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Side Hustle Safety Net
Side Hustle Safety Net
how v ulnerable worker s
s u rv i ve precariou s time s

Alexandrea J. Ravenelle

u n i v e r s i t y of c a l i f or n i a pre ss
University of California Press
Oakland, California

© 2023 by Alexandrea J. Ravenelle

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science

Foundation under Grant No. (NSF grant 2029924). Any opinions,
findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the
views of the National Science Foundation.

Portions of chapter 2 have been reproduced, with permission, from

Ravenelle, Alexandrea J., Ken Cai Kowalski, and Erica C. Janko. 2021.
“The Side Hustle Safety Net: Precarious Workers and Gig Work during
COVID-19.” Sociological Perspectives 64, no. 5: 898–919.

Portions of chapter 3 have been reproduced, with permission, from

Ravenelle, Alexandrea J., Erica C. Janko, and Ken Cai Kowalski. 2022.
“Good Jobs, Scam Jobs: Detecting, Normalizing, and Internalizing
Online Job Scams during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” New Media and
Society 24, no. 7: 1591–1610.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ravenelle, Alexandrea J., author.

Title: Side hustle safety net : how vulnerable workers survive
 precarious times / Alexandrea J. Ravenelle.
Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press,
 [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lc cn 2023009337 | isbn 9780520387294 (hardback) |
 i s bn 9780520387300 (paperback) | isbn 9780520387317 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Precarious employment—United States. | Gig
 economy—United States. | Underemployment—Economic aspects—
United States. | COVID-19 (Disease)—Economic aspects—United
States. | Independent contractors—United States.
Classification: lc c hd 5858.u 6 R38 2023 | ddc 331.25/7290973—
 dc23/eng/20230616
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023009337

Manufactured in the United States of America

32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Jacob
Contents

List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi

1 “Officially Unemployed” or “Forgotten Jobless”? 1

2 The Side Hustle Safety Net 43

3 Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, Scam Jobs 81

4 Making More and Moving On Up 106

5 Strategies of Survival 136

6 Stuck in Place 173

7 It’s a Beautiful Life 201

8 Learning from Covid 224

Appendix: Research Methodology 253

Notes 261
References 279
Index 311
Illustrations

FIGURES

1. Map of unemployment uptake 12

2. Respondent education levels by worker classification, Phase I
(n = 199) 37
3. Respondent income levels by worker classification, Phase I
(n = 199) 38
4. Respondent self-identified race and ethnicity by worker
classification, Phase I (n = 199) 39
5. Covid dining sheds photo 1 155
6. Covid dining sheds photo 2 156

TA B L E S

1. Platform participation and work categorization of respondents,

Phase I (n = 199) 33
2. Platform participation and work categorization of respondents,
Phase II (n = 168) 34
3. CARES Act unemployment assistance programs 64

ix
x I l l u s t r a t i o n s

B OX

1. Sample Craigslist advertisement to recruit research

participants 255
Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I am indebted to the more than two hundred

workers who gave their time and energy to this project, especially
during the early months of the pandemic, when everything was un-
known and even breathing the air was scary. This book wouldn’t
have happened without your participation. I hope I did your stories
justice.
This project would have been impossible without funding from
the National Science Foundation. Julie Schor has been an invaluable
mentor over the years, supporting my dissertation, introducing me
to fellow contacts, and providing crucial advice at every turn. She
also told me about the NSF RAPID grant program in early April 2020.
I will forever appreciate the guidance and patience provided by Toby
Parcel, Joe Whitmeyer, and Melanie Hughes at NSF. This research
also benefited from a UNC Junior Faculty Development Grant, a
New Faculty Collaboration Grant from the Institute for the Arts and
Humanities, and a Publication Support Grant from the UNC Institute
for Arts and Humanities and Office of Research Development.
Ken Cai Kowalski and Erica Janko were incredibly dedicated
graduate students who pandemic-pivoted to interviewing dozens of
precarious and unemployed workers. I truly could not have done this
project without the two of them. Additionally, Savannah (Newton)

xi
xii A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

Knoble and Dawn Culton spent hours on coding and summaries, and
were crucial sounding boards.
Naomi Schneider saw the early promise in this book and fast-
tracked its contract. Thank you for taking a chance on me when I was
a PhD student and moving this book forward. I love working to-
gether. Editorial assistant Aline Dolinh remained unfailingly patient.
P. J. Heim provided another fantastic index, while Elisabeth Magnus,
my copyeditor, gives new meaning to grace.
The Sociology Department at UNC has been an unfailing source
of support and mentorship. I was in my first-year review with my
chair Kenneth “Andy” Andrews, via Zoom, when I received my NSF
grant, and Andy’s reaction will forever remain one of my favorite ac-
ademic memories. Howard Aldrich has been a patient mentor and
provided valuable feedback on an early version of chapter 1, while
Karolyn Tyson, Lisa Pearce, Barbara Entwisle, and Jackie Hagan
have encouraged me to keep writing. I feel exceptionally fortunate
to be a part of a “tenure-track cohort” with Jessica Su and Tania
Jenkins, and later Scott Duxbury and Shannon Malone Gonzalez,
with informal mentoring provided by Kate Weisshaar and Taylor
Hargrove. Yong Cai, Guang Guo, and Neal Caren have always been
patient with my new-faculty questions. I’ve always appreciated the
messages of support from Ken Bollen, Kathleen Fitzgerald, Karen
Guzzo, Bob Hummer, Charlie Kurzman, and Ted Mouw. I will for-
ever be thankful to Arne Kalleberg for his “Come work with me”
tweet that led me to apply to the department, and his subsequent
mentoring.
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has been incredibly
generous and understanding. They funded the work that made Hus-
tle and Gig possible and were flexible with the deadlines for my work
on elite gig workers. Derek Ozkal is the perfect program officer—
encouraging, funny, and quick to recommend additional connec-
tions. Thank you for your support over the years.
 A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s xiii

My accountability partner, Calvin John Smiley, has been an indis-

pensable source of support and encouragement. The weekly fear of
admitting to a productivity lapse drives me to my computer most
weekday mornings.
Writing a first postdissertation book felt like transitioning from
training wheels to a ten-speed. My doctoral adviser, Barbara Katz
Rothman, went above and beyond, sitting down with me for a long
breakfast when I was four chapters in and worried about where I was
going. You are the epitome of mentoring midwifery, and always
know when to say “There, there.”
Although I’ve never met her, Sarah Damaske’s book has greatly
informed my own and was its own form of encouragement when I
was struggling to get started. Dave Brady took me under his wing
when I was a new assistant professor teaching 4-4, taught me how to
write a journal article, and provided invaluable feedback on this
manuscript. Christine Williams also provided crucial feedback and
suggestions on the manuscript; I hope I’ve done them justice.
Jonathan Davis, Colin Jerolmack, Jeff Manza, Joan Maya Mazelis,
Christine Schwartz, Jennifer Silva, and Kate Zaloom have also pro-
vided informal one-off mentoring just when I needed it most.
Joel Rosner, Dena Sloan, Isaiah Akin, and Digs Majumder are the
best friends in the world. Eva and Virgil Duncan and Diane Lefebvre
and Ron Szabo have spent hours with our children and given us
much-needed breaks over the last few years, while my mother and
sister have cheered us on from afar. Thank you for everything.
My husband, Sam Duncan, makes our world go round. He cooks,
drives, manages bath time and bedtime, and is remarkably support-
ive of my career. I don’t have words for how much I appreciate every-
thing he does. I couldn’t do any of this without him. My daughter,
Anna, was just two when the first box of “mama books” (aka Hustle
and Gig) arrived. She was the perfect dissertation baby and is now the
official family artist. I love you both.
xiv A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

Finally, this book is dedicated to Jacob Douglas, my tenure-track

baby, born during the release of Hustle and Gig and in the middle of
my interviews to join the UNC Sociology Department. There’s noth-
ing quite like a squeezy hug from a toddler after a long day of writing.
I love you and our story time. May you always achieve your dreams.
1 “Officially Unemployed” or
“Forgotten Jobless”?

