I was torn between protesting and pleading for fairness. It was not all my fault and I didn't want the blame, but I did wish to finish out the day. Throbbing with anger I followed, listening as he called personnel.
"Hello? Mac? Mac, this is Kimbro. It's about this fellow you sent me this morning. I'm sending him in to pick up his pay . . . What did he do? He doesn't satisfy me, that's what. I don't like his work . . . So the old man has to have a report, so what? Make him one. Tell him goddamit this fellow ruined a batch of government stuff -- Hey! No, don't tell him that . . . Listen, Mac, you got anyone else out there? . . . Okay, forget it."
He crashed down the phone and swung toward me. "I swear I don't know why they hire you fellows. You just don't belong in a paint plant. Come on."
Bewildered, I followed him into the tank room, yearning to quit and tell him to go to hell. But I needed the money, and even though this was the North I wasn't ready to fight unless I had to. Here I'd be one against how many?
I watched him empty the graduate back into the tank and noted carefully when he went to another marked SKA-3-69-T-Y and refilled it. Next time I would know.
"Now, for God's sake," he said, handing me the graduate, "be careful and try to do the job right. And if you don't know what to do, ask somebody. I'll be in my office."
I returned to the buckets, my emotions whirling. Kimbro had forgotten to say what was to be done with the spoiled paint. Seeing it there I was suddenly seized by an angry impulse, and, filling the dropper with fresh dope, I stirred ten drops into each bucket and pressed home the covers. Let the government worry about that, I thought, and started to work on the unopened buckets. I stirred until my arm ached and painted the samples as smoothly as I could, becoming more skillful as I went along.
When Kimbro came down the floor and watched I glanced up silently and continued stirring.
"How is it?" he said, frowning.
"I don't know," I said, picking up a sample and hesitating.
"Well?"
"It's nothing . . . a speck of dirt," I said, standing and holding out the sample, a tightness growing within me.
Holding it close to his face, he ran his fingers over the surface and squinted at the texture. "That's more like it," he said. "That's the way it oughta be."
I watched with a sense of unbelief as he rubbed his thumb over the sample, handed it back and left without a further word.
I looked at the painted slab. It appeared the same: a gray tinge glowed through the whiteness, and Kimbro had failed to detect it. I stared for about a minute, wondering if I were seeing things, inspected another and another. All were the same, a brilliant white diffused with gray, I closed my eyes for a moment and looked again and still no change. Well, I thought, as long as he's satisfied . . .
But I had a feeling that something had gone wrong, something far more important than the paint; that either I had played a trick on Kimbro or he, like the trustees and Bledsoe, was playing one on me . . .
When the truck backed up to the platform I was pressing the cover on the last bucket -- and there stood Kimbro above me.
"Let's see your samples," he said.
I reached, trying to select the whitest, as the blue-shirted truckmen climbed through the loading door.
"How about it, Kimbro," one of them said, "can we get started?"
"Just a minute, now," he said, studying the sample, "just a minute . . ."
I watched him nervously, waiting for him to throw a fit over the gray tinge and hating myself for feeling nervous and afraid. What would I say? But now he was turning to the truckmen.
"All right, boys, get the hell out of here.
"And you," he said to me, "go see MacDuffy; you're through."
I stood there, staring at the back of his head, at the pink neck beneath the cloth cap and the iron-gray hair. So he'd let me stay only to finish the mixing. I turned away, there was nothing that I could do. I cursed him all the way to the personnel office. Should I write the owners about what had happened? Perhaps they didn't know that Kimbro was having so much to do with the quality of the paint. But upon reaching the office I changed my mind. Perhaps that is how things are done here, I thought, perhaps the real quality of the paint is always determined by the man who ships it rather than by those who mix it. To hell with the whole thing . . . I'll find another job.
But I wasn't fired. MacDuffy sent me to the basement of Building No. 2 on a new assignment.
"When you get down there just tell Brockway that Mr. Sparland insists that he have an assistant. You do whatever he tells you."
"What is that name again, sir?" I said.
"Lucius Brockway," he said. "He's in charge."
It was a deep basement. Three levels underground I pushed upon a heavy metal door marked "Danger" and descended into a noisy, dimly lit room. There was something familiar about the fumes that filled the air and I had just thought pine, when a high-pitched Negro voice rang out above the machine sounds.
"Who you looking for down here?"
"I'm looking for the man in charge," I called, straining to locate the voice.
"You talkin' to him. What you want?"
The man who moved out of the shadow and looked at me sullenly was small, wiry and very natty in his dirty overalls. And as I approached him I saw his drawn face and the cottony white hair showing beneath his tight, striped engineer's cap. His manner puzzled me. I couldn't tell whether he felt guilty about something himself, or thought I had committed some crime. I came closer, staring. He was barely five feet tall, his overalls looking now as though he had been dipped in pitch.
"All right," he said. "I'm a busy man. What you want?"
"I'm looking for Lucius," I said.
He frowned. "That's me -- and don't come calling me by my first name. To you and all like you I'm Mister Brockway . . ."
"You . . . ?" I began.
"Yeah, me! Who sent you down here anyway?"
"The personnel office," I said. "I was told to tell you that Mr. Sparland said for you to be given an assistant."
"Assistant!" he said. "I don't need no damn assistant! Old Man Sparland must think I'm getting old as him. Here I been running things by myself all these years and now they keep trying to send me some assistant. You get on back up there and tell 'em that when I want an assistant I'll ask for one!"
I was so disgusted to find such a man in charge that I turned without a word and started back up the stairs. First Kimbro, I thought, and now this old . . .
"Hey! wait a minute!"
I turned, seeing him beckon.
"Come on back here a minute," he called, his voice cutting sharply through the roar of the furnaces.
I went back, seeing him remove a white cloth from his hip pocket and wipe the glass face of a pressure gauge, then bend close to squint at the position of the needle.
"Here," he said, straightening and handing me the cloth, "you can stay 'til I can get in touch with the Old Man. These here have to be kept clean so's I can see how much pressure I'm getting."
I took the cloth without a word and began rubbing the glasses. He watched me critically.
"What's your name?" he said.