was made .”
"That's not the way he tells it," Illas said. "Maybe not now .”
Parkland appealed to Zaleski. "Listen, Matt, the guy who was out of position is just a kid. A black kid, maybe seventeen. I've got nothing against him; he's slow, but he was doing his job. I've got a kid brother his age. I go home, I say, Where's the boy?' Nobody thinks twice about it. That's the way it was with this thing until this other guy, Newkirk, cut in .”
Illas persisted, "But you're admitting you used the word 'boy.'" Matt Zaleski said wearily, "Okay, okay, he used it. Let's all concede that .”
Zaleski was holding himself in, as he always had to do when racial issues erupted in the plant. His own prejudices were deep-rooted and largely anti-black, and he had learned them in the heavily Polish suburb of Wyandotte where he was born. There, the families of Polish origin looked on Negroes with contempt, as shiftless and troublemakers. In return, the black people hated Poles, and even nowadays, throughout Detroit, the ancient enmities persisted. Zaleski, through necessity, had learned to curb his instincts; you couldn't run a plant with as much black labor as this one and let your prejudices show, at least not often. just now, after the last remark of Illas, Matt Zaleski had been tempted to inject: So what if he did call him "boy"? What the hell difference does it make? When a foreman tells him to, let the bastard get back to work. But Zaleski knew it would be repeated and maybe cause more trouble than before. Instead, he growled, "What matters is what came after .”
'Well," Parkland said, "I thought we'd never get to that. We almost had the job back in place, then this heavyweight, Newkirk, showed up .”
"He's another black brother," Illas said. "Newkirk'd been working down the line. He didn't even hear what happened; somebody else told him. He came up, called me a racist pig, and slugged me .”
The foreman fingered his bruised face which had swollen even more since he came in. Zaleski asked sharply, "Did you hit him back .”
"No .”
"I'm glad you showed a little sense .”
I had sense, all right," Parkland said. I fired Newkirk. On the spot. Nobody slugs a foreman around here and gets away with it .”
"We'll see about that," Illas said. "A lot depends on circumstances and provocation .”
Matt Zaleski thrust a hand through his hair; there were days when he marveled that there was any left. This whole stinking situation was some thing which McKernon, the plant manager, should handle, but McKernon wasn't here. He was ten miles away at staff headquarters, attending a con ference about the new Orion, a super-secret car the plant would be producing soon. Sometimes it seemed to Matt Zaleski as if McKernon had al ready begun his retirement, officially six months away. Matt Zaleski was holding the baby now, as he had before, and it was a lousy deal. Zaleski wasn't even going to succeed McKernon, and he knew it. He'd already been called in and shown the official assessment of himself, the assessment which appeared in a loose-leaf, leather-bound book which sat permanently on the desk of the Vice-president, Manufacturing. The book was there so that the vice-president could turn its pages whenever new appointments or promotions were 1 considered. The entry for Matt Zaleski, along with his photo and other details, read: "This individual is well placed at his present level of management .”
Everybody in the company who mattered knew that the formal, unctious statement was a "kiss off .”
What it really meant was: This man has gone as high as he's going. He will probably serve his time out in his present spot, but will receive no more promotions. The rules said that whoever received that deadly summation on his docket had to be told; he was entitled to that much, and it was the reason Matt Zaleski had known for the past several months that he would never rise beyond his present role of assistant manager. Initially the news had been