Boysie had nodded his head, because he didn’t have the strength or the energy to waste in the effort of speaking. Old Man Jonesy had made him vexed by his talk. He was superior, his actions and his important way of speaking simple things to Boysie expressed this. It was a feeling that went with the job: an important job that had to do with the important gentlemen and ladies downstairs in the church house. He wanted Boysie to know this. He wanted Boysie … could he tell him? … to know that he knew certain inside-things about these gentlemen and ladies, things they had leaked to him about Africa. But he didn’t have time to tell him right now: he was preparing for his holidays in Jamaica where he was born, where he hadn’t visited in the twenty-five years he had been living in this country as an immigrant. Like Henry, Old Man Jonesy had begun on the railroad; and had moved up, in prestige but not in salary, to the janitorial job in the more exclusive church house.
“But I have been putting my money in the bank, Boysie. I heard from your wife that you don’t do that. I haven’ been licking it out on women and liquor, like you young generation o’ Wessindians. Every Fridee, for the ten years I been on this job, I been banking my money. Because o’ the presence o’ mind I had ten years ago, and the sense to put my wages on the bank, boy, today I could go into the Air Canada place and pay cash for a two-way ticket home to Jamaica. Ain’t that something? That’s a great achievement, ain’t it?”
“But Mr. Jones, it take you ten years? Ten years is a lot o’ time, man.”
“Ten years may be a lot o’ time to some people. But I know there is many who came here to this country with me in the Depression and they can’t even pay rent for a dirty room today, furthermore buy a cash ticket to Jamaica!”
“But, but-but … but godblindme! Mr. Jones, if it is going to take me ten years to save a couple hundred bucks on the bank, be-Jesus Christ, this is the wrong brand o’ job and the wrong place for me, man! Ten years? Man, you know what I could do in ten years? You know how kiss-me-arse old I would be in ten years?”
“That is something I want to tell you about, Boysie. On this job, you have to watch your mouth and your language, boy. Your language is not the language those gentlemen and ladies downstairs want to hear! As long as you are working ’mongst these gentlemen and ladies, you will …”
“All right, man, all right …” Boysie was thinking of having his first night alone with Brigitte, in the large apartment. Otherwise he would have put some more language on Old Man Jonesy.
“Good.” And Old Man Jonesy went on to explain further eccentricities about the job: going through each room with Boysie, pointing out the corners into which the broom had difficulty getting at the dust; showing Boysie the expensive glass-topped “desses” in the offices of the important people; making him walk on tiptoe in the office of the boss-man, Dr. Glimmermann; and making him use the vacuum cleaner in this office only, running the vacuum cleaner with the grain of the rug and not against it, leaving the rug regular and fluffy like a sprightly growing field of thick guinea grass in Africa, bent in one direction by the kiss of an afternoon breeze.
Boysie admired Old Man Jonesy’s diligence, but he hated him. He knew he wouldn’t waste such time cleaning a mere rug, regardless of whose office it was in: “Gorblummuh! it could belong to Jesus Christ, himself!” he told himself, watching Jonesy work.
Old Man Jones showed him which room to clean first, which to clean last. He showed him how to take the garbage pail from the basement, and how to lift it. Jonesy had pinned to the wall in the basement, inside the closet for the brooms and the mops, a regulation put out by the safety branch of some organization, which showed with pictures how workmen should lift heavy loads.