In early 2020, Abdul, a twenty-seven-year-old Middle Eastern Amer-

ican, was working several jobs: restaurant and bar server, videogra-
pher, and “light catering” on the side.* But then the coronavirus pan-
demic hit. Bars were considered nonessential. Restaurants could
stay open for takeout but were prevented from offering on-site din-
ing, rendering their servers redundant.
“I worked in two different places and . . . they basically fired eve-
ryone. They never promised us our jobs back after this was done,” he
said. “They just basically said, ‘We can’t afford to have you guys on
the payroll. . . . ’ One place that I worked at, they only kept two of the
kitchen staff, only two.”
Abdul applied for unemployment assistance, but he’d spent part
of the previous year working in Florida and hadn’t worked long
enough to qualify for New York State unemployment benefits. “I was
working on tips, so the money that I was making on the books wasn’t
enough,” he said. “Even if I did qualify for unemployment, I would’ve
gotten change, literally change.” He tried to apply for unemployment
assistance from Florida, explaining, “That didn’t work either, be-
cause they’re like, ‘Oh, you can’t go onto unemployment with Florida
if you live in New York. You’re not a resident.’ It’s bullshit.”

*All names have been changed.

1
2 “Unemployed” or “Jobless”?

Abdul was a member of the “forgotten jobless,” left outside the

unemployment assistance safety net during a generation-defining
pandemic. It didn’t take long for him to run out of money.
In his first interview in May 2020, Abdul described himself as “su-
per frustrated . . . just anxious all the time and it’s not fun. It’s a scary
fucking situation,” he said. “Like you might wake up one day and not
have any money for food or hygiene products. I haven’t shaved in
weeks. I shave my face. I can’t even afford to get a razor.”
Abdul had done side hustle work on food delivery apps before the
pandemic, and as his finances deteriorated, he decided to do food de-
livery work full-time. “I had no other choice but to find something,
some sort of income,” he said. “I ran out of money.”
But Abdul wasn’t the only person who viewed side hustle work as
an economic safety net, and competition for food delivery work was
fierce. On one app, workers had to claim delivery slots, in thirty-
minute increments, in advance. “Sometimes you go on and you only
see from 11:00 to 11:30. . . . You can claim that slot, but then the next
opening is from 4:00 to 4:30, from 4:30 to 5:00,” he said. “You can
spend a whole day trying to work and end up working only two
hours. . . . Even when you work a few hours, you’re not guaranteed
deliveries back to back. So you can get a delivery, do the pickup, drop-
off, and then end up waiting, wasting the rest of that hour, just wait-
ing for another order.”
With platform-based gig work so unreliable, Abdul also started
picking up moving gigs via Craigslist, work that he described as “hor-
rible.” Instead of being direct hires by the resident, most of the posi-
tions were posted by outsourcing middlemen.
“They claim that they have a crew and a truck, and then they go
rent a truck like a U-Haul or something, and then they, again, hire a
couple people like myself, they pay us less than what we would make
if we were dealing directly with the person that was offering the job,”
he said. “The pay is horrible. They don’t provide any safety equip-
 “Unemployed” or “Jobless”? 3

ment. They don’t even provide sanitizer, you have to get your own
mask, you have to get your own gloves. They have no insurance, so if
anything breaks, anything goes wrong, you’re responsible for that,
you know? . . . So if you work all day and one thing gets broken, it’s
coming out of all of our money.”
The first time he had to pay for a moving mistake, one of his fel-
low workers had thrown a storage ottoman in the moving truck, not
realizing that it held picture frames. The frames inside broke, and the
replacement cost was split among the four workers: $20 each.
“The second time was a big statue,” Abdul said, noting that a
teenage colleague without moving experience had leaned on the
statue, breaking it. “It was super expensive. . . . I was supposed to
make about $80 plus tips. None of us got paid. That was crazy. Even
though it was only a couple of hours, it was just so unfair.”
But given the choice between working or waiting for work, Abdul
thought the off-platform moving gigs were preferable. “Even though
it’s risky, at least you know that you’re going to go do this job for a
couple of hours and get that much money,” he said, noting that food
delivery work with DoorDash and Uber Eats wasn’t guaranteed.

It’s not steady. It’s not a steady income. You can’t count on it. If you
have to pay a certain amount of money for rent every month, you’re
never really confident, you’re never really sure you’re going to be able
to make rent. . . . Something like Uber, you’re driving, you’re using
your personal car; if you really think about it, the money that you’re
making is not enough. You’re putting the wear and tear on your car,
the tickets, and the parking violations. If you’re doing Uber Eats, you
have to go in and out of restaurants and buildings. All that stuff costs
a lot more than what you’re making. . . . So you’re basically just trying
to make enough money to survive today and you’re basically just fuck-
ing over your future self. . . . It’s like you’re borrowing. . . . You’re not
earning that money. You’re borrowing it from your future self.
4 “Unemployed” or “Jobless”?

Abdul tried looking for a stable job, even walking his neighbor-
hood with a handful of résumés. But at numerous businesses he was
told that there were dozens of applications ahead of his. One job he
applied for, he didn’t hear back for a year; it took that long for the
manager to work through all of the other applications. He heard of
someone who was helping people to get unemployment assistance in
exchange for a cut of their benefits, but he was worried about the le-
gal implications, describing it as “pretty sketchy.”
“I knew that I deserved some kind of unemployment. I paid
taxes. I bust my ass, and I work so hard. I had to work really shitty
jobs,” he said. “I remember when I was a teenager, I was thinking to
myself, ‘This is crazy. A third of my paycheck is just disappearing. I’m
paying a third of my paycheck as taxes. But then, if I lose my job to-
morrow, I don’t get any kind of help?’ And I was thinking about that
when I was like eighteen.”
More than a year into the pandemic, Abdul had resigned himself
to the lack of help. “So I just came to a place in my life. I just accept it
now. I accept that the country that I live in, the place that I live in, is
a little bit fucked up, and I have to take it for the good and the bad,”
he said. “If something happens, I just have to work a little bit harder,
maybe suffer a little bit more, but I’m going to make it through.”

Andrew, a twenty-seven-year-old white man, was less than a week

into his dream job when he was laid off. After more than a year as a
Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, Andrew had spent several
months working as an au pair for a local family as he tried to decide
what he wanted to do with his life.
“It’s always been a dream of mine to work in the food industry,
and I finally made the decision that I wanted to get professional train-
ing working in a restaurant,” he said. It took more than a month, but
he was eventually able to convince a local high-end restaurant to let
him trail, or work shifts in the kitchen as part of an audition process.
 “Unemployed” or “Jobless”? 5

“I spent four days working in the kitchen, and on Friday afternoon,

Chef came in and said they were closing, but I think the day before I
had actually gotten on the books,” he said. “As crazy as it was, if I
hadn’t been so aggressive about trying to get this job I would be in a
completely different situation right now.”
Even though he hadn’t been working for at least ninety days, be-
cause he was “on the books” and had lost his job through “a
Corona-related event,” he was able to qualify for unemployment as-
sistance. It didn’t hurt either that the CEO of the restaurant group
that he was working for pledged to pay workers for an additional
week after the restaurant closed, and later started an employee relief
fund.
In his week on the books at the restaurant, he had earned mini-
mum wage for thirty-five hours, or about $500. When I interviewed
him for the first time in early June 2020, Andrew was still receiving
partial unemployment of almost $900 a week, had taken a part-time
job as a cheesemonger at a local farmers market, and was helping
friends with a small food start-up.
“It’s weird. Things work out like this in my life. I don’t know. I
think people have said it’s just the way you see it. If you look at things
a certain way, things tend to just kind of flow. Yeah, so actually start-
ing in April really I was working probably more, making more money
than I would be at the restaurant and both in food-related jobs,” he
said. “I’ve been able to establish a little nest egg again and emer-
gency fund, and actually today I put down a deposit for a new sublet,
so I’m going to move next week into my own apartment. . . . I feel
kind of safe that I’ll definitely be able to pay rent.”
When I interviewed him again in the spring of 2021, Andrew had re-
cently been hired back by the restaurant for several months, leaving be-
hind the cheesemonger job. The restaurant wasn’t fully open, and he
was primarily making meals for needy families, but it meant the oppor-
tunity to cook, and the job offered benefits. But he was uncertain about
6 “Unemployed” or “Jobless”?

when the restaurant would reopen fully, and his friends at the food
start-up were looking to hire, so he quit the restaurant.
“They’ve just been experiencing pretty robust growth, and they
were in a position to offer me a full-time role,” he said. “It’s nice to be
in a salaried role actually. . . . I think at the moment of getting this op-
portunity, it seemed like more of a long-term stable kind of career
trajectory.”

