Rust by Eliese Colette Goldbach

Author:Eliese Colette Goldbach
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Flatiron Books

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After a few days of working in the Hot Dip, Mike gave me a better taste of what the job entailed. I donned my jumpsuit, my hard hat, my visor, and my gloves. With my garden hoe in hand, I began pushing the dross to Robbie. The newly galvanized steel rose out of the zinc, glistening under the bright lights, and I started to develop a rhythm with the dross. I found just the right balance of shoulders and legs to create a current that swept the hardened zinc into the channel, and Mike gave me a thumbs-up when he saw that I hadn’t marred a single piece of steel.

“We have to go clean Robbie!” he yelled over the noise.

Every time Robbie scooped a load of dross from the Pot, a small amount of zinc hardened on his arm. After a while, the zinc built up to the size of a baseball. If you didn’t clear it away, Robbie would break. Mechanics would have to be called in to fix him, and you would have to scoop away all the dross by yourself.

Mike and I walked over to the little platform where Robbie did his work. We pushed a few buttons on a control panel and cut Robbie’s power when his sieve-like head dipped below the surface of the zinc.

“I want you to try it by yourself,” Mike said as he handed me a harness. I strapped it tightly around my waist.

Even though harnesses weren’t required while pushing the dross, you had to wear one whenever you got close to Robbie. The tiny platform was difficult to navigate, and there wasn’t a barrier around the metal. If you slipped, you’d land straight in the zinc. Whatever confidence I was developing with the dross quickly dwindled.

I double-checked my harness as Mike handed me a long, thin lance that was attached to a tank of nitrogen. After he showed me how to turn it on, I looked at Robbie and hesitated. I didn’t want to get close to the molten metal, and I would have given anything to unbuckle the harness and run back to my old job with Dynamo. Mike nodded toward Robbie.

“Go on,” he said. “Robbie won’t bite.”

There was no way I could unbuckle the harness and save face, so I edged toward the Pot. I told myself that it would be over in a few minutes, but that didn’t put a dent in the fear. My heart raced and a bead of sweat dripped off the tip of my nose. The zinc was so close that I could feel the heat emanating from its depths. I inched forward like a toddler afraid of water, and I stopped when I was still a few feet away from the edge. Even with my arm fully extended at the end of the nitrogen lance, I couldn’t quite reach the big lump of zinc that had grown on Robbie’s arm.

“You have to get closer,” Mike called to me.

I took a tiny step forward.

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