In this chap­ter, titled “The Job,” we find Fat­ty and Big Soap engag­ing in a casu­al con­ver­sa­tion while work­ing on a car, the Great Chad­wick Six. Fat­ty reveals that the vehi­cle isn’t authen­tic, point­ing out that it has Ford parts instead of parts fit­ting for a Chad­wick. As they ban­ter, Fat­ty pro­pos­es a job to Big Soap, who is more inter­est­ed in “wan­der­ing the earth spread­ing joy and love” than mak­ing mon­ey, though he admits he does want to earn income.

Fat­ty’s job pro­pos­al involves con­nect­ing a water pipe on the Hill, which he insists isn’t ille­gal, just a noc­tur­nal task that needs to be done. Big Soap ques­tions why they can’t just have the city han­dle it, but Fat­ty’s knowl­edge of the Hill and the local gov­ern­ment inef­fi­cien­cies con­vinces him oth­er­wise. After dis­cussing the risks, Fat­ty tries to entice Big Soap with the promise of quick mon­ey and admits Rusty will join them as back­up for the job.

Despite some ini­tial hes­i­ta­tion, the prospect of earn­ing thir­ty-five dol­lars con­vinces Big Soap it’s worth the effort, although he express­es con­cerns about using old equip­ment and the qual­i­ty of work required. They dis­cuss logis­tics, includ­ing the need for a cement mix­er and the poten­tial risk of being caught if a watch­man is on duty. Fat­ty con­fi­dent­ly brush­es off these wor­ries, stat­ing there won’t be any prob­lems dur­ing the upcom­ing hol­i­day week­end.

The mood shifts when Paper inter­rupts, remind­ing Fat­ty of oblig­a­tions to help Nate move equip­ment relat­ed to the Memo­r­i­al Day parade. She insists he must pri­or­i­tize this over his plumb­ing job, cre­at­ing ten­sion between Fat­ty’s desire for prof­it and his com­mit­ment to his friend. As Fat­ty reluc­tant­ly agrees, he con­tem­plates the impli­ca­tions of diverg­ing paths for him and his friends, par­tic­u­lar­ly his seem­ing loss of agency.

The chap­ter touch­es on themes of friend­ship, finan­cial oppor­tu­ni­ty, and the com­plex­i­ties of loy­al­ty, illus­trat­ing the pre­car­i­ous bal­ance Fat­ty must main­tain between self-inter­est and com­mu­nal respon­si­bil­i­ty in their tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty .

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

T
26
The Job
he next after­noon Fat­ty was work­ing on the engine of the Great
Chad­wick Six as Big Soap watched over his shoul­der. Fat­ty tight­ened
the last spark plug in place, then clipped the dis­trib­uter cap on. “This ain’t a
Great Chad­wick,” he announced.
“How do you know?”
“These are Ford parts,” he said. “A Ford dis­trib­u­tor won’t fit on a
Chad­wick Six. The Ford cap is small­er. Get in. I’ll dri­ve.”
Big Soap leaped into the back seat while Fat­ty hopped into the driver’s
seat. He turned the key and the old engine fired, belch­ing forth a cloud of
black smoke.
“Put it in gear,” Big Soap wailed. He clapped his hands twice, clap clap,
and said gai­ly, “Home, Charles!”
“Very fun­ny. It won’t go in gear.” Fat­ty cut the motor, then glanced in the
mir­ror as Big Soap relaxed in the back, stretch­ing a long mus­cled arm
across the seat. “Soap, you wan­na make some dough?”
“No, Fat­ty. I wan­na wan­der the earth spread­ing joy and love. Of course I
wan­na make some dough.”
“I got a job for us.”
“Doing what?”
“Con­nect­ing a water pipe on the Hill.”
“Is it ille­gal?”
“Not real­ly. We’re just pulling an old pipe off anoth­er and con­nect­ing it
to city water. Every­body pays for city water. So it’s not tech­ni­cal­ly ille­gal.
