Steel Part 17

I a.s.sented quickly, wishing I somehow could, and was extraordinarily proud of that invitation.

I must not forget the occasion of the green pepper. One noon I sat beside Jimmy during the lunch hour. The whole Italian wing were together, sitting on benches in the brick shanty. Jimmy reached among the loaves of bread in his bucket, and hauled out a green pepper as big as an orange. He offered it to me and I accepted.

Treating it like my old friends the stuffed peppers, I bit deep. The whole shanty watched eagerly for results. I hadn't reckoned its raw strength and instantly felt like a blast-furnace on all heat. Despite all efforts I couldn't keep my face in shape, or resist putting out the fire with the water jug. The pleasure I furnished the Roman mob was enormous.

After that I learned to eat green peppers rationally and agree with my friends that they are beneficial. Beyond their health qualities they have an economic justification. With their help you can make a meal of cheap dry bread. Plain and unb.u.t.tered it costs you but six cents a half loaf which is a full meal, and hot green peppers will compel you to stow it away in self-defense. As Tony phrases it:--

"Pepper, make you eat bread like h.e.l.l!"

Tony thinks that Americans eat too much that is sweet; it makes them logy and sleepy. I think he is right. Joe claims that the people in America do not know how to make bread; the wheat he says is cut when it is too green. The gang, of course, bring Italian bread in their buckets.

It is certain that the American lunch of a soggy sandwich and piece of pie leaves a man heavy for the afternoon. The average dinner bucket in the shanty contains: a loaf of bread, a piece of meat,--lamb, beef, chicken, or sausage,--three or four green peppers, a couple of tomatoes, a bunch of grapes, and some vegetable mixture like tomatoes chopped with cuc.u.mbers and lettuce.

One day the gang got absorbed in stunts, climbing a ladder with the hands, giving a complete twist to a hammer with grip the same, the usual turning trick of a broomstick held to the floor, etc. My contribution was squatting slowly on the right leg with the left stiff and parallel with the floor. John complained of a lame thigh for three days after, I am gratified to say.

With Tony I occasionally picked a wrestling quarrel; he has a terrific grip and one day very nearly squeezed the life out of me in a fit of playfulness. I called him "Orso" afterward for his squeezing attribute.

Tony's make-up includes a sense of humor. One day when he had rolled about on the floor in front of Number 3, he said: "Ain't you 'shamed, Charlie, you young man, fight old man like me. You twenty-two, twenty-three, me thirty-seven!"

Tony could put me beyond this vale of tears with his left hand.

VIII

I TAKE A DAY OFF

I decided on a day off. John had lately taken one for the festival at New Naples, and had come in to work the next morning with the wine still at festivals in his head. Sitting atop the blast-furnaces the other day, looking at the blue rivers and the three hills, and speculating about men going down to the sea in ships--because of the fat river-boat we could see--had made me sicken of the smell of flue-dust. I decided to take a day off.

Sometimes the foreman, when you got back after cutting a turn, would say, "I don't believe you want this job; you like loafing better; I'll give it to Jimmy." But with a seven-day week, only the mean ones hollered. Men took an occasional holiday.

I ate breakfast with a very conscious leisure at George's, putting down scrambled eggs, at 8.00 o'clock, instead of the coffee and toast at 5.15 A.M.

"No work to-day," said George; "lotza mon', eh?"

"Wrong," said I.

"Mebbe you see best girl to-day."

"Guess again."

"Married?"

"No."

"Mr. Vincent's wife is sick," said George, changing the subject.

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"He no work to-day; come in here for breakfast, ten minutes before you."

Vincent was a young American, twenty-one or two, whose brother I had known in college. He had not gone himself, but took a straw boss's job in the pipe mill. He had married six months before, and his wife lived with him in two rooms in Bickford Lodge--the other hotel in Bouton. We went to the movies together sometimes, and often met for supper at the Greek's.

I looked for Vincent, and found him reading the "Sat.u.r.day Evening Post"

in the front room.

"Elizabeth is sick," he explained. "I'm sticking around to-day."

We fell to talking mill.

"What hours do you work now?" I asked.

"Six to six."

"You get up at five."

"Yes, about that."

"That's not true, Philip," came over the transom from the sick room. "I set the alarm at four-thirty, Phil sleeps till five-thirty, drinks one cup of coffee, leaves his eggs, and catches the twenty-of-six car."

"You now have the story," said Phil. "It's a stinking long day, isn't it?"

"Phil has it all figured out," Elizabeth shouted from the back room.

"From six to nine, he pays his rent--"

"Yes, I've figured it that way," he said. "The money I earn between nine and one is enough to pay my day's board and my wife's; one to three is clothes and shoes; three to five, all other expenses; five to six I work for myself!"

"That's bully; I think I'll figure mine."

"But there aren't any evenings, are there," he went on, "or any Sundays?"

Suddenly he looked up at the chandelier. "See all the pipes in that," he said; "I find pipes and tubes everywhere, since I've worked in the mill.

It's darn interesting to pick them out. The radiator in this room is made of pipe, see; the bed in the back room; notice those banisters outside. I see them everywhere I look. If I had a little money, I'd put it in a pipe mill. 'S money in that game, once you get the market; Coglin and I have it all doped out."

For fifteen minutes, Phil's enthusiasm for pipe-manufacture built the mills of the future.

Toward noon I went to George's. The pit craneman, Herb, was there, eating George's roast beef and boiled potato, and looking half asleep.

"I'll fire you," I said.

"I'm on nights this week," he returned, with a slow smile; "I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd get up and eat some. Besides, I've got to go to the bank. You're with the blast-furnaces now, huh?"

"Yes."

"Like 'em?"

"Yes, I think I'll like blast-furnace work," I said, "if I get to be stove-tender or something. Good boss, Beck."