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