Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [87]
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 are 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 fingers 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.