about for something. Then he yelled for Eloise. She came to the door. "Where's the Tylenol?" he asked her.
"Bottom right-hand drawer. Left side toward the back. Under the box of rubber bands." Eloise turned to Myron. "Would you like a Yoo-Hoo?" she asked.
"Yes, please." Stocking Yoo-Hoos. He had not been to his father's office in almost a decade, but they still stocked his favorite drink. Dad found the bottle and played with the cap. Eloise closed the door on her way out.
"I've never lied to you," Dad said.
"I know."
"I've tried to protect you. That's what parents do. They shelter their children. When they see danger coming, they try to step in the way and take the hit."
"You can't take this hit for me," Myron said.
Dad nodded slowly. "Doesn't make it any easier."
"I'll be okay," Myron said. "I just need to know what I'm up against."
"You're up against pure evil." Dad shook out two tablets and swallowed them without water. "You're up against naked cruelty, against men with no conscience."
Eloise came back in with the Yoo-Hoo. Reading their faces, she silently handed Myron the drink and slipped back out. In the distance a forklift started beeping out the backup warning.
"It was a year or so after the riots," Dad began. "You're probably too young to remember them, but the riots ripped this city apart. To this day the rip has never healed. Just the opposite, in fact. It's like one of my garments." He gestured to the boxes below. "The garment rips near the seam, and then nobody does anything so it just keeps ripping until the whole thing falls apart. That's Newark. A shredded garment.
"Anyway, my workers finally came back, but they weren't the same people. They were angry now. I wasn't their employer anymore. I was their oppressor. They looked at me like I was the one who dragged their ancestors across the ocean in chains. Then troublemakers started prodding them. The writing was already on the wall, Myron. The manufacturing end of this business was going to hell. Labor costs were too high. The city was just imploding on itself. And then the hoodlums began to lead the workers. They wanted to form a union. Demanded it, actually. I was against the idea, of course."
Dad looked out his glass wall at the endless rows of boxes. Myron wondered how many times his father had looked out at this same view. He wondered what his father had thought about when looking out, what he dreamed about over the years in this dusty warehouse. Myron shook the can and popped the top. The sound startled Dad a bit. He looked back at his son and managed a smile.
"Old Man Bradford was hooked in to the mobsters who wanted to set up the union. That's who was involved in this: mobsters, hoodlums, punks who ran everything from prostitutes to numbers; all of a sudden they're labor experts. But I still fought them. And I was winning. So one day Old Man Bradford sends his son Arthur to this very building. To have a chat with me. Sam Richards is with him - the son of a bitch just leans against the wall and says nothing. Arthur sits down and puts his feet on my desk. I'm going to agree to this union, he says. I'm going to support it, in fact. Financially. With generous contributions. I tell the little snotnose there's a word for this. It's called extortion. I tell him to get the hell out of my office."
Beads of sweat popped up on Dad's forehead. He took a hankie and blotted them a few times. There was a fan in the corner of the office. It oscillated back and forth, teasing you with moments of comfort followed by stifling heat. Myron glanced at the family photos, focusing in on one of his parents on a Caribbean cruise. Maybe ten years ago. Mom and Dad were both wearing loud shirts and looked healthy and tan and much younger. It scared him.
"So what happened then?" Myron asked.
Dad swallowed away something and started speaking again. "Sam finally spoke. He came over to my desk and looked over the family photos. He smiled, like he was an old friend of the family. Then he tossed these pruning shears on my desk."
Myron started to feel cold.
His father kept talking, his eyes wide and unfocused. ""Imagine what they could do to a human being," Sam says to me. "Imagine snipping away a piece at