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Show 165 nostrils steaming and his eyes like dead snakes and began his assault. And he did it the next day and the next day and axx everyday the same way until Red, tired from spending every lunch hour fighting instead of eating his and Whitey's lunch, actually did start to slow down a little at work, though his efforts didn't go in vain either because the Union notified the foremen that if ever ia they fell behind schedule they could call .the office for help and axa the Union's dirty man would get Red^let him help v/hoever was behind schedule with all the fever pitch he wanted. Red started to hate the Union's dirty man. It got so he didn't even bring a lunch to work. He just left the pits or wherever he was when the lunch whistle v/ent off and walked over to the big steel door in front of the furnace and watched the snow or the rain or the nothing until the Union's dirty man, xxaxaxaxikaxxiaxgkixaxixi ikaxax£xa£x£axxk looking none the worse from whatever apparent beating Red had given him the day before, came and resumed the fight. Nobody even came around to watch anymore. Workers ate their £xa lunch to the comforting thudding and bonging of Red and the Union's dirty man working out the £ eternal problems of labor. Winter changed to spring and Red began xxxxixxxikaxxx- to hear the sprouting of tiny xkaaixx green shoots in the trees instead of the falling snow. The feel of the Union dirty man's chest and face beneath his fists became as familiar as underwear, and still, everyday, the Union's dirty man came. Meanwhile, at the bank, Helen was having a crisis of nerve. Everyday her boss, the vice president in charge of loans, Frederick Carpenter Strong, brought her flowers or candy or took her to lunch where he slurped cocktails and talked about the burden of being brought up rich, having the way paved for him everywhere, the difficulty of finding meaning in a life like that, of finding challenges. He thought Helen was beautiful and half his age and he was right about both. He thought Helen was the smartest girl to ever work in the bank, and very sweet too, the way she listened intently to him and wasn't intimidated about his being rich, sometimes even joked with him about it, asking him if he wanted to trade problems or jobs sometime, or when he complained about his wife saying that she would like to have a wife, that she would like to have i*uui ~fa4iil*i'Pft fr*^ not have to give birth, and one time she |