The Focus of This Book

Both Andrew and Abdul lost jobs during the coronavirus pandemic.
But while Andrew was officially unemployed and qualified for
unemployment benefits, including the additional $600 a week of
Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC), Abdul
was part of the forgotten jobless. Left to fend for himself, Abdul
turned to the side hustle safety net of gig work. While his vow to
“make it through” is admirable, the inequity between their situations
is jarring.
This is the story of what happens to the most precarious
workers—the gig workers and laid-off restaurant staff, the early-
career creatives, and the minimum-wage employees—when the
economy suddenly collapses, and how they fare in the long pursuit of
an economic recovery.
In this book I ask, how does obtaining the status of being officially
unemployed or being part of the forgotten jobless affect workers?
How do officially unemployed workers make sense of receiving more
on unemployment than they were making while working? For those
who kept working, how do they feel about their minimum-wage pay-
check and increased risk of exposure to the virus, compared to peers
who were paid to stay home? How do workers reconcile the contra-
diction between the amount of money spent during Covid and a fail-
ure to protect the vulnerable? And finally, how do larger social trends,
 “Unemployed” or “Jobless”? 7

such as the internalization of risk and the rise of “polyemployment,”

or working two or more jobs, affect precarious workers during these
“unsettled times”?1

The Importance of Unemployment Assistance

and Polyemployment

Why does it matter if people are officially unemployed and receiving

benefits? Anyone who has ever received unemployment will be quick
to note that it’s typically not very much money, generally enough to
cover one’s food, transportation, and utilities but not necessarily rent
or a mortgage. Or, if it’s enough to cover the rent, it’s not also enough
to pay for food and other living expenses. Receiving unemployment
benefits may keep an unemployed professional from emptying their
rainy day fund, but it won’t necessarily prevent them from tapping
their savings.
But unemployment assistance is more than micro-level pay-
ments to individuals. Unemployment benefits have a macro benefit
as an automatic stabilizer, a mechanism that can help to maintain
spending during an economic slowdown. For better or worse, our
economy is based on consumer spending: the purchases you make
help to keep other people employed. Too many unemployed workers
pulling back on their spending can have reverberations throughout
the economy, triggering a recession. As chapter 2 shows, with a brief
history of the Great Depression and the creation of state unemploy-
ment programs, these stabilizers are an important strategy to ensure
that an economic downturn doesn’t quickly spiral out of control. If
too many workers lose their jobs—and don’t have access to unem-
ployment benefits—the recessionary impact can be considerable.
Much like workers’ compensation and Social Security contribu-
tions, unemployment insurance is a hard-won protection that has
required generations of effort to secure. And just as gig economy
8 “Unemployed” or “Jobless”?

companies are effectively rolling back generations of hard-won

workplace protections, business strategies that classify workers as in-
dependent contractors, or pay them in cash “under the table,” also
roll back access to the social safety net of unemployment assistance.
But it’s important to realize that not all of the rolling back of pro-
tections is due to company strategies. In recent years, more and more
workers have begun engaging in polyemployment.2 Polyemploy-
ment includes having a main job and a “side hustle,” but it also en-
compasses working two or more part-time jobs. Polyemployment is
often a response to underemployment, such as involuntary part-time
work, but it’s also a response to wage stagnation and can be used to
enable the pursuit of passion jobs like creative work. Polyemploy-
ment is an example of the internalization of risk, when workers as-
sume “personal responsibility for the physical and financial market
risks shifted onto them from corporations in a risk society.”3 Facing
stagnating wages and the increasing risk of unemployment, workers
rely on a “side hustle safety net” of multiple income sources to create
a semblance of job security and income stability for themselves. The
goal of the side hustle safety net is to reduce the risk of “putting all
their eggs in one basket,” to quote one respondent.
Polyemployment can sometimes help workers when they sud-
denly discover that one of their previous jobs qualifies them for unem-
ployment. But it can also backfire. State unemployment offices don’t
generally recognize the financial impact of losing multiple jobs simul-
taneously, and the presence of a secondary job reduces the amount of
unemployment assistance that someone receives. This is the “poly-
employment paradox,” whereby efforts to create income security and
a personal safety net can leave workers even more precarious.
As Abdul’s experience demonstrates, “officially unemployed” is
a status that isn’t available to everyone. It’s an achieved status,4 or
one that is earned, and that is available only to people who lose their
jobs through no fault of their own, through layoffs or company clos-
 “Unemployed” or “Jobless”? 9

ings; who worked at a job for a sufficient amount of time and who
earned above a certain level of income; and who were classified as
W-2 employees as opposed to independent contractors. It’s limited to
people who are actively seeking work and available to take a job if of-
fered. And historically, this status was an option only for workers in
specific approved occupations.
As a result, Unemployment with a capital U, the status of being
officially unemployed—collecting unemployment benefits or being
eligible for them—doesn’t begin to capture the full range of working
and being out of work. A jobless worker might be unemployed but in-
eligible for unemployment benefits because the type of job they were
working previously (1099 as opposed to W-2) didn’t qualify, because
they didn’t work the previous job long enough, because they weren’t
paid enough to qualify for benefits, or because they quit instead of
being laid off.5 Or they might simply be the nonworking unemployed,
like recent graduates, returning homemakers, or people transition-
ing off disability, who don’t qualify for unemployment benefits. They
may be the “partially unemployed,” workers who face a reduction in
hours or who lost a full-time unemployment-qualifying job but who
keep a part-time “side hustle” that may reduce or disqualify them
from unemployment benefits. Or they may be “underemployed,”
working fewer hours than they want at a job, or working at a job that
isn’t in line with their skills or earning potential.6 All of these catego-
ries signify people who are not making a “living wage” at a single job
and have not recently done so. Some of these individuals are “down
and out,” but some are also “making do” or “getting by,” and some
are “hustling” with multiple jobs.

“Officially Unemployed” Is an Achieved Status

It feels odd to think about “officially unemployed” as a status. When

we hear the term status, we often think of prestige. The president has
10 “Unemployed” or “Jobless”?

more status than their assistant. A doctor is considered to be higher

status than a garbage collector. But status is not just about prestige.
Status is the position someone occupies in the larger society.7 And
that status sets limits on our behavior and provides access to privi-
leges. A young child is usually free of the responsibility to pay rent,
buy groceries, or keep up with car repairs; at the same time, they also
don’t get to pick their bedtime or eat candy for dinner. Being an adult
means getting to pick your own bedtime, a privilege that may be over-
shadowed by the need to work late to finish a project.
Unemployment is typically stigmatized: unemployed profession-
als may describe themselves as “freelancing,” “consulting,” or “be-
ing between jobs,” all descriptions that suggest an ongoing commit-
ment to work. During the pandemic, that stigma didn’t entirely lift,
but with so many workers also unemployed, the status of “unem-
ployed” was less stigmatized. As thirty-five-year-old Ethan, a white
unemployed comedic actor, explained, “I try to remember that it’s
not like I’m here at my mom’s house because I bottomed out and I
couldn’t get any work anymore and I suck. It’s because they shut
down the entertainment industry.”
In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman writes,
“Society is organized on the principle that any individual who pos-
sesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that
others will value and treat him in an appropriate way.”8 Someone
who is officially unemployed is generally considered to be deserving
of weekly payments from their state government for twenty-
six weeks, or approximately six months, and often more during
an economic downturn. During the Great Recession, the “99ers”
were a group of people who received ninety-nine weeks of unem-
ployment assistance—almost two years—before they exhausted their
benefits. Workers who are officially unemployed are eligible to defer
their federal student loans. Officially unemployed workers may
 “Unemployed” or “Jobless”? 11