But we got­ta do it at night.”
“If it’s just con­nect­ing to the city line, why not get the city to do it?”
“On the Hill? You kid­ding?”
“How deep do we got­ta dig?” Big Soap asked.
“Not much. Just pull off a cov­er, go down, and dis­con­nect one pipe and
con­nect it to anoth­er. Then put the cov­er back.”
“Con­nect­ing live water lines is wet work.”
“You wan­na make mon­ey or not?”
“Just so you know, Fat­ty, I’m mak­ing good dough at the Dohler plant.”
“How much?”
“Three dol­lars and fifty cents a week.”
“What you doing over there, stuff­ing bal­lot box­es?”
“Fir­ing fur­naces.”
“They gonna bump up your dough soon?”
“When they’re ready.”
Fat­ty nod­ded, tap­ping the ancient dash­board of the old car. There it is, he
thought bit­ter­ly. Big Soap gets fired from one job, gets hired else­where, his
moth­er cuss­es him out in front of his friends, the Irish over at the Empire
Fire Com­pa­ny make him yank one hun­dred feet of wet hose to the top of
their tow­er while they sit around drink­ing beer, and he’s still hap­py to work
for noth­ing. The moron.
“You’ll make ten times that in three hours. And I’ll add Rusty to the
job.”
“If Rusty’s com­ing, it must not be easy.”
“You want the job or not?”
“You ain’t said how much.”
“Thir­ty-five dol­lars for you.”
Big Soap whis­tled. “That sounds like rob­bery. Is it a bank?”
“What do I look like, a thief? It’s a sim­ple plumb­ing job, Soap. Pull off
the man­hole cov­er. Go down a well. Move a Y valve to the six-inch feed
from the reser­voir. Con­nect anoth­er line to it. Climb out. Close the man­hole
cov­er. That’s it. I done it a hun­dred times.”
“Whose house is it for?”
“It’s not a house. It’s on the lot over at Hayes and Franklin. Where the
pub­lic faucet is.”
Big Soap frowned. “Ain’t that where the Clover Dairy is?”
“It’s across the street from the Clover Dairy.”
“It’s for them?”
“No.”
“Who’s it for then?”
“I can’t say. But they’re pay­ing long dol­lars. You want the job or not?”
Big Soap thought a moment. “Thir­ty fish is a lot of fish. How long will it
take?”
“A cou­ple hours.”
“That doesn’t sound too hard. What you need Rusty for?”
“Back­up. The man­hole cov­er on the well is old cement. If we break it,
Rusty can fix it up, make it look like the orig­i­nal. He’s good with mor­tar
and cement stuff.”
“You need water to mix cement, Fat­ty.”
“We’ll use water from the pipe we’re work­ing with.”
“What we gonna mix the cement with?”
“I got that old gas-pow­ered cement mix­er behind the jook.”
“That hunk of junk? You can’t run that thing at night. It sounds like a
bull­horn. It’ll wake up the whole Hill.”
“It’s got a hand crank, too.”
“Which works fine if you’re Tarzan.”
“Rusty will oil it up. He knows how to work that stuff. Or we’ll use a
wheel­bar­row. Rusty can col­or the cement just right to make it look like the
kind the city uses.”
“We can’t roll that mix­er down the Hill if it’s full of cement, Fat­ty. It’s
too heavy.”
“Rusty will mix the cement while you and I fix the pipes—if the cov­er
breaks when we pull it off, which it prob­a­bly won’t because we’ll be
care­ful, okay? It’ll be a snap.”
“You sure Rusty’s in?”
“Why would I say he was in if he wasn’t?”
Big Soap, sit­ting in the back seat, nod­ded, peered up at the blue sky
over­head, absent­ly lost in thought, then said, “Fat­ty, the front door of the
dairy is right at Franklin Street.”
“There’s two more doors on the Hayes Street side.”
“They get going at four in the morn­ing at the dairy.”
