Gladiator - Philip Wylie (readnow .TXT) 📗

roared and the earth shook. It was bestial, reptilian⁠—labor, and the labor of creation, and the engine that turned the earth could be no more terrible.

Hugo, standing sublimely small in its midst, measured his strength against it, soaked up its warmth, shook his fist at it, and shouted in a voice that could not be heard for a foot: “Christ Almighty! This⁠—is something!”

“Name?”

“Hugo Danner.”

“Address?”

“None at present.”

“Experience?”

“None.”

“Married?”

“No.”

“Union?”

“What?”

“Lemme see your union card.”

“I don’t belong.”

“Well, you gotta join.”

He went to the headquarters of the union. Men were there of all sorts. The mills were taking on hands. There was reconstruction to be done abroad and steel was needed. They came from Europe, for the most part. Thickset, square-headed, small-eyed men. Men with expressionless faces and bulging muscles that held more meaning than most countenances. They gave him room and no more. They answered the same questions that he answered. He stood in a third queue with them, belly to back, mouths closed. He was sent to a lodging-house, advanced five dollars, and told that he would be boarded and given a bed and no more until the employment agency had taken its commission, and the union its dues. He signed a paper. He went on the night shift without supper.

He ran a wheelbarrow filled with heavy, warm slag for a hundred feet over a walk of loose bricks. The job was simple. Load, carry, dump, return, load. On some later night he would count the number of loads. But on this first night he walked with excited eyes, watching the tremendous things that happened all around him. Men ran the machinery that dumped the ladle. Men guided liquid iron from the furnaces into a maze of channels and cloughs, clearing the way through the sand, cutting off the stream, making new openings. Men wheeled the slag and steered the trains and trams and cranes. Men operated the hammers. And almost all of the men were nude to the waist, sleek and shining with sweat; almost all of them drank whisky.

One of the men in the wheelbarrow line even offered a drink to Hugo. He held out the flask and bellowed in Czech. Hugo took it. The drink was raw and foul. Pouring into his empty stomach, it had a powerful effect, making him exalted, making him work like a demon. After a long, noisy time that did not seem long a steam whistle screamed faintly and the shift was ended.

The Czech accompanied Hugo through the door. The new shift was already at work. They went out. A nightmare of brilliant orange and black fled from Hugo’s vision and he looked into the pale, remote chiaroscuro of dawn.

“Me tired,” the Czech said in a small, aimless tone.

They flung themselves on dirty beds in a big room. But Hugo did not sleep for a time⁠—not until the sun rose and day was evident in the grimy interior of the bunk house.

That he could think while he worked had been Hugo’s thesis when he walked up Sixth Avenue. Now, working steadily, working at a thing that was hard for other men and easy for him, he nevertheless fell into the stolid vacuum of the manual laborer. The mills became familiar, less fantastic. He remembered that oftentimes the war had given a more dramatic passage of man’s imagination forged into fire and steel.

His task was changed numerous times. For a while he puddled pig iron with the long-handled, hoe-like tool.

“Don’t slip in,” they said. It was succinct, graphic.

Then they put him on the hand cars that fed the furnaces. It was picturesque, daring, and for most men too hard. Few could manage the weight or keep up with the pace. Those who did were honoured by their fellows. The trucks were moved forward by human strength and dumped by hand-windlasses. Occasionally, they said, you became tired and fell into the furnace. Or jumped. If you got feeling woozy, they said, quit. The high rails and red mouths were hypnotic, like burning Baal and the Juggernaut.

Hugo’s problems had been abandoned. He worked as hard as he dared. The presence of grandeur and din made him content. How long it would have lasted is uncertain; not forever. On the day when he had pushed up two hundred and three loads during his shift, the boss stopped him in the yard.

A tall, lean, acid man. He caught Hugo’s sleeve and turned him round. “You’re one of the bastards on the furnace line.”

“Yes.”

“How many cars did you push up today?”

“Two hundred and three.”

“What the hell do you think this is, anyway?”

“I don’t get you.”

“Oh, you don’t, huh? Well, listen here, you Goddamned athlete, what are you trying to do? You got the men all sore⁠—wearing themselves out. I had to lay off three⁠—why? Because they couldn’t keep up with you, that’s why. Because they got their guts in a snarl trying to bust your record. What do you think you’re in? A race? Somebody’s got to show you your place around here and I think I’ll just kick a lung out right now.”

The boss had worked himself into a fury. He became conscious of an audience of workers. Hugo smiled. “I wouldn’t advise you to try that⁠—even if you are a big guy.”

“What was that?” The words were roared. He gathered himself, but when Hugo did not flinch, did not prepare himself, he was suddenly startled. He remembered, perhaps, the two hundred and three cars. He opened his fist. “All right. I ain’t even goin’ to bother myself tryin’ to break you in to this game. Get out.”

“What?”

“Get out. Beat it. I’m firing you.”

“Firing me? For working too hard?” Hugo laughed. He bent double with laughter. His laughter sounded above the thunder of the mill. “Oh, God, that’s funny. Fire me!” He moved toward the boss menacingly. “I’ve a notion to twist your liver around your neck myself.”

The workers realized that an event of some magnitude was taking place. They drew nearer. Hugo’s laughter came again and changed into a smile⁠—an