“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