Henry Roth - Mercy of a Rude Stream - The Complete Novels

The spikes in the chinks of skylight had become lances, smoky lances, like a moving-picture beam, only narrower and all impregnated with floating, powdery lime. Time for a siesta. They had only two more brake drums to do, and most of the afternoon to do it. Quinto looked guardedly about, beckoned to Ira, and mounted the ladder to one of the hoisted trains. Ira followed.

“Hey, wait a minute, you guys. Hey, you, Ira.” It was the short, barrel-built chief electrician, Eakind, never without his blue racing form in his shirt pocket. He didn’t seem to care about Quinto, but Quinto came down anyway. “Hey, Vito.” He leaned under the train. “C’mon up, will ye? You there, Padget?” he called up to an adjoining train. “Okay. Will you give us a hand, Padget?”

“That ought to do it,” said Burgess.

Vito climbed up to the aisle, pocketed his drift pin. Padget, with a sheaf of cardboard ads under his arm, looked out between trains, climbed down a few seconds later. One glance and he recognized the hitch. “That fuckin’ thing holdin’ up the parade again?”

The trouble was familiar to Vito, and here came Quinto, bobbing his head in recognition. Ira too could surmise. It was a heavy-duty cable, probably carried all the amperage to the motors right from the third rail. Heavily insulated, heavily lubricated, it had to be drawn through a length of steel tubing that protected it from damage under the train. A long wire, taped to afford a better grip, projected from the end of the tube. A “tail” it was called, and it was interconnected with the cable. Most of the time, Eakind and Burgess could pull the cable through by themselves, but sometimes, perhaps because of a slight kink in the tubing, the cable proved balky, and to slide it through took more muscle than the two men could exert. Besides, it was hot.

“All right, grab hold,” said Eakind, “and get yer ass behind it.”

All did as they were told, tugged manfully at the taped tail. With Eakind at the other end, guiding it, the thick, dark cable slid a few inches into its metal sheath. “Give us a little more, fellers,” Eakind directed. “That’s it. She’s comin’.”

“So is Christmas.” Padget popped a shred of tobacco from the tip of his tongue, puffed at the heat. “Jesus, you’d think they’d have some kind o’ goddamn winch for this by now, some kinda gimmick — a half-horse motor.”

“I told ’em that fifteen years ago,” said Eakind. “I told old man Haverly when he was superintendent. He said you’d pull the cable windin’s apart.”

“Bullshit. They’re not goin’ to spend the dough as long as they got a buncha stumblebums like us with strong backs and weak minds. Right, Ira? Muz be a union.”

“It’s only once in a while they’re tight as this,” said Burgess.

“ Fica stretta , eh, Vito?” Quinto prompted.

“What the hell does that mean?” asked Padget. “You ginzos are always talkin’ to yourselves.”

“Let’s go,” said Eakind.

“ Fica stretta, gatzo duro ,” Vito explained.

“Yeah? What’s dat?”

All took hold of the tail.

“ Acqua fresca, vino puro —” Quinto rhymed.

“Pull! For Christ’s sake!”

“Oh, my achin’ back! Hey, Red. What the hell’re you guys doin’ here?”

Newcomers: a moment ago they were out of sight — nowhere to be seen. Now they stood at the end of the greasy workbench, guys in overalls, vaguely known, the way fellow workers in a big shop are known, by gait, by purpose more than visage, as they strung along the street dangling paper bag or lunch box, to enter the shop, in the endless commutation of punching the time clock in — or out, flocking toward it at the end of the day, as if to render rough noisy obeisance before it, to escape home from the shop. Mostly anonymous, except Red, the cross-eyed keeper of the tool crib and spare parts. Everybody knew him: Red. Gingery Red, with a cushy job and Irish as Mrs. Maloney’s pig. He had a tabloid in his hands, the Daily News , August 23, and he was evidently the leader, the spokesman of the several men with him. “Hey, how d’ye say dis name?” He held out the open front page to Ira’s view.

“Vanzetti,” Ira obliged. “ They’ll tell you. Right, Vito? Vanzetti?”

