Free The Tao of Apathy by Thomas Cannon Page B

Ah, Hello, Dan.” Bigger raised a
white eyebrow. “What will serve your wife right?”
    “ I changed my mind. Plenty of
businesses have a union and a union is the only thing that could
make things better here. So I’m going to do what I can do to get
one here.” Dan pictured himself as a renegade with his bosses, but
then in the end, them thanking him for making things better at the
hospital and then coming to him for help because the employees
trusted him so much.
    “ I dare you,” Bigger
said.
    Joe went to the slimy, yellow window and
looked out to the charcoal, churning sky. For a moment he imagined,
a tornado hitting the Butt Hutt and everyone having to hold on to
the fat man in the corner to keep from blowing away. “Okay, I have
two questions. The first is why an audio/visual geek making sixty
thousand a year to push TVs on carts around care about a union. My
second question is why in the hell did you dye your hair white,
Bigger?” He turned to look at Bigger and his frost color
hair.
    Bigger looked down at his white shoes. “Joe
you are my best friend. That has nothing to do with why, but I
wanted to let you know. Anyway, I wanted to conform like you told
me to do last night. I thought if white clothes were sanitary, then
white hair would be sanitary. At least, that’s what I believe I
thought. I don’t actually remember dyeing my hair. But I want to be
great at this job. I have to be.”
    “ No you don’t. Seuss isn’t going
to fire you and they pay you the same whether you do a good job or
a crappy one.”
    “ But if I can’t handle this peon
job, then when what can I handle? I couldn’t handle being fired
from this stupid job. What would my dad say? He put himself through
college doing odd jobs and then became a professor.”
    Joe threw his cigarette to the floor. “What
does that mean? Odd jobs. Did he have jobs that were odd? Did he
have to clothe dead people at funeral homes or was he a circus
geek? I hate that phrase ‘odd jobs-”
    “ Anyway,” Dan butted in. “I will
tell you why I am going to get this union going. Are you guys
listening?”
    “ No,” they said. Joe threw the
door open and he and Bigger ran through the slapping
rain.
    Inside, they put on their white hats. Joe put
on his apron. “You know why Dan wants to form a union don’t
you?”
    Bigger shook his head.
    “ Its because whenever St. Jude’s
employees try to fight back and demand that the administration
treat them fairly, the administrators say and do anything so that
they come out on top. See? That is where that tie-wearing,
newsletter reading, stock-having slacker relates to us. We have the
board of trustees and he has his wife.”

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter 15
     
    Mr. Grumby sat behind his desk with his hands
folded on his blank planner. It was ten minutes to five. Tomorrow,
Mr. Petty would officially take over Grumby’s office and he would
be gone. Betty stood in front of Grumby with a pen and a pad of
paper in hand. She felt bad for him having to watch while Petty
took over his job. Mr. Grumby had been quiet all day, until now
when he had called her into his office. “Come in here please,” he
had said. “I want to perform my last official act as president of
Saint Jude’s Hospital and Medical Center.”
    “ Heather, will you stroke my
penis?” he asked Betty.
    “ What?”
    “ Touch it. Please, my wife left me
two years ago,” Grumby pleaded. “And my girlfriend is so cold and
unsympathetic now. I just need human contact. Something to let me
know I still exist.” He stood up and walked around his desk. “It
has been forever since anyone has touched me even in a friendly
way. A child’s hug. A pat on the back. A hand touching another’s
arm in reassurance. My life is devoid of all of those intangible
things a person needs to survive.”
    “ But you didn’t ask me for those
things, Jonas. You asked me to pet your one-eyed mole.” As Grumby
moved forward, she got ready to touch his