Читать книгу Through a Glass, Darkly - Charlotte Miller - Страница 10

“It’ll kill him,” Deborah Sanders said as she pounded the wash that lay on the battling block, using the heavy stick she held in both hands. “He ain’t a man for workin’ indoors—it’ll kill him, sure as I’m standin’ here.” She pounded the wash even harder, staring across the narrow distance of ground beside her sharecropped home at the girl who was now wife to her grandson. Elise stood nearby, up to her elbows in steaming water, scrubbing clothes up-and-down over the rub board in front of her. The girl did not say a word as she stood in the cold air, a slight mist of steam rising from the washtub before her, and that made Deborah only angrier, even as she prayed again, for the innumerable time, for the patience to deal with the girl.

Janson had been back in Eason County for a little over a month now, having brought this one back with him after almost a year’s absence from his family and home—Lord, but Deborah had been surprised to see the sort of girl Janson had taken to wife, with her bobbed-off hair and her short skirts, and—heaven help them both—she had already been with child when Janson married her. Deborah still did not know what to make of this Elise Whitley, except that she was a spoiled child who had never done a day’s work in all her life. Deborah had no idea what sort of marriage this was going to be, since the girl had never cooked or cleaned or sewed or made a bed even once in her life for all anyone could tell of her. She had burned so many pans of biscuits and cornbread over the past month that Deborah had worried she would set the house ablaze over their heads if not kept away from the stove—Elise was never going to be able to keep house on her own, Deborah was certain of that, if Janson kept to this fool’s plan he had announced to them only this morning. She had known something was coming, had felt it, over the past weeks as Janson had gone about the work that Tom and Wayne had found for him to do about the place—he had only been waiting, finishing up chores he knew would be easier for a younger man to do, even though she realized now that he had known all along that it had many times been make-work that had been given him.

She stared now at this girl through the haze of woodsmoke that came from beneath the black pot of boiling clothes nearby, setting her lips for a moment, then snapping: “You’re gonna rub a hole in that shirt. If it ain’t clean enough already, put it back int’ th’ pot t’ boil some more.”

The girl stopped rubbing the shirt, dunked it back into the wash tub, and reached in for another piece of laundry, coming up with what looked to be the same shirt again, which she then set about scrubbing vigorously on the board. Deborah sighed, exasperated, and reached to sling the wash she had been beating into the girl’s tub as well, surprised when Elise only paused for a moment, then went back to rubbing the shirt without saying a word. Heaven help me, Deborah prayed silently, asking God to make her not dislike the girl so much, even as she knew that her own feelings stood in the way of any intercession from the Almighty, for she could find very little even likeable within the girl. Henry and Nell would have been surprised to have seen this little piece of baggage their son had wed, even more surprised to have seen what she had brought him to—Janson working in a cotton mill, Janson working in town, for the very people who had—

Lord, give me strength—first to find out the girl was already with child, then her absolute incompetence at anything wife-like, then, to seal forever what would probably be Deborah’s unending dislike of her, the girl had burst into tears when Deborah had told her she would be the one to midwife her child at its birth. Elise had thrown herself on her bed and cried until Janson had promised her a doctor to bring the baby—a doctor, when money was so precious; a doctor, when Deborah had helped bring into the world more babies than anyone else in this county, when she had brought Janson himself into the world, and now she was not good enough for—

Deborah slung a new handful of wash onto the battling block and began to beat it even harder than necessary with the stick, considering the girl’s figure, too flat-chested and still too skinny, even though she was already beginning to show with child. She was a pretty little thing, Deborah had to grant her that much, and she could see how Janson might have been attracted to her, with her reddish-gold hair and blue eyes, but Deborah would never have thought it possible that he would have had his head turned to such a degree by this sort of girl, so modern, not at all the sort of girl he had been raised to marry. She had even allowed herself the worry that the child the girl carried might not be Janson’s—but she had voiced that concern to no one but Tom, and then only in the privacy of their bed in the night. Tom had told her to hush her mouth, that Elise seemed a good girl, and that Janson loved her dearly. Tom believed the girl loved Janson as well—men could be such gullible fools about some things, Deborah told herself. Such gullible fools.

She heard the front door of the house open and close, and a man’s footsteps on the porch, and then descending the steps toward the yard. A moment later Janson walked around the edge of the house, coming toward them where they worked in the side yard. He was dressed neatly in his best dungarees and a work shirt that was neatly pressed, though worn and frayed both at the cuffs and neck. His shoes were knotted together at the strings and slung over one shoulder, and his worn coat was in his hands as he walked to where his wife stood working at the washtub.

Elise had paused in her work and was staring at him, a look on her face that Deborah had not seen there before. Janson stopped before her and dropped his shoes to the ground, then took his coat and wrapped it about her shoulders. “You ought not be out here workin’,” he said quietly, but still she did not say anything. He turned to Deborah instead. “Gran’ma, she ought not be out here in the cold with her sleeves rolled to her elbows an’ her hands in that water. With th’ baby an’ all, she ought t’ be inside.”

Deborah looked at the girl and actually felt a twinge of guilt, realizing she had been working her so hard simply due to her own anger. She herself had worked harder than this throughout each of her own pregnancies, but this girl was not accustomed to such work, to any work at all, and Deborah had known that.

“I’m all right,” Elise said at last, drying her hands on the too-big apron Deborah had given her to wear, and then reaching back to take Janson’s coat from her shoulders and hold it up for him to slip it on. Janson’s hands closed over hers instead as she held the coat for him, and he looked down at her for a moment.

“I’ll be back soon as I can,” he said. “Don’t be worried if it’s late.”

“I won’t be. I just hope someone will stop to give you a ride into town, so you don’t have to walk so far.”

“Somebody probably will. If not, I’ll walk it; I’ve done it before.”

She nodded, and after a moment he drew her closer, holding her against him as his mouth came to hers. Deborah cleared her throat self-consciously, and, after a moment they separated, Janson finally moving to allow her to help him with his coat, and then turning back to look at her again.

