The Clock

by James Lincoln Collier

  I was desperate to talk to Robert about it. But it was hard to find a chance to talk to him, for he was busy at his job. Most of the time he was in the carding room, which was down at the front of the mill, weighing wool. The farmers would bring it to him there, and he would mark down how much they brought. The baskets would be hauled up on a pulley rigged on a beam outside a storage area next to the slubbing room. Usually Tom Thrush was up there to take in the basket as it rose to the big door in the storage area. It was something he could do with one hand.

  I ate my dinner as quick as I could, and then raced on out of there to the carding room. Robert was sitting on a heap of wool eating some bread and cold pork. He looked up. “What’s the matter, Annie?”

  “I was late, Robert. Mr. Hoggart caught me. He says I have to tell Pa my wages will be short.”

  Robert whistled. “Your pa won’t like that very much.”

  “I know. Pa’s tight up for money these days.”

  “He always is,” Robert said.

  “I know. But it seems like it’s worse now, Ma says. I don’t know exactly the reason, I guess it’s because he owes so much for that blame merino ram.”

  “There’s going to be trouble about that, I hear. With the price of merinos shooting up so high, somebody’s bringing in a whole shipload of them. The price is bound to drop.”

  That scared me even more. “What’ll happen to Pa?”

  “If he can’t sell his for what he owes on him, he’ll be in trouble. He’ll have to find the money somewhere.”

  It was a mighty bad time for me to get my wages docked. “That blame clock, that blame ram.”

  “Maybe you could talk to Mr. Hoggart. Maybe you could plead with him.”

  I didn’t want to be beholden to Mr. Hoggart. “I would hate to do that. I would hate to beg him.”

  “I don’t know what else you can do,” Robert said.

  He was right, but I hated the idea. “I wish I could think of something else.”

  We were quiet. But I couldn’t think of anything, and neither could Robert. “Well, I guess I’d better talk to him. Only I’m afraid of him. Look what he did to Tom Thrush.”

  “Poor Tom,” Robert said. “It still hurts him to stand up straight.” He pursed his lips. “I’ll tell you what, Annie. I’ll go along with you.”

  I shook my head. “I think he’d be more likely to give in if it was just me.”

  “Maybe. All right, I’ll wait outside, and if he gives you any trouble you can shout and I’ll come in.

  So that was the way we left it. And when the five o’clock bell rang I went looking for Robert. He was standing in front of the mill, down below the pulley hanging from the carding-room window where they pulled the wool up. Robert pointed up. “He’s up there in the carding-room. He came in a few minutes ago and told me to go on for supper, he had some business to do.”

  “He let you go early? That’s funny.”

  “Only a couple of minutes early. He does it sometimes. He asks for my tally sheets and sits up there for a while. I guess he’s checking my figures on the amount of wool that came in.”

  I looked up. It was dark now, and there was a low light flickering in the carding-room window. It seemed like it must be a candle, rather than the oil lamps we usually used for lighting the place during the winter when it got dark early. I took a deep breath. “I guess I’d better do it.”

  “Maybe he’ll be in a good mood.”

  “I’d better get it over with,” I said.

  “When you go up, shut the door behind you, and I’ll come halfway up the stairs and listen.”

  So I went on up the stairs, my heart beating fast, feeling kind of sweaty and scared. At the top of the stairs the door to the carding room was closed. I knocked.

  “Who is it?” he said in a sharp quick voice. “What do you want?”

  “It’s Annie Steele, sir.”

  I heard some noise, and then the door opened and he put his head out. “What do you want?” he said.

  “Sir, I’m sorry I was late this morning. I promise I’ll never do it again if you won’t dock my pay.”

  He stared at me. Then he looked around behind, as if he was checking on something. “Come on in, Annie. Let’s talk about it.”

