Blood on the Forge

by William Attaway

  “He a walkin’ stick, like a branch o’ juniper.”

  “Where the spreadin’ adder?”

  “When I come up on him he unjoint himself. Ain’t nothin’ but a lot of little pieces underfoot. All I got to do is mix him around with one toe. When he come back together there his tail at the wrong end, his head in the middle.”

  “What you do when midnight come?”

  “Come midnight . . . come midnight . . . well, I go look at all the farmers. They all black. There ain’t no white man in the land. Nobody gits crop-aliened. There ain’t no ridin’ boss. The muck ground cover all the farmers so they grow potatoes under their armpits. They grow field corn between their toes. One man jest let a big tree grow in his back for shade. All he do is walk in the shade and drink corn whisky.”

  “Don’t he drink nothin’ else?” asks Chinatown.

  But Melody has no chance to go on with the game. Chinatown has traveled in the past and now he wants something out of the past.

  “Melody,” he said, “I sure would like me some of that red pop. Git me some of that red pop.”

  “Sure, boy,” said Melody. “I git it right now.”

  Melody was glad to leave the wishing game unended, glad to leave the house for the red pop. Anna took his place with Chinatown. She could not quiet him until she took one of his hands and drew it within the bosom of her dress. Melody saw. He looked into the corner where Big Mat crouched. Big Mat had closed his eyes.

  Every telephone pole, every fence carried a placard. In big black letters the steel workers were urged to come to the union headquarters and sign up. “Union Meeting Tonight,” advised leaflets strewn in the road. Melody saw these. But his eyes did not carry the message to his brain. To him everything had disappeared with Chinatown’s eyes. He did not resent the mills because of what they had done to his brother. Somehow or other it seemed now as though he had known all along that it must happen.

  The explosion had helped the cause of the union. The Slavs and Italians were joining in large blocks. When Melody walked up to the lunch car there was much talk passing between these men—talk that died when he entered. He knew many of these men but he was black. As yet nobody knew where black men stood with respect to the union. They called his name but kept a suspicious eye on him. It was not well to talk too openly. A stool pigeon could bring a union man to grief at the job. When he had gotten his red pop and gone the talk would flare openly again.

  Melody was not anxious to get home quickly. He needed relief from Chinatown’s eyes. He took the long way. Anna would take good care of Chinatown. Like all her kind, she had a ready sympathy for a maimed animal, whether dog or man. He thought of her easily now. Since the night of the explosion she had occupied only the rind of his mind. All the deep parts of him were taken by Chinatown. He had the gift of a sympathy so complete that his brother’s eyes became his eyes.

  There was a funeral air in the bunkhouse. Bo was there. He sat on the floor in the middle of an intent audience. No one spoke. Their attention was for Bo and for what he did. Between his legs was a pile of little steel scraps. In front of him burned a tin of canned heat. Bo put a steel dish on the heat. Into the dish went a few pieces of lead. Then he sat back to wait.

  Almost hypnotized by the strange air, Melody sat on the floor to wait.

  For twenty minutes they sat. Nothing sounded but the sudden scrape of a boot against the grain of the floor. Then the massed breathing of the men began to grow until it whistled. A watch in someone’s pocket ticked louder and louder. The creak of the bunkhouse in the changing air came now and again. Each man heard his own heart circling its blood. So what was silence spoke louder and louder.

  Then the time was up. The lead cupped the bottom of the dish, a heavy dust scumming its brightness. With ceremony Bo broke that scum. Then out of his pocket came the little chains. A drop of lead fastened each chain to one of the steel scraps. Shortly he was through. Bo began to pass out these newly created watch fobs. Afterward the group broke up.

  Melody went along home, the gift in his pocket. He had not needed to ask questions. He knew of Bo’s strange promise to Smothers that day of the explosion. That promise had been in a joke, but the joke had turned on itself. “. . . if it’s you, Smothers, we make you up into watch fobs. The boys round the bunkhouse ’ll wear you across their vests for luck. . . .”