be able to more easily qualify for Medicaid, or health insurance

marketplace subsidies, or hardship repayment programs from their
credit cards.
During the early months of the pandemic, people with the status
of “officially unemployed” were seen as deserving of financial help
that was also intended to keep them—and their families—safe from
the virus. The additional $600 a week FPUC funds were intended to
reduce the impact of unemployment on workers, to encourage peo-
ple to stay home, and to “flatten the curve” of infection. The forgot-
ten jobless were left to find food delivery jobs in the gig economy or
in public-facing essential businesses like grocery stores.
The divide between the forgotten jobless and the officially unem-
ployed isn’t just limited to the pandemic, though. Increasingly, the
status of “officially unemployed” is unattainable for jobless workers.
The W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research notes that the
unemployment insurance program has been weakening since the
1980s, serving a smaller percentage of unemployed workers and
paying a shrinking percentage of the wages that they have lost.9 In
March 2020, before unemployment claims spiked from the pan-
demic, the Pew Research Center found that only about 29 percent
of unemployed Americans were considered officially unemployed
and receiving benefits. But even that percentage hides the range of
recipiency rates between states, or the percentage of unemployed
workers who are receiving unemployment assistance. The Upjohn
Institutes notes that while “nine states have recipiency rates of
greater than 40 percent, twenty-nine have rates of less than 25 per-
cent. North Carolina’s recipiency rate is the lowest in the nation at
10.5 percent.” 10
As the Pew Research Center notes, there are regional patterns to
unemployment assistance: southern states have generally lower lev-
els of recipiency, while states in the Northeast or Midwest have
12 “Unemployed” or “Jobless”?

0–10% 10.1–20% 20.1–30% 30.1–40% 40.1–50% 50.1%+

WA NH
ME
MT ND VT
OR MN
ID MA
SD WI NY
WY MI RI
PA CT
NE IA
NV OH NJ
CA UT IL IN DE
CO WV VA
KS MO MD
KY
NC DC
TN
AZ OK SC
NM AR
MS AL GA
TX LA
PR
FL
AK
HI

f igu r e 1 . Pew Research Center map of unemployment uptake: “Being unem-

ployed doesn’t always mean getting unemployment benefits. Share of state’s unem-
ployment workers receiving unemployment benefits, March 2020.” note: Rate
shown for Puerto Rico is for February 2020. Unemployment data not available for
US Virgin Islands. s ource: Pew Research Center analysis of data from the Em-
ployment and Training Administration, US Labor Department (DeSilver 2020).

higher rates (see figure 1).11 Even when workers qualify for benefits,
there are considerable differences in the maximum weekly benefit
amount, with states in the Southeast offering the lowest maximum
weekly benefits. It would be easy to say that this is simply a reflection
of the cost of living in various states, but it’s hard to argue that the
cost of living in Kentucky is more than twice as much as Mississippi,
or that the cost of living is higher in Texas than California. Daphne
Skandalis and her coauthors note that, prepandemic, “systematically
stricter rules in states with a larger Black population” contributed to
an 8 percent Black-white gap in the replacement rate.12
 “Unemployed” or “Jobless”? 13

Working outside the Social Safety Net

Unemployment is part of the social safety net. Like a net under a

high-wire act, it is supposed to catch you if you fall. But not everyone
has access to that net. To paraphrase Abdul from the opening vi-
gnette, people without access to the status of “officially unemployed”
get to “work a little bit harder” at staying on their tightrope, or
“maybe suffer a little bit more” when they fall.
In the US most work is “at-will,” meaning you can be fired for any
reason at all, as long as it’s not an illegal reason (e.g., because you’re
pregnant, or for unionizing). But there’s a difference between the
possibility that you could lose your job and the likelihood that you
will. For most professional employees, work on Monday will also
mean work on Friday and through the end of the month, and they will
stay in that job for the entire year. For precarious workers, work that
starts at the beginning of the week might not last through the end of
a month, and for gig-based workers, the work may last only a few
hours or minutes.
Most people have done short-lived forms of work for money at
some point. Even tenured college professors occasionally get paid a
couple hundred dollars as a speaking honorarium. There’s nothing
wrong with picking up the occasional gig. But the problem is when
one’s entire income comes from these gigs. It can be exhilarating to
make a living via the hustle of running from one gig to another.
There’s a sense of working by your wits, of being in demand and
choosing your own work adventure. But it can quickly get exhausting,
and a tweak in the algorithm can suddenly result in little or no work.
Getting sick, having an accident, or simply wanting to take a few days
off can also affect how the algorithm treats you. While being in de-
mand and working long hours can generate large paydays, for every
big-income day there are likely to be several with less work or little
money. Those ebbs and flows in one’s income—highlighted in the
14 “Unemployed” or “Jobless”?

chapter 5 discussion of income volatility—affect income dependabil-

ity and can be stressful.
In Precarious Lives, Arne Kalleberg defines precarious work as in-
cluding temporary, contract-based work and involuntary part-time
work that is often insecure, provides limited economic and social ben-
efits, and is covered by few labor law or regulatory protections.13 Simply
put, precarious work is “poorly paid and insecure.” 14 It “departs from
the normative model of the standard employment relationship”—the
academic term for stable jobs with benefits after World War II—and
cannot support a household.15 In the sociology literature, a variety of
terms are associated with precarious work: “atypical employment,”
“contingent employment,” “flexible employment,” “temporary work,”
“casual work,” “nonstandard work arrangements” (often applied to
higher-paid freelancers), “underemployment,” “working poor,” and
“informal work.”16
Gig work is the epitome of precarious work.17 Gig work is so tem-
porary that a “gig” may last only a few minutes, and workers—usually
classified as independent contractors—are generally outside the so-
cial safety net of workers’ compensation, Social Security contribu-
tions, paid leave, or health insurance. As I noted in Hustle and Gig,
gig work includes platform-based work that is marketed directly
to consumers on apps such as Uber and Lyft, TaskRabbit, Instacart,
DoorDash, and Shipt.18 Increasingly, gigification, or the act of turn-
ing work into short-term gigs, is also affecting jobs that were previ-
ously W-2 based. Apps such as Pared, Instawork, Jitjatjo, Qwick, and
Shiftgig bring gig work into professional kitchens by marketing
themselves as on-demand matching tools for restaurant workers and
restaurants. Work that is already difficult and unstable has become
even more precarious by the classification of these workers as
independent contractors, where work today is no guarantee of
work tomorrow and where there are no benefits or workplace
protections.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 “No harm done! Think of our children. Suppose there’d been a
stranger here instead of Wilkinson. What would he have thought of
our home?”
“Dont worry about that,” croaked Mr. Wilkinson, “accidents will
happen in the best regulated families.”
“Poor Joe’s such a sweet boy when he’s himself,” said Aunt Emily.
“And think that it looked for a while years ago as if Harland held the
whole Curb Market in the palm of his hand. The papers called him
the King of the Curb, dont you remember?” “That was before the
Lottie Smithers affair....”
“Well suppose you children go and play in the other room while
we have our coffee,” chirped Aunt Emily. “Yes, they ought to have
gone long ago.”
“Can you play Five Hundred, Jimmy?” asked Maisie.
“No I cant.”
“What do you think of that James, he cant play jacks and he cant
play Five Hundred.”
“Well they’re both girl’s games,” said James loftily. “I wouldn’t play
em either xept on account of you.”
“Oh wouldn’t you, Mr. Smarty.”
“Let’s play animal grabs.”
“But there aren’t enough of us for that. It’s no fun without a
crowd.”
“An last time you got the giggles so bad mother made us stop.”
“Mother made us stop because you kicked little Billy Schmutz in
the funnybone an made him cry.”
“Spose we go down an look at the trains,” put in Jimmy.
“We’re not allowed to go down stairs after dark,” said Maisie
severely.
 “I’ll tell you what lets play stock exchange.... I’ve got a million
dollars in bonds to sell and Maisie can be the bulls an Jimmy can be
the bears.”
“All right, what do we do?”
“Oh juss run round an yell mostly.... I’m selling short.”
“All right Mr. Broker I’ll buy em all at five cents each.”
“No you cant say that.... You say ninetysix and a half or something
like that.”
“I’ll give you five million for them,” cried Maisie waving the blotter
of the writing desk.
“But you fool, they’re only worth one million,” shouted Jimmy.
Maisie stood still in her tracks. “Jimmy what did you say then?”
Jimmy felt shame flame up through him; he looked at his stubby
shoes. “I said, you fool.”
“Haven’t you ever been to Sunday school? Don’t you know that
God says in the Bible that if you call anybody Thou fool you’ll be in
danger of hellfire?”
Jimmy didn’t dare raise his eyes.
“Well I’m not going to play any more,” said Maisie drawing herself
up. Jimmy somehow found himself out in the hall. He grabbed his
hat and ran out the door and down the six flights of white stone stairs
past the brass buttons and chocolate livery of the elevator boy, out
through the hall that had pink marble pillars in to Seventysecond
Street. It was dark and blowy, full of ponderous advancing shadows
and chasing footsteps. At last he was climbing the familiar crimson
stairs of the hotel. He hurried past his mother’s door. They’d ask him
why he had come home so soon. He burst into his own room, shot
the bolt, doublelocked the door and stood leaning against it panting.
 “Well are you married yet?” was the first thing Congo asked when
Emile opened the door to him. Emile was in his undershirt. The
shoebox-shaped room was stuffy, lit and heated by a gas crown with
a tin cap on it.
“Where are you in from this time?”
“Bizerta and Trondjeb.... I’m an able seaman.”
“That’s a rotten job, going to sea.... I’ve saved two hundred
dollars. I’m working at Delmonico’s.”
They sat down side by side on the unmade bed. Congo produced
a package of gold tipped Egyptian Deities. “Four months’ pay”; he
slapped his thigh. “Seen May Sweitzer?” Emile shook his head. “I’ll
have to find the little son of a gun.... In those goddam Scandinavian
ports they come out in boats, big fat blond women in bumboats....”
They were silent. The gas hummed. Congo let his breath out in a
whistle. “Whee ... C’est chic ça, Delmonico ... Why havent you
married her?”
“She likes to have me hang around.... I’d run the store better than
she does.”
“You’re too easy; got to use rough stuff with women to get
anything outa them.... Make her jealous.”
“She’s got me going.”
“Want to see some postalcards?” Congo pulled a package,
wrapped in newspaper out of his pocket. “Look these are Naples;
everybody there wants to come to New York.... That’s an Arab
dancing girl. Nom d’une vache they got slippery bellybuttons....”
“Say, I know what I’ll do,” cried Emile suddenly dropping the cards
on the bed. “I’ll make her jealous....”
“Who?”
“Ernestine ... Madame Rigaud....”
“Sure walk up an down Eighth Avenue with a girl a couple of times
an I bet she’ll fall like a ton of bricks.”
 The alarmclock went off on the chair beside the bed. Emile
jumped up to stop it and began splashing water on his face in the
washbasin.
“Merde I got to go to work.”
“I’ll go over to Hell’s Kitchen an see if I can find May.”
“Don’t be a fool an spend all your money,” said Emile who stood
at the cracked mirror with his face screwed up, fastening the buttons
in the front of a clean boiled shirt.

