A JOB FOR OLLIE SINDON
Cottle, Thomas J.
A job for Ollie Sindon Hauling pain can be full-time work Thomas I. Cottle Like his older sister Effie, Davey Sindon gave his mother great pleasure. The two children were, in fact, Victoria...
...People wondered how she did it, in light of the ferocious world in which she lived, married to Ollie Sindon, but Victoria always said, "It's easy to be a gentle boat when the sea is roaring...
...You know where that boy's going to end up, Victoria...
...I'll do anything but I need a job now.' But he couldn't get nothing, man, not a dime's worth of work anywhere...
...You got lots of folks in this country quitting where I'm going on, you know...
...I am sick myself with all your complaining...
...He awoke and found he could not get out of bed...
...I may not love what I'm doing, but I'm working, and working is the act we're put on the Earth to do...
...I ain't working...
...You grow up...
...The leg never was as strong as before, and while he tried to hide his slight handicap from potential employers, the jobs grew even more scarce...
...In the beginning, no one knew exactly what had happened to Ollie Sindon...
...You're going to be a pain hauler...
...We got a job for you...
...He had everybody laughing...
...He threatened suicide, went days without speaking to anyone, and demanded to be fed when he knew there was no food in the house...
...But I ain't listening to it...
...No matter how hard she tried, Victoria Sindon could never convince her husband that being out of work did not reflect on him as a man...
...His parents were sickened by the news...
...Davey Sindon was fifteen years old when he knifed Jared Alexander in a street fight...
...with me or I take those children and I leave...
...Sent him this way, that way, scratching for jobs...
...She had landed a job with a neighborhood store and spent her money on little gifts for her brother in prison and her mother who was recuperating at home...
...Davey broke a bottle and threw it at Jared, leaving himself without a weapon...
...Ollie was never a skilled laborer, but no one could work harder...
...I am just as nervous and upset about your not working as you are, but I will not have everybody's life being spoiled by your problems...
...He was thinking, 'Dear Lord, let me find a job...
...His father's unemployment played a significant role in his life...
...He made arrangements to visit his son...
...They ate better, and it was good knowing there was a little money left over to buy those special treats the family liked...
...Jobs had turned up in the past, they would turn up in the future...
...You don't believe me, you just ask my old man...
...At fourteen Davey Sindon was a strong young man, quiet, polite, but filled with anger...
...I can't figure out what they're talking about 'cause this was a couple of years ago when I thought they used an x-ray when you broke something...
...Because of their financial situation they were obliged to accept a court-appointed lawyer who met with Davey three times in five months, Victoria Sindon had not responded well to the x-ray treatment and underwent surgery while Davey was in jail...
...She was too good and too smart to get messed up by his troubles, he told her...
...They hate us niggers 'til it just about kills them to have to give us a job...
...When visiting hours ended, he rose and walked to the bus stop, waited for the bus, and began the one-and-a-half-hour journey home...
...Nobody cares all that much about how many folks don't have Jobs when it's just black folks....' "One day about two years ago I come home from school, run up the stairs, and fly into the bathroom, and there's my mother sitting there crying...
...Lots of folks out of work...
...Just picking on my old lady...
...Maybe I go on just for her, or maybe for all of 'em, I don't know any more...
...About a month later I hear my aunt talking to my mother's best friend Morane, about how my mother's sick and how she has to go once a week to get an x-ray...
...I'm here," Victoria would scream right back at him...
...I know exactly where he's going to end up," Victoria would answer...
...She never left the children unattended, never surprised them with changes of mood or deviations in the pattern of their lives...
...Oh-oh, here comes another nigger wanting to be lazy on another job...
...He was willing to settle for very little...
...You know my mother had cancer, maybe she still has it, and she was afraid to say nothing about it to my father, she said she didn't want to bother him about it because he was too upset about his own life to hear any more bad news...
