For several days it was impossible to break into Adam's circle of friends; he would talk and work only with veteran clean-ups, and showed immense pomposity in a knowing way of hooking up slag and scrap to the crane. One day, however, I found him working alone with a wheelbarrow, cleaning cinder from around a buggy car under furnace No. 8. He looked over at me as I passed, and yelled: "Hey, you!"
He wanted my assistance on the wheelbarrow. We worked together for an hour or so, and I felt that perhaps the ice was broken.
"Did you ever work on the floor?" I asked.
"Two years," he said; "no good."
A little later I talked to Marco about him.
"Hell," he said, "he got fired from furnace, for too goddam lazy." I felt less hurt at his snobbishness after that.
Marco and I became good chums. We sat on a wheelbarrow one day, after finishing a job on the track under Six.
"You teach me American," he said; "I teach you Croatian."
"Damn right," I said; and we began on the parts of our body, and the clothing we wore, drawing out some of the words in the dirt with a stick, or marking them with charcoal on a board.
"Did you ever go to school in America?" I asked.