The Fires of Eddie Harrington
COTTLE, THOMAS J.
WITHOUT A JOB YOU'RE DEAD' The Fires of Eddie Harrington BY THOMAS J. COTTLE It was not true, as many people believed, that Edward Harrington was out of work most of his life. He began working...
...But sick in the mind...
...He would stalk into the room he shared with his brother Peter and break things or rip the sheets off his bed...
...It's man eat man, and those bastards always win...
...He repeated the action two weeks later, when he could not find a reason for his behavior...
...He remembers listening from his room when his father came home that afternoon and went into a rage, telling his mother how he was going to buy a gun: "What the hell do I have to lose anymore...
...It was said that Harrington had women on the side...
...Before the layoffs, Eddie never had seen his father drunk or engaged in moments of fury...
...But like, when a kid like me grows up, he kind of expects his dad and mother to be certain ways...
...I knew he had a lot of problems...
...he asked calmly...
...Eddie would ask...
...Say there was one job in the world and two people who might take it...
...That's when I found out about my old man, 'cause she put her hand over the phone, you know, thinking 1 couldn't hear...
...Chrissakes, that son of a bitch Amano was bullshitting me in front of my kid...
...It ain't important whether you choose it or find it or stumble on it...
...I'd tell him he shouldn't be ashamed if he gave me the chance...
...Eddie would kick himself free and want to vomit or urinate on the man...
...I think my problems are due to my parents, 'specially my father, although I hate to blame him...
...Is that all it is...
...Now mind you, their son is just a newborn baby still in the hospital...
...Every few years he changed jobs because he was dropped, or he saw an opportunity to improve his wages, or something else looked more interesting than what he was doing...
...Kid's sharp as a buck...
...You get what I'm saying...
...Still his son did not move...
...They would be traveling on the trolley...
...Now you don't have nothing to be sad about...
...Then he would imagine having a conversation with the man, and a whole scene would unfold...
...Nah, that's not it," the man would protest, looking sheepish...
...I said, and I'm starting to cry now, "Tell my father I never want to see him again...
...Shoveling shit off the dock even, if they offered it to me...
...Keep it with you loaded, so the first guy that starts messing with you gets it right between the eyes...
...They can throw every word in the goddamn dictionary at you and you still don't have nothing...
...He couldn't look at my mother so he found this other woman...
...Almost every day he would fantasize murder...
...What do you say, dad, how's it going with you...
...The lighting of fires went on for months...
...Then they'd go out, have a drink, and bring their goddamn wife a bunch of flowers and a big card that says, "Jesus Christ, hon, you know how bad I feel...
...What you need is a good stiff drink, or a night with a broad...
...Christ, he'd pass as a goddamn Jew or nigger in black face if he could save his job, or take someone else's from him...
...He wanted no part of anybody, preferring to talk to himself: "I'd tell myself, 'Okay, man...
...When you got it you got everything, when you lose it, you got nothing...
...I couldn't understand my dad just walking out on us...
...At first I didn't want to, but then I thought, why not...
...They're one of the guys, see, and the guy competing for the job is their own son...
...Can't get a job, that's all...
...Gloria tried to be sympathetic with her son but he would fly into a greater rage and run out of the house screaming...
...Got to find something or, I don't know what...
...I just wish he'd give us the chance to talk about it with him so he wouldn't have to keep going away...
...Good...
...Even your kid could scare the piss out of him...
...had told his wife the job looked secure...
...And you got to fight for every job as if they were trying to take away your arms...
...He'd he out looking for a job...
...They'll win when I'm dead and buried too...
...Young Eddie had been with his father the day the two men talked...
...You eat people and you spit 'em out to take care of yourself...
...But he doesn't trust us enough to tell us anything I guess...
...I've tried...
...But just 'cause I'm your mother don't mean I have to respect you...
...What the hell they give a goddamn about...
...You hear...
...Miserable bastards...
...When Harrington felt his job was secure, his spirits were high and his relations with his wife Gloria were pleasant if not always affable...
...After all Edward had married her, and where would a separation or divorce lead...
...You don't have to get up every morning wondering, do I have a job today or don't I? Will my wife and kids like me because I do have a job or I don't have a job...
...He don't even want to be seen...
...Now you don't have to look nobody in the face again and let 'em see what sort of a bum you really are...
...And you're going to die the same way I do...
...Gel a job, then get yourself a gun...
...So I tell him I don't have any idea where he is...
...Eddie was detained in the precinct station eight and a half hours at the time of his first arrest...