“You go in an’ rest in a little while, you hear me?” he told her, and she nodded. He glanced at his grandmother for a moment, but did not say anything more, then he turned to look about the yard, toward the sharecropped house one more time, toward the fields where the dry cotton plants had recently been turned under, his eyes moving over the red land in a way that Deborah had so often seen before. For a moment he looked torn. There was a longing in him that she could almost feel—and then it was gone.

He straightened his back and turned his eyes toward his wife again, a brief smile touching his lips as he looked at her one last time before taking up his shoes and starting toward the road that would take him into town and away from the only kind of life he had known throughout his twenty years. Deborah watched him go, seeing him turn back to wave toward them before the rise of the land could cut off sight of the house behind him. She saw the girl wave in return, but Deborah did not. She could only turn back to her work, thinking of the years her son Henry had spent in that cotton mill, and of how often she had heard him swear that his son would have a better life.

Walter Eason sat in his office at the mill that morning, listening to the words of his son, Walt, but his eyes never left the hands folded neatly atop the massive oak desk, his own hands—his knuckles were large, his fingers long and tapering. Dark veins stood out along the backs of both hands; his nails were neatly groomed. Here and there were signs of his seventy-plus years, but the aging did not bother him. His hands were steadier still than many a younger man’s; they still held strength and assurance, as well as the wisdom he hoped that his years had brought him. They were hands that held influence far beyond this mill or Eason County, or even Alabama itself, hands that he was proud of, as he was proud of anything that was his own.

Walter sat looking at his hands as his son, sitting at the far side of the desk in a leather-covered armchair, delivered news that Walter did not want to hear. He listened, until long after the younger man had finished talking, but still did not say a word. He heard the shifting of his son’s abundant weight in the other chair, the creak of the upholstery, the clearing of a throat, a waiting and then silence, then he lifted his gray eyes and considered the man opposite him.

His only grandson, Walt’s only son and Walter’s hope for the future of his family and of his county, was causing difficulties again—but Buddy had been causing difficulties almost from his birth. Only the family name had kept him out of trouble with the law on several occasions in his eighteen years, but even the Eason name could not go on protecting him forever. He had to grow up someday if he were ever to assume the responsibility that would one day come to him.

After a long moment, Walter spoke. “Will the other boy recover?”

“Dr. Thrasher said that he would, though Buddy would have killed him if someone hadn’t pulled him off of the boy first.”

Walter nodded his head, considering. “Over a girl, you say—one of Buddy’s girlfriends?”

“No, the other boy’s—Buddy was, well—”

“And the boy’s parents?” Walter asked. He knew very well what his grandson was like; he did not have to be told, and he wanted none of the sordid details.

“The boy’s father is keeping his mouth shut.”

“Donner’s a good worker,” Walter said, nodding. It was his highest praise.

“But, Donner’s wife—” He did not continue, and did not have to. Walter expected nothing less than complete loyalty out of a millhand, no matter the circumstances.

“When the shift’s over, give Donner and his wife both their notice. I want them out of their mill house by day-end tomorrow—and make sure his wife keeps her mouth shut.”

The last words were said with a feeling that Walter showed only on such occasions. He could not allow such talk in the mill or the village. Complaint bred nothing but discontent—the more people talked, the unhappier they were; the unhappier they were, the more they wanted, and there could be nothing more a mill villager could want than what Walter Eason provided for them. They were poor; they worked long hours in the mill, and lived out their lives in mill houses he owned. They married other mill villagers, and had children just like themselves, too ill-equipped to make more of themselves than what they came into life with, for it was not within Walter to believe that anyone would be poor in the first place if he had any drive or ambition within him. All they could do was complain and cause trouble if they were given the chance, gaining for themselves freedoms they were never equipped to handle. They should be content in their neat homes along their clean streets, content with their steady wages, and the food on their tables, content that their children would come into the mill just as they had—he guaranteed them work; he guaranteed them shelter; he guaranteed them existence. What more could any of them need?

A discreet tap came at the door, and Walter looked up to see the secretary enter. “Yes, Grace?” Walt asked, an annoyance evident in his voice that brought his father’s eyes to him. Walter had stressed to both his sons never to show emotion, anger or annoyance, before any other human being. To do so only made one appear weak, and Walter Eason would have no member of his family appear weak before anyone.

“I didn’t mean to bother you, Mr. Eason, but there’s a young man here, and I knew there was an opening in the card room—”

“Well, send him on to the overseer, and don’t bother me with hiring. What do you think I pay you for?”

Walter gritted his teeth, wanting in that moment to reach across the wide expanse of the desktop and grab his son by the shirt front. When he had reached the age of sixty-five, he had given Walt a form of authority over the cotton mill, but, in the more than five years since, he had not been able to bring himself to divest complete responsibility for the enterprise, still maintaining his office in the mill just as he always had. It was times such as this when Walter could see the wisdom in not having turned the complete control of the mill over to his son. Walt lacked the temperament to manage a business as vast and involved as the cotton mill, village, and the related enterprises.

“But, the young man, he asked to see you, Mr. Walter, personally, and I thought you would want to see him—it’s Henry Sanders’s boy, Janson.”

Walter brought his eyes back to Grace quickly. “Janson Sanders is here, looking for work?”

“Yes, sir.” There was relief evident on the woman’s face that it had been Walter who had addressed her this time.

“We had enough trouble out of that boy’s father,” Walt began. “We don’t need the son now bringing the roof down on our heads. Tell him—”

“Send him in,” Walter said, and the woman moved immediately to obey his words, even as Walt, with his paper title, blustered in opposition.

“You know what trouble Henry Sanders was, selling his cotton out of the county, thinking he could do whatever he damned well pleased, when every other farmer in this county stayed in line and sold their crop here. He was so damn proud, and so damn stubborn, that if he hadn’t died when he did he might have started others following him—and that boy of his was even worse. I tell you, I won’t have him in this—”

Walter stared him into silence, seeing the anger in his son’s face at having his orders countermanded. It had been a long time since Walter had struck his son, but at that moment he wanted to—he wanted to thrash him as he had done so many times when he had been a small boy showing his bluster in disrespect.

