Randolph on the Job

Randolph Champion was sensing changes in the air around his family.

The Toronto-born Randolph was an unrelenting supporter of the underdog, self-proclaimed member of the downtrodden, and persistent opponent of the controlling upper classes, which included just about everyone who did not share his views on paid labour—that it was an abuse of the lower classes, including himself, and thus to be avoided. (The fact that those in charge of the provincial welfare program, with its handy direct-deposit system to the Spinner’s Inlet Community Credit Union comprised a paid workforce, he considered just and fitting.)

So the revelation that his thirteen-year-old son, Michael, had taken a job stacking shelves and sweeping up at Gilbert’s Groceries after school and on weekends for five dollars an hour, was unsettling.

“Gilbert Chen is exploiting you,” Randolph warned. “That is not even minimum wage.”

“And I’m not old enough legally to be employed,” Michael said, “So that makes us about even. Anyway, Constable Sidhu knows about it and she’s not bothered. She comes in and asks me to move the freshest milk to the front from the back where Gilbert stacks it.”

The next day Randolph appeared twice at busy times at the store and watched Michael work, which the boy seemed to manage without too much duress. In fact, both times Gilbert ordered the boy to take a break, go sit down for a bit, and gave him a couple of oatmeal-chocolate cookies and a bottle of juice of his choice from the cooler.

At home, Randolph told his wife, Storm, “I’m going to keep a watch on that situation.”

Their other son, Billy, was also a cause for concern. At fifteen, he had taken to that most bourgeois of activities: golf. It had started with his being shown by industrious and profit-minded Inlet youth how to earn cash by hunting for golf balls in the rough and selling them back to players. He had then exceeded the usual practice of discovering and picking up abandoned balls, by stealthily following playing groups and finding “lost” balls before their owners could, thus increasing his inventory.

“Working for a faction of elite country club members,” Randolph said. “Gin and tonics, white shoes, and tartan pants, and making serfs of innocent youth by requiring them to haul the weight of their overpriced equipment in severe heat at peasant rates …”

“We do not have a country club, Dad,” Billy replied. “It’s called Spinner’s Inlet Golf Course. There’s nothing elite about it because anybody can play if they can pay, including people like Samson Spinner, who wears shorts and runners, even with legs like his, and carries his own bag with five clubs. The only dress rules are no cut-offs and no T-shirts with rude messages. There’s just a beer-and-wine licence. I think the only gin is in the flask carried by old Dr. Timothy, who says it’s for medicinal purposes after the front nine. When I caddy I get paid twenty-five bucks for a four-hour round. I did two yesterday and got a ten-dollar tip on each.”

Randolph’s eyebrows moved. “Still,” he said.

From selling found balls and caddying, Billy had earned enough to begin playing the game, renting a set of clubs donated to the facility by Annabelle Bell-Atkinson. She had bought them originally for the geeks to share in the hopes of getting them out of the house, but those two had proven mutually and extraordinarily incompetent. They had been asked to leave and stay away from the course following a sudden mood swing and an outburst of vulgarity that had alarmed a group of women golfers and required the posting of an embarrassing apology on the public notice board.

Billy had taken to the game and was showing potential, especially with help from two regular players: Cameron Girard—a relentlessly enthusiastic if marginally skilled golfer—and former Canadian Armed Forces Corporal Harry Dyson. As a youth Harry had played in the Rocky Mountain Amateur Golf Tour, and he was finding that coaching and playing alongside Billy Champion, and seeing the results, was helping him emerge from the gloom that his Kabul experience had brought him. He was back to a respectable six-handicap, and a brighter outlook on life.

One of Cameron’s sports roundups mentioned that Billy’s potential could one day take him to the riches-loaded Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) TOUR.

Randolph grunted and said, “We’ll see about that!”

The next day he stood outside the gate to the golf course and, for reasons no one could quite discern, loudly quoted the late Groucho Marx’s famous words: “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”

Michael’s announcement that Gilbert Chen had already promised him a fifty-cent-an-hour raise and could see him having management potential, seemed to be what spurred Kylie, his younger sister, into her own declaration that she was accepting a post as dishwasher, cash in hand, at the Cedars pub, where owner Matthew Blacklock had guaranteed that he would personally deliver her home safely after each shift and that it would not surprise him to see her become a full-fledged server soon.

Randolph’s habitual protest concluded with, “You’re thirteen! We’ll see about this!”

And indeed, he visited the Cedars, where Matthew showed Kylie efficiently and happily taking care of the dishes in an immaculate, air-conditioned kitchen, where most of the work was handled by a massive and silent-running dishwasher that Kylie loaded, after having given the dishes a cursory dipping in a deep sink, and started by pressing a button.

“Nothing to it, Dad,” the girl said.

“Humph,” Randolph replied. Then he told Matthew, “I will pick her up, when she finishes.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“To the victor,” Blacklock murmured.

Storm was perusing a flyer from BC Ferries when Randolph entered the room. The paper was an ad for a part-time position at the Spinner’s Inlet terminal—ticket selling and directing cars and so on. Storm, who had never held a job in their seventeen years of marriage, said, “This looks interesting. Coupla hours every other day, twenty-three bucks an hour …”

Randolph’s lips were set to say, “We’ll see about that,” but he turned away. He had learned over their time together that his wife’s parents had been something more than prescient when they chose her name.

Instead, he quietly took comfort in knowing that he had been saved from the demands of daily labour in order to be always available to deal with family issues when they arose.