The Clock

by James Lincoln Collier

  “Well, I hope all the farmers don’t go into the mills,” Ma said. “Otherwise we’re going to be a little short of food.”

  “Not a bit of it,” Pa said. “It’ll be the same thing in farming as in anything else. Science, new methods, everything up-to-date. There’ll be machines for planting, machines for cultivating, machines for cutting wood, machines for everything. Work to the clock, instead of leaving it to nature. Think of how much labor is lost in the winter when the days grow short. With the new methods we won’t need but half the farms we have, and the farmers will be free to go into the mills. Why, it won’t be long before home spinning has disappeared. With machines, the price of cloth has got so, it’s hardly worth making your own at home. Someday the spinning wheel will be a relic, a reminder of the olden times. People will laugh at the idea of making your own cloth at home.”

  I was mighty sick of hearing about all this, and I went out to the barn to feed the chickens. It had gotten even colder than before. I’d put a pan of water out in the barn for the chickens before dinner. It was frozen solid—not just on the top, but all the way down to the bottom. I turned the pan upside down and banged it, and the ice fell out in a chunk. I filled the pan up again, but I knew it wasn’t much use—it’d be frozen over pretty soon.

  In the morning I bundled up real good for my walk to the mill, but the cold went right through my clothes, and I had to keep clapping at my sides with my hands to stir up some heat. My nose like to froze off. I pulled my scarf up over my nose and mouth, just leaving my eyes showing. But that wasn’t any good because my breath soon soaked the scarf, and it would have frozen to my lips if I hadn’t pulled it away. After that, about every two minutes I’d pull my hand out of my mitten and hold it over my nose; and about the time my nose was warmed up my hand would be stinging and I’d put it back in my mitten again.

  Cold as it was, the snow was almost like ice. It was like trying to walk across a frozen pond, except that the snow wasn’t flat like a pond, but rutted and twisted. About every ten steps I slipped, and I fell down twice. Oh, I was pretty miserable by the time I got to the mill; and between trying to keep my nose from freezing off, and slipping and sliding, I was late when I got there, and worried that I was going to catch it from Mr. Hoggart.

  I needn’t have worried, for his mind was occupied with something else. The great waterwheel that ran the machinery was icing up. As I came up the mill road I could see Mr. Hoggart and a couple of the New York boys standing by the shunt where the water ran under the wheel, trying to poke ice off it with long poles. The ice was clustering around the spokes and struts that the wheel was built of. That ice was heavy, and was slowing the wheel down a good deal. But the worst was, if the wheel iced up enough it would quit moving altogether. The machines would stop, and we wouldn’t be able to card or spin or anything else until they got the wheel loose again.

  Mr. Hoggart had those poor boys knocking ice off that wheel with those heavy poles all day. He’d keep two or three of them down there until they were soaked and near frozen to death, and crying from the cold. Then he’d send them inside to thaw out and push another two or three out to handle the poles. To warm them up a little he’d give each of them a swallow of rum before they went out, and another when they came back; and of course he’d take one himself along the way. He was going to be drunk before the day was out, and I knew I’d best keep out of his way.

  I thought about Mr. Hoggart pestering me all afternoon, and finally decided I’d slip out and head for home a few minutes early. Mr. Hoggart wasn’t thinking about anything but the waterwheel, for if it froze up and the mill stopped, Colonel Humphreys would lose a good deal of money. It was Mr. Hoggart’s place to see that things like that didn’t happen.

  So I kept an eye on the clock in the bell tower and when it got to be just a few minutes before five, I told Hetty that I was feeling sick and thought I was going to throw up. I grabbed my coat, and went on out of the slubbing room and down the long stairs to the ground.

  I stood for a moment at the bottom of the stairs, listening. Over the rumble of machinery coming from inside the building I could hear the thumps and shouts and curses of the boys whacking ice off the waterwheel. I felt sorry for them; they’d be doing that all night, so the wheel wouldn’t freeze up at night.

  I listened for the sound of Mr. Hoggart’s voice. I didn’t hear it. I wished I knew where he was, but I didn’t dare look around the corner of the building to the waterwheel to see if he was there. I went around the building the other way, out to the mill road. A line of alder bushes ran alongside the mill road. I slipped in behind them on the snowy field so as to be out of sight of the mill as much as possible. Of course, the bushes were bare of leaves, but the alders were thick and covered me up pretty fair.

