I fought myself out of bed and shut it off; stood up and tried to think. Pretty soon a thought came over me like an ache: it was "Fourteen hours!" That was beginning in fifty-five minutes—fourteen hours of back-walls, and hot ladles, and—Oh, hell!—I sat down again on the bed, and prepared to lift my feet back in.
Then I got up, and washed fiercely, threw on my clothes, and went downstairs, and out into the afternoon sun.
Down by the restaurant, I met the third-helper on Eight.
"Long turn wouldn't be so bad, if there weren't no next day," he said, with a sort of smile.
In the mill was a gang of malignant men; things all went wrong; everybody was angry and tired; their nerves made mistakes for them.
"I only wish it were next Sunday!" I said to someone.
"There aren't any goddam Sundays in this place," he returned. "Twenty-four hours off between two working days ain't Sunday."
I thought that over. The company says they give you one day off every two weeks. But it's not like a day off anywhere else. It's twenty-four hours sandwiched between two work-days. You finish your night-week at 7.00 Sunday morning, having just done a week of one twenty-four hour shift, and six fourteens. You've got all the time from then till the next morning! Hurrah! How will you use it? If you do the normal thing,—eat breakfast, and go to bed for eight hours,—that brings you to 5.00 o'clock. Will you stay up all night? you've had your sleep. Yes, but there's a ten-hour turn coming at 7.00. You go to bed at 11.00, to sleep up for your turn. There's an evening-out of it! Hurrah again! But who in hell does the normal thing? Either you go on a tear for twenty-four hours,—you only have it twice a month,—or you sleep the twenty-four, if the week's been a bad one. Or—and this is common in Bouton—you get sore at the system and stay away a week—if you can afford it.
"Hey, you, get me a jigger, quick. Ten thou'."