“…man runs that flame over the finished shoe, trimming off all the hanging threads and whatnot.”
“Doesn’t the flame hurt the shoe?” McQuade asked.
“It can hurt it,” Griff said, “but this man knows his job.”
“I see.”
“This is really the manicuring department, you understand. The shoe is really finished for all intents and purposes here, dressed up, so to speak. There, see that fellow spraying those black kids with lacquer? He’s freshening up the shoe before it gets packed into its box.”
“Of course.”
And the sounds of the factory. The giant hum of the big machines, and the high soprano of the sewing machines; and the bell ringing over and over again when they were on the third floor, summoning someone to the foreman’s cage, and the telephone shrilling on the fifth floor; and the tacking machines spitting their tacks, clanging their tacks with a sudden rush, sticking the upper to the last; the whir of the drill in the Heeling Department, the bit sinking through the metal-lined hole in the last, penetrating into the wood of the heel, the screw with its open circular top following the drilled hole; the pneumatic hiss of inflated leather in the Soling Department; the radios on every floor; and the cackle of the old women, and the whispers of the young women, and the raucous laughter of the men; and the clash of the elevator doors, the rasping stealth of a cutting knife.
“…down the chute here into the Stock Room. We keep all our stock shoes here. And then through this door here is the Shipping Room, see those machines stapling the cartons shut there, and, oh, yes, Piping and Stripping is on this floor, too, a little factory of its own, where all the scraps from upstairs are made into…”
“I see.”
And finally it was all over. McQuade looked a little dazed, as if the three hundred and twelve operations that went into the building of a single pair of shoes had been a little too much for him to absorb. Griff could understand his bewilderment. He was exhausted himself. He suggested a cup of coffee and they made their purchases at the lunch counter and were heading for the room behind the counter when McQuade said, “Let’s take it up to the office, shall we?”
“Well, Mr. McQuade, we’re not allowed to have anything at our desks.”
“Nonsense,” McQuade said, smiling pleasantly. “Come along.”
They took the coffee up to Griff’s office, and Griff was not surprised to find a desk waiting for McQuade when they got there.
“Is it all right?” Marge asked.
“Yes, very nice, thank you, Miss Gannon,” McQuade said, moving toward Aaron’s desk. He sat on the edge of the desk, putting the coffee container down, looking around the office. Griff suddenly remembered the note he’d left for Aaron. It sat under the inkwell, not twelve inches from McQuade’s knee. He wet his lips nervously, anxiously.
“Has Aaron been back?” he asked Marge, glancing uneasily at the note.
“No, but he called in, Griff. He’s still checking those lizard and alligator samples for Guild Week.”
“Costing,” Griff explained to McQuade. “One or the other of us usually handles it, depending on who’s free.”
“I see,” McQuade said. His eyes fled over Aaron’s desk top, and a frown crossed his face, and Griff was certain he’d seen the note and its En garde! warning, a warning which seemed ridiculously overcautious now. Marge, who’d apparently read the note while Griff was gone, glanced at him apprehensively. McQuade sipped at his coffee, his blond eyebrows pulled into sharp wings, his gray eyes unreadable.
“Is there anything wrong, Mr. McQuade?” Griff asked. He did not want an open breach with McQuade, because he had honestly, come to like him during the tour of the plant. But if there was going to be any enmity over the note, he preferred bringing it into the open at once.
“This fellow,” McQuade said, snapping his fingers. “I forget which floor he’s on.”
“Which fellow?” Griff asked, suddenly relieved.
“The one with that little hot iron,” McQuade said. “The one who was burning those two holes on the bottom of the finished soles.”
“Oh, yes,” Griff said. “Our eagle-eyer.”
“Is that what you call him?” McQuade asked, amused.
“Yes.”
“Tell me, is that all he does?”
“Sir?”
“Your eagle-eyer. Does he sit there all day long with that iron and burn those tiny little holes on the bottom of each finished sole?”
Griff could not hide his surprise. He had spent more than three hours showing McQuade through the factory, twice as long as he usually took with the high-school classes. McQuade had seemed to be an intelligent observer, asking pertinent questions at every step of the operation, and Griff had been immensely gratified with the response. But now, in the quiet of the office, away from the clatter of the machinery, he had expected more questions, and he had honestly expected questions of a somewhat higher caliber. After all McQuade had seen, was he most interested in a man who burned infinitesimal holes on the bottom of a sole? Was this what had interested him most in the whole fantastic operation of building a fashion shoe?
“I… well… yes, that’s all he does,” Griff stammered. “He burns those two holes on each finished sole. Yes.”
“Why?” McQuade asked. He did not look up from his coffee.
“Why what, sir?” Griff asked.
“Why the holes?” McQuade said.
“Oh. Oh, I see. Well, sir,” Griff said, smiling, “there’s a pretty interesting story behind that. You see, before the industry began using cement on the shoe soles — remember, you saw the assembly belt downstairs where that leather cushion inflates and presses the glued sole to the inner sole?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, before the industry took to using cement, each shoe was hand-turned. That meant that the sole had to be tacked and then stitched to keep it in place. Frankly, we turned out a hell of a good shoe then, much better than we get with cement. You ask any of the old shoemakers on the floor, and they’ll tell you. Well, before the sole was stitched, it was tacked in three places. At the toe, in the center of the sole, and again where the instep breaks. Later, when the shoe was almost finished, those three small tacks were pulled. But they left three holes in the sole, three small holes, true, but three somewhat ugly holes. Someone got the idea of dressing up those holes, sort of ‘finishing’ them, to give the shoe a smoother look. The eagle-eyer came into existence then. He dotted each of those small holes with a small hot iron, finishing them, making them a part of the completed shoe. After a while, those three dots in the sole became associated with a quality shoe. When a woman turned over a shoe and spotted those three dots, she knew the shoe was a good one.”
“That’s very interesting,” McQuade said.
“Naturally, when we began using cement, there was no need for tacking the sole any more, and really no need for the dots, either. But milady had grown used to the dots, had come to look for them. We cut out the dot at the toe, figuring we’d save time and expense, but we left the other two dots, as a sort of quality shoe trademark.”