“It’s a sure thing I’m tellin yer,” said the man again and again,
bringing his face close to Ed Thatcher’s face and rapping the desk
with his flat hand.
“Maybe it is Viler but I seen so many of em go under, honest I
dont see how I can risk it.”
“Man I’ve hocked the misses’s silver teaset and my diamond ring
an the baby’s mug.... It’s a sure sure thing.... I wouldn’t let you in on
it, xept you an me’s been pretty good friends an I owe you money an
everythin.... You’ll make twentyfive percent on your money by
tomorrow noon.... Then if you want to hold you can on a gamble, but
if you sell three quarters and hold the rest two or three days on a
chance you’re safe as ... as the Rock of Gibraltar.”
“I know Viler, it certainly sounds good....”
“Hell man you dont want to be in this damned office all your life,
do you? Think of your little girl.”
“I am, that’s the trouble.”
“But Ed, Gibbons and Swandike had started buying already at
three cents when the market closed this evening.... Klein got wise
an’ll be right there with bells on first thing in the morning. The
market’ll go crazy on it....”
 “Unless the fellers doin the dirty work change their minds. I know
that stuff through and through, Viler.... Sounds like a topnotch
proposition.... But I’ve examined the books of too many bankrupts.”
Viler got to his feet and threw his cigar into the cuspidor. “Well do
as you like, damn it all.... I guess you must like commuting from
Hackensack an working twelve hours a day....”
“I believe in workin my way up, that’s all.”
“What’s the use of a few thousands salted away when you’re old
and cant get any satisfaction? Man I’m goin in with both feet.”
“Go to it Viler.... You tellem,” muttered Thatcher as the other man
stamped out slamming the office door.
The big office with its series of yellow desks and hooded
typewriters was dark except for the tent of light in which Thatcher sat
at a desk piled with ledgers. The three windows at the end were not
curtained. Through them he could see the steep bulk of buildings
scaled with lights and a plankshaped bit of inky sky. He was copying
memoranda on a long sheet of legal cap.
FanTan Import and Export Company (statement of assets and
liabilities up to and including February 29) ... Branches New York,
Shanghai, Hongkong and Straights Settlements....
Balance carried over $345,789.84
Real Estate 500,087.12
Profit and Loss 399,765.90
“A bunch of goddam crooks,” growled Thatcher out loud. “Not an
item on the whole thing that aint faked. I dont believe they’ve got any
branches in Hongkong or anywhere....”
He leaned back in his chair and stared out of the window. The
buildings were going dark. He could just make out a star in the patch
of sky. Ought to go out an eat, bum for the digestion to eat irregularly
like I do. Suppose I’d taken a plunge on Viler’s red hot tip. Ellen, how
do you like these American Beauty roses? They have stems eight
feet long, and I want you to look over the itinerary of the trip abroad
I’ve mapped out to finish your education. Yes it will be a shame to
leave our fine new apartment looking out over Central Park.... And
downtown; The Fiduciary Accounting Institute, Edward C. Thatcher,
President.... Blobs of steam were drifting up across the patch of sky,
hiding the star. Take a plunge, take a plunge ... they’re all crooks and
gamblers anyway ... take a plunge and come up with your hands full,
pockets full, bankaccount full, vaults full of money. If I only dared
take the risk. Fool to waste your time fuming about it. Get back to the
FanTan Import. Steam faintly ruddy with light reflected from the
streets swarmed swiftly up across the patch of sky, twisting
scattering.
Goods on hand in U. S. bonded warehouses ... $325,666.00
Take a plunge and come up with three hundred and twentyfive
thousand, six hundred and sixtysix dollars. Dollars swarming up like
steam, twisting scattering against the stars. Millionaire Thatcher
leaned out of the window of the bright patchouliscented room to look
at the dark-jutting city steaming with laughter, voices, tinkling and
lights; behind him orchestras played among the azaleas, private
wires click click clickclicked dollars from Singapore, Valparaiso,
Mukden, Hongkong, Chicago. Susie leaned over him in a dress
made of orchids, breathed in his ear.
Ed Thatcher got to his feet with clenched fists sniveling; You poor
fool whats the use now she’s gone. I’d better go eat or Ellen’ll scold
me.
V. Steamroller

D
usk gently smooths crispangled streets.
Dark presses tight the steaming asphalt
city, crushes the fretwork of windows
and lettered signs and chimneys and
watertanks and ventilators and fireescapes
and moldings and patterns and corrugations
and eyes and hands and neckties into blue
chunks, into black enormous blocks. Under
the rolling heavier heavier pressure windows
blurt light. Night crushes bright milk out of
arclights, squeezes the sullen blocks until
they drip red, yellow, green into streets
resounding with feet. All the asphalt oozes
light. Light spurts from lettering on roofs,
mills dizzily among wheels, stains rolling
tons of sky.

