I came into the mill five minutes late one morning, and went to the
green check-house at the gate, to pick 1611, the numerical me, from the
hook. A stumpy man in a chair looked up and said: "What number?"
I gave it. "An easy way to lose forty-three cents," I thought, feeling a
little sore at the stumpy man, and going out through the door slowly.
I increased my step along the road to the open-hearth, and reached my
locker just as the Pole who shared it was leaving.
"Goddam gloves!" he was saying. "Pay thirty-five cents--three
days--goddam it--all gone--too much. What you think?"
"I think the leather ones at fifty cents last better," I said.
He made a guttural noise, signifying disgust, and left.
I opened the locker, and disentangled my working-clothes, still damp
from the last shift, from the Pole's. I removed all my "good" clothes,
and stood for a minute naked and comfortable. The thermometer had
registered 95 deg. when I got up, at 4.00.
For the past few days I had been demoted to the pit; there had been no
jobs open on the floor. As I took up my gloves and smoked glasses, I
wondered how I could get back to furnace work.
Pete was moving with his lurching short steps past Six.
"How about helping to-day on the floor?" I said.
He snapped back quickly in his blurred voice, "You work th' pit, tell
y'--goddam quick, want y' on the floor."
I looked back at him, swore to myself, and went slowly down the pit
stairs.
I couldn't find the gang at first, but later found half of them: Peter
the Russian, the short Wop, the Aristocrat, and a couple more, all under
furnace Eight, cleaning out cinder. The Aristocrat was trying to get the
craneman to bring up one of the long boxes with curved bottoms for slag.
The craneman was damning him. There was one too many at the job,--four
is enough to clean cinder,--so I threw a bit of slag at Peter (for old
time's sake) and passed on.