...Every day...
...And Eddie remembers well his father's bitterness toward Trent, who fired Harrington for reasons that were never made clear...
...He remained in jail 13 months awaiting trial...
...I mean, they got to make up their minds where they stand...
...Edward could have refused to marry her when she got pregnant with Anne-Marie...
...Young Eddie heard a chair fall over and a noise that sounded like someone being hit...
...There's only one thing in life that matters, and that's working steady at whatever the hell you do...
...I'll always do that 'cause you're my own blood...
...He ain't the first guy out of work around here, and he sure won't be the last...
...The job paid well enough, there was a chance for salary increases, and there seemed to be beneficial union representation...
...Eddie could not move...
...I wanted that little fellow in there just as bad as you did...
...My ass...
...She's told me that herself: 'I'll always love you...
...Once he said, even if I cut school or quit for good I could find better things to do than go with him...
...He would feel gratified and fulfilled, guilty and ashamed...
...He would see himself standing up in front of the man holding a large-link steel chain...
...Harrington for the way the boy had been detained...
...My sister Elaine said my father wasn't around but she had a number where maybe I could get him...
...I never told him nothing, but I was thinking that I'd never do anything that'd amount to all that much even if I stayed in school...
...Frank Amano, baby, I know your kind...
...Then he would sling the chain so that it would not only crash against the man's skull but wrap around it, splitting open the cheeks and the bones around the eyes and ears...
...Ed Harrington Sr...
...Then suddenly, when he was in his early 40s, Harrington's job situation changed for the worse...
...She always granted it...
...The only thing that talks is the job...
...Starting with the man's legs, he would chain-whip him...
...And like, when my hand hits the wall, that's like the first time I think about it...
...With a job you got life, without it, you're long since dead...
...But if he is, he wouldn't be here...
...Finally he looked down and mumbled, "I don't know...
...Yet, it was almost impossible to believe that he could have been as calm and straightforward when such heavy tears had flowed from his eyes...
...He was sentenced to prison for a term to run no less than one year, no more than three...
...You and Trent, who is the biggest bullshitter 'cause his real name's Grady, or O'Grady, and he's afraid some folks will steal his little job from him if they find out he's a mick...
...I'll tell you something else," his father said, "just to make certain you got it in your head for good...
...They screw you behind your back, in front of your eyes...
...I guess I was always a little afraid of him, more than a little when he'd be fired from his job—he never admitted to anyone that he was fired, but he was...
...In time, the running away to be alone turned into running away and being consumed with fear...
...Harrington was assured he would be among the first to be rehired, since he had a consistently fine record...
...They still got him there in one of those cribs...
...You can see it just the way he's, like, afraid to look at us...
...His son merely nodded...
...In minutes a huge flame rose up from the sandbox...
...There ain't no jobs, son...
...Been trying for years...
...One of the fires had destroyed an old wooden building that had been condemned...
...Which is it...
...You understand that...
...All I know is you got to work...
...Then he took some of the papers, rolled them up and dipped them into the gas tank of a motorcycle...
...But he'd just go...
...Sitting on the trolley he would see an elderly gentleman looking tired, depressed...
...He would yell at the passengers to get off and they would run away screaming...
...What the hell's with you...
...Killing babies...
...I didn't think I was blaming him, because I didn't want to blame him...
...I told him lots of times I'd like to go with him where he goes, but he said I had to stay around home 'cause I had school and stuff like that...
...Look after your mother...
...The judge then asked, "Is your lather alive...
...He's hiding from us...
...So the cop says, 'Call him on the phone,' and he gives me a dime...
...The cop thought I was stalling, and the woman hung up in my face...
...Get out...
...Maybe there's another me inside the one everybody sees ordering me to do things...
...I'll be back...
...You work your goddamn ass off for years and what the hell does it bring...
...Trent will choke in his own shit...
...Yet deep down she felt she had no right to complain...
...Thomas J. Cottle, visiting distinguished professor of psychology at Amherst College and lecturer in psychology at Harvard Medical School, is the author of Children in Jail...
...The cop says, 'Call your home.' So I call home with his dime...
...When you see him hanging around the house doing nothing then he ought to explain it...
...As it happened, a little boy had perished in the fire...
...He says, 'First off, who's your father?' So I tell him...
...He began working full time at 17 without problems or mishaps...
...It would be night and only a few people would be riding in the car...
...They care if you work...
...Sometimes things just come into my head, so I have to do them...
...Eddie stood motionless, looking tough, but beaten...
