In the silence that followed Peaches said, 'Oh, Conway gonna get a raise,' before she could catch herself, having thought we'd keep on talking and she wouldn't be heard. Somebody laughed.

I kept looking at Kelly without saying anything. He turned suddenly and started out. When he had gone Smitty said, 'How come he always got to pick on you? He don't never jump on none of these white leadermen. You know as much as they do.'

I unfolded my rule and tapped the duct he was working on. 'Cut your bottom line ten inches from the butt joint,' I directed, trying to keep my voice steady. He was just a simple-minded, Uncle Tom-ish nigger, I told myself; he couldn't help it. 'You'll have a four-inch gap. Take this duct over to the shop and get a production welder to weld in an insert plate and grind the burrs down as smooth as possible.' I turned and started out, then stopped. 'And remember I'm your leaderman,' I added.

Ben was standing in the opening, grinning at me. He was a light-brown-skinned guy in his early thirties, good-looking with slightly Caucasian features and straight brown hair. He was a graduate of U.C.L.A. and didn't take anything from the white folks and didn't give them anything. If he had been on the job for more than nine months he'd probably have been the leaderman instead of me; he probably knew more than I did, anyway.

I grinned back at him.

He said, 'Tough, Bob, but you got to take it.'

CHAPTER IV

I bumped into Red Williams in the companionway and he said he'd been looking all over for me.

'Will you get me a tacker, Bob?' he said. 'I'm tired of fooling with these people. I've had enough.'

He was a tall, rawboned, merriney-looking Negro with kinky reddish hair and brown freckles.

Me too, I wanted to tell him, but the fellows in my gang looked up to me; whenever they had trouble with the white workers they looked to me to straighten it out. So all I said was I'd see Hank.