"I'm Kelvin, the foreman here," the big man told me, extending a ham of
a fist to be shook. "Outside, doing my Army time, I noticed that most
people don't have as many slipups as we do here. Never could figure it
out."
"This rock is part of it--"
"What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely.
"I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no
plateau work..."
"Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything
about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock; it isn't even plain
granite. Granite City exports some of the finest grade of the stone in
the world. And it's used all over the world. We aren't just a bunch
of meatheaded ditch diggers--we are craftsmen. We have to figure a
different way of getting out every piece of stone."
"It's too bad."
"What's too bad?"
"That you chose the wrong way so often," I said.
Kelvin breathed a virile grade of tobacco into my face. "Listen,
Madison, we have been working this quarry for generations, sometimes
more of us working than other times. Today most of us are working
getting the stone out. That's the way we like it. We don't want any
outsider coming in and interfering with that."
"If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal,
I can tell you that I will do something about that!"
As soon as my teeth clicked back together, the sickening feeling hit me
that I shouldn't have said that.
* * * * *
The general store was called a supermarket, but it wasn't particularly
superior.
I took a seat at the soda fountain and took a beer, politely declining
the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the
Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter.
Behind me were three restaurant tables and one solitary red-upholstered
booth. Two men somewhere between forty and sixty sat at the nearest
table playing twenty-one.
Over the foam of my stein I saw the old man I had almost run down in
the road. He marched through the two-thirds of the building composed of
rows of can goods and approached the fat man at the cash register.
"Hello, Professor," the fat man said. "What can we do for you?"
"I'd like to mail a letter," he said in an urgent voice.
"Sure, Professor, I'll send it right off on the facsimile machine as
soon as I get a free moment."
"You're sure you can send it? Right away?"
"Positive. Ten cents, Professor."
The professor fumbled in his pants' pocket and fished out a dime. He
fingered it thoughtfully.
"I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will
buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel."
"Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime.
And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and
the two sinkers for nothing."
"That's--kind of you," the old man said awkwardly.