The door opened again and the secretary entered, followed by Janson Sanders. Walter turned his attention from the angry man who sat across the desk from him, to the angry one who stood now near the doorway. The boy looked older, much older, in fact, than the passage of a year should have allowed him, and, for having all the coloring and features of his dark, Cherokee mother, he reminded Walter in that moment of no one so much as the tall, reddish-brown-haired man who had made such a problem of himself those years before. Henry Sanders had concerned him as few other men ever had. There had been something in the man that could not be controlled, something that could not be broken—and that something showed in the eyes of the young man who stood before Walter now.

Janson Sanders held his head high. He looked at Walter, at Walt, then back to the older man, meeting his gaze with a pride in his eyes that showed a sense of self even beyond what had been in Henry Sanders. The boy nodded his head and addressed Walter directly, the green eyes, so odd in the dark face, never leaving his own.

“You told me once there was a place in th’ mill for me if I wanted it.” The boy met his gaze levelly, that indomitable pride in his eyes, as if demanding respect by his very bearing as few men ever could.

Walter looked at him, at the straight, black hair, the high cheekbones, the odd green eyes, at the worn coat and dungarees, and at the scuffed work shoes, remembering that day, more than a year before, when he had made the offer. He had gone to the Sanders farm after he had received word at last that the land was being foreclosed on. He had gone to offer the boy a job, and a decent house in the village. The boy had lost both his parents, and now he had lost his home as well; Walter had assumed that he was beaten, finished in life even as Henry Sanders had never been finished even in death—but the boy had ordered him from his land, staring at him with that same hatred that sat in his eyes even now. It took a great deal of character, or stupidity, for the boy to be able to come to him today in acceptance of that same offer, and Walter wondered as he stared at him what it had taken in the past year to bring the boy to this.

“As I recall, you told me to get the hell off your land,” Walter said, watching Janson closely.

“I’ve got a wife now, an’ a baby on th’ way. I’ve got t’ have steady work, an’ a decent place for her t’ live.” His gaze never wavered.

“A baby, eh?” All the county needed now was another generation of these peculiar men. He considered Janson for a long moment, remarking to himself again how like the father this son was. There had been something within Henry Sanders that Walter had grudgingly respected, just as there had also been something within the man that Walter had feared, as he had feared few things in his life. Henry Sanders had not been content to be who and what he was, just as this boy before Walter now was not content. They both held a desire to have something that was all their own, not to be beholden to anyone or anything for their livelihoods or their dreams—and Henry Sanders’s dreams had at last cost him his life, as well as his land. Walter knew this boy held him responsible for his father’s death, as well as for the foreclosure that had taken his farm; the boy had made no secret of his feelings before he left the county a year before.

And now he was back, with a wife, and a child on the way, having reached a moment in his life that the boy would never have thought to see himself reach, and, as Walter stared at him, he could almost feel responsible—

“Go see the overseer of the card room,” Walter told him, never once letting his gaze leave the green eyes. “Tell him you’re on the night shift, and go see the house boss for your house assignment; the rent will be held from your wages.”

Janson Sanders stared at him without speaking, and Walter returned the stare, not moving his eyes toward his son even as he heard Walt mutter angrily just beneath the level of his hearing. After a time, Janson nodded his head just once and left. Walter watched him go, not surprised in the least when the boy did not say thank you.

Less than an hour later, Janson left the white-painted office building that sat before the mill and made his way, following directions from a nervous little man in a tiny office, toward the place that would be home to him, and to Elise, for what could be many years to come. Row upon row of neat, white-painted frame houses sat on either side of the red dirt streets that led away from the mill. The houses all looked the same, with their small, neat yards and tiny, cleared garden patches, their stacks of cordwood against side walls, their chimneys with smoke drifting out, their tin roofs and gray porches—all the same. Most he passed were of six rooms, divided down the middle, he knew, for two families, an outside water faucet in the yard between every other structure. Occasionally he passed a four-room structure, one designed for the fixers on each shift, or a three-room shotgun house where no larger home would fit.

He stared at the houses, the structured sameness of the place seeming odd to his eyes more accustomed to the never-ending change of the countryside. God might not have made any two things alike, but Walter Eason had tried to, with these identical houses along these identical rows throughout the village. But, even here, touches of individuality did show through. Chairs and rockers sat on porches; flower beds and garden patches, neatly cleared for winter, were marked off in various yards; trees and plants grew and were tended. A dog was tied before one house, and a cat slept on the porch of another. Milk cows stared back at him from beneath houses that sat supported high off the hilly ground on one side by stone pillars; gaudy flowered curtains hung in one window, sedate lace ones in another.

Janson nodded to the few people he passed on the street, not recognizing a single face. He felt out of place in this village, and he found himself wondering how Elise would be able to survive here—but this was the best he could do. At least it would be a roof of their own, a home that he could provide. Something he could do. Part of him still resisted the knowledge that he would be working for the Easons, that he would be bringing Elise and their child under the Easons’ control—but he had no choice. The events of the past year had left him with little choice in anything.

He could hear a train passing along the edge of the village on tracks that ran beside the mill, tracks that effectively cut the town in half. On the other side of those tracks lay the business district, the big churches and nice homes, the town schools and Main Street. On this side lay the mill and the mill village, the row upon row of mill houses the Easons owned, the small stores the Easons rented to proprietors, and the small Methodist and Baptist churches the mill villagers attended. On this side was the cotton warehouse that sat just behind the mill and alongside the railroad tracks, the village school for the children of the mill workers, the small power plant that supplied electricity to the mill and mill office, and the water plant and tower that supplied the faucets throughout the village—all owned by the Easons. The Eason family owned much of the businesses and property on the other side of those tracks as well, owned, or at least controlled, much of the county, but on this side, in the village, they owned all, down to the last thought, the last feeling, the last impulse they could lay hands on.

