The Spiked Heel

“…putting in the steel shank here in this department. You’ll never find this in a cheap shoe, Mr. McQuade. This piece of steel in its sleeve is put into the breasting of the shoe here, so that the shoe won’t snap in two some day. Then this cork is glued on either side of the shank, to level it off so that the heel and sole can be…”

“Yes, I see.”

The smells of the factory assailed their nostrils, a new smell, a different smell for each department, the smells Griff would never tire of, the smells he loved. The smell of good rich leather, and the smell of benzine, and the smell of rubber cement, and the smell of ether, and the smell of compo, and the smell of machines and men.

“…is where the sole is glued to the shoe. You’ll see here on the assembly line these leather cushions which inflate with air and press the glued sole tightly to the inner sole. The last, you understand, is still in the shoe during all these operations. The last is not pulled until later. You saw how the uppers were tacked to the last upstairs, remember? That machine that spits tacks into the leather? Well, that last is not removed until the shoe…”

“Of course.”

And the sights of the factory. The fellow doing pinking, with a collection of Marilyn Monroe pinups behind his machine, arranged with painstaking care on two large sheets of cardboard, the most famous pose placed prominently in the center. The old newspapers tacked on the wall behind a machine in the Stock-fitting Department: YANKEES WIN. — IT’S IKE! — SKIRTS GO HIGHER THIS YEAR. The nude calendars everywhere. In Assembly, a calendar exhibiting a naked girl with really remarkable mammary glands, a calendar distributed by GRAINGER’S HARDWARE COMPANY, and on either side of the girl’s magnificent body, the penciled comment: “Some hardware!” The sink near the stairway leading down from Lasting, a dirty, filth-encrusted. sink above which a crayoned sign warned: “Keep this sink clean; It is used by lasters and bed lasters. Thank you.” The union posters on every floor of the factory, the fire hoses in the hallways, the numbers on the racks, 15, 16, 17, announcing the priority each lot of shoes enjoyed, gaily printed on green, yellow, and pink cards.

And the people. The people of the factory. The people bent over glue pots, their fingers encrusted with the stuff. The people shoving leather soles into folding machines, the people stitching and the people sewing, and the people trimming and cutting and stamping and wiping and binding and cleaning and drying and tacking and pulling and talking and laughing; the Puerto Rican women with their full breasts in low-cut smocks, the sweat beaded on their breasts, the gold crosses dangling in the valley of shadow; the mental defective on the fourth floor whom one of the Kahns had hired out of generosity, pushing his racks full of shoes; the people clipping tickets, pink shreds and white shreds, shreds that meant money, one cent, or one cent four mills, or two cents, or two cents two mills, clipped from the work ticket and shoved into a bench drawer, or put into a cigar box, people doing their jobs quickly, adding up the cents, adding up the tenths of a cent; the man at the sanding machine, expertly smoothing the breasting of a shoe, his fingers wrapped in adhesive bandages to forestall any accidents; the man standing near the Muller machine, the machine inoperative, its wide doors open, its red bulb glowing, its leather hanging inside like sides of miniature beef in a butcher shop, waiting to be softened. The people, the people sweating and grinning, intent or indifferent, their laughter suddenly silenced whenever the man from Titanic walked through the floor.

“…man runs that flame over the finished shoe, trimming off all the hanging threads and whatnot.”

“Doesn’t the flame hurt the shoe?” McQuade asked.

“It can hurt it,” Griff said, “but this man knows his job.”

“I see.”

“This is really the manicuring department, you understand. The shoe is really finished for all intents and purposes here, dressed up, so to speak. There, see that fellow spraying those black kids with lacquer? He’s freshening up the shoe before it gets packed into its box.”

“Of course.”