“It’s Memo­r­i­al Day week­end, Soap. The Antes parade. Speech­es,
bar­be­cue, beer, fire­works. Every busi­ness in town’s closed.”
“All the same. They prob­a­bly got a watch­man at the dairy, and he’ll be
look­ing out.”
“The watchman’ll be at Antes House hav­ing fun with the parade and
fire­works like every­body else. I know him. He’s col­ored,” Fat­ty said.
“Then he won’t be at the parade,” Big Soap said. “I don’t know one
col­ored that goes to that parade.”
“It’s Rev­erend Sprig­gs.”
Big Soap paused a moment, think­ing, then said, “Ain’t Snooks your
pas­tor?”
“He ain’t my pas­tor,” Fat­ty said. “He’s the pas­tor.”
“I didn’t know Snooks worked as a watch­man,” Big Soap said. “Father
Vicel­li runs our church full-time.”
Fat­ty dis­missed that with a wave of his hand. “Any­time this town needs
a Negro to stand around at cel­e­bra­tions and eat and look hap­py, they call
Snooks. That’s his real job.”
“That don’t sound like a bad job,” Big Soap said. He looked up over
Fatty’s shoul­der. “Uh-oh.”
Fat­ty spun around to fol­low Big Soap’s gaze to see Paper at the front
grill of the car, hands on her hips.
See­ing her stand­ing amid the junk in his yard, her yel­low dress swish­ing
about in the breeze, the sun­light bounc­ing off her smooth brown face, made
him feel as if he were in a room full of warm marsh­mal­lows. His heart felt
as light as that of a four-year-old.
“C’mere,” she said, wav­ing him over with an impa­tient swipe in the air.
He climbed out of his con­vert­ible by stand­ing on the seat, step­ping over
the wind­shield onto the hood, and jump­ing off, land­ing next to her,
where­upon she grabbed his elbow and spun him around so their backs were
to Big Soap.
“Haven’t you ever heard of the ear­ly bird?” she said.
“No. But I heard of the wrig­gling worm.”
“You was sup­posed to go by to see Nate this after­noon to fig­ure out what
time to run him out to Hem­lock Row. He wants to move. Tonight.”
Fat­ty felt a sud­den urge to con­fess, to tell Paper he’d accept­ed anoth­er
job, one that involved a huge pay­off with lit­tle risk, that would pro­vide him
—maybe even them, if there was a them, which he hoped there was—with
some real mon­ey.
“Tonight?” he sput­tered. “I got things to do tonight.”
“What kind of things?”
“A job come up.”
“You can sell ice­break­ers at your jook tomor­row. It’s all set. Just get
down to the the­ater. Nate needs you to help him move some drums and
parade stuff to Antes House before he leaves out.”
“I thought I was sup­posed to dri­ve him over to Hem­lock Row. Nobody
said noth­ing about vol­un­teer­ing me to haul cot­ton for Doc Roberts’s parade.
And nobody said noth­ing about me doing all that today.”
“Just play along, would you? It’s a lot of drums and parade stuff.”
“There’s plen­ty folks around to help Nate. Why’s he want me?”
“Because you’re the only one on the Hill who can come up with
some­thing big enough to bring all them instru­ments in one big swoop on
short notice. Oth­er­wise he’ll be haul­ing that stuff back and forth all day. He
ain’t got all day. He’s got to get mov­ing tonight.”
“Why?”
“Miggy set him up with the Egg Man. Tonight.”
“Why can’t the white folks haul their own stuff for their parade? They
aller­gic to work?”
“Get down there and ask Nate your­self.”
“Can you tell him I can’t make it, Paper?”
Paper leaned on the hood cool­ly and reached out to touch his face gen­tly.
“Be good, Fat­ty. I know you can.”
