Youth Challenges Part 35

"We have a testing department," he said. "Every sc.r.a.p of metal that goes into a car is tested before we use it.... Bonbright's in the testing department."

"Isn't it possible to keep on testing a piece of metal till it's all used up?" she said.

"H'm!... Suppose you mind your own business," he said, in his gruff, granite way--not rudely nor offensively. "How's his wife? How are they getting along?"

Hilda shook her head. "They're queer, dad. Somehow I don't believe things are working out the way they should. I can't understand HER."

"Squabbling?"

"Never.... Bonbright's so gentle with her. He has a sort of wistful way with him as soon as she comes near. It makes me want to cry. Somehow he reminds me of a fine, affectionate dog watching a master who doesn't give back any affection. You know."

"Doesn't she?"

"Give back affection?... That's just it. I don't know. I've been there and seen him come home. She acts queerly. As soon as she hears him coming up the stairs she seems to shut up. It's as if she turned out the lights.... Where the ordinary girl would be running to kiss him and make a fuss over him she--doesn't do anything.... And she keeps watching him. And there's something in her eyes like--well, like she was blaming herself for something, and was sorry for him. ... She seems, when she's with him, as if she were trying to make up to him for something--and didn't know how."

"Readjustment," Lightener grunted. "They jumped into the thing kerplunk. Queer start-off."

"I don't know.... She's a dear--and he's a dear.... It isn't like anything I've ever seen. It's something peculiar."

"Must be his fault. I told him--"

"It isn't his fault." Hilda spoke with certainty. "If you could see him you'd know it. His manner toward her--why, dad, I never saw a man so sweet and gentle and patient."

"Maybe that's the trouble. Too much patience is as bad as too much raising the devil."

"No.... It's something."

She turned to leave the room, when her father called after her: "Bonbright quit chawing castings to-night. He doesn't know it, but to-morrow he gets a new job.... Has all of that he needs. Knows how it feels."

"What's he going to do now?"

"Nice, light, pleasant job.... He'll be pa.s.sing rear axles--made by his father--down a chute to the a.s.sembling track. Bet he'll need Saint Jacob's oil on his back to-morrow night. Give his wife a job."

"Why," she scolded, for she was on intimate terms with the factory, "that's common labor. He'll be working with Wops and Guineas and Polacks."

He nodded. "If he stands the gaff I'll ease up on him."

"If he doesn't?"

Lightener shrugged his shoulders.

"Dad," said Hilda, "sometimes you make me MAD...."

When the factory heard what had become of Bonbright it laughed.

Bonbright was aware it laughed, and he set his teeth and labored.

Beside what he was doing now the machine shop had been play. Rear axles are not straws to be tossed about lightly. Nor are Wops, Guineas, Polacks, smelling of garlic, looking at one with unintelligent eyes, and clattering to one another in strange tongues, such workfellows as make the day pa.s.s more quickly....

Bonbright had to pa.s.s down a certain number of axles an hour. At definite, brief intervals a fragment of an automobile would move along the a.s.sembling track and pause beneath his spout--and his axle must be ready. There was a constant procession of fragments, and a second's delay brought up to his ears pointed commentary from below. ... The more pointed that those below knew who was above them.

He worked feverishly. After a while it became acute torture. He felt as if every axle he handled was the last he could manage--but he forced himself to just one more and then just one more--and another. He worked in a daze. Thought-processes seemed to stop. He was just a mechanism for performing certain set acts. The pain was gone--everything was gone but the stabbing necessity for getting another axle on that chute in time. He wanted to stop at a certain stage, but there was something in him which would not allow it. After that he didn't care. "Another....

Another.... Another..." his brain sang over and over endlessly. He was wet with perspiration; he staggered under the weights; he was exhausted, but he could not stop. It was as if he were on a treadmill where he had to keep stepping on and on and on whether he could take another step or not.... After a century the noon whistle blew.

Bonbright did not leave his place. He simply sagged down in his tracks and lay there, eyes shut, panting. Gradually his brain cleared, but he was too weary to move. Then thirst drove him to motion and he dragged himself to the wash room, cramped, aching, and there he drank and sopped himself with cold water.... So this was what men did to live! No wonder men were dissatisfied; no wonder men formed unions and struck and rioted!... Bonbright was getting in an efficient school the point of view of the laborer.

In the afternoon Malcolm Lightener stood and watched Bonbright, though Bonbright did not see, for he was working in a red haze again, unconscious of everything but that insistent demand in his brain for "another.... Another.... Another...." Lightener watched, granite face expressionless, and then walked away.

