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Show 4 / Karl had applied himself in school to learn all the reading, writing and arithmetic he would need for a job as a steelworker. That was fine, and he'd been willing. But the classes he'd be forced to take in his sophomore year -- literature, algebra, history -- would do him no good whatsoever in the mill. Maggie Rose had told him in no uncertain terms, though, that she wouldn't put up with his loafing around the house from the beginning of September until his sixteenth birthday, so he was to go to school, she said, and learn as much as he could in that time. Karl shrugged. He'd have to make the best of it somehow, endure the boredom until he'd served his term and could finally escape to the mill on November twentieth. Forty-five minutes had passed before Karl heard his mother stomp across the back porch so loudly that he knew her anger hadn't totally cooled. "I want to hear all about it," Karl told Kathleen as Maggie Rose marched across the kitchen and plunked into her rocking chair next to the window. Her back was straight as a yardstick, her hat still firmly in place. "Well, you should have been there, Karl," Kathleen said. "Adolf Heilmann never had a fighting chance, the poor guy. Want to see how it went? Pretend you're at the nickelodeon watching a movie called 'How the Irish Beat the Huns at the Battle of Heilmann's Butcher Shop.'" Kathleen picked up her mother's apron from the table and wrapped it around her, prepared to act out the scene for Karl. Twisting her |