“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