The noise of the mill followed him through the streets of the village, as did the lint that floated in the air. This was an existence so far from any he had ever thought to have, and so different from the one he had hoped to bring Elise to, that he was surprised at his own feelings as he finally reached his destination and stared up at the house that was his assignment. It was a house like any other on this street, divided down the middle to be shared by two families. It sat on a rise, sandwiched between two houses that looked very much the same, high off the ground on stone pillars in the front, flush with the level of the yard in the back. Its gray porch, smoke-blackened chimneys, tin roof, and twin front doors much the same as the others, its yard just as neatly tended—but, as he stared up at it, he felt a degree of satisfaction that he had not felt since before the money he had worked for and had saved to buy back his land was stolen. This half of a house would be something he could do, a home that he could give to Elise, could give to his child, and to other children who would one day come to them.

He looked at the place, memorizing every detail, wanting to take it in memory back to his grandparents’ home so that he could tell Elise about it—he was going to give her a home; he was doing his job, the job of a man, of a husband and father. He knelt at the side of the road and took his shoes off, smiling at a little boy of about five who played, bundled in a coat much too big for him, in a yard nearby. In a few years his son or daughter would be playing here. Elise would make friends, and he would work hard—life would not be so bad, he told himself. He had the woman he wanted. He would be a father in a few months time. He had a dream to work for. The rest he would take care of himself with his own sweat and work, just as his own father had. Sweat and work were two things he did not fear.

He knotted his shoestrings together and stood, slinging his shoes over one shoulder as he looked up at the house once again. It might be a long walk before someone offered him a ride back toward his grandparents’ place, and it would be even more difficult to get back into town late that afternoon in time for the night shift in the mill, but perhaps he could borrow his Gran’pa’s wagon. He was hungry, and he wanted to see Elise, to touch and love her and tell her about the house, and maybe have her lie in his arms while he tried to get some rest before returning for his first shift in the mill. He would have to get at least a few hours sleep this afternoon, or he would be dead on his feet by the morning when his shift ended—but he would not worry about that just now.

He stared at the house—two weeks, he told himself. Two weeks, and he and Elise would move here. Two weeks, and this would be their home. The man who lived in half of this house now, the half that would be their home, had held the job that Janson would begin on learner’s wages tonight. In two weeks he would be leaving this home he had held for ten years, just as he had left the job he had held for even longer. He had been fired—not for dishonesty or unsatisfactory work, the mill’s nervous house boss had told Janson, not for a sharp tongue or trouble-making on the job, but because his children had started a fight with other children on the way home from the village school one day. Walter Eason tolerated misconduct from the children and families of his millhands no better than he did from the millhands themselves.

What a pretty hell I’ve bought for us, Janson thought, staring up at the house, realizing that no matter how satisfied he felt to be doing something on his own for his wife and for the family they were making, he had very likely gained that satisfaction by selling their souls to the devil in exchange.

The first night Janson worked in the mill, he saw a man mangled in the machinery.

It had been a careless movement, a moment’s inattention, and the man’s arm was jerked into the cards while he was stripping cotton dust out of a machine. From that moment, the sight of that mangled arm would not leave Janson, giving him a healthy aversion for machines that could cost him an arm, or even his life. There was too much talk in the mill of lost arms and broken bones, of women who had their hair ripped out by machinery in the spinning room, or of a card hand killed when he had gotten caught in the belt that ran from the machinery to the drive shaft near the ceiling. Janson could not afford to take chances; Elise was depending on him. He knew he was risking enough to be working for the Easons in the first place, for he well knew what they could be capable of doing to a man in Eason County—and, if he had not known, Walt Eason had given him a clear reminder on his first shift in the mill, coming into the card room only minutes after the bleeding man had been taken out, to stand staring at Janson for an interminable time, his arms crossed before his chest. The man had not spoken, but his eyes had never once left Janson—it had been a clear warning, a warning that Janson had understood. He was being watched, and it would take only one mistake to cost him home, shelter, livelihood, and much more in Eason County.

To Janson, the first weeks working in the mill seemed to stretch into forever. He saw Elise only for the short while between the long rides to and from town and an exhausted sleep, with what seemed almost too little time in the afternoons when he finally woke to dress, eat, and begin the long ride back to town to start the next shift. He found as the days passed that he hated the mill more than he had thought possible, but the time away from Elise was even worse. The twelve-hour shifts five days a week left little time for anything except eating, sleep, and the never-ending rides in the creaky wagon to and from work, rides ending in the walk across town from the wagon lot on Main Street to the mill village, since the town would no longer allow mules, horses, and wagons free roam of the village any more than they would the town area on the other side of the railroad tracks. Janson stole whatever time he could to be with Elise, even though his body was exhausted from both work and the wagon rides, his mind numb from the machinery and noise he had endured through the night, and his lungs choked on the cotton dust he had breathed in the card room. He told himself that things would be better once they were living in the village, even though he hated the thought of bringing Elise to live in this place. At least they would be alone, in half a house that would be their own, until the baby came. At least there would be no more endless hours behind the plodding mules to get to his shift—things would be better then.

On the last night of the two weeks, Janson sat on an overturned dye-can on the loading dock just outside the large doors that led into the opening room of the mill. He had chosen this place to take his brief, middle-of-the-night break to eat once he had his job caught up enough to take the time. The air was almost unbearably cold, chilling him through his worn coat and the legs of his overalls as he sat eating, but he would not go back inside until he had to. The open sky was far preferable over the noise and cotton dust within the confines of the card room, or even the stuffy atmosphere of the lunch room where he knew he could have gone to eat.

The sausage sandwich he ate, on thick slices of home-baked bread, was long ago cold, but he was so hungry that it did not matter. It was good to be hungry, good to be working, sweating and earning a wage, even if it was over machinery and not behind a plow or dragging a pick sack. He missed the sky, the sun and earth as he worked. It seemed so odd to look up during his shift to see the dark ceiling overhead, beyond the glaring electric lights that lighted the card room, so odd to have the noise of the machinery in his ears, a noise that stayed in his head even when he was far away from this place.

