God's Little Acre (9 page)

All day long there was a quiet stillness about the ivy-walled mill. The machinery did not hum so loudly when the girls operated it. The men made the mill hum with noise when they worked there. But when evening came, the doors were flung open and the girls ran out screaming in laughter. When they reached the street, they ran back to the ivy-covered walls and pressed their bodies against it and touched it with their lips. The men who had been standing idly before it all day long came and dragged them home and beat them unmercifully for their infidelity.

Will woke up with a start to see Pluto and Rosamond and Darling Jill. He had been away, and when he returned, he was surprised to see them there. He rubbed his eyes and wondered if he had been asleep. He knew he had not been, though, because his dish was empty. It lay in his hands heavy and hard.

“Christ,” he murmured.

He remembered the time when the mill down below was running night and day. The men who worked in the mill looked tired and worn, but the girls were in love with the looms and the spindles and the flying lint. The wide-eyed girls on the inside of the ivy-walled mill looked like potted plants in bloom.

Up and down the Valley lay the company towns and the ivy-walled cotton mills and the firm-bodied girls with eyes like morning-glories and the men stood on the hot streets looking at each other while they spat their lungs into the deep yellow dust of Carolina. He knew he could never get away from the blue-lighted mills at night and the bloody-lipped men on the streets and the unrest of the company towns. Nothing could drag him away from there now. He might go away and stay a while, but he would be restless and unhappy until he could return. He had to stay there and help his friends find some means of living. The mill streets could not exist without him; he had to stay and walk on them and watch the sun set on the mill at night and rise on it in the morning. In the mill streets of the Valley towns the breasts of girls were firm and erect. The cloth they wove under the blue lights clothed their bodies, but beneath the covering the motions of erect breasts were like the quick movements of hands in unrest. In the Valley towns beauty was begging, and the hunger of strong men was like the whimpering of beaten women.

“Jesus Christ,” he murmured under his breath.

He looked up to find Darling Jill filling his empty dish with peach-flecked ice cream. Before she could turn and go away, Will grabbed her arm and pulled her to him. He kissed her cheek several times, squeezing her hand tightly.

“For God’s sake don’t ever come over here and work in a mill,” he begged. “You wouldn’t do that, would you, Darling Jill?”

She started to laugh, but when she saw his face, she became anxious.

“What’s the matter, Will? Are you sick?”

“Oh, nothing is the matter,” he said, “but for God’s sake don’t ever go to work in a cotton mill.”

Rosamond laid her hand on his and urged him to eat the cream before it melted.

He closed his eyes and saw the yellow company houses stretched endlessly through Scottsville. In the rear of the houses he saw tight-lipped women sitting at kitchen windows with their backs to the cold cook-stoves. In the streets in front of the houses he saw the bloody-lipped men spitting their lungs into the yellow dust. As far as he could see, there were rows of ivy-walled mills beside broad cool Horse Creek, and in them the girls sang, drowning out the sound of moving machinery. The spinning mills and the fabric mills and the bleacheries were endless, and the eager girls with erect breasts and eyes like morning-glories ran in and out endlessly.

“Pluto is going to take us over to Georgia,” Rosamond said softly. “You’ll have a good rest over there at home, Will. You’ll feel lots better when we come back.”

He was glad then that they were going to Ty Ty’s for a while, but he hated to go away and leave the others there to sit and wait and stand out against the mill. When he got back, he would feel much better, though; perhaps they could then break open the steel-barred doors of the mill and turn on the power. He would like to come back to the Valley and stand in the mill and hear the hum of machinery, even if there was to be no cloth woven any time soon.

“All right,” he said. “When do we start, Pluto?”

“I’m ready now,” Pluto said. “I’d like to get back in time to count some votes before supper.”

Rosamond and Darling Jill went into the house to dress. Will and Pluto sat looking down at the green water below. It looked cool, and it did make the breeze feel cooler after passing over it. But the temperature was even under the cloudless sky. The grass and weeds wilted in the sun, and the dust that blew down from the cultivated uplands settled on the ground and on the buildings like powdered paint.

