A Lost King: A Novel by Raymond Decapite

Author:Raymond Decapite [DeCapite, Raymond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612778969
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Kent State University Press
Published: 2013-12-06T05:00:00+00:00

9

Early Saturday afternoon I went downtown and bought a fine black hat for my father. It cost me twenty-five dollars. On the way home I saw a help-wanted sign in front of the Superior Forge & Steel Company. I thought it would be a wonderful surprise for my father if I came home with a new job as well as that new hat. I got off the bus and hurried into the front office of the plant.

Not one word did I say. A man with a smashed nose and eyes like ice caught my arm as though putting me under arrest. He studied me.

“My name is Rafferty,” he said. “Do you want a job? I mean do you need a job? Tell the truth. Did you finish high school? You look all right to me, damn it. I’m fed up with these floaters. Can I count on you? Damn it, boy, I’ll get you started in an hour here. I’ll put you on the second shift. How about it? Bring your cake. Follow me.”

Carrying the hatbox, I followed him into the plant.

First and last in that place was the pounding. It seemed that some tremendous hammers were dropping and dropping to pound everything into pieces. The pounding was off to our right and then it started in a distant corner of that black building. Rafferty guided me around the shipping dock. Beside and above it was a kind of conveyor. Swollen gray carcasses of steel were hanging from it on big hooks. One by one they loomed out of a hooded shed. Rafferty turned to take me down an aisle of ovens. Those ovens squatted like frogs and gaped at each other across the blackened floor. Tangled webs of pipe soared and were lost in the gloom. An overhead crane rumbled past blackened windows running the length of the building below the corrugated roof. One window was open on a square of blue sky. It was a world of sky. Pounding was everywhere. It packed the twilight air like thunder. Down in the distance a sudden door was opening on a flood of sunlight.

“On to the forging plant,” Rafferty was saying. “Damn it.”

He was turning into a darker jungle. I found myself going straight for the sunlight. I walked faster. I started to run. I ran down the aisle with that hatbox held high like a trophy. I ran out the door and past piles of rusting scrapiron and over railroad tracks. A cry burst from me. I ran all the way around that long block of buildings and caught the next bus home.

My father was sitting on the porch. I put the box in his lap. He tore the paper off. When he saw the label he got up and carried the box into the kitchen. He took the lid off and lifted the hat out carefully as an egg. He turned it in his hands and felt along the edge of the brim with his thumb and forefinger.

“It’s a good hat,” he said.

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