more. It got torn down. But it was there then, and he liked it. All of them old guys liked Sweeney’s. Sweeney was an old guy himself. Shoot the shit with his old pals, my father would, all of them still pissed off, too, the stupid thing the company’d done to them and all their friends. After all those years. In jobs they were proud of, doing work that they did well. That was the last one for them, too, for most of them at least. Last job they ever had. Dad never got another one, ’til the day he died. Tried for over fourteen years, but he died unemployed, and at least ten or a dozen of those years, he could’ve done a job. It was really sad. A man, I think a man that wants to, and’s in good health and all, I think he should be allowed to keep his job ’til he decides he wants to quit. Not ’til some young wise guy that he never even saw but who knows everything, of course, says: ‘Everyone this old or older is too old to work, so boot their asses out.’ ”
    â€œIsn’t what you mean,” Dell’Appa said, “that he died retired? Not that he was unemployed? He must’ve been well into his mid-seventies by then. They must’ve had pensions, the retirement plans and all.”
    â€œOh, sure,” Brennan said, “they had those. They had the pensions. Nothing like Fat City, no, but they were union men. So, yeah, they had their retirement pay, and their Social Security. It wasn’t like he and Ma were destitute or anything. House was all paid off. There were six of us kids, but only four of us in school. Rest of us all were working. Still living at home, sure, we all were. Either