  One Sunday, when Melody dressed in a regular suit, he would wear that little piece of Smothers across his vest for luck.

  Everything was the same when Melody got home. Only Big Mat had gone. He had gone to walk in the hills, Anna told him. Melody was glad. Big Mat was no help, crouching always in a corner of the room.

  “Well, had to go clean to hell and back, but I got it,” he told Chinatown, waving the red pop.

  Chinatown tried to find the pop. Melody took his hand and closed it over the neck of the bottle.

  “It don’t feel right,” said Chinatown. He bit off the cap. When he turned up the bottle it spilled down both his cheeks. He tasted the first mouthful only. “Ugh! I knew it.” He gagged. “This don’t taste right neither. It ain’t red pop.” He spat out the stuff.

  Melody did not know what was the matter.

  “That there’s red pop,” he insisted.

  But Chinatown could not taste the color red.

  Big Mat was caught in emptiness. The trouble with Anna had broken his confidence. Chinatown’s mishap had struck its blow, so Mat had been split like a bag of wind between two heavy palms. But he was not unhappy in the house with his brothers and Anna. His brokenness was his adjustment. The fact that Anna would not sleep with him was hard on his body, a big body which made constant demands. But he had held himself in before. He did again now.

  He took to walking in the hills. Like his brothers, symbolically he was going home. In his trouble his spirit was near home. So the song of the mills was muted, and all that he saw had another air. The sky sometimes took on the colors of planting time. He did not see the smoke and slag of the mills. There was that coming-summer smell that the hot gases could not kill. This time of the year did something to Big Mat, and he found himself away in the hills, digging in the ground now and then with a pointed stick. He walked, and his nostrils widened in the light wind. His nostrils tested the wind for the smells. There had been an old mule pressed against a rail fence on a sloping red hillside. Its nose had felt the breeze for good smells.

  “This smell like a good year for things in the ground,” he would mutter.

  He would be far away from the river, up in the black hills. Because he listened for other sounds he would lose the sound of the steel makers.

  “Would be long planted now iffen we was back home,” he would tell himself.

  These would be good days. Sun behind the thin gray clouds, the earth trim under his shoes. These would be good days for sick men to feel the earth.

  “Long planted now,” he would repeat.

  Sometimes Melody would be with him. Chinatown was more able and no longer needed a string to tie him in the world. He could be left with Anna for longer and longer periods. On these occasions Big Mat felt older. His body had begun to reflect his mind. It became evident. When Melody climbed the steepest hills Big Mat chose the path around. Often Melody would have to stop and wait for his big companion. When they lay down to gain breath Melody would be the first up for a new climb. In the evenings, when they left the mills, Melody’s quick flesh would throw off its weariness; Big Mat’s fatigue would hang on. Once Big Mat stopped by the roadside and picked up a great rock. All that long walk he kept it balanced in one palm. Melody did not speak. He could not have lifted the stone.

  But July was coming on, and with it came the end of the Moss boys’ retreat to the past. With the coming of July, it was difficult to walk through the town. The attitude of the foreign workers was changing. Big Mat and Melody found out what that change could mean. It was early Saturday, on their week end away from the job. They were approaching the pump at the edge of town. As usual
, there were the Slav women with their pails, waiting in line for washing water. A ball game went on in the cleared space behind the pump shed. Suddenly one of the boys spied them.

  “Ya-a-a . . .”

  The stones began to whiz in the air around their heads. A stone caught Big Mat on the chest. It sounded a deep note and fell at his feet. He stood bewildered. Melody was not bewildered. This all had a familiar air. There were the women pulling their shawls down over their faces. Those faces held deep contempt. Big Mat wanted to stay and talk, but Melody pulled him away.

  “What the trouble?” Big Mat kept crying.

  But Melody did not answer. They cut through one of the side streets. There were faces in the doorways. Every second he expected to see an old Slav with a long handle-bar mustache lean out of a window to spit at them. There was no old Slav this time, but the workmen lolling in the doorways gave them long, level looks. Those looks were more terrifying than threats.

