Except that I was damn close to stopping it myself, Griff thought, without the use of either a hose or fists. Now, wait a minute, wait a minute, he told himself, how can you be sure it was going to stop? Because they were listening to you? Steve could have stepped in any minute and cracked Charlie’s head wide open, and that would have fixed things up solid, wouldn’t it?
McQuade had acted decisively. He had sized up the situation, delivered a warning, and then taken action when his warning had gone unheeded. He had behaved somewhat like a — a despot… yes, but hadn’t that been called for in the situation? There was danger present. Hadn’t he prevented any blood-letting?
So, disregarding the automatic association of brutality with a hosing, didn’t one have to admit that McQuade was acting for the good of the company and even, when you got right down to it, the good of the two men who were menacing each other with dangerous weapons?
Had anyone really been hurt? No.
Had anyone really suffered for it? No. (Except Charlie and Steve, and Hengman would have canned them, anyway.)
And hadn’t it really set things straight in the factory? Didn’t everyone know the score now? Didn’t they know they were there to make shoes, and, whereas there may have been goofing and cheating and stealing and whatever-the-hell under the Kahn regime, didn’t they now know them days was gone forever, and that Titanic was a new firm with fresh blood and keen ideas, strong ideas, maybe, but ideas under which a company could flourish and thrive and beat out the rest of the field, and if that happened wouldn’t it benefit those people who worked in the factory, those people who spent nine hours of every day there, more waking hours than they spent at home, people who — in reality — damn near lived at the factory, wouldn’t, it help them?
It was a question of the general good, he figured. Maybe things would be tough for a while, but it would all turn out for the best. The people of the factory would be served. Once you got that prejudical picture of the hosing out of your mind, things fell into place, and you had to admit no real injustice had been done. You had to admit that if you were being fair with yourself. And fair with McQuade.
He was no monster. He was a man doing a job.
Nonetheless, and in spite of Griff’s reasoning, a pall seemed to settle itself over the factory for the remainder of that week. He could not have described the pall accurately if he’d wanted to. It was more an attitude than anything else. The workers went about their jobs as usual, but the atmosphere seemed to have tightened a little. There was not as much laughter as there used to be, not as much jibing or friendly chatter. The workers worked, and whenever someone in a business suit appeared on the floor, they worked harder, and into their work a sort of tremulous fear crept, a fear that was never admitted except in the quick shifting of an eye or the sudden turn of a head over a shoulder. The shop stewards, despite their outrage over the hosing, were forced to admit that the two men involved had not behaved in an exactly exemplary way, and they couldn’t very well oppose the firing of those men once the facts were laid before them. Their hands were tired, and this bound helplessness spread to the rest of the factory until Charlie and Steve took on the proportions of martyrs in a forgotten cause.
The workers remembered the fight, and then they began wondering why the fight had started, and they recalled there had been some business about piecework-and overtime, and in recalling that they also were forced to recall Manelli’s overtime edict, and so they worked harder during the day, knowing that overtime was frowned upon now. But their work was a sort of “I’ll-show-you-you-bastard” kind of thing. If they were to be denied overtime, they would have to earn that extra cash during the day. They worked with a vengeance, and behind their increased labor was this fear that sneaked into their eyes and their gestures. They did not want to lose their jobs. The factory was their home, and they did not want to be put out into the street.
Griff could not ignore the changed tempo or the changed attitude of the factory. He had been with the firm for eleven years, and in those years, the business had become a part of his makeup. He loved the business, and he loved shoes, and he loved everything about making shoes. The factory, as corrupt and as badly functioning as it had been under the Kahns, was nonetheless a warm sort of retreat for him. There had never been a morning when he did not rise looking forward to the job ahead of him. He liked going to work. He knew there were many men who despised their jobs, but this did not at all lessen his own pleasure. There was excitement in the factory, and warmth, and a feeling of well-being. He was a lucky man, and he knew it.
But now, with the change that had moved in after the hosing, he felt a strange uneasiness, and the uneasiness gave way to a troubled mystification. He did not like the new climate of Julien Kahn. And because that climate was such an integral part of his life, he carried it with him all day long, he carried it home with him at night, and he carried it with him while he was asleep, and all the while it troubled him deeply because the making of shoes was his first love, and now he hardly recognized his love.
He blamed the factory for the failure of his first date with Cara Knowles. Actually, his fixing of blame may or may not have been valid. He did feel extremely morose that Saturday night, but there were a good many other factors which combined to make the date a failure, and his moroseness was only one of them.
March 13 had started out to be another normal March day, full of wind and ill temper. He had awakened from a deep sleep at about ten o’clock, smoked a cigarette, and then started preparing some bacon and eggs for breakfast. He began washing while the bacon fried, saving the shaving until that evening, and figuring he’d certainly have time enough to finish before the bacon was done. He miscalculated and, when he went back into the kitchen of his efficiency apartment, he was greeted with the sight of six curling black strips of charcoal. The burnt bacon killed all taste for eggs. He poured himself a cup of coffee and drank only that, having another cigarette at the table.
He had awakened again with the memory of the factory sharp in his mind. For the hundredth time, he went over the hosing, and then tried to understand the attitude of the workers; and for the hundredth time he was left with a vague sense of uneasiness and despair. He tried to tell himself that he was, after all, not responsible for the attitude of anyone in the factory. He had a fairly important job, and he did that job better — probably — than anyone else in the factory could have done it, but he did not kid himself into thinking he was indispensable. He was simply a cog in a vast machine — perhaps a unique cog in that he recognized his own cogginess and at the same time was endowed with a sense of responsibility toward the rest of the machine — but nonetheless a cog. So why did he feel upset about the way things were going? He could not answer the question.
It started raining at noon. It was a cold dreary rain accompanied by a sharp wind that flung enraged needles of icy water against the windowpanes. He listened to the rain, and the rain increased his gloominess, seemed to entrap him within the four walls of his apartment and the gray walls of his thoughts. He tried to read but soon put the book aside. He paced the apartment for a while, asking himself, What the hell is wrong with me, why doesn’t it stop raining? and then he threw himself onto his bed, seeking the solace of sleep, annoyed when sleep would not come. He got up finally and went out for a newspaper, but all the papers at his local stand were soaked through. He bought a copy of The Saturday Evening Post instead, but when he got back to his apartment he no longer felt like reading it. He looked at the Norman Rockwell cover, and then he thumbed through the magazine looking at all the illustrations and the cartoons, and then put it aside, convinced that eight o’clock was at least four million years away.