Blood on the Forge Read online

  “Anna, she is called.”

  “Who is she?” he asked again.

  “She is my niece.”

  “Ain’t nothin’ like keepin’ business in the family.” Chinatown laughed.

  “That is what I think,” said Sugar Mama. “But now she is sick. And it is Friday.”

  “What the matter with her?”

  “She is a no-good one—lazy. . . .”

  “ ‘The work ain’t hard, and the boss ain’t mean,’ ” sang Chinatown.

  “You are a funny one—sí.” She poked her elbow into his ribs.

  “You are a funny one—sí,” mocked China, and tickled Mama on her fat backside.

  Sugar Mama shied away and giggled.

  “You see, I tell her the men not bad. But no, she is here three days, and this one hurt her, and that one hurt her—”

  “Maybe they did hurt her,” said Melody.

  “But she is acting the new one,” said Sugar Mama. “And already she bring a baby into her mama’s house. The papa for the baby is four, five, six fellow—maybe more.”

  The girl was not looking at anybody in particular. Her eyes were fixed on the opposite wall. There was no expression in her broad face. She didn’t seem to care that she was being talked about.

  “She is lazy,” said Sugar Mama. “So lazy that up her food comes as soon as it goes down.”

  “Well, let’s git onto the dogfights,” said Chinatown. “C’mon, Melody.”

  “Naw!”

  “Aw, C’mon!”

  “Take Sugar Mama. I’ll stick around here.”

  “You waste your time,” said Sugar Mama. “She is a sick one.”

  “That ain’t nothin’,” said Melody.

  “She is no good to sleep with.”

  “I ain’t aimin’ to lay her.”

  “You sleep with Mama, sí?”

  “Naw.”

  “Well, let’s git on now,” cried Chinatown.

  Melody took out his money and gave half of it to Chinatown. Sugar Mama’s eyes followed the green. Then she walked over to the girl and spoke rapidly in Spanish. The girl gave no sign of hearing. Sugar Mama turned to Melody.

  “I tell her you are a nice man. She do what you say, or I break her head in. Sick or no sick, it is Friday.”

  “Sure, sure,” said Chinatown. He took her by one of her fat arms and pulled her out through the doorway.

  Melody could hear him laughing and hurrying Sugar Mama down the dirt road. The girl shook her head when Melody turned and held out the bottle to her. He stood there drinking, feeling the corn fire burning in his guts. Every now and then his stomach rolled, and he belched. Then the hot breath of the corn was sickening.

  He began to feel at a loss. He couldn’t study out the feeling that made him pass up the dogfights to stay here. There was a lot about himself that he would never be able to study out.

  The girl helped him.

  “The guitar—you carry it for nothing?”

  “Naw, I play on it most times.”

  “You can play a Mexican tune?”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Maybe so?”

  “I plays anythin’ I feels like.”

  “Then play Mexican tune.”

  He sat down and tucked the box into his stomach. He had to take another drink, because his fingers couldn’t find a chord.

  “Don’t know how to start, I guess,” he told her.

  She began to hum something that might have been a song. All he could feel in her humming was a rhythm that halted and hopped and halted and hopped. He shook his head.

  She laughed.

  “Where is the place you come from?” she said.

  “Kentucky.”

  “I come from Vaughan in New Mexico. It is not like New Mexico here.”

  “Reckon not.”

  “In New Mexico there are goats.”

  “I seen goats, all right,” he told her.

  “There I milk the goats and play in the sun all day with the children.”

  “You mean, when you jest a kid,” he said.

  “All the time,” she said in a clear child voice.

  He looked at her again. She did have the body of a woman.

  “How old are you?” he finally asked.

  “Now I am fourteen, I think. Maybe fifteen.”

  “You ain’t knowin’ for sure?”

  “I know for sure I am an old one not to have a yardful of little ones and a man sleeping in the sun.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So it is all the same.” She shrugged.