...Bill Trent got to be foreman 'cause he did anything anybody told him...
...Well, son, I'll tell you what the story is...
...Finally, Eddie Harrington was picked up by the police: "You should have seen those cops, they couldn't wait to get their hands on me...
...The fire was quickly put out and Eddie was never caught...
...I couldn't believe it...
...Then, like at nine or ten o'clock this big fat cop comes in, a guy with the reddest face I ever saw with all these pimples all over his nose...
...So I tell him again my dad don't work...
...Blood would pour out onto the seats and the floor of the car...
...There simply seemed to be something pushing him to set a fire...
...He's not a bad guy or anything...
...My father's ashamed he's out of work...
...At the sentencing, the judge apologized to Mrs...
...I call this number Elaine gives me and this woman answers...
...Not long after his 15th birthday, Eddie Harrington was arrested by the police for stealing money from a grocery store...
...His son too had been crying...
...Ain't had a fuckin' shred of it in 40 years...
...This meant that Eddie was charged with involuntary manslaughter...
...Might be the best education about life you'll ever get...
...When the anxiety and frustration became too intense, Harrington would go off somewhere to be with friends and drink...
...Don't let people beat you or get the best of you.' But he can't be that way himself...
...They said he was so ruthless, he'd kill his own children if it meant getting a job...
...Get hold of yourself, don't let yourself go all the way.' Stupid things like that...
...Let 'em take your wile, your home, your car, anything they like, but die before they take your job away, 'cause you're going to be like me, 'cause you're my blood...
...One night, on an occasion when his father had gone off, Eddie collected a huge pile of newspapers and placed it in a dilapidated sandbox in his housing project's playground...
...Like, he couldn't be a husband 'cause he didn't have any respect from my mother, 'cause she only respects men with lots of money...
...You see, guys like Amano and Trent can be explained real simple...
...Eddie, who had been curled up on his bed, heard his mother cry out to his father: "Jesus Christ, you're mad...
...The next thing kids got a right to expect is that their fathers or mothers got a job...
...He felt an obligation to Gloria...
...You're really sick...
...He's a big a liar as Amano, only he don't have none of Amano's guts...
...She goes, 'Hey Harrington, put your pecker in your pants, there's a kid on the phone says he's your son.' Then I heard him say, 'How the hell did he find me here for Chrissakes...
...So I have to ask this cop with the nose for another dime...
...Specially to me...
...Or like with my folks, let them be separate, with the kids sort of knowing, over here's where your mother lives and over there's where your father lives...
...On his way out of the precinct that evening, he overheard a policeman say: "That Harrington kid...
...I'm his son...
...I was hoping he'd come and talk with me...
...The boy thought for a conspicuously long time...
...Get out...
...seeming the most upset by the new pattern in the house...
...So long, old man...
...I can't explain it," he would say later...
...Lucky you aren't my real father...
...Listen to nobody...
...Even his coworker Frank Amano said that Harrington deserved to stay with Amos more than any other man, and everybody knew Amano never complimented anyone, especially someone with whom he was competing for a job...
...Hey, daddy, how come you ain't working and Frank Amano and Bill Trent are?' What do I say...
...Might as well get a little bit of goddamn satisfaction out of my life...
...Dog eat dog out there...
...Money was tight in the coal industry, but he had seniority in his department...
...The words terrified Eddie because he had been thinking a great deal of killing...
...So she says, 'Yeah, he's here, who are you?' So I say, 'Who the hell are you...
...He knew exactly what he had wanted to say, almost as if he had been waiting for just that moment...
...Hell, we can always find a job...
...I'd only be doing everybody coming up behind me a favor if I got rid of that son of a bitch Amano...
...Next, Eddie would begin to destroy the man...
...They've made you sick, or this job thing has, or something has, and I don't give a damn what it is...
...While he knew that many of his friends' fathers were out of work, he could not imagine his own father losing his job...
...I said I was ashamed of him and he was ashamed of himself, 'cause he didn't have a job and he didn't have any place to go where people respected him, which I suppose was a lot like me too...
...It was as if Eddie were dreading the coming of a momentous event, a calamity...
...By the time he turned 35, he had worked in sugar processing, hardware, produce, steel, and trucking...
...When the judge asked him whether his father was in the courtroom Eddie shook his head...
...Besides, he was a well-liked employe...
...But being out of work for weeks at a time made him scared and irritable...
...But this cop with the nose, he was all right...
...When he wasn't having such fantasies, young Eddie thought a lot about his father's last steady job with the Amos Coal Company...