Bonbright did not hear the evening whistle. He placed another axle on the chute, but no one was below to take it. He wondered dimly what was the matter.... A Guinea from the next chute regarded him curiously, then walked over and touched his shoulder with dirty hand, and wafted garlic in his face. "Time for quit," said the man.

Bonbright sat down where he was. It was over. That day was over. Not another axle, not another, not another. He laid his head against the chute and shut his eyes.... Presently he staggered to his feet and walked blindly to the stairway. At the bottom stood Malcolm Lightener, not there by accident, but with design to test Bonbright's metal to the utmost. He placed himself there for Bonbright to see, to give Bonbright opportunity to beg off, to SQUEAL.

Bonbright, shoulders drooping, legs dragging, face drawn, eyes burning, would have pa.s.sed him without recognition, without caring who it was he pa.s.sed, but that did not suit Lightener's purpose.

"Well, Bonbright?" he said.

Sudden fire flashed in Bonbright's brain. He stopped, and with the knuckles of a hand that was torn and blistered and trembling, he knocked on Lightener's broad chest as he would have knocked on a door that refused to open. "d.a.m.n your axles," he said, thickly. "I can get them there--another--and another--and another--and another.... They're too slow below.... Make 'em come faster. I can keep up...." And all the time he was rapping on Lightener's chest.

He was conscious of what he did and said, but he did not do and say it of his own volition. He was like a man who dimly sees and hears another man. Subconsciously he was repeating: "Not another one till to-morrow.... Not another one till to-morrow...."

Abruptly he turned away from Lightener and, setting down each foot heavily with a clump, he plodded toward the wash room. He was going to rest. He was going to feel cool water on his head and his neck; he was going to revel in cool water... and then he would sleep. SLEEP! He made toward sleep as one lost in the desert would make toward a spring of sweet water....

Lightener stood and looked after Bonbright. His granite face did not alter; no light or shade pa.s.sed over it. Not even in his gray eyes could a hint of his thoughts be read. Simply he stood and looked after Bonbright, outwardly as emotionless as a block of the rock that he resembled. Then he walked to his office, sat down at his desk, selected and lighted a cigar, and tilted back in his chair.

"There's something to that Bonbright Foote formula," he said to himself. "It's all wrong, but it could produce THAT."

Then, after a few moments of puffing and of studying the thing, he said: "We'll see if he comes back to-morrow.... If he DOES come back--"

At home that evening Hilda asked him about Bonbright. He was ashamed to confess to her what he had done to the boy--yet he was proud of having done it. To his own granite soul it was right to subject men to such tests, but women would not understand. He knew his daughter would think him a brute, and he did not want his daughter to think any such thing.

"If he comes back in the morning--" he promised.

Bonbright came back in the morning, though he had been hardly able to drag himself out of bed. It was not strength of body that brought him, but pure will. He came, looking forward to the day as a man might look down into h.e.l.l--but he came. "I'll show THEM," he said, aloud, at the breakfast table, as he forced himself to drink a cup of coffee. Ruth did not understand. She did not understand what was wrong with him; feared he was on the verge of an illness. He had come home the night before, scarcely speaking to her, and had gone directly to bed. She supposed he was in his room preparing for dinner, but when she went to call him she found him fast asleep, moaning and muttering uneasily.

"What did you say?" she asked, uneasily.

"Didn't know I spoke," he said, and winced as he moved his shoulders.

But he knew what he had said---that he would show THEM. It wasn't Malcolm Lightener he was going to show, but the men--his fellow laborers. The thing that lay in his mind was that he must prove himself to be their equal, capable of doing what they could do. He wanted their respect--wanted it pitifully.

Ruth watched him anxiously as he left the apartment. She knew things were not well with him and that he needed something a true wife should give. First, he needed to tell some one about it. He had not told me.

If she had been inside his life, where she belonged, he must have told her. Second, he needed her sympathy, her mothering.... She might have been able to give him that--after a fashion.... She felt how it should be done, knew how she would have done it if only she loved him. "I could be the right kind of a wife," she said, wistfully. "I know I could...."

Bonbright went doggedly to his place at the mouth of the chute and was ready with the whistle, an axle poised to slide downward to the a.s.sembling car below. He was afraid--afraid he would not be able to get through the day--absurdly afraid and ashamed of his physical weakness.

If he should play out!...

A boy tapped him on the shoulder. "You're wanted in the office," he heard.

"I've got to--keep up," he said, dully. "Cars are coming along below,"

he explained, carefully, "and I've got to get the axles to them."

"Here's a man to take your place," said the boy--and so strange is man created in G.o.d's image!--he did not want to go. He wanted to see it through till he dropped.