  I went in, and he shut the door behind me. There was a candle sitting on the floor, and a lot of wool scattered around in bags or just loose. Beside the candle was a bag full of wool with a string around the neck. Next to it was another bag, half full. Beside the candle was a small bottle of rum. Mr. Hoggart bent over, picked up the bottle, and had a swallow. Then he looked at me like he was sizing up a horse. “You’re a mighty pretty girl, Annie. I hope those New York boys haven’t been pestering you.”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “They’re a bunch of nasty little devils,” he said. “If any of them pesters you, be sure to let me know. I’ll birch him enough so he won’t think to do it again.”

  “My ma says I’m too young for fellows.”

  He scratched his chin. “You don’t have a fellow? What about the tally boy, Robert? I heard he was your fellow.”

  I blushed, and I tried to make myself stop, for I didn’t want Mr. Hoggart to see it. “No, sir. We’re just friends. His folks have the next farm to ours. We grew up together from babies. We’re just friends.”

  He straightened up away from the door jamb, and took a couple of steps toward me. “Well, Annie, I hope you and me will be friends too. I could do a lot for you if we were friendly. I could forget about you being late this morning.”

  “Oh, thank you, sir.’’

  He looked at me again. “I didn’t say I was going to do it. I said I might. But you wouldn’t expect me to forget about that if we weren’t on friendly terms, would you?”

  “No, sir.” It was what I’d been afraid would happen. “I just hope you’ll think about it, for Pa’s going to be mighty angry with me if my pay is short.”

  He nodded. “I expect he will be.” He took another drink of rum. “You know, if we were friendly I could do a lot for you. I could even make you lamp girl.”

  That was the easiest job in the mill. In wintertime it was pitch dark when we started work in the morning, and dark before we got finished at night too. The factory was lit by oil lamps, dozens of them on each floor. The lamp girl had to go around and see that the lamps had oil in them, and that the wicks were trimmed so they’d burn right. And then as it got dark she’d go through the mill lighting the lamps. It was easy work, and a whole lot more interesting than working a slubbing billy, for you got to go wherever you wanted, and could talk to people and see what was going on. They liked to have one of the girls for the job, because if you gave the job to one of the New York boys they’d use it as a chance to go into the kitchen and the storerooms and steal whatever they could find.

  But I didn’t want to be beholden to Mr. Hoggart for anything. “I don’t mind the slubbing billy,” I said. “Maybe you could make Hetty Brown the lamp girl.”

  “Oh, you’d like being lamp girl. But I couldn’t make anybody lamp girl I wasn’t on good terms with.” He squinted at me, his head slanted over. “Come, Annie. Robert’s sweet on you, isn’t he?”

  I blushed again and looked down at the floor. I hated having him talk about Robert and me. I hated him being in it. “We’re just friends, sir.”

  “Just friends? I’ll wager it’s more than that.”

  I was still looking at the floor, and suddenly I realized that he had walked softly toward me, and was standing a couple of feet from me. I could smell the rum he’d been drinking. He reached out, clenched my chin, and raised my face up so I had to look at him. “It’d be worth your while to be friendly to me, Annie,” he said in a soft voice. “There’s a lot I could do for you.”

  I felt disgusted, and twisted my head to break loose from his grip. He let go. “That isn’t being very friendly, is it now?”

  “Please, sir, can I go?” I started to step around him, but he grabbed my arm above t
he elbow.

  “You ought to try to be a little friendly. You’d like being lamp girl.” He let go of my arm, and put his arm around my shoulders, and started to pull me toward him. My nose was filled with the smell of his sweat and rum, and I felt scared and disgusted. I pulled back and slipped out from under his arm. He reached out, and grabbed me by the shoulder; and just then I heard feet clumping up the stairs, and I knew from the clippety-clop way they went that it was Robert. The door slammed open. Mr. Hoggart let go of my arm and snapped around. “What the devil are you doing here?”

  Then he noticed that Robert wasn’t looking at him, or me, but at the two bags of wool next to the candle. “What are you staring at, Bronson?” he shouted.

  Robert jerked his eyes away from the wool. “Nothing, sir. I just came to walk Annie home.”

  Suddenly I saw it: We’d caught Mr. Hoggart stealing wool. Did he realize that we knew?