  Big Mat had been known as Black Irish. That title had meant something to steel men. They had known of Big Mat before they had met him. And after the meeting they looked with respect. The Slavs had accepted the judgment of the Irish. Big Mat could not understand this sudden reversal.

  At the end of the dirt road the houses stopped. Beyond were the hills. They quickened their pace. A man came slowly down the street. It was Zanski. Big Mat was relieved. Zanski was their friend. All would be explained. Greetings on their lips, they waited. And Zanski passed them as though they did not exist. Melody called:

  “Hey, Zanski! Look!”

  “It’s Melody and me!” cried Big Mat.

  Zanski was undecided. Then he turned and walked up to them. They put out their hands, and Zanski took them. But they were all suddenly self-conscious.

  “See your arm out of the sling,” remarked Melody.

  “Yeah. Three, four day now,” said Zanski.

  “How Rosie gettin’ on?” asked Melody.

  “So . . . so . . .”

  “Chinatown gittin’ better. Gittin’ around,” spoke up Big Mat.

  “That’s good.”

  “Ain’t been able to git no more corns on my pickin’ hand,” said Melody, wiggling his fingers.

  “So . . . so . . .”

  Big Mat started to speak, but Melody cut him off.

  “Well, we be seein’ you. Got to git walkin’.”

  Zanski waited for a second.

  “All my boys is join the union,” he stated.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Melody.

  “Well, so long,” they said to him again.

  As they walked on Zanski called:

  “Do not go around the corner. There is trouble.”

  They did not know what he meant. Melody turned and waved.

  “So long.”

  “What got in ever’body?” asked Big Mat. “You know he seen us in the first place.”

  Melody did not get to answer. They were rounding the corner. They saw an almost motionless scene: a group of men bunched over a man who was lying in the middle of the road. There was no action to indicate a struggle. It was more like a group of young men gathered to look at a sick man. They started forward.

  “Somebody fell out maybe,” said Melody.

  Then a strange thing happened. Like a fan unfolding, the men fled in all directions. In a moment there was no one on the road but the two Moss boys and the sprawled figure.

  Melody and Big Mat wanted to see what danger would present itself. They did not approach. A lean hound with staring ribs came out of a hole in a garbage pile. He was full of rotten food but he trotted up to the fallen man and smelled around. He gave short whines, and the concave of his stomach jerked as though it were full of rubber bands. He opened his mouth. The sounds of his coughing broke as he continually reate his gorge.

  Melody picked up a rock and threw.

  “Scat you!” cried Big Mat.

  Melody threw again and caught the hound in the side.

  With a short yelp the dog fled in a tight circle. It was not the stone—he was trying to escape the sudden pain of madness, running away from the thing in him that whirled him like a top. At last he set a straight line for his flight. Over the prone body, across the piles of garbage, until he was gone in the hills. His faint, crazy yelps hung in the air.

  Big Mat and Melody walked with cautious steps up to the silent figure. They remembered from their boyhood—these were dog days, hot July up into August, when snakes shed their winter skins and dogs and men went mad.

  The man on the ground was Bo. He had been kicked and beaten. There was a lump the size of a pigeon’s egg at the base of his skull. They knelt beside him, chafing his hands and rubbing his stomach.

  “Gotta git some water,” said Big Mat.

  He lifted the unconscious man in his arms. The weight was nothing. He started at a fast walk toward the pump. Melody walked along by his side, holding onto one of Bo’s dangling hands. Both of them kept their eyes moving from side to side. They were frightened deep inside. That fear did not stem altogether from what had happened. It had roots in mob-fearing generations of fore-bears in the South.

  The women left the pump when they came into sight. The Slav children kept at a distance and watched them with their burden. They laid Bo on the damp boards beneath the spigot. Big Mat pumped, and Melody held Bo’s head to one side so that the water would not choke his breathing. Bo began to stir.

  “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” And he fought the water, clawing with his hands.

  Melody held his hands.

  “They gone, Bo. They gone.”