Vito said nothing, only looked — obliquely. Quinto couldn’t read, but somehow gave the impression he sensed something unfriendly. What the hell? Padget grinned, and stocky Eakind waited indulgently, while he ran a thick, nicked thumbnail between chin and lip. Only Burgess stared at Ira, a level, dark-eyed, almost forbidding stare. What the hell?

“Not that one,” said Red. “How do ye say de udder one?”

“The other one?” Ira could scarcely believe his ears. “Anybody can say the other one. You don’t mean the word ‘executed’ at the end, do you?”

“No, we know dat. Dese guys are callin’ dat foist name ‘Sayco.’”

“Hell, yeah, dat’s right.” Red was seconded by one or two of his group.

“We want to know how you say it in American. You’re a college guy, ain’tcha?”

And now Ira knew there was something wrong. A ruse, but what? He had a sense of the others hemming him in. What the hell could be loaded in the word “Sacco”? He stared at the big block headlines: SACCO & VANZETTI EXECUTED. The black scare headline seemed about to bolt from the page, held there as if leashed. Vito had begun to glower, Padget snickered, Eakind seemed on the point of pulling out the blue racing form from his shirt, scratched his chest instead, and Burgess looked hopeless.

“Can’t you say that?” Ira hedged.

“I told ye, everyone was all sayin’ it different. Wuzn’t we, Feeney?”

“Yeah.”

Ira knew he was trapped. But how to get out of it, whatever the trick was? Shinny up the sunbeam slanting right down to the lime-powdered cement slab: Jacob’s ladder. “It’s simple,” he said, backing away toward Burgess.

“Yeah, what?”

“‘Sacco.’”

And the avalanche fell. Six tightly rolled-up paper truncheons appeared from behind backs of Red’s henchmen, and a guffaw went up as the truncheons crashed down. “Socko!” They flailed away at Ira’s head. “Socko-o-o!”

Arm overhead, holding his glasses in place, and forcibly grinning, Ira retreated past Burgess out of range, but not before he had taken a dozen or more hard wallops. “Oh, so that was it?” he said.

“Yeah.” They were bright with glee: “Socko! Right?”

“ Managia ,” Vito muttered out of the side of his mouth.

“Let’s go,” said Eakind; and to the roisterers, “You guys wanna give us a hand with this cable?”

“Not us. Dat’s too much like woik.”

“Okay, you’ll have Kelly around here in a minute askin’ what it’s all about. So let’s go.”

“Fuck Kelly,” Red blustered. “We ain’t afraid of him.” Nonetheless, they moved off in the direction they had come from. “Socko!” They slapped their paper truncheons against their palms as they went through the aisle. “Socko!” They disappeared around the end of the line of trains.

“The fact is,” Ira muttered the first words audibly, as he so often did when vexed or in quandary, that the transition he had envisaged, the second party alone at Edith’s, felt anticlimactic. He had already told all that mattered: it was an open-faced sandwich — it didn’t need that upper slice of bread. He had gotten his lumps in the shop, lumps on the coconut, and that settled the matter — and contrasted with the cultivated cocktail party at Edith’s that had gone before. The two episodes balanced each other — he hoped: were poised in dynamic equilibrium, or should be. Besides, many of the same people were there — the short stocky lawyer too. And this time there was Lewlyn, and the young, tender-looking, freckled doctoral student in philosophy from across the hall, Amelia, sitting quietly by herself, and stealing a glance at Ira as he at her. Was she what you called demure? Or vulnerable? Or wan with study? Or. . what? Philosophy: Plato, Aristotle. How could she be so much smarter than he was? That Philosophy 1 course he had taken as a freshman, one of the few courses still open when the classes on the blackboard were closed, what a fiasco that Philosophy 1 course had been. He didn’t know a categorical imperative from a jelly bean. Hey, go over and tell her that. I Kant — ooh, mamma mia! Yeah, but she’s a cinch. You can see, your brain tells you, but you Kant. Anh, what a shame. Everything had to be on the sly — first with Minnie, then with Stella — talk about a hit-and-run driver. Spoiled, that open, candid, natural self — ah, what the hell was the difference? Behold, Juno-Louise in a pink dress instead of a peach frock, clinging all the way up from calf to tous-tous. A vous tous-tous avez a vous? Pig French that meant “Where do you hurt?” in Yiddish.