—
AS A NOD to the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, the John Antes His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety every
year allowed Moshe’s All-Amer­i­can Dance Hall and The­ater the priv­i­lege
of stor­ing in its vast base­ment their assort­ed drums and parade sup­plies
used for the annu­al Memo­r­i­al Day parade and fire­works dis­play. Sev­en­teen
snare drums, eight tom-toms, four huge bass drums, eigh­teen drum
har­ness­es, ban­ners, floats, two minia­ture fire trucks, plat­form mate­ri­als, and
oth­er assort­ed para­pher­na­lia for the parade dig­ni­taries, which includ­ed Doc
Roberts and sev­er­al city coun­cil mem­bers.
Nor­mal­ly, the city sent a truck around to pick up the gear. But this year,
no truck arrived. Instead, the request for the drums arrived via a high school
kid who bore a note to Moshe, ask­ing that the gear be brought over.
Moshe was not at the the­ater when the note came. He was home not
feel­ing well. Thus, the note was hand­ed to Nate, who could not read, who
hand­ed it to Addie, who could, who walked it over to Moshe’s house to
deliv­er the request to Moshe, then returned to the the­ater, where Nate was
back­stage prepar­ing for the week­end appear­ance of the great blues singer
Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe.
“What’d he say?” Nate asked.
“He was fast sleep. He’s not feel­ing well. So I didn’t both­er him,” Addie
said.
“He used to run him­self to death to please the white folks round here,”
Nate said. “Any­way, we’ll hold him up. We’ll get the drums and stuff there.
I’ll still have time to get to Hem­lock Row tonight.”
“Hang the parade,” Addie said. “We got our own busi­ness to tend to. Let
them get their own parade junk.”
“I’ll have time.”
“Who’s gonna fetch that stuff back here after the parade and fire­works is
fin­ished?”
Nate waved her off. “It’ll take ’em all night to close up Antes House. I’ll
fetch the drums and things in the morn­ing.”
“Not if the police are hunt­ing you.”
“They ain’t gonna be hunt­ing me. ’Cause I’ll be back here.”
Addie was silent. She’d hid­den her dread about the whole busi­ness at last
night’s meet­ing with Miggy, but as the hours to Nate’s depar­ture drew
clos­er, she’d grown more ner­vous. “Maybe it’s best to leave Dodo in God’s
hands,” she said.
‘He is in God’s hands,” Nate said. “That’s why I’m meet­ing the Egg Man
at Hem­lock Row. I’ll tell him what I want. Pay him a few shekels, then let
him do the rest. I’ll be back by mid­night. So if they find out the boy’s gone
and the police come look­ing for him here, they won’t find him. They’ll find
me in bed instead. I ain’t going out there to fetch him, hon­ey. I’m just going
to meet the Egg Man. The rest I’ll leave to him and Miggy. You got noth­ing
to wor­ry about.”
At that moment, Addie real­ized that there was no actu­al plan laid out that
she knew about. Fat­ty had agreed to dri­ve Nate to Hem­lock Row to meet
Bullis, the Egg Man, care of Miggy. She couldn’t remem­ber what else she’d
actu­al­ly heard at last night’s meet­ing beyond that, for Miggy talked in
para­bles and the notion of Dodo at the mer­cy of that … hea­then Son of
Man drove her ill, not to men­tion the dis­cov­ery that Nate, her Nate, was …
she always knew he had a secret. He said he was from the South. South
Car­oli­na was his home, he’d said. But Hem­lock Row? She decid­ed she’d
take it up lat­er, for there was trou­ble ahead now. Nate, her Nate, was not
going inside that hos­pi­tal, Dodo or no Dodo.
“My mind’s trou­bled by some things that was spo­ken about yes­ter­day,”
she said.
“We’ll get to it when we’re done with what’s ahead.”
“Just to be sure. You ain’t going inside that place your­self, is you?”
“I don’t want to go in there,” Nate said dis­mis­sive­ly.
She want­ed to scream at him that he’d bet­ter not go in there, but the
sound of horse­shoes clop­ping along Main Street toward the the­ater
inter­rupt­ed her thoughts. She turned around to look and mur­mured, “Oh
my …”
Fat­ty, the only Negro on the Hill who could on short notice create—or
think of—a con­trap­tion big enough to car­ry the assort­ed para­pher­na­lia for a
parade of 350 peo­ple, clomped up to the curb in a cart pulled by a mule.