  Mr. Hoggart gave Robert a mean, hard look. Then he looked back at me. “You can go now, Annie.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  WHEN I GOT HOME Pa was sitting by the fire reading a newspaper. When I came in he looked at me, and then at that blame clock. “You’re twenty minutes late,” he said.

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to talk about what Mr. Hoggart had tried to do, but I realized I’d better. He was bound to do it again, and some day it’d come out. “Mr. Hoggart kept me late.”

  “What was that for?” Pa said.

  “He’s—he tried to pester me.”

  Ma came in from the kitchen, carrying a jug of cider. “What’s that?” she said, mighty sharp. She put the jug on the table. “What do you mean, pester you?”

  “He says I should be friendly to him. He says it would do me good to be friendly to him.”

  Suddenly Ma was right in front of me, looking into my face. “Annie, did he touch you?”

  “He grabbed my chin and twisted my head up. He put his arm over my shoulder, but I ducked away.”

  Ma looked at Pa. He was staring at me, holding the paper in his lap.

  “Now, just a minute, Annie—” Pa began.

  “I never wanted her to go into the mill, Pa. I told you that from the beginning. And now see what’s going on.”

  Pa stood up and dropped the newspaper on his chair. “Now, just a minute, you two. Let’s not jump to conclusions. What did he actually do, Annie?”

  “He told me to be friendly to him. Then he tried to put his arm around me and hug me.”

  Ma looked at me, and then back at Pa. “Was it because of you going in late this morning?”

  Pa frowned. “Was Annie late? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Of course she was late. How was she to hear that bell over the wind this morning? You can’t blame her, Pa.”

  “She’s supposed to be at the mill on time,” Pa said. “We’re not on sun time anymore. We’re on clock time. Did he say he was going to dock your wages?”

  “He said he wouldn’t if I was friendly to him.”

  “There,” Ma said. She stamped her foot. “I won’t have this.”

  Pa stood there, his hands on his hips, looking around the room for an answer. I could tell what was going on in his mind as clear as if I could see through his face. He didn’t want Mr. Hoggart pestering me any more than Ma did; but he wanted my wages too. That was Pa, always getting himself tangled up over things. Finally he said, “Annie, you sure you’re not exaggerating all this? I know you’d be mighty happy to get out of the mill.”

  “Pa, it’s true,” I shouted. “And that’s not all. Mr. Hoggart’s been stealing wool out of the mill. He’s been doing it for a long time.”

  Pa stared at me, and even Ma looked shocked. “Now, Annie—” Pa said.

  “It’s true. Robert and I caught him. Robert knew all along anyway, because the tally sheets didn’t calculate out.”

  Pa puffed out his cheeks and stared around the room once again. Finally he said, “Annie, I don’t know what to say about all of this. I don’t doubt your word, but it’s hard for me to believe that Mr. Hoggart’s as bad as all that. I wouldn’t think it of him.”

  “It’s true, Pa.”

  “Well.” He looked out the window, the way he did when he knew he was supposed to do something, but didn’t know what. “He shouldn’t be pestering you. No, I won’t allow that.”

  “Pa, it’s true about him stealing wool.”

  He looked at me. “Now, Annie, you don’t have any proof of that, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “But I could get proof if we found out where he was hiding the wool.”

  Suddenly Pa made up his mind about it. “Annie, I don’t want you getting involved in anything like that. It isn’t any of your business what Mr. Hoggart’s doing down there. Probably he has a perfectly good reason for it. You don’t know about these things, and I want you to stay clear of it.”

  Ma looked at me. “Your pa’s right about that, Annie. It isn’t any of your business. Just stay out of it.” Then she looked at Pa. “But that isn’t any reason why she should be pestered. If it happens again I want her out of the mill.”

  “Now, now, you two are not going to start giving me orders,” Pa said.

  Then George walked in, carrying the ax. He looked around at us. “What’s happening?”

  “Annie says Mr. Hoggart’s been pestering her.”

  George looked at me. “Did he touch you?”

  I hated talking about it. “He grabbed hold of me. He tried to kiss me.”

