"Union?"
"What?"
"Lemme see your union card."
"I don't belong."
"Well, you gotta join."
He went to the headquarters of the union. Men were there of all sorts. The mills were taking on hands. There was reconstruction to be done abroad and steel was needed. They came from Europe, for the most part. Thickset, square-headed, small-eyed men. Men with expressionless faces and bulging muscles that held more meaning than most countenances. They gave him room and no more. They answered the same questions that he answered. He stood in a third queue with them, belly to back, mouths closed. He was sent to a lodging-house, advanced five dollars, and told that he would be boarded and given a bed and no more until the employment agency had taken its commission, and the union its dues. He signed a paper. He went on the night shift without supper.
He ran a wheelbarrow filled with heavy, warm slag for a hundred feet over a walk of loose bricks. The job was simple. Load, carry, dump, return, load. On some later night he would count the number of loads. But on this first night he walked with excited eyes, watching the tremendous things that happened all around him. Men ran the machinery that dumped the ladle. Men guided liquid iron from the furnaces into a maze of channels and cloughs, clearing the way through the sand, cutting off the stream, making new openings. Men wheeled the slag and steered the trains and trams and cranes. Men operated the hammers. And almost all of the men were nude to the waist, sleek and shining with sweat; almost all of them drank whisky.
One of the men in the wheelbarrow line even offered a drink to Hugo. He held out the flask and bellowed in Czech. Hugo took it. The drink was raw and foul. Pouring into his empty stomach, it had a powerful effect, making him exalted, making him work like a demon. After a long, noisy time that did not seem long a steam whistle screamed faintly and the shift was ended.
The Czech accompanied Hugo through the door. The new shift was already at work. They went out. A nightmare of brilliant orange and black fled from Hugo's vision and he looked into the pale, remote chiaroscuro of dawn.
"Me tired," the Czech said in a small, aimless tone.