"Next thing you know here come the Old Man. He so old hisself his chauffeur has to help him up them steep stairs at my place. Come in a-puffing and a-blowing, says, 'Lucius, what's this I hear 'bout you retiring?'
" 'Well, sir, Mr. Sparland, sir,' I says, 'I been pretty sick, as you well know, and I'm gitting kinder along in my years, as you well know, and I hear that this here Italian fellow you got in my place is doing so good I thought I'd might as well take it easy round the house.'
"Why, you'd a-thought I'd done cursed him or something. 'What kind of talk is that from you, Lucius Brockway,' he said, 'taking it easy round the house when we need you out to the plant? Don't you know the quickest way to die is to retire? Why, that fellow out at the plant don't know a thing about those furnaces. I'm so worried about what he's going to do, that he's liable to blow up the plant or something that I took out some extra insurance. He can't do your job,' he said. 'He don't have the touch. We haven't put out a first-class batch of paint since you been gone.' Now that was the Old Man hisself!" Lucius Brockway said.
"So what happened?" I said.
"What you mean, what happened?" he said, looking as though it were the most unreasonable question in the world. "Shucks, a few days later the Old Man had me back down here in full control. That engineer got so mad when he found out he had to take orders from me he quit the next day."
He spat on the floor and laughed. "Heh, heh, heh, he was a fool, that's what. A fool! He wanted to boss me and I know more about this basement than anybody, boilers and everything. I helped lay the pipes and everything, and what I mean is I knows the location of each and every pipe and switch and cable and wire and everything else -- both in the floors and in the walls and out in the yard. Yes, sir! And what's more, I got it in my head so good I can trace it out on paper down to the last nut and bolt; and ain't never been to nobody's engineering school neither, ain't even passed by one, as far as I know. Now what you think about that?"
"I think it's remarkable," I said, thinking, I don't like this old man.
"Oh, I wouldn't call it that," he said. "It's just that I been round here so long. I been studying this machinery for over twenty-five years. Sho, and that fellow thinking 'cause he been to some school and learned how to read a blueprint and how to fire a boiler he knows more 'bout this plant than Lucius Brockway. That fool couldn't make no engineer 'cause he can't see what's staring him straight in the face... Say, you forgittin' to watch them gauges."
I hurried over, finding all the needles steady.
"They're okay," I called.
"All right, but I'm warning you to keep an eye on 'em. You caint forgit down here, 'cause if you do, you liable to blow up something. They got all this machinery, but that ain't everything; we are the machines inside the machine.
"You know the best selling paint we got, the one that made this here business?" he asked as I helped him fill a vat with a smelly substance.
"No, I don't."
"Our white, Optic White."
"Why the white rather than the others?"
" 'Cause we started stressing it from the first. We make the best white paint in the world, I don't give a damn what nobody says. Our white is so white you can paint a chunka coal and you'd have to crack it open with a sledge hammer to prove it wasn't white clear through!"
His eyes glinted with humorless conviction and I had to drop my head to hide my grin.
"You notice that sign on top of the building?"
"Oh, you can't miss that," I said.
"You read the slogan?"
"I don't remember, I was in such a hurry."
"Well, you might not believe it, but I helped the Old Man make up that slogan. 'If It's Optic White, It's the Right White,' " he quoted with an upraised finger, like a preacher quoting holy writ. "I got me a three-hundred-dollar bonus for helping to think that up. These newfangled advertising folks is been tryin' to work up something about the other colors, talking about rainbows or something, but hell, they caint get nowhere."
" 'If It's Optic White, It's the Right White,'" I repeated and suddenly had to repress a laugh as a childhood jingle rang through my mind:
" 'If you're white, you're right,' " I said.
"That's it," he said. "And that's another reason why the Old Man ain't goin' to let nobody come down here messing with me. He knows what a lot of them new fellers don't; he knows that the reason our paint is so good is because of the way Lucius Brockway puts the pressure on them oils and resins before they even leaves the tanks." He laughed maliciously. "They thinks 'cause everything down here is done by machinery, that's all there is to it. They crazy! Ain't a continental thing that happens down here that ain't as iffen I done put my black hands into it! Them machines just do the cooking, these here hands right here do the sweeting. Yes, sir! Lucius Brockway hit it square on the head! I dips my fingers in and sweets it! Come on, let's eat..."
"But what about the gauges?" I said, seeing him go over and take a thermos bottle from a shelf near one of the furnaces.
"Oh, we'll be here close enough to keep an eye on 'em. Don't you worry 'bout that."
"But I left my lunch in the locker room over at Building No. 1."
"Go on and git it and come back here and eat. Down here we have to always be on the job. A man don't need no more'n fifteen minutes to eat no-how; then I say let him git on back on the job."
Upon opening the door I thought I had made a mistake. Men dressed in splattered painters' caps and overalls sat about on benches, listening to a thin tubercular-looking man who was addressing them in a nasal voice. Everyone looked at me and I was starting out when the thin man called, "There's plenty of seats for late comers. Come in, brother..."
Brother? Even after my weeks in the North this was surprising. "I was looking for the locker room," I spluttered.
"You're in it, brother. Weren't you told about the meeting?"
"Meeting? Why, no, sir, I wasn't."
The chairman frowned. "You see, the bosses are not co-operating," he said to the others. "Brother, who's your foreman?"
"Mr. Brockway, sir," I said.
Suddenly the men began scraping their feet and cursing. I looked about me. What was wrong? Were they objecting to my referring to Brockway as Mister?
"Quiet, brothers," the chairman said, leaning across his table, his hand cupped to his ear. "Now what was that, brother; who is your foreman?"
"Lucius Brockway, sir," I said, dropping the Mister.
But this seemed only to make them more hostile. "Get him the hell out of here," they shouted. I turned. A group on the far side of the room kicked over a bench, yelling, "Throw him out! Throw him out!"
I inched backwards, hearing the little man bang on the table for order. "Men, brothers! Give the brother a chance..."
"He looks like a dirty fink to me. A first-class enameled fink!"
The hoarsely voiced word grated my ears like "nigger" in an angry southern mouth...
"Brothers, please!" The chairman was waving his hands as I reached out behind me for the door and touched an arm, feeling it snatch violently away. I dropped my hand.
"Who sent this fink into the meeting, brother chairman? Ask him that!" a man demanded.
"No, wait," the chairman said. "Don't ride that word too hard..."
"Ask him, brother chairman!" another man said.
"Okay, but don't label a man a fink until you know for sure." The chairman turned to me. "How'd you happen in here, brother?"
The men quieted, listening.
"I left my lunch in my locker," I said, my mouth dry.
"You weren't sent into the meeting?"