"Which is the stuff I'm supposed to bring up?"
The man shrugged his shoulders.
"Ask the platform boss. I jus' run the elevator."
"Which is the platform boss?"
The elevator operator pointed at a heavy-set man in an undershirt. Thick black hair spilled out from his chest and sprouted furiously from his forearms.
His features were coarse and heavy and his skin had the red flush of a heavy drinker.
David walked over to him. "What d'yuh want?" he asked.
"Mr. Wagner sent me to pick up the heralds."
The platform boss squinted at him. "Wagner, huh? Where's Sam?"
David stared at him. "Sam?"
"Sam the receiving clerk, yuh dope."
"How the hell do I know?" David asked. He was beginning to get angry.
The platform boss looked over his head at the elevator operator.
"They didn't can Sam to give this jerk a job, did they?" he yelled.
"Naw. I seen him workin' upstairs at one of the packing tables."
The platform boss turned back to David.
"Over there." He pointed. "Against the wall."
The heralds were stacked on wooden racks in bundles of a thousand. There were four racks, one hundred and twenty-five bundles on each.
David rolled the fork lift over to one and set the two prongs under it.
He threw his weight back against the handles, but his one hundred and thirty pounds wasn't enough to raise the rack off the floor.
David turned around.
The platform boss was grinning.
"Can't you give me a lift with this?"
The man laughed.
"I got my own work to do," he said derisively.
"Tell ol' man Norman he hired a boy to do a man's job."
David was suddenly aware of the silence that had come over the platform. He looked around.
The elevator operator had a peculiar smirk on his face; even the truck drivers were grinning.
Angrily he felt the red flush creep up into his face.
They were all in on it.
They were waiting for the boss's nephew to fall flat on his face.
He pulled a cigarette absently from his pocket and started to light it.
"No smoking on the platform," the boss said. "Down in the street if yuh want to smoke."
David looked at him a moment, then silently walked down the ramp to the street.
He heard a burst of laughter behind him. The platform boss's voice carried.
"I guess we showed the little Jew bastard where to get off!"
He walked around the side of the building and lit his cigarette.
He wondered if they were all in on it.
Even the foreman upstairs, Wagner, hadn't been exactly happy to see him.
He must have given him the job knowing he didn't have the weight to swing a fork lift.
He looked across the street.
There was a garage directly opposite and it gave him an idea.
Fifty cents to the mechanic and he came back, pushing the big hydraulic jack the garage used for trucks.
Silence came over the platform again as he jockeyed the jack under the wooden rack. Quickly he pumped the handle and the rack lifted into the air.
In less than five minutes, David had the four racks loaded on the elevator.
"O.K.," he said to the operator. "Let's take her up."
He was smiling as the doors clanged shut on the scowling face of the platform boss.
The men looked up from their packing tables as the elevator door swung open.
"Wait a minute," he said to the elevator operator. "I’ll go ask Wagner where he wants these."
He walked down the aisle to the foreman's empty desk. He turned and saw the men watching from their tables.