Chap­ter 26: The Job begins with Fat­ty and Big Soap engag­ing in a light-heart­ed con­ver­sa­tion while work­ing togeth­er on a car, the Great Chad­wick Six. As they toil away, Fat­ty points out that the vehi­cle is not the gen­uine arti­cle, not­ing that it has Ford parts installed, which should not be the case for a Chad­wick. Despite the car’s lack of authen­tic­i­ty, they con­tin­ue their task, and the mood is casu­al, with Fat­ty propos­ing a job to Big Soap dur­ing their down­time. Big Soap, how­ev­er, seems more intrigued by the idea of trav­el­ing the world, spread­ing love and joy, rather than pur­su­ing a con­ven­tion­al means of earn­ing mon­ey. Nev­er­the­less, he acknowl­edges that, ulti­mate­ly, he does need to make a liv­ing.

Fat­ty’s job pro­pos­al cen­ters around con­nect­ing a water pipe on the Hill, a task that Fat­ty insists is not ille­gal but is rather a job that must be com­plet­ed dur­ing the night. He reas­sures Big Soap that this is not some­thing that should raise alarms; how­ev­er, Big Soap is nat­u­ral­ly curi­ous about why they can’t just let the city take care of it. Fat­ty, with his exten­sive knowl­edge of the Hill’s lay­out and his insights into the inef­fi­cien­cies of local gov­ern­ment ser­vices, con­vinces Big Soap that this task will need to be han­dled pri­vate­ly, and not by any offi­cial sources. As their con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues, Fat­ty does his best to sell the idea, empha­siz­ing the poten­tial for quick earn­ings and men­tion­ing that Rusty will be join­ing them as back­up for the job.

Big Soap’s ini­tial hes­i­ta­tion starts to fade as he hears the prospect of earn­ing thir­ty-five dol­lars. Despite this, he voic­es his con­cerns about the out­dat­ed equip­ment they would have to use, ques­tion­ing the qual­i­ty of the job they could actu­al­ly com­plete with such tools. The pair dis­cuss­es the nec­es­sary logis­tics for the job, such as obtain­ing a cement mix­er and prepar­ing for the poten­tial risk of being caught if a watch­man hap­pens to be on duty dur­ing their late-night work. Fat­ty, ever con­fi­dent, dis­miss­es these wor­ries, assur­ing Big Soap that there won’t be any sig­nif­i­cant issues dur­ing the hol­i­day week­end, when the job is sched­uled to take place.

Just as their con­ver­sa­tion seems to be wrap­ping up, the mood shifts when Paper inter­rupts, remind­ing Fat­ty that he has pri­or com­mit­ments. She insists that he pri­or­i­tize help­ing Nate move equip­ment for the Memo­r­i­al Day parade, a respon­si­bil­i­ty Fat­ty can­not ignore. This cre­ates an imme­di­ate ten­sion, as Fat­ty now faces a dilem­ma: should he pur­sue the prof­itable plumb­ing job or hon­or his oblig­a­tions to his friend? Ulti­mate­ly, Fat­ty reluc­tant­ly agrees to help Nate, torn between his desire to make mon­ey and his sense of loy­al­ty to those around him. In this moment, Fat­ty begins to reflect on the chal­lenges of man­ag­ing both his per­son­al ambi­tions and his respon­si­bil­i­ties to oth­ers.

This chap­ter touch­es deeply on themes of friend­ship, respon­si­bil­i­ty, and the lure of finan­cial oppor­tu­ni­ty. Fat­ty’s inner con­flict becomes cen­tral to the nar­ra­tive as he tries to nav­i­gate the com­pet­ing demands of his per­son­al desires and his com­mit­ment to his friends and com­mu­ni­ty. The bal­ance between self-inter­est and loy­al­ty is not eas­i­ly achieved, and Fat­ty finds him­self at a cross­roads, where the need for quick mon­ey con­trasts sharply with the weight of his oblig­a­tions. His jour­ney under­scores the com­plex­i­ty of rela­tion­ships and how per­son­al goals can some­times clash with the expec­ta­tions of those we care about, adding depth to the por­tray­al of the chal­lenges of main­tain­ing a sense of agency while remain­ing loy­al to oth­ers. The chap­ter empha­sizes that these ten­sions often lead to dif­fi­cult deci­sions, forc­ing indi­vid­u­als to eval­u­ate their pri­or­i­ties care­ful­ly.