Welcome back to the old plantation May 4, 1985
Going back to the Willowbrook Dunkin felt strange. The mere
month and a half away seemed like years.
Bernard was still there, but bitter at the fact that Phil
took over again as owner, as if a return to slavery.
Last night, Phil mumbled something about “Niggers,”
confident I would take Bernard’s place as baker and Bernard would return – in
Phil’s thinking – to his rightful place as porter.
Bernard had other ideas and came into the store hot a hell,
his brown head shifting from side to side like a boxer wading into a match in
anticipation of a fist fight.
“It cost me fifteen bucks to get here,” he told me as the
time clock clicked him in at 1 a.m. “I don’t know why I’m here.”
Habit, no doubt, since he worked this shift before I returned,
and like some ghost destined to haunt the same place, he returned.
A more apt question is why I came back since Phil like all
the owners and managers prior to him intimidates me – much the way my uncles
did when I lived in the old house in Clifton.
Or he might have asked why Phil came back after a year and
half, after having cashed in his chips on the place, collecting a small fortune
for the sale.
Or why Phil expected nothing to have changed in the
interval.
None of the important things really changed, such as Bernard’s
willingness to do anything, even when being demoted from night baker to porter.
But some of the other members of the crew old crew wouldn’t go
back to the old ways.
A year and a half of freedom opened their eyes to the slavery
Phil had previously imposed on them. They hated being dragged back and chained
to those old routines and low expectations – despite the fact that the year
without him had been manic and disastrous for the store. But disasters have a
way of providing opportunities for people previously held down by routine,
finding advancement lacking before.
Some of these others saw Bernard as an Uncle Tom. Yet he had
survived three owners, each of whom had given him what he asked for as far as
pay and the hours he requested. They told him how much they needed him. The
last of these, a real bastard to me and the reason I took up work at the
Bloomfield Dunkin, even taught Bernard to bake, giving him the night shift, he wanted,
and the responsibility Phil would never give “that dumb nigger.”
Wayne, the day baker is back, too. But his head is filled
with queer ideas about money and power.
For three short months, he worked as manger here, hiring and
firing, with sex being the key qualification for the women he gave jobs to.
Phil demoted him to baker, leaving no room at the top for
Bernard.
Wayne demands to be paid more than any other baker; I
suppose to make up for the loss of privilege he had as manager.
Phil won’t have any part of it, calling him “a nigger” too, and
intends to send Wayne to Dunkin school, hoping he will fail and will return humbled.
The others are more rebellious, refusing to kowtow to Phil
the way we all did in the old days. They feel betrayed – the way many emancipated
slaves felt after the conclusion of the Civil War when the abolitionists abandoned
them, getting promised freedom, but losing so much more in the process.
This is the man who sold everybody out and left us all in
the hands of carpetbaggers, each of us scrambling to survive under their new
and ruthless regimes. Each of us had to put on a pleasant face to somehow get
through each day, yet each growing stronger as we got use to being out from
under Phil’s yoke.
While the new owners sucked, some of us actually managed to
find a better place, less secure, yet not so beholden. None of the others feel
the least nostalgic at having Phil back as owner and his desire for everything
to go back to the way it was.
I’m the most fortunate in all this, having walked away
during the last of the owners, and being asked back when Phil regained the reigns
to this insane plantation. I got to see my options elsewhere and get to choose
my master, knowing I can walk away again if I have to, unlike Bernard or Wayne
and others who get stuck with whoever buys this place next.
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