Janson bit into the cold, fried apple pie that was the last of his meal, listening to the sound of a train whistle as boxcars and a caboose moved down the nearby tracks and at last left his sight, then his eyes moved back to the darkness of the village. There was no light showing anywhere that he could see, except for the mill itself. A light burning at some unusual hour would bring a neighbor or even someone from the mill to investigate, to make certain there was no sickness or trouble, and, as Janson had already learned, most of the people who lived on these peaceful streets preferred not to bring attention to themselves.

By the next night Elise would be sleeping in one of these dark houses. It would be good to have her so close, to know he would be able to return to her once the shift was over, without the long wagon ride to get through, to be able to touch and love her and glory in the daily changes in her body that the baby was causing, without the worry that Gran’ma or Gran’pa or someone else would hear them. There might be neighbors on the other side of the house, but it would be more privacy than they had known under his grandparents’ roof.

Janson closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall, thinking of having Elise all to himself at last, thinking of her hair, and the feel of her skin, the newly gentle rounding of her belly against him, and the knowledge that his child was inside of her. He could see her so clearly in his mind, more lovely now than when he had first met her—less than a year ago, and both of their lives changed so completely since then. It still amazed him that she was his wife, as he guessed it would amaze him to the day he died.

There was a sound from the doorway, and he opened his eyes and turned in time to see the dark form of a man starting back into the mill. For one brief moment Janson saw the man’s face, and what he saw there in that instant was more anguish than he had ever thought to see in any man.

“Nathan, what’s wrong?” he asked, recognizing the man as the night janitor of the mill, Nathan Betts, whom he had seen in passing over the last two weeks.

Nathan stopped, but did not turn back. It was a long time before he spoke, and, when he did, there was a choked sound in his voice. “We—” he stopped for a moment again, his eyes set on a place somewhere in the distance as he took a deep breath before he seemed able to continue, “we buried my wife this mornin’.”

Buried—the word sat on Janson for a moment. He had no idea what to say. He rose from where he had been sitting on the dye-can and went to stand beside the older man, watching as Nathan pulled a handkerchief from the back pocket of his trousers to wipe at his wet eyes.

“What happened?” Janson asked at last.

“She had a boy, th’ boy we’d been hopin’ for after our two girls—but, after, th’ bleedin’ wouldn’t stop. It hadn’t been like that before, with th’ girls, an’ th’ granny woman, no matter what she did, she couldn’t make it stop. She sent me for th’ doctor, but it was too late—”

Tears started down his cheeks again, tears he did not try to wipe away, as he looked at a memory that Janson knew he could not help but to unfold.

“She bled to death before we could get back. Th’ granny woman had her covered over with th’ sheet.” His words trailed off as he stood in silence and cried, the tears rolling from his cheeks now and dripping onto hands that Janson could see were shaking.

“You don’t need t’ be here t’night, Nathan—”

But the older man shook his head, anger mixing in his voice with the grief. “I asked Mr. Walt for a few more days, t’ give me time t’ find somebody t’ keep my girls an’ th’ baby while I’m workin’, time t’ just take care ’a things, an’ t’ give th’ girls time t’ realize their mama’s with Jesus now and that she ain’t comin’ back—they’re both s’ little, they can’t understand—”

“You need time, too. You lost your wife—”

Nathan wiped at his eyes again with the handkerchief, and then a look of forced and bitter determination came over his face as he folded the square of material and shoved it back into his pocket. “Mr. Walt told me that he’d done give me two days, that she was buried now, an’ that there wasn’t nothin’ I could do t’ bring her back. He told me I had a job t’ do, children t’ support, an’ that I’d better start thinkin’ about them an’ not about me—as if even once since th’ day th’ first was born I ever thought of me over them, as if even once—” The bitterness seemed to fill him for a moment to the point there was no room for anything else. “I can’t afford t’ lose my job, even if it means leavin’ my children with th’ neighbor woman every night, an’ her s’ old she can’t hardly walk, hearin’ my youngest girl screamin’ as I leave because she’s afraid I ain’t gonna be able t’ come back since her mama can’t ever again—” Tears started from the edges of his eyes again, but he did not seem to notice. “Sometimes you got t’ find strength in you t’ do things you never thought you’d have t’ do.”

Janson stared at him. “If there’s anythin’ me or my wife can do t’ help, you let me know.”

Nathan brought his eyes to him and looked at him for a moment. “You really mean that, don’t you?” he asked. “Most white men wouldn’t make a offer like that t’ a colored man, no matter what’s happened in his family.”

“My pa was white an’ my ma Cherokee,” Janson said. “We’re all one color or another—besides, it’s what’s inside a man that makes him what he is.”

Nathan nodded. After a time he turned and started back into the mill. Janson watched him go, realizing in that moment that he had felt a degree of kinship with this man that he had felt toward few other people—Nathan Betts was here in the mill tonight not for himself, but for the sake of the family he had made with the wife he had buried today. He was here, not for himself, but for those he was responsible for. That was something Janson could respect far beyond the power or money of someone like Walt or Walter Eason.

He looked out over the darkened mill village one last time, then turned and went back into the mill, knowing that work waited for him.

Within days of moving into the mill village, Elise hated the sight of the huge, red-brick mill with its white-painted office out front and its tall chimneys billowing smoke throughout the village. She hated the flying lint that floated in the air for streets away, that stuck to her hair and clothing. But most of all she hated the sound of the machinery. No matter where she went, it was always there, keeping her awake at night as she lay alone in her bed, grating at her nerves in the daytime as Janson slept alone in the front room of their house, following her from morning to night and to morning again.

She longed for quiet and peace during those first weeks in the village, longed for someone to talk to, for books to read, for something to occupy her time as the minutes of each day dragged by. She found herself wishing for her mother, even for the constant harping of Janson’s grandmother—someone, anyone, to help her fill the hours of her days.

Most of all, she wanted Janson, but he seemed more distant from her than at any time since she had known him. He seemed driven to work, driven to earn, to prove something to her that did not need proving, accepting the shortened Saturday shift any time it was offered to him, sleeping through the days, waking only to hold her for a while, eat, dress, and return to that god-awful place that dominated life in the village—he hated the mill and the village even more than she did, and she knew it, though he never said a word. She knew he was working in a place he had never thought he would find himself because of her, and because of the baby.