  He took another pull off the bottle and found himself hitting the guitar lightly. There was a faint smell of cedar in the air. The girl moved closer to him and drew her knees into the rig of her arms. Her dress slid away from her legs and bunched around her thighs. She had legs beautiful as fresh-split cedar.

  “What is it you play?”

  “Don’t know.”

  She looked up at him and laughed softly. He forgot about her legs, because there was something like a dream in her eyes set even with the brows in her broad flat-as-a-spade face.

  “You love me, yes?” she said.

  “Sure,” he told her.

  He was on the edge of something more satisfying than thinking about the quivering snakes her fresh-split-cedar legs could become under his weight. He was on the edge of something but he slipped away. Maybe he was drunk, he thought. The corn in him was powerful. He tried to steady himself, as though balancing something on the end of his nose. It was a chunk of the night, and he had to hold himself steady so it would not fall off.

  “You love Anna?”

  “Sure, baby.”

  If he could keep the thing balanced on the end of his nose maybe he would find out something.

  “Shame!” she scolded. “A little of a bottle, and you are too drunk to love Anna.”

  “Naw, I love you,” he heard himself saying.

  She took his hand off the strings of the guitar and drew it down on her thigh. There was not much feeling in his fingers. Everything was like eelskin.

  “Anna love you.”

  All of a sudden the thing on his nose fell back into his eyes, and through the half-dark he saw her as though she had a new face, His hand came back and ran over the guitar. He didn’t exactly hear what kind of music he was making but he knew what passed in his head. This girl had more than one woman shackled in her eyes. All the women he had seen were here. Here was the fat-cheeked black girl he had seen walking in the rain, the woman whose left breast died and rotted until she stank so no man would buy her for a dime. Here, quivering above the high weeds, were the freckled legs of the bohunk being covered by her brother. Here were women smelling of rut and sweat and some of milkweed crushed in the field ground under their raw buttocks, the blues singer in a Kentucky jook joint, lifting her skirt to cover coins on table corners, spreading herself before the boys, crying: “Throw your quarters! Throw a bull’s-eye and git it free!” Here were the women seen through a window or behind a door . . . again the sick eyes of that fat-cheeked girl walking in the rain —dead, swimming fish eyes telling a lie. . . . Come lay your floating head on a beautiful-as-fresh-split-cedar belly and let your toes tickle the stars. . . .

  Anna spoke in a high, whining voice, and what she said was a cold wind clearing his head.

  “You a sissy feller, I think.”

  “What you say?”

  “You got plenty money.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Still you play music instead of making love with Anna.”

  “But ain’t you sick, like Sugar Mama say?”

  “Bah!” She spat violently. “That’s for that old nanny goat. I do not like to see the dogs die.”

  “But she say you got hurt,” he stuttered.

  “Nobody hurts Anna, and she is not sick.”

  The cold wind was still blowing.

  “When I turn the trick that fat she-devil takes away the money.”

  He was seeing with everyday eyes.r />
  “I will not draw the men here for nothing!” she screamed. “I stay like I am sick until she drops dead from men bouncing on her fat belly.”

  He felt as though he had told this girl something she had no business knowing about.

  “When she is dead, then Anna take all the money.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said.

  She grew suddenly quiet and gloomy.

  “But she will not die. She is a tough old bitch, that one. Anna will be old and wrinkled when that old one is holding up a lamp in the window. I never will wear high-heel shoes on my feet, I think.” She held out her bare feet for him to see. “I think I am grand in shoes with the very high heels. Never have I had them but sometime I will kill the old bitch and keep all the money to buy them.”

  “Yeah, but they put you in jail,” he said.

  “That is right. I guess sometime I get a man who will make love all the time and spend his money for high-heel shoes and grand things.”

  “Guess you will.”

  “He will be a big man with muscles like a bear on the mountain. That is so he can kill Sugar Mama if she try to hold me when I go with him. He will have a pine tree on his belly, hard like rock all the night. He will get me high-heel shoes with bright stones in the heels.”

