Tony finally said, "Why you no be priest, Charlie?"
"Oh," I answered, laughing, "I run away; I like raise hell too much be priest." This was pretty accurate, too.
"O Charlie!" they bellowed.
After that, the gang were friends to the death.
VII DUST, HEAT, AND COMRADESHIP
One day I was promoted to stove-tender or hot-blast man on Number 6.
The keeper of the furnace was a negro. When he was rebuilding the runways for the tapped metal, I noticed that his movements were sure and practised. He patted and shaped the mud-clay in the runway, like a potter moulding a vessel. When it was tap time, he bored the tap hole with the electric drill easily and neatly; when the metal flowed, he knew the exact moment to lift the gates for drawing away slag. I watched him to see how he managed the four white men that worked for him. They were Austrians, and I found they joked together and showed no resentment of status. Commands were given with a nod or gesture. With the Americans on the furnace, the relation was the traditional one. The negro was light and seemed too slightly built for the job, but he performed it very efficiently, and so did his gang.
The blower was Old McLanahan, a man somewhere between thirty-five and sixty. A long, successful life of inebriety had given him a certain resignation to the ills of man, and enabled him to keep the heart of a viveur throughout his life. His skin appeared thrown like a bag over an assemblage of loosely fitted bones—the only considerable part of him being a paunch which coursed forward into a moderate point.