I felt much more tired after this first ten hours than later; it was the
limp fatigue that comes from too much heat. I ate fried eggs and a glass
of milk, and then my appetite took a start and I ordered cold lamb and
vegetables. When I finished, I went back into the mill to my locker, and
took out a cigarette. I sat on a pile of pipes against a main girder,
intending to smoke; the cigarette went out, and I slept a half hour.
Things were going first-rate from six to nine. Jigger, clean up scrap,
front-wall Number 6, front-wall Number 8. I couldn't distinguish between
this and any other night shift; the food must have acted for sleep. But
after nine the hours dragged. From 9.20 to 10.00 was a couple of hours.
In the middle of a front-wall, I saw the efficiency man, Mr. Lever,
come through and stare at the furnace, walk around a little, and stare
profoundly at the furnace. Mr. Lever was pointed in two places, I
noticed for the first time. He had a pointed stomach, and his face
worked into a point at his nose. I noticed carefully that he had a
receding chin and a receding forehead. As he watched us scoop the
dolomite, drag up to the spoon, dump, scoop up the dolomite, and do it
over, for three quarters of an hour, I thought about him. I wanted to go
up to him, and give him my shovel. I had to struggle against that
impulse--to go up to him and give him my shovel.
The evening dragged. I fought myself, to keep from looking at the clock.
I fought for several hours after ten o'clock, and then, when I thought
dawn must be breaking, went up and found it ten minutes of eleven.
I did feel relieved at twelve, and went out to the restaurant, saying:
"Hell, anyone can wait till morning."
Sometimes, when things are hurried, when tapping is near or a spout is
to be fixed, you have to eat still drenched in sweat. But to-night I had
time, and at quarter of twelve hung my shirt on the hot bricks at the
side of the furnace, and stood near the doors in the heat, to dry my
back and legs. I then washed soot and dolomite dust from ears and neck,
and dipped my left arm, which was burned, in cold water. At twelve I put
on the dried shirt, and went to eat.
Half the men wash, half don't. There were a number of open-hearth
helpers in the restaurant, with black hands and faces, two eating soup,
two with their arms on the counter. Their faces lacked any expression
beyond a sullen fatigue; but their eyes roved, following Beck about.
Lefflin had his arms on the counter and his face on them.
I ate ham and eggs, which included coffee, fried potatoes, two slices of
bread, and a glass of milk.
Walking back to the furnaces was an effort of will. I climbed the
embankment to the tracks very slowly, the stones and gravel loosening
and tumbling downhill at each step. I tried hard to concentrate on a
calculation of the probable number of front-walls to come. Then I
wondered if it wouldn't pay to cut out breakfast in the morning, and get
nine hours of sleep instead of eight and a quarter. Friselli came up the
bank behind me. He is third on Number 6.
"Well," I said, "make lots of money to-night."
"What's the good money, kill yourself?" he said, and went past me along
the tracks.
Number 8 was preparing to make front-wall. I felt weary, and full of ham
and eggs, and very desirous of sitting down right there on the floor.
But Jock, the first-helper on Eight, said, "Oh, Walker!" when he saw me,
and we began.
Through that front-wall Jock was tiring. He worked in little spurts. For
"half a door" he would sing, and goad us on in half-Scotch, and for the
next half he would be silent, and wipe his face with his sleeve. After
that door, he came up to us and said with profound conviction, "It's a
lang turn, it's a lang turn."
When we finished, Jock lay down on a bench.
It's a part of a third-helper's duties to keep five or six bags of fine
anthracite coal on the little gallery back of the furnace, near the
spout. I went after that little job now. Fifty pounds of coal in a thick
paper bag isn't much to carry, till you get doing it a couple of days
running.
I sat on the seat where the Wop stays who works the furnace-doors; they
call him the "pull up." That had some sacks and a cushion, and was
broad, with a girder for back. I fell asleep.
Something twisting and pinching my foot woke me up. It was the
first-helper. "Fifteen thousand, quick!" he said. I got up with a jerk,
feeling not so sleepy as I expected, but immeasurably stiff. I moved in
a wobbly fashion down toward the Bessemer. I felt as if I were limping
in four or five directions. Very vigorously and insistently I thought of
one thing. I would look at the clock opposite Number 6 when I went by,
and possibly, very probably, a whole pile of hours had been knocked off.
Then I thought with a sting that we had not tapped, and it couldn't be
more than three o'clock. It was two!
"Fifteen thousand," I said to myself, "quick"; and climbed the iron
stairs to the Bessemer platform.
When I came back, I walked beside the locomotive as it dragged the ladle
and the fifteen thousand pounds of molten pig iron. Through closing eyes
I watched the charging-machine thrust in the spout. That long finger
lifted the clay thing from its resting-place on the big saw-horses
between furnaces. Then, moving on the rails, the machine adjusted itself
in front of number two door, and shoved the spout in with a jar.
I stood lazily watching the pouring of the molten steel. Fred motioned
slowly with his hands, with "Up a little, whoop!" as the stream flowed
very cleanly into the spout and furnace. Then came the noise of lifting,
that characteristic crane grind, with a rising inflection as it gained
speed and moved off. "Pretty soon tapping, after tapping back-wall,
front-wall, the spout, morning," I meditated.
"Well, how in hell are you?" It was Al, the pit boss.
"Fine!" I said as loudly as I could; and went and sat down at once. My
chin hit my chest. I stopped thinking, but didn't go to sleep.
"Test!" yelled Fred.
We tested three times, and then tapped. There were two ladles, with four
piles of manganese, to shovel in. A third-helper from Number 4, a short
stocky Italian, shoveled with me. The ladle swung slightly closer to the
gallery than usual, and sent up a bit more gas and sparks. We put out
little fires on our clothes six or seven times. After the first ladle,
the Italian put back the sheet iron over the red-hot spout, and after
the second ladle, I put it on. We rested between ladles, in a little
breeze that came through between furnaces.
"What you think of this job?" he asked.
"Pretty bad," I said, "but pretty good money."
He looked up, and the veins swelled on his forehead. His cheeks were
inflamed, and his eyes showed the effects of the twenty hours of
continuous labor.
"To hell with the money!" he said, with quiet passion; "no can live."
The words sank into my memory for all time.
The back-wall was, I think, no hotter than usual, but men's nerves made
them mind things they would have smirked at the previous morning. The
third-helper on Eight and Nick quarreled over a shovel, and Nick sulked
till Fred went over and spoke to him. Once the third-helper got in
Nick's way. "Get out, or I'll break your goddam neck!" And so on--
I felt outrageously sore at everyone present--not least, myself. After
that back-wall all except Fred threw their shovels with violence on the
floor, and went to the edge of the mill. They stood about in the little
breeze that had come up there, in a state of fatigue and jangled nerves,
looking out on a pale streak of morning just visible over freight cars
and piles of scrap.
We made front-wall, and when it was over, I went to the bench by the
locker and sat down, to try to forget about the spout. I had been
forgetting about it for twenty minutes when Nick came up, and shook me,
thinking I had fallen asleep.
"Mud," he said.