Will went inside to take off the khaki pants and put on his own clothes.

They were ready to start and had locked the house when Will saw someone coming up the street.

“Where you going, Will?” the man asked, stopping and looking at them and at Pluto’s car.

“Just over to Georgia for a day or two, Harry.”

Will felt like a traitor, running off like that. He waited for Rosamond to go down the walk first.

“Are you sure you’re not leaving for good, Will?” the man asked suspiciously.

“I’ll be back in town in a few days, Harry. And when I get back, you’ll know it.”

“All right, but don’t forget to come back. If everybody leaves, pretty soon the company is going to rush a crew of operators in here and start up without us. We’ve all got to stay here and hold out. If the mill ever once got started without us, we wouldn’t have a chance in the world. You know that, Will.”

Will went down the walk and got in front of Rosamond. He walked down the street with the other man, talking to him in a low voice. They stopped several yards away and began arguing. Will would talk a little while, tapping the other man on the chest with his forefinger; the other man would nod his head and glance down at the ivy-walled mill below. They turned and walked a little further, both talking at the same time. When they stopped again, the other man began talking to Will, tapping him on the chest with his forefinger. Will nodded his head, shook it violently, nodded again.

“We can’t let anybody go in there and wreck the machinery,” Will said. “Nobody wants to see that done.”

“That’s just what I’ve been trying to tell you, Will. What we want to do is to go in there and turn the power on. When the company comes and sees what’s happening, they’ll either try to drive us out, or else get down to business.”

“Now listen, Harry,” Will said, “when that power is turned on, nobody on God’s earth is going to shut it off. It’s going to stay turned on. If they try to turn it off, then we’ll—well, God damn it, Harry, the power is going to stay turned on.”

“I’ve always been in favor of turning it on and never shutting it off. That’s what I’ve tried to tell the local, but what can you tell that son-of-a-bitch A.F.L.? Nothing! They’re drawing pay to keep us from working. When we start to work, the money will stop coming in here to pay them. Well, God damn it, Will, we’re nothing but suckers to listen to them talk about arbitration. Let the mill run three shifts, maybe four shifts, when we turn the power on, but keep it running all the time. We can turn out as much print cloth as the company can, maybe a lot more. But all of us will be working then, anyway. We can speed up after everybody gets back on the job. What we’re after now is turning on the power. And if they try to shut off the power, then we’ll get in there and—well, God damn it, Will, the power ain’t going to be shut off once we turn it on. Now, God damn it, Will, I’ve never been in favor of wrecking anything. You know that, and so does everybody else. That son-of-a-bitch A.F.L. started that talk when they heard we were thinking about turning the power on. All I’m after is running the mill.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying at every local meeting since the shutdown,” Will said. “The local is all hooped-up with the A.F.L. They’ve been saying nothing is going to get us our jobs back except arbitrating. I’ve never been in favor of that. You can’t talk to the company and get nothing but a one-sided answer. They’re not going to say a thing but ‘a dollar-ten.’ You know that as well as I do. And how in the hell can a man pay rent on these stinking privies we live in out of a dollar-ten? You tell me how it can be done, and I’ll be the first to vote for arbitrating. No, Sir. It just can’t be done.”

“Well, I’m in favor of going in there and turning on the power. That’s what I’ve been saying all the time. I’ve never said anything else, and I never will.”

Rosamond came part of the way and called Will. He turned away from the other man and asked what she wanted. He had forgotten all about the trip to Georgia.

“Come on, Will,” she said. “Pluto is all up in the air about waiting so long to start. He’s running for sheriff back home, and he’s got to canvass for votes. You and Harry can finish that argument when we come back in a day or two.”

He and Harry talked for several moments, and Will turned and followed Rosamond to the car. Darling Jill was in the driver’s seat, with Pluto beside her. Will sat down on the back seat with Rosamond. The motor had been idling for five minutes or longer while they waited.

Will leaned out of the car to wave to Harry.

“Try to get that meeting called for Friday night,” he shouted. “By God, we’ll show the A.F.L. and the company what we mean by turning the power on.”