  The snow was crusted over as hard as brick and as slippery as butter. I had to hang onto the alder bushes to keep from falling down. I went on slipping and sliding down toward the town road. And I was halfway there when I saw Mr. Hoggart turn off the town road onto the mill road. He was carrying a jug of rum, and slipping and sliding himself.

  I was scared as I could be, for if he looked close he was bound to see me through the alders. I stopped moving, and crouched down, getting colder by the minute. On he came, cursing when he slipped, and carrying the jug cradled in his arms, so it would be protected if he fell down. He’d rather break an arm than that jug, I figured. He was concentrating on his footing, and keeping his eyes on the dips and ruts in the road, and I prayed that he’d keep on doing that until he got by me. He kept on coming until he was abreast of me. Then he stopped, uncorked the jug, and raised it to his lips. With the jug in midair, he looked around to see if anyone was noticing him. The only person he saw was me crouched down behind the alders.

  “You,” he shouted. “Where do you think you’re going?” He bent over and set the jug down on the frozen snow. I didn’t wait but started on out of there, slipping and sliding along behind the alders, grabbing hold of them as I went. But I was licked, because he was out on the mill road, which was chewed up, and gave him better footing than I was getting in the field of frozen snow behind the alders. He followed along abreast of me, cursing and shouting, and trying to grab me through the alder bushes. I was as scared as could be, my heart thumping, and sweating even in that cold.

  “Hold still, damn you,” he shouted. I didn’t stop, but went on scrambling along toward the town road. I figured if I made it safely there I could make a run for it. I might have a chance then, because he wouldn’t want anybody to see him chasing a mill girl down the road.

  All of a sudden he made a dive for me, into the alders. He crashed through them and fell on his belly. I turned to run out across the snowfield. I didn’t make more than ten feet before I slipped and went down. He kneeled up, dove across the slick snow, and was on me. I staggered to my feet. He swatted me across the face, knocking me back into the snow. Tears began to leak out of my eyes. Then he looked down at me. “If I didn’t have that water-wheel to worry about, I’d teach you a lesson you’d never forget, miss. Now, you go on back to the mill. I’ll tend to you later.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  I WASN’T GOING BACK to the mill, that was for sure. Not the way Mr. Hoggart was then, drunk and mad and ready to do anything. But I didn’t want to go home, either. What with being hit, and crying, and falling into the snow, and getting my coat ripped, I looked pretty bad. Pa and Ma would want to know what it was all about. I couldn’t tell them, because they wouldn’t believe me. Pa wouldn’t blame Mr. Hoggart for being provoked with us, he’d say. I was exaggerating, he’d say, in order to get out of my contract, he’d say. No, it was hopeless to try to tell them anything. I had to get cleaned up before I went home, so they wouldn’t ask questions.

  Where could I go? I thought about the people we knew in Humphreysville—the minister, our friends. The people I knew best in the village were Hetty Brown’s folks. It’d be some comfort just to be there, and I could clean up a little.

&
nbsp; I went on down the mill road, turned onto the village road, and pretty soon I came to their place. I knocked at the door. Hetty’s ma opened it. She took one look and her eyes went wide. “What on earth happened to you, Annie?”

  I put my hands over my face and began to cry. Mrs. Brown sort of pulled me in, and took me over to the fire. Oh, my, that fire felt good.

  “What happened, Annie?” Mrs. Brown said again.

  “Mr. Hoggart was drunk. He whacked me and knocked me down. He’s always pestering me, and he’s trying to work Robert to death. He’ll do it if he can.”

  She gave me a squeeze. “You just wait here and warm up.” She went out to the back of the house where Mr. Brown’s wheel shop was, and in a minute she came back with him.

  Mr. Brown was the biggest man in the village, I’d always heard, and I could believe it. He was way over six feet tall, and his head nearly scraped the ceiling beams as he came into the room. He was so big that he seemed to fill up the room all by himself. But he was kindly; anyone could see that by the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He came over and sat down in a rocking chair next to me.

  “Tell me about it, Annie,” he said. “What’s this all about?” He put his huge hand over mine.

  I was ashamed of crying, but the idea of somebody willing to listen to my story did it. After a minute I quit, and wiped my face off with the sleeve of my coat. “Mr. Hoggart was drunk. He whacked me and knocked me down. He’s always pestering me, and he’s trying to kill Robert. He’ll do it if he can.”

