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