Next to him sat Big Soap, grin­ning.
“Taxi?” Fat­ty called gai­ly.
Addie rolled her eyes.
“It’s just a few blocks,” Fat­ty said.
Nate wasn’t amused, but he led Fat­ty and Big Soap around to the
theater’s stage door, where the three of them hasti­ly piled the gear into the
cart, strapped it down with ropes, and set off. Fat­ty and Nate rode up front.
Big Soap rode on the equip­ment stacked high in the cart’s rear, fac­ing
back­ward, his legs dan­gling off the back.
As they clunked for­ward, with Big Soap out of earshot, Fat­ty got to the
prob­lem quick­ly. “Nate, do you have to meet the Egg Man in Hem­lock Row
tonight?”
“Got to. Head­ing out around sev­en o’clock.”
“Can it be anoth­er night?”
“What’s wrong?”
Fat­ty looked to see if he could be over­heard, though they were atop the
cart and out of earshot of every­one. “I got anoth­er job,” he said.
“So?”
“It’s for tonight. Just a lit­tle job. Can I get you to Hem­lock Row a lit­tle
ear­ly? Maybe take you at four. Is that all right?”
“What time would you fetch me after?”
“It’ll be late. About mid­night or so.”
Nate frowned. “All right. So long as I’m back by morn­ing.”
“You got some­place to sit tight over at the Row while you wait for me
lat­er?”
Nate smirked. “Don’t wor­ry ’bout me out there.”
“I’m sor­ry, Nate. I’m in a tight spot. I need the dough from this job. It’s a
lot of mon­ey. But you can count on me.”
It sound­ed pho­ny even as he said it, and as the cart approached the Antes
House at the bot­tom of Chick­en Hill, Fat­ty glanced beyond the old build­ing,
three blocks up the slope, to the Clover Dairy. He decid­ed to fess up.
“Nate, I got a note from my sis­ter yes­ter­day.”
“Glad y’all is speak­ing again.”
“Some­body passed some mon­ey to me through her. They want me to dig
up the water pipe across from the Clover Dairy. There’s a Y under there that
con­nects the Jew­ish church to the faucet well. I’m gonna take it and con­nect
it to the city’s water from the reser­voir. The pub­lic spigot’s well must be
dry­ing up.”
Nate nod­ded. “All these springs under the Hill are dry­ing out. Too many
wells. Water comes out the tap mud­dy and wrong nowa­days. How do you
know about pipes under the Hill?”
“I helped my dad­dy put in a lot of the pipes when I was lit­tle. It wasn’t
legal back then, but that’s how they did it. Just ran pipes where they could. I
guess they don’t wan­na go through the town to get it fixed.”
“They don’t wan­na pay off crooks, is what it is. Who wrote the note?”
“I don’t know and Ber­nice didn’t say. But there was a lot of mon­ey in
that note. And some­thing else was in that note, but I … lost part of it.”
“You lost it?”
“There was a sec­ond page. I tore it by acci­dent. I found some of it, but
the rest … it fell behind my jook, and by the time I went back and found it,
it was all wet. I couldn’t make it out.”
“None of it?”
“Just some­thing about the rail­road men. Union work­ers … Jews … and
the Pennhurst train. But what all, I don’t know.”
Nate pon­dered this for a moment, then smiled before he final­ly spoke.
“Mr. Isaac’s run­ning this thing from the back.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Moshe’s got a cousin by the name of Isaac. He’s a deep-pock­et­ed
fel­la from Philly. The­ater man. Same busi­ness as Mr. Moshe but big­ger,
three times over. He’s all right then. Was there any mon­ey in that note for
the rail­road peo­ple?”
“There was four hun­dred dol­lars extra in there taped to that note on that
page about the rail­road men. I don’t know what it was for.”
“Was that all the mon­ey in there?”