Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [83]
"All right, boys, get the hell out of here.
"And you," he said to me, "go see MacDuffy; you're through."
I stood there, staring at the back of his head, at the pink neck beneath the cloth cap and the iron-gray hair. So he'd let me stay only to finish the mixing. I turned away, there was nothing that I could do. I cursed him all the way to the personnel office. Should I write the owners about what had happened? Perhaps they didn't know that Kimbro was having so much to do with the quality of the paint. But upon reaching the office I changed my mind. Perhaps that is how things are done here, I thought, perhaps the real quality of the paint is always determined by the man who ships it rather than by those who mix it. To hell with the whole thing . . . I'll find another job.
But I wasn't fired. MacDuffy sent me to the basement of Building No. 2 on a new assignment.
"When you get down there just tell Brockway that Mr. Sparland insists that he have an assistant. You do whatever he tells you."
"What is that name again, sir?" I said.
"Lucius Brockway," he said. "He's in charge."
IT WAS a deep basement. Three levels underground I pushed upon a heavy metal door marked "Danger" and descended into a noisy, dimly lit room. There was something familiar about the fumes that filled the air and I had just thought pine, when a high-pitched Negro voice rang out above the machine sounds.
"Who you looking for down here?"
"I'm looking for the man in charge," I called, straining to locate the voice.
"You talkin' to him. What you want?"
The man who moved out of the shadow and looked at me sullenly was small, wiry and very natty in his dirty overalls. And as I approached him I saw his drawn face and the cottony white hair showing beneath his tight, striped engineer's cap. His manner puzzled me. I couldn't tell whether he felt guilty about something himself, or thought I had committed some crime. I came closer, staring. He was barely five feet tall, his overalls looking now as though he had been dipped in pitch.
"All right," he said. "I'm a busy man. What you want?"
"I'm looking for Lucius," I said.
He frowned. "That's me -- and don't come calling me by my first name. To you and all like you I'm Mister Brockway . . ."
"You . . . ?" I began.
"Yeah, me! Who sent you down here anyway?"
"The personnel office," I said. "I was told to tell you that Mr. Sparland said for you to be given an assistant."
"Assistant!" he said. "I don't need no damn assistant! Old Man Sparland must think I'm getting old as him. Here I been running things by myself all these years and now they keep trying to send me some assistant. You get on back up there and tell 'em that when I want an assistant I'll ask for one!"
I was so disgusted to find such a man in charge that I turned without a word and started back up the stairs. First Kimbro, I thought, and now this old . . .
"Hey! wait a minute!"
I turned, seeing him beckon.
"Come on back here a minute," he called, his voice cutting sharply through the roar of the furnaces.
I went back, seeing him remove a white cloth from his hip pocket and wipe the glass face of a pressure gauge, then bend close to squint at the position of the needle.
"Here," he said, straightening and handing me the cloth, "you can stay 'til I can get in touch with the Old Man. These here have to be kept clean so's I can see how much pressure I'm getting."
I took the cloth without a word and began rubbing the glasses. He watched me critically.
"What's your name?" he said.
I told him, shouting it in the roar of the furnaces.
"Wait a minute," he called, going over and turning a valve in an intricate network of pipes. I heard the noise rise to a higher, almost hysterical pitch, somehow making it possible to hear without yelling, our voices moving blurrily underneath.
Returning, he looked at me sharply, his withered face an animated black walnut with shrewd, reddish eyes.
"This here's the first time they ever sent me anybody like you," he said as though puzzled. "That's how come I called you back. Usually they sends down