The Spiked Heel

Maria worked at her packing until five minutes to five. She went to the ladies’ room then and washed up. Her street shoes were in her locker. She was tempted to leave the red shoes in her locker in place of the street shoes, but how could she ever return them now that the box had already gone downstairs? She left the red shoes on, and when she went out of the building that evening the watchman didn’t give her a second glance.

The shoes were hers.

The retailer in Philadelphia had paid twelve dollars for a pair of house slippers which would be shipped to him the next day.

6

He thought about the incident with the fire hose for the remainder of that week, and in all his thoughts he was surprised to find himself seeking an excuse for McQuade’s behavior.

He did not want to believe that the man who’d turned the fire hose on Charlie and Steve was the same man who’d bought him the cup of coffee afterward, the man he had grown accustomed to as “Mac.”

He could not, in all truth, attribute any particular viciousness to McQuade’s hosing. There had been no sadism involved, he was certain of that. He had seen McQuade’s face when he was playing the hose on the two men, and there had been no glee there, in fact there had not even been any anger on it. The face had been expressionless, the hands holding the hose firm. In that moment, McQuade had looked like a man trying to put out a fire, nothing more and nothing less. But even so, even so…

He began to question himself about brutality. From what McQuade had said, he was trying to teach an object lesson. By watering down Steve and Charlie, he was showing the rest of the workers that Titanic would brook no horse manure. He must have realized, then, that the fight could have been broken up without using the hose. But he preferred to use the hose instead, giving his lesson dramatic impact, and was this not brutality, and, if not, what was brutality? McQuade had used two other men for his own devious purposes. Those two men had been humiliated and damn near drowned, and those two men had lost their jobs in the bargain, and all so that McQuade could show the workers who was boss.

Is that wrong? Griff asked himself. He did not know.

He tried to discount the hosing from his evaluation. In his mind, the use of a hose was connected with penal institutions, and so he discounted the hosing in judging the case. Suppose McQuade had used his bare fists instead? Suppose he had stepped onto the floor and disarmed them and beat them senseless with his hands, or suppose he had not even beat them senseless, just socked one or the other or both, but stopped the fight, and got the men back to work, would he have been wrong then?

Well, no, he supposed, not if it were for the good of the factory. A mixup on the eighth floor could mean a slowdown on every floor. The fight had to be stopped, and McQuade stopped it, and how he stopped it was not really terribly important.

Except that I was damn close to stopping it myself, Griff thought, without the use of either a hose or fists. Now, wait a minute, wait a minute, he told himself, how can you be sure it was going to stop? Because they were listening to you? Steve could have stepped in any minute and cracked Charlie’s head wide open, and that would have fixed things up solid, wouldn’t it?

McQuade had acted decisively. He had sized up the situation, delivered a warning, and then taken action when his warning had gone unheeded. He had behaved somewhat like a — a despot… yes, but hadn’t that been called for in the situation? There was danger present. Hadn’t he prevented any blood-letting?

So, disregarding the automatic association of brutality with a hosing, didn’t one have to admit that McQuade was acting for the good of the company and even, when you got right down to it, the good of the two men who were menacing each other with dangerous weapons?

Had anyone really been hurt? No.

Had anyone really suffered for it? No. (Except Charlie and Steve, and Hengman would have canned them, anyway.)

And hadn’t it really set things straight in the factory? Didn’t everyone know the score now? Didn’t they know they were there to make shoes, and, whereas there may have been goofing and cheating and stealing and whatever-the-hell under the Kahn regime, didn’t they now know them days was gone forever, and that Titanic was a new firm with fresh blood and keen ideas, strong ideas, maybe, but ideas under which a company could flourish and thrive and beat out the rest of the field, and if that happened wouldn’t it benefit those people who worked in the factory, those people who spent nine hours of every day there, more waking hours than they spent at home, people who — in reality — damn near lived at the factory, wouldn’t, it help them?