He returned from his shift in the card room each morning, tired and hungry, covered with lint and cotton dust, and weary to his soul. He would eat whatever she had prepared for him, then fall into an exhausted sleep, no matter the hour. For the first week she tried to rearrange her sleeping so that she could lie beside him, but found that she could not sleep, no matter how tired she could make herself, so long as it was light outside. The only time she lay with him was for loving, and to watch him sleep afterward, before rising to try to find something she could do.

She tended their three rooms, doing housework for the first time in her life, housework she quickly decided she hated, in a house filled with mismatched furniture that had once belonged to his parents or that was borrowed from his relatives or given to them outright. She was determined to prove to herself, and to Janson, and to his grandmother as well, that she could be a good wife—the old woman had told her she was too spoiled to ever keep a decent house, which had made her all the more determined, and, it seemed, all the more doomed to failure. Each pan of burned biscuits now reduced her to tears; each meal that Janson did not compliment seemed inedible; each cobweb in a corner or hole in a sock seemed a slap in the face, until she sometimes thought she swung from crying jags to bouts of homesickness with nothing in between.

She could hear the neighbors’ voices in the other half of the house during the days, the many Breedloves as they came and went, hearing the children’s voices, even the parents arguing. She could smell their meals cooking, and hear their lives going on right here under the same roof as hers, and that made her feel all the worse. She could feel her body changing, the baby growing inside of her, and it had her mind in a turmoil. She was no longer the girl she had been, yet she was not sure who she was supposed to be. Life in the village was so different—and it was boring, so unendingly boring.

She wrote long letters to her mother and to her brother, Stan, and received long letters in return. Her mother’s writings were falsely cheerful, prattling on about people she knew, gossiping about neighbors, and showing a genuine excitement over the grandchild that Martha Whitley had to know she would likely never see. Stan’s letters were much more honest, and his honesty tore right through Elise’s heart—her name could no longer be spoken in her father’s house. Her room had been dismantled, her things either burned or given away to the colored families who lived at the edge of town. The people she had grown up with had been told that her father had thrown her out, that she was an ungrateful daughter who was at last getting what she rightly deserved. No mention was to be made of her, or of the “damned half-breed” she had married, and, when her mother at last told her father that she was pregnant, he said that he hoped that neither she nor her baby survived the birth.

She was dead to him, and he wanted every part of her dead as well, and, as Elise went through the days, she began to feel that a part of her really was dying, the part of her that had been Elise Whitley, the part that had been young and carefree and so excited just to be a young woman of the twenties. She could remember being that girl; she could remember being excited over new dresses and shades of lipstick, of wanting to be bold and daring and a bit shocking—but she wasn’t that girl anymore, and she knew she never would be again. She was Janson’s wife, and, though her entire world had changed because of him, she still wanted nothing else so much as to be his wife—she just wanted time with him, and something to do with the hours when they were apart. She just wanted to know who she was now, and to figure out her place in this new world. She had always had friends in Endicott County, people very much like herself, and she realized that she had defined who she was through those friends—but she had no friends here except for Janson himself.

She began to attend the Baptist church in the village, going alone, for Janson usually slept on Sunday mornings. She quickly became part of the choir, and was delighted when people made a fuss over her and told her how well she sang, until she realized she was valued primarily for her ability to drown out one of the other choir members, Helene Price, who sang loudly and usually quite off key, and who seemed to think that she could run the choir and the church and many of the other church members. Elise decided that she detested Helene, and it did not take long to realize that at least one other of the choir members felt much the same.

“Thinks she’s somethin’, don’t she?” she heard someone say as she was putting on her coat after choir practice on a Wednesday evening late that February. She turned to find Dorrie Keith just behind her, the heavy-set woman taking up her own coat from where it had lain across the back of a pew. Dorrie was the only person Elise had met who was outspoken enough to tell Helene Price when she was flat or in the wrong key.

Elise followed her gaze, and found Helene standing near the front of the church talking to the preacher, Reverend Satterwhite.

“Thinks she’s so high-and-mighty,” Dorrie was saying, bringing Elise’s eyes back to her. “I remember when she was just Helen, growin’ up at the edge of town. Her family was about th’ poorest I know of, ’cause my mama used t’ feed them young’ns more than their own folks ever fed them—then she married Bert Price, and him th’ boss of th’ supply room, and she was suddenly Helene, all high and mighty, but she ain’t nothin’ but Helen, no matter what she thinks of herself.”

Elise found that she liked Dorrie Keith as heartily as she detested Helene, and was surprised when she learned the two were distant cousins.

“She just about lived at our house growin’ up,” Dorrie told Elise one day, “though t’ hear her talk now you’d ’a thought we were her poor relations—tried t’ give me a old wore-out dress of hers not too long ago, as if I’d have some old rag she’d wore—”

Dorrie lived with her husband, Clarence, and their four sons only a few streets away from Elise and Janson in the mill village, and Elise began walking to church on Sunday mornings and afternoons and Wednesday evenings by way of Dorrie’s house.

It was nice to finally have a friend in the mill village, even if that friend was old enough to be Elise’s own mother, nice to have another woman to talk to about being pregnant, and about what having a baby would be like.

Elise sat in Dorrie’s kitchen late on a Thursday afternoon in March. Janson had left for his shift in the card room at the mill and would not be home until early the next morning, and Elise had been looking for company when she had walked the few streets to Dorrie’s house. Dorrie had just gotten in from the shift she worked in the spinning room, and was beginning supper for her family, but she had been uncharacteristically silent almost from the moment she had met Elise at the door. Dorrie was peeling potatoes for supper, her eyes going to the door repeatedly, until Elise at last asked her what was wrong.

