Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin Page B

he was not convinced that these boys, eager as they were, were equal to the task.
    “In anticipation of that, sir,” replied Mootfowl, “I have designed a test. Choose, if you will, any of my boys, and assign them as difficult an operation as might be encountered. We are willing to be evaluated in such a manner.” He stepped back, nervous and proud.
    Jackson Mead said that he would hire them all if the boy that he chose could forge a heptagonal ferris piece without appreciable distortion. When he stood up to survey the applicants, it was as if he had climbed into a tower. They, in turn, felt a collective adolescent chill that turned to ice when the snowy-haired bridge builder pointed directly at a little fat boy huddled in the back, and said, “Him. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and that looks to me like the weak link.”
    He had chosen young Cecil Mature—five foot one, two hundred pounds, a face packed with untenable fat, and two black smiling slits where his eyes were supposed to have been. He was a squash cook at the home, who had begged to be made a mechanic. He wore a crenellated beanie that fit in perfect roundness over his waxed crew cut. His arms were like sausages, and when he waddled around quickly in his black apron he looked like a cannonball come alive. He had arrived fairly recently at Overweary’s, his origins a mystery, though he claimed to have vague memories of life on an English herring boat. He was fourteen, and seemed not to know much of the world.
    When made to understand that he had been chosen for the test, he broke into a joyous smile and ran out to the forge. Everyone followed, wondering what would happen. They liked him, it was true, but in the way that you like an awkward dog that loses its footing and skis down the stairs. Mootfowl had yet to draw out the fine strands of Cecil Mature’s intelligence. The boy was eager, but seldom did things right. So, when he heated up a ferris piece and took it to the anvil, they winced. Each blow was more damaging than the one before. After five minutes, the ferris piece was badly mangled, but still capable of salvation. Cecil Mature put down his hammer and took a step backward. He adjusted his hat and peered through his slitlike eyes at the half-dead ferris piece. Then he stepped back to the anvil and really began to do it in. The ferris piece had been at one time a complicated jointure that looked like a cross between a carriage wheel and an arch. After being pounded for fifteen minutes by Cecil Mature, it was once again a rocky ore, something that looked, in fact, just like a newly fallen meteorite. When he was finished, Cecil Mature delicately stepped back into the group of boys and was quickly hidden among them. Jackson Mead thanked a whitened and speechless Mootfowl (who had not known that Cecil was along), and departed in his carriage to inspect a new shipment of steel braces.
    Their single-file walk back to the workshop was taken by many to have been a funeral procession without a corpse. Mootfowl dismissed them, and they remained idle for a week. During this time, Mootfowl became deeply despondent, and lay all day, dejected, on top of his enormous tool trolley, staring at the skylight ablaze with the sun. Then he summoned Peter Lake.
    Overjoyed, because he knew an active Mootfowl was indomitable, Peter Lake rushed to find his mentor furiously working on a framelike contraption which he had built in the middle of the workshop. Peter Lake thought that it was a new machine that they would show to Jackson Mead, and so redeem themselves.
    He helped Mootfowl with some adjustments, but still did not understand what he was building, or why Mootfowl seemed crazed with excitement. “That’s it,” said Mootfowl, “only one last thing left. When I give the word, hit this bar with a sledgehammer, as hard as you can. I have to make one last measurement, one last fastening, and it is a matter of precision.” Mootfowl disappeared behind a