Steel Part 11

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 G.o.ddam 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 sc.r.a.p.

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.

I got him mud.

Nick fixed up the spout amid an inclination to cursing in Serbian, and gave me commands in loud tones in the same language. I felt exceedingly indifferent to Nick and to the spout, and finished up in a state of enormous indifference to all things save the chance of sleep. Jack, the second-helper of Eight, was making tea, having dipped out some hot steel with a test-spoon, and set a tea-pot on it.

"Want some?" he said.

I nodded.

Watching him make it, and drinking the tea woke me up.

"What time is it?" I asked.

"Four-thirty," said he.

"Thanks for the tea."

Then the summoning signal for a third-helper rang out--a sledge-hammer pounding on sheet iron. They were "spooning up," that is, making front-wall, on Number 6. All through that stunt I was wide awake, quite refreshed, though with the sense, the conviction, that I had been in the mill, doing this sort of thing, for a week at the inside.

Coming back to Seven from that, I found Fred flat on his back, looking "all in." Jock came up for a drink of water, and looked over at me.

"You look to me," he remarked, "like the breaking up of a bad winter."

He laughed.

5 A.M. _Monday_

The sun came into the mill, looking very pallid and sick beside the bright light from the metal. I watched the men on Eight make back-wall, and heard the sounds; I sat on the bench, my legs as loose as I could make them, my head forward, eyes just raised.

"Lower, lower, G.o.ddam you, lower!" came a desperate command to the "pull-up" man to close the furnace doors.

"Get out--"

"One more--"

"Up, up, G.o.ddam it! where are your ears?"

"Come on, men, last door."

"My shovel you son-of-a--!"

Now they were tapping on Number 6. The melter came out of his shanty; he had had a sleep since the last furnace tapped. He rubbed his eyes, and went out on the gallery. I could hear his "Heow." Four poor devils were standing in the flame, putting in manganese. Thank G.o.d, I don't shovel for Six.

"A jigger," from Fred.

"Sure."

When I went for it, the sores on the bottom of my feet hurt, so that I walked on the edges of my shoes. I was so delighted with the idea of its being six o'clock, with no back-walls ahead, that I almost took pleasure in that foot. I stopped in front of a fountain and put my right arm under the water.

The recorder in the Bessemer was asleep. He was a boy of twenty. I woke him up, and grinned in his face.

"Fifteen thou' for Number 7."

"You go to h.e.l.l, with your G.o.ddam Number 7!"

I grinned at him again, knew it was just the long turn, knew he'd give me that fifteen thousand pounds; went down stairs again--

Twenty minutes of seven. It's light. n.o.body talks, but everyone dresses in a hurry. Everyone's face looks grave from fatigue--eyes dead. We leave at ten minutes of seven.

7 A.M. _Monday_

It's a problem--a d.a.m.n problem--whether to walk fast and get home quick, or walk slow and sort of rest. I try to go fast, and have the sense of lifting my legs, not with the muscles, but with something else. I shake my head to get it clearer. One bowl of oatmeal. Coffee. "I feel all right." I get up and am conscious of walking home quietly and evenly, without any further worry about the difficulty of lifting my feet. "The long turns, they're not so bad," I say out loud, and stumble the same second on the stairs. I get up, angry, and with my feet stinging with pain. Old thought comes back: "Only seven to eight hours sleep. Bed.

Quick." I push into my room--the sun is all over my bed. Pull the curtain; shut out a little. Take off my shoes. It's hard work trying to be careful about it, and it's darn painful when I'm not careful. Sit on the bed, lift up my feet. Feel burning all over; wonder if I'll ever sleep. Sleep.

VI

BLAST-FURNACE APPRENTICESHIP

At the end of every shift, when I walked toward the green mill-gate just past the edge of the power house, I could look over toward the blast-furnaces. There were five of them, standing up like mammoth cigars some hundred feet in height. A maze of pipes, large as tunnels, twisted about them, and pa.s.sed into great boilers, three or four of which arose between each two furnaces. These, I learned, were "stoves" for heating the blast. I had had in mind for several days asking for a transfer to this interesting apparatus. There was less lifting of dead weight on the blast-furnace jobs than on the open-hearth. Besides, I wanted to see the beginning of the making of steel--the first transformation the ore catches, on its way toward becoming a steel rail, or a surgical instrument.

I went to see the blast-furnace superintendent, Mr. Beck, at his house on Superintendent's Hill.

"I'm working on the open-hearth," I said, "and want very much to get transferred to the blast-furnace. I intend to learn the steel business, and want to see the beginnings of things."

"How much education?" he asked.

"I graduated from college," I said, "Yale College." Would that complicate the thing, I wondered, or get in the way? I wanted badly to sit down for a talk, tell him the whole story--army, Washington, hopes and fears; I liked him a good deal. But he was in a hurry--perhaps that might come on a later day.

We talked a little. He said I ought to come into the office for a while and "learn to figure burdens." I replied that I wanted the experience of the outside, and a start at the bottom.

"All right," he said, "I'll put you outside. Come Monday morning."

On Monday morning I followed the cindered road inside the gate for three hundred yards, turned off across a railroad track, and pa.s.sed a machine-shop. The concrete bases of the blast-furnaces rose before me.

Somebody had just turned a wheel on the side of one of the boiler-like "stoves," and a deafening blare, like tons of steam getting away, broke on my eardrums. I asked where the office was.