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Show 38 have to speak to her. Since he'd found out she was sweet on him, Karl had carefully avoided any contact with her. "Francis X, where the hell are you?" Jame bellowed. "Get over here and watch for an ore slip." Jame's bellow brought a sullen Francis X out of the outhouse. Scowling, the boy stationed himself at the highest point of the Culley yard, his gaze fastened on the mill's four blast furnaces, eighty feet tall, whose tops were visible from where Francis X sat. You'd never guess from the dirty, ragged clothes Francis X wore, Karl thought, that his mother was a laundress. His shirtwaist was torn and grimy, his pants too short even for short pants. In another year, when Francis X reached fourteen, the age at which boys graduated to long pants, his skinny legs would be fortunately hidden. Karl moved to the rows of peas and weeded around them. As he worked, he dug his bare toes into the loosened soil, which was sun-warmed on top but cool and moist underneath, and felt good. When he looked into the Culley yard again, after a quarter of an hour, he noticed his little brother Hunnie sitting next to Francis X, who wore a sly expression and was whispering something into Hunnie's ear that seemed to upset the little boy. That dirty punk, Karl thought. If he's teasing my brother again, I'll wring his neck. But before Karl had a chance to holler for Hunnie to come home, a muffled explosion broke the morning stillness. "Slip!" Francis X yelled at the top of his lungs. "Ma! Slip on D Furnace." |
