white chickens lay black eggs and the white folks is Jim Crowed while the black folks is-'
He broke off as Smitty came in with a white leaderman named Donald. They didn't see me. He showed Donald where he had cut an opening in his duct for an intake vent, and Donald said he'd cut four inches off the X.
'That's where Bob told me to cut,' he said.
Donald shook his head noncommittally; he was a nice guy and he didn't want to say I was wrong. I'd often wondered if he was a Communist. He had a round moonface, pleasant but unsmiling, and that sharp speculative look behind rimless spectacles that some Communists have.
I stepped into the picture then. 'When did I tell you to cut out there?' I asked Smitty.
Donald turned red. 'Hello, Bob,' he said. 'Smitty said you was off today.'
'Jesus Christ, can't you coloured boys do anything right?' Kelly said from behind me. He had slipped in unnoticed.
Air began lumping in my chest and my eyes started burning. I looked at Kelly. I ought to bust him right on the side of his scrawny red neck, I thought. I'd kill him as sure as hell. Instead I ground out, 'Any mechanic might have made the same mistake. Any mechanic but a white mechanic,' I added.
He didn't get it. 'Yeah, but you boys make too many mistakes. You got to cut it out.'
Donald started moving off. 'I ain't made a single mistake this month, Mr. Kelly.' Conway grinned up at him from where he knelt on the floor, soldering a seam.
Pigmeat nudged me. 'See what I mean? Got 'em skunt back to his ears. He thinks the man a dentist.'
Kelly heard him but acted as if he didn't. He said to Conway, 'I wasn't talking about you. You're a good boy, a good worker. I was talking 'bout some of these other boys.'
In the silence that followed Peaches said, 'Oh, Conway gonna get a raise,' before she could catch herself, having thought we'd keep on talking and she wouldn't be heard. Somebody laughed.
I kept looking at Kelly without saying anything. He turned suddenly and started out. When he had gone Smitty said, 'How come he always got to pick on you? He don't never jump on none of these white leadermen. You know as much as they do.'
I unfolded my rule and tapped the duct he was working on. 'Cut your bottom line ten inches from the butt joint,' I directed, trying to keep my voice steady. He was just a simple-minded, Uncle Tom-ish nigger, I told myself; he couldn't help it. 'You'll have a four-inch gap. Take this duct over to the shop and get a production welder to weld in an insert plate and grind the burrs down as smooth as possible.' I turned and started out, then stopped. 'And remember I'm your leaderman,' I added.
Ben was standing in the opening, grinning at me. He was a light-brown-skinned guy in his early thirties, good-looking with slightly Caucasian features and straight brown hair. He was a graduate of U.C.L.A. and didn't take anything from the white folks and didn't give them anything. If he had been on the job for more than nine months he'd probably have been the leaderman instead of me; he probably knew more than I did, anyway.
I grinned back at him.
He said, 'Tough, Bob, but you got to take it.'
CHAPTER IV
I bumped into Red Williams in the companionway and he said he'd been looking all over for me.
'Will you get me a tacker, Bob?' he said. 'I'm tired of fooling with these people. I've had enough.'
He was a tall, rawboned, merriney-looking Negro with kinky reddish hair and brown freckles.
Me too, I wanted to tell him, but the fellows in my gang looked up to me; whenever they had trouble with the white workers they looked to me to straighten it out. So all I said was I'd see Hank.
Hank was the tacker leaderman, a heavy-set, blond Georgia boy about my age and a graduate of Georgia Tech. White mechanics could go to him and get any tacker they wanted, but he made the coloured mechanics wait until he could find a coloured tacker that was free. Most of the white tackers didn't like to work for coloured mechanics, and Hank wouldn't assign them to. He wasn't offensive about it, he'd just make the coloured mechanics wait, and if they got mad about it he gave them a line of his soft Southern jive. I found him on the quarter-deck talking to a couple of white women tackers in their welders' suits.
'How 'bout a tacker for a half hour or so?' I said.
He hadn't seen me coming toward him and when I spoke he jumped. Then he put on his special smile for coloured. 'Why, if it isn't the shot,' he said. 'Whataya say, big shot, long time no see. What's cooking?'
'All I want's a tacker,' I said. I knew it wasn't the way to go about it but I wasn't in the mood for jive.
'Say, fellow, you're getting fat-a regular capitalist.' He kept on as if he thought he was going to thaw me out. Then he turned to the two women. 'Here's a boy who's come out to California and made good in a big way; he's a leaderman in the sheet-metal department-one of Kelly's boys.'
I saw I couldn't rush him so I decided to dish out some too. 'You're doing fine yourself,' I said. 'The folks back in Georgia wouldn't know you.'
He kept his smile, but he began getting dirty. 'You said it, bo.' Then to the women, 'This boy's really a killer, got all the little brown gals in a dither about him.' To me again, 'How does you do it, bo?'
I got all set to curse him out; then right in the middle of it I realized that I was jumping the gun; he hadn't really said enough to start a rumpus about. I had to laugh. The three of them started to laugh with me. I said, 'Don't sell me too hard, buddy, you just might find a buyer.'
Hank caught it first; the creases stayed in his face but his smile went. The two women dug it from the change in his expression; neither blushed; they just got that sudden brutal look.
'You don't want a tacker, sho 'nuff?' Hank said, trying to get back his advantage.
But he had lost it. 'Sho 'nuff,' I drawled. 'An' ri' now.'
We looked at each other, measuring. His eyes were hard blue, hostile but not quite angry. I don't know how mine looked but I tried to make them as hard as his.
He decided to play it straight, where he always had the advantage. 'To tell you the truth, Bob, all of my tackers are busy, will be busy all day.'
I tried to get it back again. 'How about one of these ladies?' I'd started to say 'Southern' ladies, but decided not to press him that far.
'They're busy too,' he said. Now he got some of his smile back.
I started to turn away, saw a couple of tackers lounging over at the port rail by the generators, gabbing; turned back. 'How about one of them?' I nodded in their direction.
He glanced over at them, looked back at me. Now he had all of his smile back. 'They're busy too,' he said. 'You're just out of luck, Bob. Why don't you try Tommy?' Tommy was another cracker bastard.
I couldn't call him a liar; that's where he had me. I couldn't go down to Kelly and say, 'Hank said he ain't got any tackers'-even if I would have, which I wouldn't. He'd look at me as if I was nuts and say, 'Why, goddamn, why tell me?' I turned away, thinking. The white folks win again, trying to laugh it off. But it stuck in my craw. If I couldn't get the work done I'd have to take Kelly's riding; and in order to get it done I had to eat everybody else's. I had my usual once-a-day urge to tell them to take their leaderman job and shove it.
But half-way down the ladder I thought, What the hell, and turned around and went back to the tackers who were gabbing by the rail. I saw they were Southerners, but I asked anyway.
'Look, can I get one of you fellows to tack a couple of stays for me?'
They looked at each other. For a moment I thought neither one was going to answer, then one said, 'We's waitin' fuh Hank.'
'You're not working on a job, though, are you?'
'No, we's jes waitin'.'
I couldn't tell whether they were making fun of me or just talked like that. I decided to try again. 'If Hank says it's all right, can I get one of you then?'
They looked at each other again. The other one spoke this time. He said, 'Sho.'
All of a sudden I had to laugh. They knew that Hank wasn't going to assign them to me. 'Okay, boys,' I said. 'Get your rest.'