A
steamroller was clattering back and forth over the freshly
tarred metaling of the road at the cemetery gate. A smell of
scorched grease and steam and hot paint came from it. Jimmy
Herf picked his way along the edge of the road; the stones were
sharp against his feet through the worn soles of his shoes. He
brushed past swarthy-necked workmen and walked on over the new
road with a whiff of garlic and sweat from them in his nostrils. After a
hundred yards he stopped over the gray suburban road, laced tight
on both sides with telegraph poles and wires, over the gray paperbox
houses and the gray jagged lots of monumentmakers, the sky was
the color of a robin’s egg. Little worms of May were writhing in his
blood. He yanked off his black necktie and put it in his pocket. A tune
was grinding crazily through his head:
 I’m so tired of vi-olets
Take them all away.
There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and
another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in
glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead.... He walked on fast
splashing through puddles full of sky, trying to shake the droning
welloiled words out of his ears, to get the feeling of black crêpe off
his fingers, to forget the smell of lilies.
I’m so tired of vi-olets
Take them all away.
He walked faster. The road climbed a hill. There was a bright
runnel of water in the ditch, flowing through patches of grass and
dandelions. There were fewer houses; on the sides of barns peeling
letters spelled out LYDIA PINKHAM’S VEGETABLE COMPOUND,
BUDWEISER, RED HEN, BARKING DOG.... And muddy had had a
stroke and now she was buried. He couldn’t think how she used to
look; she was dead that was all. From a fencepost came the moist
whistling of a songsparrow. The minute rusty bird flew ahead,
perched on a telegraph wire and sang, and flew ahead to the rim of
an abandoned boiler and sang, and flew ahead and sang. The sky
was getting a darker blue, filling with flaked motherofpearl clouds.
For a last moment he felt the rustle of silk beside him, felt a hand in a
trailing lacefrilled sleeve close gently over his hand. Lying in his crib
with his feet pulled up cold under the menace of the shaggy
crouching shadows; and the shadows scuttled melting into corners
when she leaned over him with curls round her forehead, in
silkpuffed sleeves, with a tiny black patch at the corner of the mouth
that kissed his mouth. He walked faster. The blood flowed full and
hot in his veins. The flaked clouds were melting into rosecolored
foam. He could hear his steps on the worn macadam. At a crossroad
the sun glinted on the sticky pointed buds of a beechsapling.
Opposite a sign read YONKERS. In the middle of the road teetered a
dented tomatocan. Kicking it hard in front of him he walked on. One
glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and another glory of
the stars.... He walked on.
 “Hullo Emile!” Emile nodded without turning his head. The girl ran
after him and grabbed his coatsleeve. “That’s the way you treat your
old friends is it? Now that you’re keepin company with that
delicatessen queen ...”
Emile yanked his hand away. “I am in a ’urree zat’s all.”
“How’d ye like it if I went an told her how you an me framed it up
to stand in front of the window on Eighth Avenue huggin an kissin
juss to make her fall for yez.”
“Zat was Congo’s idea.”
“Well didn’t it woik?”
“Sure.”
“Well aint there sumpen due me?”
“May you’re a veree nice leetle girl. Next week my night off is
Wednesday.... I’ll come by an take you to a show.... ’Ow’s ’ustlin?”
“Worse’n hell.... I’m tryin out for a dancin job up at the Campus....
That’s where you meet guys wid jack.... No more of dese sailor boys
and shorefront stiffs.... I’m gettin respectable.”
“May ’ave you ’eard from Congo?”
“Got a postalcard from some goddam place I couldn’t read the
name of.... Aint it funny when you write for money an all ye git ’s a
postal ca-ard.... That’s the kid gits me for the askin any night.... An
he’s the only one, savvy, Frogslegs?”
“Goodby May.” He suddenly pushed the straw bonnet trimmed
with forgetmenots back on her head and kissed her.
“Hey quit dat Frogslegs ... Eighth Avenue aint no place to kiss a
girl,” she whined pushing a yellow curl back under her hat. “I could
git you run in an I’ve half a mind to.”
Emile walked off.
A fire engine, a hosewagon, and a hookandladder passed him,
shattering the street with clattering roar. Three blocks down smoke
and an occasional gasp of flame came from the roof of a house. A
crowd was jammed up against the policelines. Beyond backs and
serried hats Emile caught a glimpse of firemen on the roof of the
next house and of three silently glittering streams of water playing
into the upper windows. Must be right opposite the delicatessen. He
was making his way through the jam on the sidewalk when the
crowd suddenly opened. Two policemen were dragging out a negro
whose arms snapped back and forth like broken cables. A third cop
came behind cracking the negro first on one side of the head, then
on the other with his billy.
“It’s a shine ’at set the fire.”
“They caught the firebug.”
“’At’s ’e incendiary.”
“God he’s a meanlookin smoke.”
The crowd closed in. Emile was standing beside Madame Rigaud
in front of the door of her store.
“Cheri que ça me fait une emotiong.... J’ai horriblemong peu du
feu.”
Emile was standing a little behind her. He let one arm crawl slowly
round her waist and patted her arm with his other hand, “Everyting
awright. Look no more fire, only smoke.... But you are insured, aint
you?”
“Oh yes for fifteen tousand.” He squeezed her hand and then took
his arms away. “Viens ma petite on va rentrer.”
Once inside the shop he took both her plump hands. “Ernestine
when we get married?”
“Next month.”
“I no wait zat long, imposseeble.... Why not next Wednesday?
Then I can help you make inventory of stock.... I tink maybe we can
sell this place and move uptown, make bigger money.”
She patted him on the cheek. “P’tit ambitieux,” she said through
her hollow inside laugh that made her shoulders and her big bust
shake.
 They had to change at Manhattan Transfer. The thumb of Ellen’s
new kid glove had split and she kept rubbing it nervously with her
forefinger. John wore a belted raincoat and a pinkishgray felt hat.
When he turned to her and smiled she couldn’t help pulling her eyes
away and staring out at the long rain that shimmered over the tracks.
“Here we are Elaine dear. Oh prince’s daughter, you see we get
the train that comes from the Penn station.... It’s funny this waiting in
the wilds of New Jersey this way.” They got into the parlorcar. John
made a little clucking sound in his mouth at the raindrops that made
dark dimes on his pale hat. “Well we’re off, little girl.... Behold thou
art fair my love, thou art fair, thou hast dove’s eyes within thy locks.”
Ellen’s new tailored suit was tight at the elbows. She wanted to
feel very gay and listen to his purring whisper in her ears, but
something had set her face in a tight frown; she could only look out
at the brown marshes and the million black windows of factories and
the puddly streets of towns and a rusty steamboat in a canal and
barns and Bull Durham signs and roundfaced Spearmint gnomes all
barred and crisscrossed with bright flaws of rain. The jeweled stripes
on the window ran straight down when the train stopped and got
more and more oblique as it speeded up. The wheels rumbled in her
head, saying Man-hattan Tran-sfer. Man-hattan Tran-sfer. Anyway it
was a long time before Atlantic City. By the time we get to Atlantic
City ... Oh it rained forty days ... I’ll be feeling gay.... And it rained
forty nights.... I’ve got to be feeling gay.
“Elaine Thatcher Oglethorpe, that’s a very fine name, isn’t it,
darling? Oh stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples for I am
sick of love....”
It was so comfortable in the empty parlorcar in the green velvet
chair with John leaning towards her reciting nonsense with the brown
marshlands slipping by behind the rainstriped window and a smell
like clams seeping into the car. She looked into his face and
laughed. A blush ran all over his face to the roots of his redblond
hair. He put his hand in its yellow glove over her hand in its white
glove. “You’re my wife now Elaine.”
“You’re my husband now John.” And laughing they looked at each
other in the coziness of the empty parlorcar.
White letters, ATLANTIC CITY, spelled doom over the rainpitted
water.
Rain lashed down the glaring boardwalk and crashed in gusts
against the window like water thrown out of a bucket. Beyond the
rain she could hear the intermittent rumble of the surf along the
beach between the illuminated piers. She lay on her back staring at
the ceiling. Beside her in the big bed John lay asleep breathing
quietly like a child with a pillow doubled up under his head. She was
icy cold. She slid out of bed very carefully not to wake him, and
stood looking out the window down the very long V of lights of the
boardwalk. She pushed up the window. The rain lashed in her face
spitefully stinging her flesh, wetting her nightdress. She pushed her
forehead against the frame. Oh I want to die. I want to die. All the
tight coldness of her body was clenching in her stomach. Oh I’m
going to be sick. She went into the bathroom and closed the door.
When she had vomited she felt better. Then she climbed into bed
again careful not to touch John. If she touched him she would die.
She lay on her back with her hands tight against her sides and her
feet together. The parlorcar rumbled cozily in her head; she fell
asleep.
Wind rattling the windowframes wakened her. John was far away,
the other side of the big bed. With the wind and the rain streaming in
the window it was as if the room and the big bed and everything
were moving, running forward like an airship over the sea. Oh it
rained forty days.... Through a crack in the cold stiffness the little
tune trickled warm as blood.... And it rained forty nights. Gingerly she
drew a hand over her husband’s hair. He screwed his face up in his
sleep and whined “Dont” in a littleboy’s voice that made her giggle.
She lay giggling on the far edge of the bed, giggling desperately as
she used to with girls at school. And the rain lashed through the
window and the song grew louder until it was a brass band in her
ears:
Oh it rained forty days
And it rained forty nights
And it didn’t stop till Christmas
And the only man that survived the flood
Was longlegged Jack of the Isthmus.