...I'm not living no more 'til you give me a job.' " Victoria would stare at him and without raising her voice she would warn him, "You don't talk that way Thomas J. Cottle is Distinguished Visiting Professor of Psychology at Amherst College and lecturer on psychology at the Harvard Medical School...
...Man used to play ball with me...
...You walk in there and the cat says your job's working in the carpentry shop...
...Where the hell are you...
...Let's give him the job he's been looking for all these years...
...Anything...
...Steady work, though, in jail...
...A few close friends spoke with him, but he rarely let others know what he was thinking and feeling...
...A police ambulance was called and two attendants carried Ollie down the stairs...
...Tells His angels, 'Look down there at old man Sindon...
...So between his not working and my mother's lying on that table once a week with that x-ray machine burning her insides out, you can imagine how we were doing...
...Bombing me out with their promises and their bull...
...Davey was charged with manslaughter and put in jail to await trial...
...I got Effie, God bless her...
...No one could lift his spirits, or convince him that what he called his collapse as a man hadn't brought down his entire family...
...Won't be long now...
...But when he did find out, he got scared about my mother same as I did...
...Who was looking out for my old man ten years ago...
...I don't know, sometimes I feel sorry for the guy...
...This job is marked just for you...
...Davey's manner troubled his mother, infuriated his father...
...Just let the future come quick," he would whisper, following Victoria into the back room, the single bedroom in the apartment, where the children slept...
...After work, all the men' would come down to watch my old man play ball, and all these little kids wanted to play with us...
...The problem was not Ollie Sindon's mercurial temperament...
...She could be tough with them, but never mean...
...Don't make much money hauling pain, but it'll keep you out of trouble...
...And she keeps saying, 'Nothing's wrong, nothing's wrong.' 'But you're crying,' I tell her...
...Her children too, she imagined, seemed healthier when he was working...
...Then suddenly all you hear about is unemployment, unemployment...
...That's the guy you want to give your pain to...
...he would scream...
...You got a job...
...Indeed, he seemed to be aging more quickly than anyone she knew, except for her son...
...Down on his knees, I'll bet, more times than he'd ever admit begging for people to give him a job...
...You want to complain about how you're the only person in the world who's got problems, you go right ahead...
...He himself could not define what it was, exactly, that infuriated him: He might start a tirade against America, its racism, and high unemployment rate, but soon he was haranguing against his father, calling him weak, a quitter, the nice nigger in the company of white folks...
...In time, much of Victoria's strength returned, although she would never be the woman she was...
...But Peter Mixley threw him his knife and the boys wrestled around, and crawled, and fell over one another...
...They even pay you...
...He's going to end up in jail...
...He never stopped blaming himself for everything: "I have a wife who wouldn't be as bad if I was working...
...I have had it up to here with your feel-sorry-for-the-poor-old-man bit...
...I been bad.' He was like a little kid...
...What's wrong, what's wrong?' I ask her...
...You hear me, man...
...Glad you told me," she would reply with a wink, because a person like myself is always happy to know why we were put on the Earth...
...Then he got feeling really sorry and sad that he'd been such a bad husband to her...
...Finally, a gurgling, painful sob came from one of the boys and Jared Alexander lay doubled-up in the street, David's knife stuck in his abdomen...
...Ignoring his request, she visited with him every week and brought him magazines...
...the problem was his being out of work...
...That's all he could say for months...
...It was a Wednesday morning, that Victoria knew for certain, Wednesday morning when he was out of work...
...Guys blowing their brains out when they lose their jobs...
...There were days when the little bit of hope she wanted to hold on to seemed real enough, but she knew nothing would last, for no jobs ever lasted, and Ollie wasn't getting any younger...
...Close the door on him 'fore he gets in so far we can't throw him out...
...I didn't think much of dying when I was working regular...
...You got a lot of reasons to call it quits...
...Jared produced a long knife...
...Got a boy going to jail, got a wife going to go back to the hospital one of these days...
...I got a kid in jail who for sure wouldn't be there if I was working...
...The two children were, in fact, Victoria Sindon's only source of pleasure...