  With a rush Bo came to himself. He sat up, eyes flaring.

  “They caught me,” he cried. “But that’s all right. I know who they was—I know.”

  Big Mat and Melody were closer than Bo to the South. They did not question. The first thing to do with a black man in trouble was to hide him. Without heeding Bo’s protest, Big Mat threw him, sack-like, over one shoulder and started for home. They had cut across a vacant lot and gone through several alleys before he listened to Bo’s words.

  “Put me down. I kin make it, I tell you.”

  Bo was set on his feet. He stood for a minute rubbing the lump on the back of his head. Then he felt his ribs.

  “How you feel?” asked Melody.

  “Sore as hell, but ain’t nothin’ broken,” said Bo.

  “Didn’t know you was gittin’ it,” said Big Mat. “How come you didn’t yell some?”

  “Didn’t have no chance. They hit me too quick.”

  “Was they tryin’ to kill you?” asked Melody.

  “They wish I was dead ’fore I git through,” said Bo. “I know who they was.”

  “Who was they?” asked Melody.

  “They the bastards got turned off the job ’cause they workin’ in the union,” said Bo. “I know ’em, ever’ one.”

  “How come they jump you?”

  “Say I’m the stool pigeon that told on ’em.”

  “Damn! How come anybody think you do somethin’ like that?”

  Bo’s eyes became very crafty.

  “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s git on. Ain’t no tellin’ if they followin’ us.”

  Big Mat turned into the wind. The muscles in his arms twitched.

  “This here the North,” he said. “We kin fight back.”

  “Naw, C’mon,” said Bo.

  They followed him toward the river.

  “Whyn’t you go by the hospital and git checked over?” said Melody.

  “I got business at the mill,” said Bo. “I appreciate it if you fellas walk that way with me.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  On the way to the mills they passed a few Slav and Italian workmen who looked at them with hard eyes. Once they passed a couple of Irishmen. The Irishmen called to Big Mat:

  “Hello, Black Irish.”

  Big Mat waved his hand.

  “Them Irish got sense,” said Bo. “They ain’t gittin’ mixed up with no union.”
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br />   “How come?” asked Big Mat.

  “They all got good payin’ jobs,” said Bo.

  “What the hunkies want with the union then?”

  “They lyin’ to ’em. Say they kin git rid of the long shift. Eight-hour day what they want. Want more money, too, and a union for all the time. Lot of other stuff.”

  “Sound all right,” said Melody.

  Bo looked at him.

  “That ain’t no way to talk.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, you a nigger. Only reason a nigger in the mill is cause o’ trouble. I tell you that before. Only reason I git my job as foreman is ’cause I stick when the rest strike.”

  “Maybe I git to be a foreman this time,” said Melody.

  “Maybe,” said Bo.

  Big Mat was not thinking about the labor trouble. Yet he knew that he would not join the union. For a man who had so lately worked from dawn to dark in the fields twelve hours and the long shift were not killing. For a man who had ended each year in debt any wage at all was a wonderful thing. For a man who had known no personal liberties even the iron hand of the mills was an advancement. In his own way he thought these things. As yet he could not see beyond them.

  There were a lot of uniformed guards at the mill gates. They stopped Bo short.

  “You got business, buddy?”

  Bo looked at the two Moss boys, then he went up to the guard and whispered close to his ear. The guard changed his tone.

  “Okay, I’ll call him up. Wait a minute.”

  Bo stood back with Melody while the guard went into the stone hut by the gate. They could see him working the telephone. Then he kicked the door with his foot and was out of sight.

  Big Mat and Melody looked out of the corners of their eyes at Bo. Bo shifted a little under their sidewise glances. He began to talk in a casual way. But they could not keep the suspicion out of their attitudes.

  In a second the guard was back.

  “Okay, go on in.” He gestured to Bo. “He’s waitin’ for you in the office.”

  Bo left them.

  They stood a few minutes. They had never heard of a steel worker having business in the offices at off hours. The same suspicion hit them both: maybe Bo was a stool pigeon.