Jimmy Herf sits opposite Uncle Jeff. Each has before him on a
blue plate a chop, a baked potato, a little mound of peas and a sprig
of parsely.
“Well look about you Jimmy,” says Uncle Jeff. Bright topstory light
brims the walnutpaneled diningroom, glints twistedly on silver knives
and forks, gold teeth, watch-chains, scarfpins, is swallowed up in the
darkness of broadcloth and tweed, shines roundly on polished plates
and bald heads and covers of dishes. “Well what do you think of it?”
asks Uncle Jeff burying his thumbs in the pockets of his fuzzy buff
vest.
“It’s a fine club all right,” says Jimmy.
“The wealthiest and the most successful men in the country eat
lunch up here. Look at the round table in the corner. That’s the
Gausenheimers’ table. Just to the left.” ... Uncle Jeff leans forward
lowering his voice, “the man with the powerful jaw is J. Wilder
Laporte.” Jimmy cuts into his muttonchop without answering. “Well
Jimmy, you probably know why I brought you down here ... I want to
talk to you. Now that your poor mother has ... has been taken, Emily
and I are your guardians in the eyes of the law and the executors of
poor Lily’s will.... I want to explain to you just how things stand.”
Jimmy puts down his knife and fork and sits staring at his uncle,
clutching the arms of his chair with cold hands, watching the jowl
move blue and heavy above the ruby stickpin in the wide satin
cravat. “You are sixteen now aren’t you Jimmy?”
 “Yes sir.”
“Well it’s this way.... When your mother’s estate is all settled up
you’ll find yourself in the possession of approximately fiftyfive
hundred dollars. Luckily you are a bright fellow and will be ready for
college early. Now, properly husbanded that sum ought to see you
through Columbia, since you insist on going to Columbia.... I myself,
and I’m sure your Aunt Emily feels the same way about it, would
much rather see you go to Yale or Princeton.... You are a very lucky
fellow in my estimation. At your age I was sweeping out an office in
Fredericksburg and earning fifteen dollars a month. Now what I
wanted to say was this ... I have not noticed that you felt sufficient
responsibility about moneymatters ... er ... sufficient enthusiasm
about earning your living, making good in a man’s world. Look
around you.... Thrift and enthusiasm has made these men what they
are. It’s made me, put me in the position to offer you the comfortable
home, the cultured surroundings that I do offer you.... I realize that
your education has been a little peculiar, that poor Lily did not have
quite the same ideas that we have on many subjects, but the really
formative period of your life is beginning. Now’s the time to take a
brace and lay the foundations of your future career.... What I advise
is that you follow James’s example and work your way up through
the firm.... From now on you are both sons of mine.... It will mean
hard work but it’ll eventually offer a very substantial opening. And
dont forget this, if a man’s a success in New York, he’s a success!”
Jimmy sits watching his uncle’s broad serious mouth forming words,
without tasting the juicy mutton of the chop he is eating. “Well what
are you going to make of yourself?” Uncle Jeff leaned towards him
across the table with bulging gray eyes.
Jimmy chokes on a piece of bread, blushes, at last stammers
weakly, “Whatever you say Uncle Jeff.”
“Does that mean you’ll go to work for a month this summer in my
office? Get a taste of how it feels to make a living, like a man in a
man’s world, get an idea of how the business is run?” Jimmy nods
his head. “Well I think you’ve come to a very sensible decision,”
booms Uncle Jeff leaning back in his chair so that the light strikes
across the wave of his steelgray hair. “By the way what’ll you have
for dessert?... Years from now Jimmy, when you are a successful
man with a business of your own we’ll remember this talk. It’s the
beginning of your career.”
The hatcheck girl smiles from under the disdainful pile of her
billowy blond hair when she hands Jimmy his hat that looks
squashed flat and soiled and limp among the big-bellied derbies and
the fedoras and the majestic panamas hanging on the pegs. His
stomach turns a somersault with the drop of the elevator. He steps
out into the crowded marble hall. For a moment not knowing which
way to go, he stands back against the wall with his hands in his
pockets, watching people elbow their way through the perpetually
revolving doors; softcheeked girls chewing gum, hatchetfaced girls
with bangs, creamfaced boys his own age, young toughs with their
hats on one side, sweatyfaced messengers, crisscross glances,
sauntering hips, red jowls masticating cigars, sallow concave faces,
flat bodies of young men and women, paunched bodies of elderly
men, all elbowing, shoving, shuffling, fed in two endless tapes
through the revolving doors out into Broadway, in off Broadway.
Jimmy fed in a tape in and out the revolving doors, noon and night
and morning, the revolving doors grinding out his years like sausage
meat. All of a sudden his muscles stiffen. Uncle Jeff and his office
can go plumb to hell. The words are so loud inside him he glances to
one side and the other to see if anyone heard him say them.
They can all go plumb to hell. He squares his shoulders and
shoves his way to the revolving doors. His heel comes down on a
foot. “For crissake look where yer steppin.” He’s out in the street. A
swirling wind down Broadway blows grit in his mouth and eyes. He
walks down towards the Battery with the wind in his back. In Trinity
Churchyard stenographers and officeboys are eating sandwiches
among the tombs. Outlandish people cluster outside steamship lines;
towhaired Norwegians, broadfaced Swedes, Polacks, swarthy
stumps of men that smell of garlic from the Mediterranean,
mountainous Slavs, three Chinamen, a bunch of Lascars. On the
little triangle in front of the Customhouse, Jim Herf turns and stares
long up the deep gash of Broadway, facing the wind squarely. Uncle
Jeff and his office can go plumb to hell.
 Bud sat on the edge of his cot and stretched out his arms and
yawned. From all round through a smell of sweat and sour breath
and wet clothes came snores, the sound of men stirring in their
sleep, creaking of bedsprings. Far away through the murk burned a
single electric light. Bud closed his eyes and let his head fall over on
his shoulder. O God I want to go to sleep. Sweet Jesus I want to go
to sleep. He pressed his knees together against his clasped hands to
keep them from trembling. Our father which art in Heaven I want to
go to sleep.
“Wassa matter pardner cant ye sleep?” came a quiet whisper from
the next cot.
“Hell, no.” “Me neither.”
Bud looked at the big head of curly hair held up on an elbow
turned towards him.
“This is a hell of a lousy stinking flop,” went on the voice evenly.
“I’ll tell the world ... Forty cents too! They can take their Hotel Plaza
an ...”
“Been long in the city?”
“Ten years come August.”
“Great snakes!”
A voice rasped down the line of cots, “Cut de comedy yous guys,
what do you tink dis is, a Jewish picnic?”
Bud lowered his voice: “Funny, it’s years I been thinkin an wantin
to come to the city.... I was born an raised on a farm upstate.”
“Why dont ye go back?”
“I cant go back.” Bud was cold; he wanted to stop trembling. He
pulled the blanket up to his chin and rolled over facing the man who
was talking. “Every spring I says to myself I’ll hit the road again, go
out an plant myself among the weeds an the grass an the cows
comin home milkin time, but I dont; I juss kinder hangs on.”
 “What d’ye do all this time in the city?”
“I dunno.... I used to set in Union Square most of the time, then I
set in Madison Square. I been up in Hoboken an Joisey and
Flatbush an now I’m a Bowery bum.”
“God I swear I’m goin to git outa here tomorrow. I git sceered
here. Too many bulls an detectives in this town.”
“You could make a livin in handouts.... But take it from me kid you