...I got pride," he would tell his wife...
...There wasn't another man in the world who liked steak the way Ollie Sindon did — steak followed by strawberry ice cream...
...He was a good man, a good father, she tried to assure him...
...Tell myself, hey, the world is tough, especially if you're black...
...And there was hope...
...A job possibility would lift his spirits, but Victoria could see that he was scared now, because of the uncertainty and the months of inactivity...
...Victoria Sindon was happy when her husband worked...
...Surely his father had lost touch with him, and Davey insisted his mother, too, hadn't the slightest notion of who he was...
...Just took what come each day and let it go at that...
...Even when Davey rejected him, he sat alone in the waiting room of the jail, his eyes fixed on the door leading to the cells, hoping his son might change his mind...
...They were just out there on the street looking for the cheapest labor they could find...
...Ollie became extremely quiet and depressed...
...I could quit...
...Nobody with a big stomach interview you, or nothing...
...Now I ain't got anything else to think about...
...Ain't much, but what the hell, working for peanuts is better than not working for peanuts...
...His sister Effie came to the prison and talked with him, but Davey preferred that she stay away...
...I been bad, Victoria...
...Nobody cares all that much about how many folks don't have jobs when it's just black folks out of those jobs...
...I felt fantastic...
...He'd clown it up, make it fun for me...
...The rule for Victoria was constraint...
...Man, has this country screwed that guy up...
...When I was small, you know, and he was working — not all the time but a lot more than he does now — that man was fun to have around...
...I know my father, and I know what he was thinking...
...The little bit of energy he always had been able to draw upon during the long months of unemployment had vanished...
...They'd just as soon give what little they got to an animal...
...And if I ain't working, I ain't living...
...They're bombing me out," he would roar...
...the one requirement was steady work until he was sixty-five and ready to retire...
...The thought that he might end up in jail had crossed Davey's mind as well: "Could happen, man," he would say, beginning to smile his smile of toughness and defiance...
...I'll tell you why God gives me all the pain: He knows I can take it...
...He'll tell you all about working...
...It was there when he worked, it was never talked about when he didn't...
...Something in my eye,' she says...
...You just relax now, man, 'cause we got mountains of the stuff for you to haul, and the rest of your life to do it...
...Do you care?' 'Damn right I care...
...I didn't think about dying...
...But all that's different now...
...In time he recovered most of the feeling in the leg, although no amount of therapy healed his limp...
...Anyway, I figured some of it out and Morane told me the rest later...
...You're going to be working day and night, seven days a week...
...It was like a fire in him...
...Nobody...
...Victoria had taken on odd jobs — sewing, house cleaning, laundering — when she could find them...
...You see your father sitting home all the time, bitching about this, moaning about that, and no matter what he says about how black folks got it tough, and the world don't want part of us, I see him not working...
...He's got an easy victim with me...
...You hear us, Ollie...
...You don't have to go looking for it, or have some Mr...
...If the sea roars, the boat don't have to do nothing but hold onto its course...
...Lots of 'em are out of work...
...Victoria told him to quit joking, but he insisted he couldn't move his left leg...
...you learn the world...
...Nobody knew what started the fight...
...Man hasn't worked in all this time, so he's got nothing to do with his time but take all your pain...
...Ollie Sindon's stroke occurred when his son Davey was thirteen...
...She disliked being away from her husband, who had grown depressed after his illness...
...Then she would leave him before he had a chance to speak, and by his own admission, he would be happy that she had silenced him, for his complaining hurt him almost as much as his not working...
...Then all these white dudes start losing their jobs, too — high-up guys, vice presidents...
...I thought the man was the greatest father alive...
...Her son cried when he heard the news of the operation...
...When Victoria offered to go shopping for bread and the brand of cheese he liked so much, he would yell at her for leaving him alone in the house...
...Ollie would mutter...
...They visited with him daily and were confused by the long wait before his trial...
...Both boys had been drinking...
...He don't care...
Vol. 43 • October 1979 • No. 10
