MOLTEN METAL
By Hornell Hart
The president of the Canfield Iron Works sat at his desk, poring over departmental reports. The hush of Saturday afternoon had settled over the deserted works. Instead of the rumble of trucks, the tattoo of steam hammers, and the shrill of signal whistles, a fly droned at the window screen and birds twittered from the eaves.
It was with a startled feeling that the president looked up and saw, standing at the end of his desk, a tall, dully dressed working girl. Her eyes were circled with shadow, and her thin lips were set with the expression of one who forces back tears.
“I came to get five hundred dollars,” said the girl, in a tense voice. He looked up at her in dumb astonishment, and she hurried on. “We just got to have it, and you owe it to us. Pa, he kept telling the boss that the big ladle for the melted iron was cracked and it would spill some day, and the boss just laughed. Well, one day, about three months ago, he came up here to the office to tell you about it, and the fella out there told him to go on out and mind his business.
“Well, last month—on Thursday, it was—the handle broke off and spilled the hot iron all over Pa and the men in his gang. They brought him home, and his legs were all burned off, and he was dead. John Burczyk his name was.
“I’m the oldest at home, and all the others are little. There ain’t one of all six of them that can work yet. And Ma, she ain’t very strong, and she can’t earn much, washing. Well, we needed money awful bad, and a smart fella from you came to our house and gave Ma ten dollars. Ma’s Slovak, and she can’t read English, and she didn’t know what it was she was signing. Well, she found she’d signed away her rights to sue for money from you, because dad was killed. Now you’re going to give us that money.” She finished with a harsh peremptoriness and paused. The president started to speak, but she stopped him with a crude, imperative gesture.
“You wait,” she said; “I ain’t through yet. It was bad enough that you killed Pa and stole the damage money from her and the kids. But that ain’t all. You done worse than that. There was another man burned with that melted iron. His name was Frank Nokovick.” The girl’s voice rose and broke in a sob, but she choked it back harshly and struggled on.
“Frank—he and I was sweethearts for a year and a half before that, but he couldn’t get the money for the furniture and things. Well, we was to be married on Saturday, but Thursday the ladle broke and the iron burned Frank all down the side. He made ’em bring him home, and he sent for the priest. ‘Run for the priest, Pete,’ he says to my brother. ‘Run like hell, and make him come quick.’
“Frank, he was groaning terrible, but he just grabbed hold of my hand and hung onto it, and he kept saying, ‘Our kid’s got to have a father, Mary. Our kid’s got to have a father.’
“Well, the priest came as quick as he could, and he was going to marry us, but Frank was dead.”
The girl’s voice trailed off into a wail, but she choked on defiantly.
“Now I lost my job, because they can all see my trouble. And we got to have the money. You give me that five hundred dollars! You give it to me!”
The president had turned his back toward her. She fumbled nervously with a queerly shaped thing covered with a handkerchief in her right hand. The president turned silently and handed her a bundle. Dumbly she counted five one-hundred-dollar bills. At the bottom was a check.
“Pay to the order of Mary Burczyk,” it read, “two thousand dollars.”
Mary sank on the floor in a little heap. “I’d rather have shot you,” she sobbed.