He was in a dingy room standing before a grilled window. A voice from
behind it asked his name, age, address, war record. Hugo was handed a
piece of paper to sign and then a second piece that bore the scrawled
words: "Amalgamated Crucible Steel Corp., Harrison, N. J."
Hugo's emotional life was reawakened when he walked into the mills. His
last nickel was gone. He had left the train at the wrong station and
walked more than a mile. He was hungry and cold. He came, as if naked,
to the monster and he did it homage.
Its predominant colour scheme was black and red. It had a loud, pagan
voice. It breathed fire. It melted steel and rock and drank human sweat,
with human blood for an occasional stimulant. On every side of him were
enormous buildings and woven between them a plaid of girders, cables,
and tracks across which masses of machinery moved. Inside, Thor was
hammering. Inside, a crane sped overhead like a tarantula, trailing its
viscera to the floor, dangling a gigantic iron rib. A white speck in its
wounded abdomen was a human face.
The bright metal gushed from another hole. It was livid and partially
alive; it was hot and had a smell; it swept away the thought of the dark
descending night. It made a pool in a great ladle; it made a cupful
dipped from a river in hell. A furnace exhaled sulphurously, darting a
snake's tongue into the sky. The mills roared and the earth shook. It
was bestial, reptilian--labour, and the labour of creation, and the
engine that turned the earth could be no more terrible.
Hugo, standing sublimely small in its midst, measured his strength
against it, soaked up its warmth, shook his fist at it, and shouted in a
voice that could not be heard for a foot: "Christ Almighty! This--is
something!"
"Name?"
"Hugo Danner."
"Address?"
"None at present."
"Experience?"
"None."
"Married?"
"No."
"Union?"
"What?"
"Lemme see your union card."
"I don't belong."
"Well, you gotta join."
He went to the headquarters of the union. Men were there of all sorts.
The mills were taking on hands. There was reconstruction to be done
abroad and steel was needed. They came from Europe, for the most part.
Thickset, square-headed, small-eyed men. Men with expressionless faces
and bulging muscles that held more meaning than most countenances. They
gave him room and no more. They answered the same questions that he
answered. He stood in a third queue with them, belly to back, mouths
closed. He was sent to a lodging-house, advanced five dollars, and told
that he would be boarded and given a bed and no more until the
employment agency had taken its commission, and the union its dues. He
signed a paper. He went on the night shift without supper.
He ran a wheelbarrow filled with heavy, warm slag for a hundred feet
over a walk of loose bricks. The job was simple. Load, carry, dump,
return, load. On some later night he would count the number of loads.
But on this first night he walked with excited eyes, watching the
tremendous things that happened all around him. Men ran the machinery
that dumped the ladle. Men guided liquid iron from the furnaces into a
maze of channels and cloughs, clearing the way through the sand, cutting
off the stream, making new openings. Men wheeled the slag and steered
the trains and trams and cranes. Men operated the hammers. And almost
all of the men were nude to the waist, sleek and shining with sweat;
almost all of them drank whisky.
One of the men in the wheelbarrow line even offered a drink to Hugo. He
held out the flask and bellowed in Czech. Hugo took it. The drink was
raw and foul. Pouring into his empty stomach, it had a powerful effect,
making him exalted, making him work like a demon. After a long, noisy
time that did not seem long a steam whistle screamed faintly and the
shift was ended.
The Czech accompanied Hugo through the door. The new shift was already
at work. They went out. A nightmare of brilliant orange and black fled
from Hugo's vision and he looked into the pale, remote chiaroscuro of
dawn.
"Me tired," the Czech said in a small, aimless tone.
They flung themselves on dirty beds in a big room. But Hugo did not
sleep for a time--not until the sun rose and day was evident in the
grimy interior of the bunk house.
That he could think while he worked had been Hugo's thesis when he
walked up Sixth Avenue. Now, working steadily, working at a thing that
was hard for other men and easy for him, he nevertheless fell into the
stolid vacuum of the manual labourer. The mills became familiar, less
fantastic. He remembered that oftentimes the war had given a more
dramatic passage of man's imagination forged into fire and steel.
His task was changed numerous times. For a while he puddled pig iron
with the long-handled, hoe-like tool.
"Don't slip in," they said. It was succinct, graphic.
Then they put him on the hand cars that fed the furnaces. It was
picturesque, daring, and for most men too hard. Few could manage the
weight or keep up with the pace. Those who did were honoured by their
fellows. The trucks were moved forward by human strength and dumped by
hand-windlasses. Occasionally, they said, you became tired and fell
into the furnace. Or jumped. If you got feeling woozy, they said, quit.
The high rails and red mouths were hypnotic, like burning Baal and the
Juggernaut.
Hugo's problems had been abandoned. He worked as hard as he dared. The
presence of grandeur and din made him content. How long it would have
lasted is uncertain; not forever. On the day when he had pushed up two
hundred and three loads during his shift, the boss stopped him in the
yard.
A tall, lean, acid man. He caught Hugo's sleeve and turned him round.
"You're one of the bastards on the furnace line."
"Yes."
"How many cars did you push up to-day?"
"Two hundred and three."
"What the hell do you think this is, anyway?"
"I don't get you."
"Oh, you don't, huh? Well, listen here, you God-damned athlete, what are
you trying to do? You got the men all sore--wearing themselves out. I
had to lay off three--why? Because they couldn't keep up with you,
that's why. Because they got their guts in a snarl trying to bust your
record. What do you think you're in? A race? Somebody's got to show you
your place around here and I think I'll just kick a lung out right now."
The boss had worked himself into a fury. He became conscious of an
audience of workers. Hugo smiled. "I wouldn't advise you to try
that--even if you are a big guy."
"What was that?" The words were roared. He gathered himself, but when
Hugo did not flinch, did not prepare himself, he was suddenly startled.
He remembered, perhaps, the two hundred and three cars. He opened his
fist. "All right. I ain't even goin' to bother myself tryin' to break
you in to this game. Get out."
"What?"
"Get out. Beat it. I'm firing you."
"Firing me? For working too hard?" Hugo laughed. He bent double with
laughter. His laughter sounded above the thunder of the mill. "Oh, God,
that's funny. Fire me!" He moved toward the boss menacingly. "I've a
notion to twist your liver around your neck myself."
The workers realized that an event of some magnitude was taking place.
They drew nearer. Hugo's laughter came again and changed into a
smile--an emotion that cooled visibly. Then swiftly he peeled up the
sleeve of his shirt. His fist clenched; his arm bent; under the nose of
his boss he caused his mighty biceps to swell. His whole body trembled.
With his other hand he took the tall man's fingers and laid them on that
muscle.
"Squeeze," he shouted.
The boss squeezed. His face grew pallid and he let go suddenly. He tried
to speak through his dry mouth, but Hugo had turned his back. At the
brick gate post he paused and drew a breath.