The Waking by H. M. Mann Page A

Slade asks.
    “ Some.” Though I was usually high or just coming down when I got to work.
    “ So get a job.”
    I blink. “Just … get a job.”
    “ Yeah. Get a job. Today.”
    I shake my head. “With no ID, no references, looking like I do with no underwear, no belt, and these?” I point at my boots. “Who’d hire me?”
    Slade points at the American Queen . “They might.”
    “ Right.”
    “ You never know.” He stands and dusts some grass off his pants. “Far as they know, you’ve been working on a towboat and want a change of scenery.”
    “ That’s crazy.”
    “ Sometimes crazy works.” He stares me down. “Crazy worked for you when you jumped, right?”
    “ But this is different.”
    He shrugs. “Well, it doesn’t hurt to ask, now, does it? They have to have a crew of at least a hundred-fifty on there. Maybe they’ll have room for one more.”
    He starts down the hill toward the American Queen , but I don’t move. “You’re just going to walk on and ask them?”
    “ Yeah.”
    I stumble down behind him. “Just like that?”
    “ Well, I ain’t going up to the Captain and ask him for a job for you, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m gonna find the head Negro in charge.” He points to a chubby black man winding a rope as thick as my arm around his elbow and shoulder.
    “ Him?” I say.
    “ Does he look like the H-N-I-C?” Slade says. “The man’s just a hand like me, but he knows who’s running the show, right?”
    “ I guess.”
    He stops before we reach the gangplank. “Listen quick. You are my cousin Manny from Pittsburgh, and—”
    “ They aren’t gonna believe that,” I interrupt.
    “ Manny, we’re all cousins. I thought you knew that. Now you’re my cousin, okay? It’s important.”
    “ Okay, okay, we’re cousins. But how’s that—”
    “ Watch.”
    Slade rolls up that gangplank onto the American Queen like he owns the boat, like he owns an entire fleet of boats, and he heads straight for the hand winding the rope. “How you doin’?” he asks all country-like.
    “ Jes’ fine,” the man replies.
    Man, his arms are huge, like he has two angry pit bulls for biceps, and his chest is about to break through his coveralls.
    “ Name’s Slade, just off the Boonesboro .”
    “ I’m Rufus.” He looks like a Rufus, only he has the youngest baby face to go with that big body.
    “ I’m lookin’ for a job for my cousin Manny here,” Slade says.
    Rufus looks at me. “What can he do?”
    “ He’s been swabbing decks and cleaning mostly for us on the Boonesboro for a good while, and he wants a change of pace, you know, to get off the boat for a spell.”
    “ Uh-huh,” Rufus says, stretching “uh-huh” a lot further than two syllables. Where is Rufus from?
    “ Who might I talk to about this?” Slade asks.
    Rufus looks back at me again. “Cleanin’, huh?”
    “ Yeah.”
    He turns back to Slade. “Can he bus tables or cook?”
    I clear my throat. I’m over here, Rufus. “Sure. Whatever you need done.”
    Rufus turns and squints at me. “Where you from?”
    “ Pittsburgh.”
    “ Yeah?” He loops the rope around a pole. “Got a cousin up there in Homewood, name of Greeley. You ever hear of him?”
    Not unless he’s done some time at County. “Greeley? No. He got a nickname?”
    Rufus pokes out his lips. “Nah. We jes’ always called him Greeley.”
    “ Sorry, I don’t know him. Pittsburgh’s a big place.”
    “ Don’t I know it,” Rufus says. “Got lost as I don’t know what last time we was up there. Ain’t none of the streets go straight.”
    Slade puts his hand on Rufus’s shoulder, and the two of them walk along a railing away from me. Rufus looks back at me every now and then before nodding at Slade, shaking his hand, and disappearing up some stairs.
    “ What’s happening?” I ask.
    “ He’s gone to get the H-N-I-C.” He buttons the top button of my shirt and whisks lint from my shoulders. “You look good, Manny. You ready