“They sent for Clarence just as soon as we got in from our shift, told him t’ bring Wheeler James t’ th’ mill office,” Dorrie said, meeting Elise’s eyes from where she sat just opposite Elise at the old table then looking away again. “Men—” she said, the word coming out almost as if it were a curse. She peeled viciously at a potato, taking away chunks of white with the peelings, “they think we got nothin’ t’ say when they go t’ talk somethin’ important. Women’re there t’ birth ’em, an’ bury ’em, an’ in between we get t’ clean their bottoms an’ bandage their heads an’ put ’em t’ bed if they’ve had a drunk—they sent for Wheeler James an’ for Clarence with no mention ’a me, as if I ain’t been in th’ mill every bit as long as Clarence, as if I ain’t Wheeler James’s mama, as if I ain’t got nothin’ t’ say, or even th’ right t’ know—”

“Why would they want to see Wheeler James at the mill office?” Elise asked. Wheeler James was Dorrie’s oldest son, only a couple of months younger than Elise herself, very tall and thin, with a quiet manner that did little to show the brilliant mind that Elise had found behind his brown eyes and shy smile. He seemed to know something about almost any subject she could bring up, and could do mathematics in his head that she could never hope to do with pencil and paper and unlimited time.

“Mr. Eason offered him a night shift in th’ twister room at th’ mill, soon as school’s out this year,” Dorrie said, an odd tone in her voice.

“A night shift—for the summer?”

“No, permanent.” Dorrie’s eyes moved back toward the door, and Elise realized she was waiting for her husband and son to return from the mill office.

“But, there’s no way he can work all night and go to school the next day.”

“I know that.”

“But, he shouldn’t quit school; there’s so much he could do with his life. He—”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Dorrie asked, anger coming to her brown eyes and into her voice as she turned to look at Elise once again. “Don’t you think I know how smart he is? Don’t you think I know that he’s got in him t’ be anythin’ he wants t’ be—I’ve knowed it since he was talkin’ in complete sentences at two, and readin’ books when he was only four. I’ve watched him grow up, thinkin’ every day, dreamin’ every day, about him finishin’ school, not just the village school here, but goin’ on beyond it, maybe even college—”

“Then, why—” But Elise’s words were cut short as the door that led from the rear porch into the kitchen opened, and Clarence entered followed by Wheeler James. Clarence did not bring his eyes to his wife, but turned instead to take the battered hat from his head and hang it on a peg by the door. Wheeler James walked past him without a word, not looking at his mother or Elise. He crossed the room and went through the doorway into the middle room of their half of the house, closing the door silently behind himself. Elise watched him go, then turned her eyes back to Clarence and Dorrie, seeing a look of what seemed to be almost physical pain pass between them.

“Wheeler James comes int’ th’ mill just as soon as school’s out this year,” Clarence said, quietly.

For a moment Dorrie did not speak. She still held the small knife in her hand, the bowl of half-peeled vegetables now forgotten on the table before her. “What if he went t’ live with Aunt Min? It wouldn’t be th’ same as livin’ here, but he could finish school, an’ then maybe—”

But Clarence was shaking his pale head. “It won’t work, Dorrie. If he don’t come int’ th’ mill this summer, Mr. Eason’ll put us out ’a this house, an’ out ’a th’ mill—we got th’ other boys t’ think about. We can’t be losin’ our jobs an’ th’ roof over our heads.”

“He wouldn’t do that, not just because Wheeler James won’t come int’ th’ mill. There’s plenty ’a people willin’ t’ take a shift, grown men with families, an’ women who are needin’ th’ work. One boy can’t really matter that much—” But, even as Dorrie said the words, Elise could see she did not believe them.

Clarence was staring at his wife, a look of pity in his light-colored eyes, and Elise wondered who the pity was for: Wheeler James, who wanted nothing more than to finish school, Dorrie who was seeing her dreams for her son ripped apart before her eyes, or Clarence, who had dreamed of something better for his sons. “There’s nothin’ we can do, Dorrie. Mill houses are for mill workers, and mill workers’ children are expected t’ come int’ th’ mill in their own time—we’ve always knowed that. Mr. Eason ain’t gonna let Wheeler James go against what’s been done all these years, even if it means puttin’ us all out in th’ street.”

Or burning a cotton crop, or costing a man the land his parents had fought and died to give to him, just to keep the same kind of control over the farming community that he had over the mill village, Elise thought. Her eyes came to rest on Dorrie and on the knife Dorrie still held only an instant before Dorrie’s free hand closed over the blade.

Elise rose to her feet, seeing a flicker of physical pain pass across Dorrie’s features, and then stopped as Dorrie opened her fingers outward to drop the knife and stare at the blood spreading across her open palm. Clarence was suddenly kneeling beside her, pulling a white handkerchief from his pocket to wrap it around her hand.

“We got t’ accept it. We knowed it was comin’,” she heard him say, but Dorrie seemed not to hear him. She had instead turned her eyes to stare out the window, and Elise turned to look out as well. “There ain’t no other choices left,” she heard Clarence say at last, and Elise wondered if those few words were supposed to explain the world in which they were living.

The sky was gray and threatening rain, the air chill, with a bite to it that said winter was not yet over as Janson left the mill on a Saturday morning in mid-March. He was tired from his twelve-hour shift in the card room, his feet aching from standing on them all night, but there was satisfaction within him, as there was each Saturday morning when he left the mill. The card room received their pay envelopes at the end of each Friday night shift, and Janson had his already counted, neatly folded away in the bib pocket of the overalls he wore beneath his coat. It was one more week’s pay from which he might save even some small amount toward buying back his land one day.

He wanted nothing more now than to go home and hold Elise in his arms, and to count his pay again with her, so they could see how much they would have to use for food and for other necessities this week. With any luck, there would be at least a few coins they could put away in the fruit jar Elise had hidden in the old cupboard in the kitchen. Another week, a few more coins saved; it was a good feeling.

His stomach rumbled, reminding him that he was hungry. He could see other mill workers leaving from their shifts through the main entrance, the wide double doors set into the front of the building, doors that opened into the card room near the drawing frames, and that led to the staircase that rose to the twister room on the second floor of the mill, and the spinning room where Elise’s friend, Dorrie, worked the day shift. Janson liked to leave through the picker and opening rooms, thus reaching the outdoors much sooner than the trip through the length of the card room to the main entrance would have allowed. Besides, it prevented him from being stopped by someone to talk; when his shift was over he wanted to go home, not stand around talking.