  She took his hand and put it on the thick bush at her thighs. The cold wind had stopped blowing, but still he didn’t want this woman. He felt as though he had had her already. How he could feel that way he couldn’t figure out.

  “You will give Anna money and not tell the old nanny goat?”

  “Sure, sure.”

  The bottle was almost empty. He finished it in a gulp.

  “Git some more,” he told her, waving the empty bottle.

  She fell back across his lap.

  “First we make love?” She smiled.

  “Naw,” he said. “Git a bottle.”

  “No.” She pulled his head down.

  “Git a bottle,” he said against her lips.

  Rolling out of his lap, she hit the floor with a thud and was on her feet.

  “You are a sissy fellow!” she screamed.

  Getting up slowly, he took a couple of dollars out of his pocket and threw them on the cot.

  “Them two bucks is to leave me alone,” he told her. “All I wants is corn.”

  He knew the corn was kept underneath the cot. She did not move to get a bottle.

  “What’s eatin’ you?” he said.

  She was trembling. He could see anger jerking at the little strings around her mouth.

  “What’s eatin’ you?” he said.

  Still she just stood, looking hell at him.

  “What bullheads is bitin’ you? Ain’t you got your two bucks for nothin’?”

  Those words were high wind in a grass fire.

  “You pay money not to make love with Anna. Anna would sleep with pigs sooner than you. She would lick the mess off their bellies sooner than kiss you. You are not a man. You squat down to pee. Nothing but a little string hangs from your belly. . . .”

  He couldn’t do anything but stand there with his mouth open. The stream of words had knocked him out on his feet.

  “You are a sissy feller.”

  “Now wait a little while——” he began.

  “Get out, sissy! Get out!”

  “I ain’t no sissy,” he said.

  “Get out,” she screamed at him, and broke out cursing in Spanish. In the middle of her cursing she turned and started to run out the back door. Before she had gone more than a couple of steps she came back and snatched up the two bills. The door slammed after her.

  There was nothing for him to stick around for, he thought. He would go back to the bunkhouse and try to sleep. After all, tomorrow was Saturday and the long shift. He would need that sleep to stand twenty-four hours in the heat.

  Saturday morning Big Mat went to the mill a changed man. A-borning in him was a new confidence. He did not sink into himself when O’Casey singled him out as scapegoat for the mistakes of the crew. He looked the little pit boss in the eye. O’Casey knew men. He knew when to let up. The other men were quick to sense the change. They passed little looks among themselves when O’Casey passed by Big Mat. They began to lag in their work. The pit boss had to do something to save face. Luckily, one of the pouring crew failed to show up. And when the call came for a replacement O’Casey recommended Big Mat.

  Bo had said that they put the green men on hot jobs before they knew enough to stay alive. That was true. Black George, one of the men from the red hills, had been slow learning. They had put what was left of him in the ground. But Big Mat proved to be a natural hot-job man. After the first turn he did not have as many burns to grease as had the regulars.

  The steel pourers’ shelf was just a narrow platform high up against a wall. Around it was a rickety iron railing. Big Mat was told about that railing. One of the pourers said, “It was jest put up lately. ’Fore that a guy who faints rolls right into heaven.”

  They did faint on the shelf—especially on hot spring days like this one. But Big Mat welcomed the heat. Through the long, hot hours he would do twice as much work as anybody else. In competition with white men, he would prove himself.

  The Bessemers were directly across from the shelf. Through the blinding heat Big Mat saw them in a haze—the blower on the pulpit, watching the tall air-stretched flames, the flaming air pulsing through the white metal, shimmying thirty feet above the live steel, blowing at the sun through holes in the roof. Once Big Mat had thought the holes were there so the flames could light the sky at night. Once the drone of the Bessemers had frightened him. Now his ears did not hear the drone. The steel began to blow noiselessly after he had been a short turn on the shelf.