  “Annie’s overwrought,” Pa said. “I don’t think it was as bad as that.”

  George stood there, holding the ax. “I heard something like that about him. They say something like that happened where he worked before.”

  “Now, George,” Pa said. “It isn’t right to spread rumors. If we believed half of what we heard about people, we wouldn’t be able to trust anybody.”

  George didn’t say anything, but he gave Pa a long look. Pa looked out the window. “I guess I’d better have a talk with Mr. Hoggart.”

  I knew if he did that Mr. Hoggart would come down on me mighty hard. “Please, Pa, don’t. It’ll only make it worse.”

  Pa puffed out his cheeks. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  It was the same as with the clock. He’d paid a lot of money for it, and he was going to have us go by it, whether it made any sense or not. I could see where you had to go by clock time at the mill, for everybody had to start and stop together. But on a farm it was better to go by the sun and the seasons. You couldn’t hay in the rain, no matter what any clock said, and you sheared the sheep when the shad-bushes bloomed, because that was how you knew it was warm enough for the sheep to do without their coats. And you planted the corn when the oak leaves were the size of a mouse ear. And you couldn’t tap the maple trees by a calendar, either, for you had to do it when the sap ran, and that was up to God, and not Pa.

  But Pa was bound and determined to believe that going by clock time was a good thing, and so he believed it; and he was bound and determined to believe that Mr. Hoggart wasn’t really pestering me, either. Pa wasn’t bad. He didn’t want Mr. Hoggart to pester me any more than Ma did. But he wanted me in the mill, and so he saw things the way he wanted them.

  But George believed me. After dinner we went out to the barn to water the animals and settle them down for the night. George hung the lantern on a peg in the wall, and we began pitching the old wet hay out into the barnyard. “He really did touch you, Annie?”

  “Yes. I’m certain he’ll try again.”

  “Was he drunk?”

  “He was drinking rum from a bottle.”

  “Well, maybe it won’t happen again,” George said. “Maybe it was just because he was drinking.”

  “I’m worried.”

  George stopped with the pitchfork stuck down in a clump of wet hay. “If he does it again, you tell me. I’ll beat the whey out of him myself.”

  “George, I’ve got to get out of that mill.”

 
; He looked grim. “I think you’re stuck, Annie. For now, anyway. You’ll have to endure it. Who knows, maybe Pa really will make a fortune on that ram.”

  I looked at him. “Do you really believe that, George?”

  He grinned. “No. But we can always hope, can’t we?

  George was on my side, that was true. He didn’t want to see me working in the mill forever just to pay for Pa’s fancy notions, any more than he wanted to work twelve hours a day in the woodlot to pay for them either. But the truth was that George figured things the same way Pa did—that it wasn’t necessary for a girl to study geography and history, when she could be doing something useful to earn her keep.

  But Robert was different, and I wanted to talk to him about it all. The next day at the mill I went looking for him, but he wasn’t where he usually was underneath the rope and pulley, weighing up wool. I stood looking around, and then Tom Thrush came down the path with our tea bucket.

  “Tom, where’s Robert?”

  He stopped. “Didn’t you hear about it, miss?”

  “Hear about what?”

  “Robert ain’t the tally boy no longer. He’s got to work regular, just like the rest of us.”

  “But he can’t,” I cried. “Not with that foot.”

  “Maybe he can, and maybe he can’t,” Tom said. “But he’s got to, anyway. Hoggart’s had him loading bags of yarn onto carts all morning.”

  It was the worst possible job for Robert, for trying to walk with that bad foot of his under a heavy weight was certain to make him stumble and trip all the time. I wanted to see him real bad, but he wasn’t around where I could get to him anymore. It was Saturday, though, and I knew I could talk to him when we were coming home from church the next day.

  The trees were bare now, the sky was filled with clouds, and the air was chill. After church Robert and I came along behind the rest, and talked. “Of course he doesn’t want me to be tally boy anymore,” Robert said. “He’s afraid I might calculate things out and find out how much wool is missing.”