Darling Jill raced down the unpaved street and turned the corner recklessly. They were off in a cloud of dust that blew up and sifted thickly through the hot air to settle on the trees and front porches of the yellow company houses.

They sped along the hot concrete toward Augusta, passing an almost endless cluster of company houses. They passed through the other company towns, slowing down in the restricted zones and looking out at the humming mills. They could see the men and girls through the open windows and they could almost hear the hum of the moving machinery behind the ivy-covered walls. Along the streets there were few people to be seen. There were not nearly so many as there were on the streets of Scottsville.

“Hurry up and let’s get to Augusta,” Will said. “I want to get out of the Valley as soon as this car can take me out. I’m damn tired of looking at spinning mills and company houses every minute of the day and night.”

He knew he was not tired of looking at them, or of living with them; it was the sight of so many open mills that irritated him.

Graniteville, Warrenville, Langley, Bath, and Clearwater were left behind, and out of the Valley they raced over the hot concrete at seventy miles an hour. When they got to the top of Schultz Hill, they could look down over the dead city of Hamburg and see the muddy Savannah and, on the Georgia side, the wide flood plain on which Augusta was built. Up above it was The Hill, clustered with skyscraping resort hotels and three-story white residences.

While coasting down the long hill toward the Fifth Street Bridge, Rosamond said something about Jim Leslie.

“He lives in one of those fine houses on The Hill,” Will said. “Why doesn’t the son-of-a-bitch ever come to see us?”

“Jim Leslie would come, if it wasn’t for his wife,” Rosamond said. “Gussie thinks she’s too good to speak to us. She makes Jim Leslie call us lint-heads.”

“I’d rather be a God-forsaken lint-head and live in a yellow company house than be what she and Jim Leslie are. I’ve seen him on Broad Street and when I spoke to him, he’d turn around and run off so people wouldn’t see him talking to me.”

“Jim Leslie didn’t use to be that way,” Rosamond said. “When he was a boy at home, he was just like all the rest of us. He married a society girl on The Hill, though, when he made a lot of money, and now he won’t have anything to do with us. He was a little different from the rest of us at the start, though. There was something about him—I don’t know what it was.”

“Jim Leslie is a cotton broker,” Will said. “He got rich gambling on cotton futures. He didn’t make the money he’s got—he crooked it. You know what a cotton broker is, don’t you? Do you know why they’re called brokers?”

“Why?”

“Because they keep the farmers broke all the time. They lend a little money, and then they take the whole damn crop. Or else they suck the blood out of a man by running the price up and down forcing him to sell. That’s why they call them cotton brokers. And that’s what Jim Leslie Walden is. If he was my brother, I’d treat him just like I would treat a scab in Scottsville.”

I
T WAS NOT
quite dark, but the stars were beginning to come out, and lights in the houses beside the road blinked in the late twilight. When they were half a mile from home, they could see moving lights that looked as if lanterns were being carried by moving men.

There was a stir and a hum about the place that showed that something was going on. Darling Jill speeded up the car to find out what it was. She slowed down at the turn, burning the brake bands until the odor of rubber enveloped them in the dust.

Ty Ty came running around the house holding out a smoking lantern in front of him. His face was red with the day’s heat, and his clothes were caked with dried clay that clung to the cloth like beggar-lice. They all jumped out to meet him.

“What’s the matter, Pa?” Rosamond asked him excitedly.

“Great guns,” he said, “we’re digging like all get-out. We’ve sunk a hole twenty feet since this morning, and I don’t mean maybe, either. We’ve been doing the fastest digging in ten years.”

He pulled at them, urging them to follow him. He broke into a run, leading them across the yard and around the corner of the house. Stopping abruptly, they found themselves balanced on the rim of a lantern-lit crater at the side of the house. Down on the floor of it, Shaw and Buck and Black Sam were digging into the clay. On the other side of the crater, opposite them, was Uncle Felix with another smoking lantern and a shot gun. There was another man beside him, looking like a ghost in the flickering light.

“Who’s that over there?” Will asked.

Ty Ty shouted down at Buck and Shaw. Griselda came suddenly into view, emerging from somewhere in the darkness.