Invisible Man (27 page)

I looked around me. It was not just an engine room; I knew, for I had been in several, the last at college. It was something more. For one thing, the furnaces were made differently and the flames that flared through the cracks of the fire chambers were too intense and too blue. And there were the odors. No, he was
making
something down here, something that had to do with paint, and probably something too filthy and dangerous for white men to be willing to do even for money. It was not paint because I had been told that the paint was made on the floors above, where, passing through, I had seen men in splattered aprons working over large vats filled with whirling pigment. One thing was certain: I had to be careful with this crazy Brockway; he didn’t like my being here … And there he was, entering the room now from the stairs.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

“All right,” I said. “Only it seems to have gotten louder.”

“Oh, it gets pretty loud down here, all right; this here’s the uproar department and I’m in charge … Did she go over the mark?”

“No, it’s holding steady,” I said.

“That’s good. I been having plenty trouble with it lately. Haveta bust it down and give it a good going over soon as I can get the tank clear.”

Perhaps he
is
the engineer, I thought, watching him inspect the gauges and go to another part of the room to adjust a series of valves. Then he went and said a few words into a wall phone and called me, pointing to the valves.

“I’m fixing to shoot it to ’em upstairs,” he said gravely. “When I give you the signal I want you to turn ’em wide open. ’N when I give you the second signal I want you to close ’em up again. Start with this here red one and work right straight across …”

I took my position and waited, as he took a stand near the gauge.

“Let her go,” he called. I opened the valves, hearing the sound of liquids rushing through the huge pipes. At the sound of a buzzer I looked up …

“Start closing,” he yelled. “What you looking at? Close them valves!”

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked when the last valve was closed.

“I expected you to call.”

“I said I’d
signal
you. Caint you tell the difference between a signal and a call? Hell, I buzzed you. You don’t want to do that no more. When I buzz you I want you to do something and do it quick!”

“You’re the boss,” I said sarcastically.

“You mighty right, I’m the boss, and don’t forgit it. Now come on back here, we got work to do.”

We came to a strange-looking machine consisting of a huge set of gears connecting a series of drum-like rollers. Brockway took a shovel and scooped up a load of brown crystals from a pile on the floor, pitching them skillfully into a receptacle on top of the machine.

“Grab a scoop and let’s git going,” he ordered briskly. “You ever done this before?” he asked as I scooped into the pile.

“It’s been a long time,” I said. “What is this material?”

He stopped shoveling and gave me a long, black stare, then returned to the pile, his scoop ringing on the floor. You’ll have to remember not to ask this suspicious old bastard any questions, I thought, scooping into the brown pile.

Soon I was perspiring freely. My hands were sore and I began to tire. Brockway watched me out of the corner of his eye, snickering noiselessly.

“You don’t want to overwork yourself, young feller,” he said blandly.

“I’ll get used to it,” I said, scooping up a heavy load.

“Oh, sho, sho,” he said. “Sho. But you better take a rest when you git tired.”

I didn’t stop. I piled on the material until he said, “That there’s the scoop we been trying to find. That’s what we want. You better stand back a little, ’cause I’m fixing to start her up.”

I backed away, watching him go over and push a switch. Shuddering into motion, the machine gave a sudden scream like a circular saw, and sent a tattoo of sharp crystals against my face. I moved clumsily away, seeing Brockway grin like a dried prune. Then with the dying hum of the furiously whirling drums, I heard the grains sifting lazily in the sudden stillness, sliding sand-like down the chute into the pot underneath.

I watched him go over and open a valve. A sharp new smell of oil arose.

“Now she’s all set to cook down; all we got to do is put the fire to her,” he said, pressing a button on something that looked like the burner of an oil furnace. There was an angry hum, followed by a slight explosion that caused something to rattle, and I could hear a low roaring begin.

“Know what that’s going to be when it’s cooked?”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Well that’s going to be the guts, what they call the
vee
hicle of the paint. Least it will be by time I git through putting other stuff with it.”

“But I thought the paint was made upstairs …”

“Naw, they just mixes in the color, make it look pretty. Right down here is where the real paint is made. Without what I do they couldn’t do nothing, they be making bricks without straw. An’ not only do I make up the base, I fixes the varnishes and lots of the oils too …”

“So that’s it,” I said. “I was wondering what you did down here.”

“A whole lots of folks wonders about that without gitting anywhere. But as I was saying, caint a single doggone drop of paint move out of the factory lessen it comes through Lucius Brockway’s hands.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Long enough to know what I’m doing,” he said. “And I learned it without all that education that them what’s been sent down here is suppose to have. I learned it by doing it. Them personnel fellows don’t want to face the facts, but Liberty Paints wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel if they didn’t have me here to see that it got a good strong base. Old Man Sparland know it though. I caint stop laughing over the time when I was down with a touch of pneumonia and they put one of them so-called engineers to pooting around down here. Why, they started to having so much paint go bad they didn’t know what to do. Paint was bleeding and wrinkling, wouldn’t cover or nothing—you know, a man could make hisself all kinds of money if he found out what makes paint bleed. Anyway, everything was going bad. Then word got to me that they done put that fellow in my place and when I got well I wouldn’t come back. Here I been with ’em so long and loyal and everything. Shucks, I just sent ’em word that Lucius Brockway was retiring!

“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 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 finger 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.”

U
PON
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.