When Little Jim took his father's dinner to him the next day, 'Masso's boy Tony was sharing 'Masso's lunch. His face was dust smeared.
"I gotta job," announced Tony.
'Masso nodded. "He bigga kid now. Not go da school any more. Boss, he giva da cut. I bringa da Tony, getta da job as tool boy. Boss, he fire da Yankee boy. Tony, he work cheaper."
"He's too small to work," said Big Jim. "You'd ought to keep him in school and give him a chance."
"Chance for what?" asked 'Masso.
"Chance to grow into a decent American citizen," snarled Big Jim with the feeling he had had so often of late, the sense of having his back to the wall while the pack worried him in front.
Tony looked up quickly. He was a brilliant faced little chap. "I am an American!" he cried. "I'll be rich some day."
Big Jim looked from 'Masso's child to his own. Then he looked off over the browning summer fields, beyond the quarry. There lay the land that his fathers had held in grant from an English king. But the fields that had built Big Jim's flesh and blood were dotted with Italian huts. The lane in which Big Jim's mother had met his father, returning crippled from Antietam, was blocked by a Polish road house.
Little Jim didn't like the look on his father's face. He spoke his first thought to break the silence.
"Can't I stay for a while, Dad, and watch you load the big stones?"