go back to the farm an the ole folks while the goin’s good.”
Bud jumped out of bed and yanked roughly at the man’s shoulder.
“Come over here to the light, I want to show ye sumpen.” Bud’s own
voice crinkled queerly in his ears. He strode along the snoring lane
of cots. The bum, a shambling man with curly weatherbleached hair
and beard and eyes as if hammered into his head, climbed fully
dressed out from the blankets and followed him. Under the light Bud
unbuttoned the front of his unionsuit and pulled it off his
knottymuscled gaunt arms and shoulders. “Look at my back.”
“Christ Jesus,” whispered the man running a grimy hand with long
yellow nails over the mass of white and red deep-gouged scars. “I
aint never seen nothin like it.”
“That’s what the ole man done to me. For twelve years he licked
me when he had a mind to. Used to strip me and take a piece of light
chain to my back. They said he was my dad but I know he aint. I run
away when I was thirteen. That was when he ketched me an began
to lick me. I’m twentyfive now.”
They went back without speaking to their cots and lay down.
Bud lay staring at the ceiling with the blanket up to his eyes.
When he looked down towards the door at the end of the room, he
saw standing there a man in a derby hat with a cigar in his mouth.
He crushed his lower lip between his teeth to keep from crying out.
When he looked again the man was gone. “Say are you awake yet?”
he whispered.
The bum grunted. “I was goin to tell yer. I mashed his head in with
the grubbinhoe, mashed it in like when you kick a rotten punkin. I
told him to lay offn me an he wouldn’t.... He was a hard godfearin
man an he wanted you to be sceered of him. We was grubbin the
sumach outa the old pasture to plant pertoters there.... I let him lay
till night with his head mashed in like a rotten punkin. A bit of scrub
along the fence hid him from the road. Then I buried him an went up
to the house an made me a pot of coffee. He hadn’t never let me
drink no coffee. Before light I got up an walked down the road. I was
tellin myself in a big city it’d be like lookin for a needle in a haystack
to find yer. I knowed where the ole man kep his money; he had a roll
as big as your head but I was sceered to take more’en ten dollars....
You awake yet?”
The bum grunted. “When I was a kid I kep company with ole man
Sackett’s girl. Her and me used to keep company in the ole icehouse
down in Sackett’s woods an we used to talk about how we’d come to
New York City an git rich and now I’m here I cant git work an I cant
git over bein sceered. There’s detectives follow me all round, men in
derbyhats with badges under their coats. Last night I wanted to go
with a hooker an she saw it in my eyes an throwed me out.... She
could see it in my eyes.” He was sitting on the edge of the cot,
leaning over, talking into the other man’s face in a hissing whisper.
The bum suddenly grabbed him by the wrists.
“Look here kid, you’re goin blooy if you keep up like this.... Got
any mazuma?” Bud nodded. “You better give it to me to keep. I’m an
old timer an I’ll git yez outa this. You put yer clothes on a take a walk
round the block to a hash joint an eat up strong. How much you
got?”
“Change from a dollar.”
“You give me a quarter an eat all the stuff you kin git offn the rest.”
Bud pulled on his trousers and handed the man a quarter. “Then you
come back here an you’ll sleep good an tomorrer me’n you’ll go
upstate an git that roll of bills. Did ye say it was as big as yer head?
Then we’ll beat it where they cant ketch us. We’ll split fifty fifty. Are
you on?”
Bud shook his hand with a wooden jerk, then with the laces
flickering round his shoes he shuffled to the door and down the
spitmarked stairs.
The rain had stopped, a cool wind that smelled of woods and
grass was ruffling the puddles in the cleanwashed streets. In the
lunchroom in Chatham Square three men sat asleep with their hats
over their eyes. The man behind the counter was reading a pink
sportingsheet. Bud waited long for his order. He felt cool, unthinking,
happy. When it came he ate the browned corned beef hash,
deliberately enjoying every mouthful, mashing the crisp bits of potato
against his teeth with his tongue, between sips of heavily sugared
coffee. After polishing the plate with a crust of bread he took a
toothpick and went out.
Picking his teeth he walked through the grimydark entrance to
Brooklyn Bridge. A man in a derby hat was smoking a cigar in the
middle of the broad tunnel. Bud brushed past him walking with a
tough swagger. I dont care about him; let him follow me. The arching
footwalk was empty except for a single policeman who stood
yawning, looking up at the sky. It was like walking among the stars.
Below in either direction streets tapered into dotted lines of lights
between square blackwindowed buildings. The river glimmered
underneath like the Milky Way above. Silently smoothly the bunch of
lights of a tug slipped through the moist darkness. A car whirred
across the bridge making the girders rattle and the spiderwork of
cables thrum like a shaken banjo.
When he got to the tangle of girders of the elevated railroads of
the Brooklyn side, he turned back along the southern driveway. Dont
matter where I go, cant go nowhere now. An edge of the blue night
had started to glow behind him the way iron starts to glow in a forge.
Beyond black chimneys and lines of roofs faint rosy contours of the
downtown buildings were brightening. All the darkness was growing
pearly, warming. They’re all of em detectives chasin me, all of em,
men in derbies, bums on the Bowery, old women in kitchens,
barkeeps, streetcar conductors, bulls, hookers, sailors,
longshoremen, stiffs in employment agencies.... He thought I’d tell
him where the ole man’s roll was, the lousy bum.... One on him. One
on all them goddam detectives. The river was smooth, sleek as a
bluesteel gun-barrel. Dont matter where I go; cant go nowhere now.
The shadows between the wharves and the buildings were powdery
like washingblue. Masts fringed the river; smoke, purple
chocolatecolor fleshpink climbed into light. Cant go nowhere now.
In a swallowtail suit with a gold watchchain and a red seal ring
riding to his wedding beside Maria Sackett, riding in a carriage to
City Hall with four white horses to be made an alderman by the
mayor; and the light grows behind them brighter brighter, riding in
satins and silks to his wedding, riding in pinkplush in a white carriage
with Maria Sackett by his side through rows of men waving cigars,
bowing, doffing brown derbies, Alderman Bud riding in a carriage full
of diamonds with his milliondollar bride.... Bud is sitting on the rail of
the bridge. The sun has risen behind Brooklyn. The windows of
Manhattan have caught fire. He jerks himself forward, slips, dangles
by a hand with the sun in his eyes. The yell strangles in his throat as
he drops.
Captain McAvoy of the tugboat Prudence stood in the pilothouse
with one hand on the wheel. In the other he held a piece of biscuit he
had just dipped into a cup of coffee that stood on the shelf beside the
binnacle. He was a wellset man with bushy eyebrows and a bushy
black mustache waxed at the tips. He was about to put the piece of
coffeesoaked biscuit into his mouth when something black dropped
and hit the water with a thudding splash a few yards off the bow. At
the same moment a man leaning out of the engineroom door
shouted, “A guy juss jumped offn de bridge.”
“God damn it to hell,” said Captain McAvoy dropping his piece of
biscuit and spinning the wheel. The strong ebbtide whisked the boat
round like a straw. Three bells jangled in the engineroom. A negro
ran forward to the bow with a boathook.
“Give a hand there Red,” shouted Captain McAvoy.
After a tussle they landed a long black limp thing on the deck.
One bell. Two bells, Captain McAvoy frowning and haggard spun the
tug’s nose into the current again.
“Any life in him Red?” he asked hoarsely. The negro’s face was
green, his teeth were chattering.