  The blower was an old Irishman. He knew by the color of the flame when it was time to tip a Bessemer. Now he waved his gloved hand at the shelf. Someone let out a warning “Hallo-o-o-o-o-o!” Big Mat followed the example of the men around him and yanked down his dark glasses. The Bessemer sighed, and the place was full of sparks. The furnace was tilted. And almost before the full ladle could move on its overhead tracks to the pourers’ shelf another great Bessemer went into its noiseless song.

  Hollow molds were moving beneath the shelf. The pourer signaled when the first was in position. He pulled the lever on the full ladle, releasing the white fire. Through his glasses Big Mat could see the red winking eye growing into the bottom of the mold. The stream that fed that eye threw off curtains of sparks, pinpricking his hands and face. He got his signal and threw strips of manganese into the glowing mold. He was continually dodging, but still the sparks fried in the sweat of his chest where the leather apron sagged. The red stream stopped suddenly. Another mold slid underneath the ladle.

  Without slowing between molds, they took tests of the steel. The sweat ran into Big Mat’s wide-mouthed gloves and made small explosions when it fell on the hot test steel. Big Mat did not flinch. Alone he held the spoon steady. It took two hunkies to hold up a spoon. He smiled behind his expressionless face. His muscles were glad to feel the growing weight of the steel. The work was nothing. Without labor his body would shrivel and be a weed. His body was happy. This was a good place for a big black man to be.

  Melody and Chinatown were helping on the floor underneath the Bessemers. Naked to the waist, they worked hard, cleaning a big ladle for relining. The air was stifling. When Melody raised his lips upward to search the thin air he could see Big Mat high above. Pushing up his glasses, he wiped the sweat out of his eyes. He could see the liquid steel hitting the sides of the test spoon, scattering in clouds of white stars over Mat’s gloved hands. Even to his hazed eyes, Mat’s muscles sang. His own muscles did not sing. They grew weak and cried for long, slow movement. He could not stop them from twitching. It was not the heat and work alone—the rhythms of the machinery played through his body—the stripper, knocking the hardened steel loose from the molds. He couldn’t hear it. It would have been a relief to hear it. He felt it insi
de himself—the heavy rhythm of the piston that used only a stroke to a mold. That rhythm in his body was like pounding out those ingots with a blow of his fist. And he was tired. Twenty-four hours had to pass before he could stagger away to the bunkhouse. Only a thought kept him on the job: next week end he would pleasure himself in Mex Town while some other bastard was baking on the long shift.

  Chinatown was inside the big ladle. He could see the sun lancing through cracks in the ceiling high above. The heat of the sun sitting on the roof was nothing to the temperature inside the ladle. But it was just that little added heat that was too much for him to stand. His clothes were wet to his body. Where he squatted there was a wet spot. He was being smothered in a blanket of heat that pressed in from all sides. His lungs ached for moisture. He would have killed somebody for a drink of water. Yet there was water not far away. He had been told not to drink his fill. They had told him to put a tablet of salt on his tongue. The salt was crusted in his throat. He climbed out of the ladle. O’Casey saw him start for the hydrant.

  “Just rinse out your mouth and spit,” warned O’Casey.

  Chinatown fastened his lips to the spigot and turned the water on full force. His lips still clung when the foreman pulled him away. They had to take him out in the yard to untie the knot in his stomach. Then he was sick. Never before had he been so sick. Inside himself he prayed to die if he ever felt like that again.

  Between spells Melody and a gray old Slav came out into the yard to watch over Chinatown. The old man’s name was Zanski. He looked over the dozing Chinatown to Melody’s drooping shoulders.

  “You ain’t feel so good either?”

  “Head turnin’,” said Melody.

  “Maybe you hold your head far down to the ground . . .”

  Melody tried it.

  “Do kinda help some.”

  “Make heat drip out through head.”

  “Obliged.”

  “All feller work in heat know that.”

  They didn’t say any more until it was almost time to get back to the floor.

  “Sooner be shot in Kentucky than do another turn,” groaned Melody.

  The old man smiled.

  “Don’t nothing’ git you guys?” asked Melody. “You jest work and work till it git discouragin’ to watch.”