Out of This Furnace: Part 3, Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

When Johnny returns to school after the summer ends, he is unable to catch up with the other students. Moreover, Mary misses the money Johnny’s job brought in, especially with the war causing a jump in prices. She asks Kracha to pay more for his boarding, to which he responds with predicable griping and grumbling. Mary cannot understand his refusal to pay more, especially since he spends most of his money on whiskey. Kracha has become “prickly with grievances,” a “quivering bundle of outraged habits” who would rather die than change them. Christmas Eve arrives and Mary is waiting at home for Kracha, but he does not show. Mary sends Johnny to Francka’s house to learn his whereabouts when a neighbor, visibly embarrassed, informs Mary that Kracha has been arrested and is sitting in a Homestead jail.

Mary and Johnny depart for Homestead. Johnny enjoys the evening stroll through the cold night up the dark hillside leading towards Homestead while Mary struggles to keep up with him. She remembers “playing on the cinder dump, running over North Braddock's hills, as young and tireless as Johnny,” and wonders what time has done to her formerly vigorous self. Finally, they arrive at the police station, where they find Kracha soaked, still drunk, and penniless—his payday money has either been stolen or spent in the saloons. Mary is also penniless, but she convinces the jail official to waive the fine and release Kracha. Prohibition is now the law of the land, and before they leave, the jail official lectures Kracha “on the evils of drink” and, by extension, blames “You Hunkies” for the unpopular law. Johnny tries to explore the jail before a policeman shoos him out of the station.

When they arrive home, Kracha collapses into bed and Mary begins to cry because they have no Christmas presents. Johnny tries to comfort her, so she sends him to buy some fruit, nuts, and candies to put into the children’s stockings. They write a note from “Santa Claus,” claiming that “on account of the war” he cannot bring them presents, but that he hopes to make up for it by returning for Greek Christmas. Johnny has a blast posing as St. Nick. Later, after a series of firm lectures from Andrej and Francka, Kracha behaves himself and Greek Christmas unfolds joyously. Having been pushed to her limits, Mary cannot tolerate Kracha much longer and wishes Johnny could go back to work.

Johnny does not like school. In early April, Pauline reports that he got into a fight in the schoolyard. He has also stopped attending whole classes, instead preferring to linger in study hall. Over Easter, he searches for a job but is too young to work. He finds a lawyer in Homestead who, in exchange for two dollars and Mary’s signature, is willing to provide an affidavit claiming Johnny is sixteen and thus free to work full time. Mary, however, is unable to swear on the lawyer’s bible to forge Johnny’s age, claiming it would have been “too big a sin.”

Johnny vows to obtain working papers by another means, so he visits the home of the school principal’s secretary and convinces her that his birth certificate is lost and that a trust fund is waiting for him in the bank. The secretary types him a paper listing his birthdate of 1903; he then enlists the help of a schoolmate who uses a typewriter to change the date to 1902. Johnny’s scheming pays off the next day, when he secures a job as an apprentice armature winder in the North Braddock steel mill. Though reluctant to move and lose Kracha’s boarding fee, Mary also wants to get rid of Kracha. They move back to Braddock to a three-room dwelling, near Alice.