He smiled to himself, thinking about Elise. She would be up making breakfast for him now, having been awakened by the whistle the mill blew to wake the day shift workers who would work the shortened Saturday shift. He could imagine her in the kitchen, working at the woodstove, maybe still in her nightgown. He would not have to return to the mill until Monday night, and he would probably spend the afternoon and evening of this day asleep—but this morning he would spend with his wife. Perhaps breakfast could wait, and counting his pay with her as well. Perhaps there were more important things to share with his wife this morning than food and money.

He could see mill workers slowing as they reached the sidewalk before the small white office building that sat before the mill, some deliberately crossing the street, others staying on the sidewalk, but hurrying on with heads down and eyes averted as if trying to avoid something there. As he drew nearer, he could see several young men loitering near the front of the structure. One sat on the bricked steps that led up to the office door, saying something to a woman who seemed to increase her pace, as if trying to hurry by and avoid him. Another was leaning against a tree that grew alongside the sidewalk, occasionally, and it appeared deliberately, sticking a foot out into the path of workers as they left their shifts. The third made straight for Nathan Betts the minute the night janitor came around the corner of the office building, grabbing a sack from Nathan’s hands and turning to keep it away from him as he rifled through it.

“What’re you stealing, boy?” he asked, reaching out with one hand to shove Nathan back as the older man tried to retrieve the sack. “We can’t let no nigger walk out of the mill without checking to see what he’s stealing from honest white folks first, now can we?”

“Mr. Richard, give me back my sack, now. I got t’ get home—”

“You ain’t ‘got’ to do nothing, boy, not until I say you do—now, why don’t you ask me again if you can have it, real nice this time, and don’t forget to say please—”

Janson started toward them, ready to intercede on Nathan’s behalf if necessary, but there was a quick movement from the young man leaning against the tree as he turned and stepped onto the sidewalk and directly into Janson’s path, almost running into him. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked in a stink of alcohol breath just before he shoved Janson backwards against the tree. A jolt of recognition came across the man’s face at the same moment that Janson felt the same recognition hit him—it was Buddy Eason.

He stared at the closely set gray eyes, remembering a day, two and a half years before, when he had tried to kill this younger man. He could almost smell again the oily smell of the carriage house that stood on the Easons’ property at the end of Main Street, could almost see again Buddy Eason’s sister as she sat in the open doorway of her grandfather’s Cadillac touring car, the girl yelling encouragement to her brother in a fight that had begun after Buddy had found them together. He remembered his embarrassment, and then the rage as he had realized that Lecia Mae Eason had never wanted him, but only a diversion. He could feel the heat of the struggle with Buddy Eason, and then the cold shock of the knife blade Buddy had driven through his right shoulder—he could also remember the fear in Buddy’s eyes when Janson had held the bloody knife in his own hand with the blade to Buddy’s throat at last, and the strong scent of urine as Buddy wet himself because of the fear within him. He could see in Buddy Eason’s eyes that he remembered as well.

A muscle worked in Buddy’s jaw as he stared at Janson. “What are you doing here, you red nigger,” he said, his voice low, filled with fury, his eyes never leaving Janson’s face. The muscle worked again in his jaw. “I thought you’d been run out of this county for good—”

“You thought wrong,” Janson said, returning his stare. He could see the rage building within Buddy Eason as Buddy shifted from one foot to the other, both hands tightening into fists at his sides, loosening, and then tightening again.

“You better get out of this village, boy. You got no right to be here; you get your goddamn ass back into the country where the rest of the stinking shit is—”

Janson could hear the others snicker at Buddy’s words, but he did not turn to look at them. “I got all th’ right I need; I live here.”

“Only mill workers live here, and I know Daddy would never have hired a red nigger to work in the mill.”

“He didn’t,” Janson said, seeing a momentary look of satisfaction come into Buddy’s eyes, “but your gran’pa did—”

Buddy’s expression was immediately one of a pure hatred. He took a step closer, crowding Janson even further back against the tree, and bringing his clenched fist up to hold it to within inches of Janson’s face. “You listen to me, you goddamn half-breed son-of-a-bitch, I won’t have you living in this village, or working in this mill. Do you understand me?” He stared at Janson, his breath hot and stinking in Janson’s face. “You pack up whatever shit you have and get the hell out of here, and don’t you let me see you in this town or near the mill again or I’ll cut your balls off and stuff them down your throat for you—now, get out of my sight before I beat your ass just for being here.” He stepped back, obviously expecting Janson to leave, but Janson only stared at him. “Did you hear me—get!”

His voice rose on the last word, his eyes never leaving Janson’s face.

“You goddamn—” He moved toward Janson again, grabbing him by the front of his coat and trying to drag him closer. Janson reached up to tighten a hand round Buddy’s wrist, twisting, digging his fingers into the exposed flesh at the underside until pain shot across Buddy’s features. Buddy struggled to maintain his grip, then failed, releasing him with a shove that sent Janson back against the tree again. He rubbed at his wrist, his eyes never leaving Janson’s face, his own expression a study in hatred. “You goddamn red nigger, I’ll kill you one day for that. You wait, one day I’ll blow your fucking head off.”

Janson only stared at him, then, after a moment, he turned his eyes to the young man who had Nathan Betts’s package. “Give him back his sack,” he said.

The man looked at him, then back to Buddy Eason. Buddy did not speak, or meet his eyes, but just continued to stare at Janson. After a moment, Nathan reached and took the sack, and it was released without any resistance. Janson turned his eyes back to Buddy Eason, finding nothing but hatred on the man’s face.

“You’re dead,” Buddy said quietly. “One day—but I’m gonna hurt you first. I’m gonna make you beg to die. I’ll teach you what hell is before I send you there.”

Janson stepped back up onto the sidewalk, intending to walk around him, but Buddy stepped out of his way.

“You’re dead—remember that, you red nigger,” Buddy said as Janson walked past. “You’re dead.”