Read Online Unrivaled by Siri Mitchell - Free Book Online Page A

procession of boys steering the wheel barrows was headed. But they had to dodge a parade of carts that were being pushed along some sort of track that had been set into the floor.
    The traffic inside this building was the worst I’d seen since I’d arrived in St. Louis. With the open flames beneath the kettles and the dusty powder that covered the room, the place was a firetrap.
    Gillespie gestured past the mixer to a different machine. “Andthen, once everything’s been mixed in, the boys bring over trays, and the men pull that plug there at the bottom of the mixer. The taffy pours out, and then it’s wheeled over there to cool.” He was pointing away from the mixer to one of the corners of the room. Trays that had been placed on what looked like tea carts were being pushed in that direction. “It’s got to cool for a while, but not for too long. Then those trays get wheeled over to the pulling machines.”
    He didn’t have to point those out. The mechanical arms were waving like madmen.
    “After it’s been pulled, we throw it back into the wheelbarrows and take it to the tables. Couple of the men size out the ropes, then cutters take over. They dump their pieces back onto the trays, and they get wheeled off to be packed.” He pointed to the fourth corner, where I could see a dozen white-capped women plucking the log-shaped pieces from the trays, folding red waxed wrappers around them, and pushing the rectangular candies farther down the tables. At the end, a small army of girls swept the pieces into boxes, then placed the boxes into crates.
    “From there?”
    “Got some boys who load the crates onto carts.” He nodded in the direction of one of those track-bound carts that rolled past us. “Then they push the crates out to the docks, where I’ve got some fellows who put them onto a pallet.”
    I looked at the far corners of the building where Royal Taffy made its way through a number of steps in its dizzying path around the factory. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the packers near the docks? And the mixer next to the melting pots?”
    He shrugged. “But then where would you put this?” He gestured to an enormous funnel that was pierced with all kinds of pipes that hadn’t had anything at all to do with the process I’d just watched.
    “What’s that?”
    “It’s a grinder.”
    “What does it have to do with Royal Taffy?”
    “Nothing. It’s for something different. Something new. But the powder has to be pushed out and taken next door.”
    This was one of the largest buildings I’d ever seen, and there was another one next door? “If it has to go next door, then why isn’t this grinder next door too?”
    The superintendent shrugged. “This was the only space available.”
    We parted the procession of children pushing wheelbarrows and walked past packers, out the door, down a few steps, and into the next building. It looked newer than the previous one and just as big. It should have been brighter, too, but a murky haze hung like a cloud over the room.
    The superintendent handed me a gauze mask.
    I tied it on. “Why is it like this?” It wasn’t as noisy in this building, but there was a thumping vibration that seemed to pound my words back into my chest. I had to make an effort to force them out.
    “It’s the pulverizer.”
    I could tell this was the domain of children, though the powder-coated ragamuffins looked more like phantoms. “Are there any other buildings?”
    “No. It all takes place here. And back where we were.” He pointed the way we’d come, and we walked in the direction of that first building. “Let me show you out.”
    With the haze and the strange sight of children marching through the gloom, I might have wandered there for hours before finding the door I’d come in through.
    As we approached the railroad dock, a train puffed up. We pressed ourselves against the wall while men rushed forward tounload it. They swarmed the cars, pulling off boxes and carrying