...You'll see what happens when he talks to Trent," they warned...
...He did attempt to find a new job, but after several hours in employment offices or waiting outside factories and warehouses, he headed for his favorite drinking haunts with his unemployed comrades...
...Surely he was a handsome enough man with a well-preserved body...
...He made me talk about my father...
...Unprepared for these transformations, he became terrified and angry...
...What the hell is anybody supposed to think when all they hear about is me losing my fuckin' job all the time...
...His father was proud to have him there overhearing the adult conversation...
...In most every case she knew of, the man left the woman to have her baby all by herself...
...But you are sick...
...Like, first off, he expects them to be married or not married, right...
...They acted like I was the number one most wanted crook in the country...
...His mouth was dry and the palms of his hands were covered with perspiration...
...He couldn't be a man with any of us...
...His son heard the door to the outside close and his father slowly descending the steps...
...Always the man's broken body would fall over frontward, thumping upon the dirty floor of the trolley car and landing against Eddie's own legs in a sickening hulk...
...He would say aloud: "There you are old man...
...Gloria thought she knew about the other women, although she could never prove anything...
...Amos Coal began laying off men temporarily...
...Not bad, son," the man would answer...
...Ed Harrington's speech to his son had been perfectly direct, and delivered with calmness and strength...
...Harrington closed the door...
...In the end, there was no formal charge, merely a severe warning that if there was a next time, the police would come down hard on him, even though he was only 14 years old...
...Eddie would strike up a conversation, letting the man see his good-natured side...
...You got the wrong number.' I was so surprised, I didn't know what the hell to tell her...
...You hear the part about choking babies...
...You got to earn that.' So when I asked her what I have to do before I earn it, she said: 'I'll probably never respect you...
...He would imagine laughing and crying, swearing and yelling all at once...
...He's like a little boy...
...Eddie nodded...
...He tells me all the time, 'You got to be a man...
...With all his might he would swing the chain at the man's chest and hear the ribs crack and the man cry out in pain...
...I wasn't meant to become much of anything...
...You ain't going to end up too much better than your father, and there isn't a soul who's going to respect him...
...And Eddie Harrington's heart would beat faster and faster...
...Tell him you never heard of me.' So she gets back on the phone and says, 'He never heard of anyone named Harrington...
...But most of the men despised Amano...
...Then he says, 'What's your father do?' So I tell him, '1 don't know,' 'cause I don't, and he says I'm being fresh...
...Got children to feed and a wife that still can stomach the sight of me...
...Then, as his hands began to perspire, and his breathing quickened, Eddie would imagine himself becoming crazed...
...He always returned home sober and freshly shaven, however, and begged his wife for forgiveness...
...Soon the afternoons in bars expanded and he would disappear for several days...
...When his case was taken to court, the judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence to prove his role in the setting of two of the fires as well as the robbery...
...Amano and Trent would go into that nursery and—thinking their boss just might give the job to this two-day-old kid lying there in his own piss and shit—would squeeze the kid to death...
...And he's supposed to be training me for when I'm a man...
...He would imagine what the man's life was like, or feel sorry for the man and wish he could help him...
...But by 40, he was certain he would remain with the Amos Coal Company until he retired...
...Eventually, the stretches of unemployment became more trying for the entire family, with 14-year-old Edward Jr...
...Tell him he's chicken shit...
...As far as young Eddie had been concerned, his father was a good man who spent the better part of his life working and bringing home pay checks...
...He was too terrified to open the door and see what his parents were doing...
...I can smell you out 10 blocks away...
...Don't believe nobody...
...Like, I'll be setting on my bed and I won't be thinking anything special, but then suddenly I'm slamming my fist into the wall, only I don't even know that I'm doing it...
...Edward was different...
...I forbid you to be near the kids when you're like this...
...But you look so glum...
...He comes in there and he says, 'Okay let's have it.' So I start to tell him about the fire and he stops me...
...In my case I think it should be my father who has a job 'cause he ain't separated from us...
...Suddenly, the door to his room flew open and his father was standing there...
...Anyway, Amos Coal had work again, and everything was back to normal...
...At the police station he also was charged with setting fires on six different occasions...
...Making certain no one saw him, he set fire to the roll and threw it on the pile...
...Eddie Harrington could not have been more distant from the neighborhood boys who seemed to find trouble no matter where they went...
...I'll predict right now that boy will be in here one day with a murder charge wrapped around his neck...
Vol. 61 • January 1978 • No. 2
