The union meeting let out at half past nine on a Tuesday in March, and Eddie Czernak walked home along East 28th Street with his collar turned up against the lake wind. He was twenty-four, broad through the shoulders from four years on the open hearth at National Tube.

U.S. Steel had signed with the union two weeks before. Men were still shaking hands in the aisles.

He didn't go straight home. He turned toward the glass-walled office near the main gate, where one green-shaded lamp burned. Irish Mike was inside, bent over the gate ledger. He had been a sailor in the British Navy and a good deal else before Lorain.

Eddie knocked three times.

"Come."

"I'm taking leave, Mike. Pittsburgh. Union work."