  They both became very still and looked at me, because they saw I meant it. They knew that something bad was going on. Mr. Brown put his hand on my shoulder, and bent down a little toward me. “Tell me about it, Annie. What’s happening?”

  So I told him the whole thing right from the beginning: How Robert had figured out Mr. Hoggart was stealing; how we’d caught him, and the cabin and all that; how Mr. Hoggart had had it in for us ever since, always pestering me, and forcing Robert to do work that was like to kill him.

  They listened all the way through, with Mrs. Brown’s eyes getting wider and wider, and Mr. Brown asking a little question here and there just to make sure he was getting everything right. When I finished, he said, “You see what the problem is, don’t you, Annie? It’s his word against yours.”

  “We have proof, sir,” I said. “There’s that cabin. And we saw him filling that sack.”

  “How did you happen to come upon him doing that?”

  “I went up there to ask him not to dock me for being late once. Robert went with me. We saw him with a big sack he was loading with wool.”

  Mr. Brown shook his head. “That doesn’t mean very much. He could have had a dozen reasons for filling a sack with wool. Besides, he’ll just deny it.”

  I could see that was true. “Mr. Brown, I have to get out of that mill. He’s pestering me all the time.”

  He thought for a minute. “Did he actually touch you?”

  “He tried to grab me.”

  Mr. Brown frowned. “Are you sure of that, Annie? Are you sure he wasn’t just teasing you?”

  “Sir, he did grab me.”

  He didn’t say anything, but sat looking at me for a moment. “These are hard accusations, Annie.”

  “It’s true, sir. He tried to do worse than that last Wednesday after work, but some of the girls figured what he was up to, and sent Robert.”

  “Robert saw this—incident?”

  “Yes, sir. He did, sir.”

  He sat there, frowning and thinking. Finally he said, “Annie, you didn’t do anything to encourage this—behavior, did you? Mr. Hoggart’s in a position to do nice things for the mill girls. Give them easy jobs and such. I suppose it might occur to some girls that it would be worth playing up to Mr. Hoggart a little.”

  I nodded. “He said if I was nice to him he’d make things easy for me and Robert, and if I wasn’t he’d make things hard. But I wouldn’t do it. I’d never do it. I hate him.”

  “Shhh, Annie. You mustn’t say things like that. Mr. Hoggart is well regarded here. He’s done a good job with the woolen mill.”

  I looked down at the floor. It sounded like he wasn’t going to believe me. What would I do then? “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You know, Annie, I can’t just go on your word about all of this. I need proof, I need evidence. If Mr. Hoggart’s been stealing, of course I’ll go to Colonel Humphreys. But I can’t go with just your word.”

  “But we found the cabin, sir. That’s the proof. The wool’s in the cabin.”

  “Did you actually see this cabin? Did you go inside? Or did you see Mr. Hoggart bringing wool there?”

  I was stuck. For a minute I thought of lying and saying that I’d been inside the cabin. But I didn’t dare.

  “Well, I didn’t actually get inside the cabin, for Mr. Hoggart was in there. But I heard noises in there, and I saw him after he came out.”

  “How did that come about?” Mr. Brown said. “There are too many mysteries here, Annie.”

  I took a deep breath. “One Sunday night when I was coming here I saw footprints leading from the mill out to the woods. So I took a chance and followed them, and heard him in there.”

  Mr. Brown shook his head. “So you don’t really know whether he’s actually storing wool in that shed or not. He could have been out there for a perfectly good reason.”

  “There has to be wool in there, sir. What else could it be?”

  “I admit, Annie, it looks that way. But it isn’t proof. I know you, and I know you wouldn’t make a thing like this up. I’m willing to admit you and Robert might be right about it. But mill hands are always talking against overseers, and Colonel Humphreys won’t take it seriously unless there’s something monstrous wrong. Let’s admit that Mr. Hoggart is doing a little pilfering. A lot of overseers do it. But it doesn’t usually amount to very much. Oh, they’ll siphon off a bottle of rum, or take some lumber and nails out of the storeroom to make a table with, or bring home some yarn for their wives. Most of the owners accept this kind of petty thievery as part of the game. If they’ve got a good overseer, as Mr. Hoggart appears to be, they’ll wink at it. I’m not saying you’re a liar. So if you tell me you saw Mr. Hoggart taking some wool out of the mill, I’ll accept that. But you know, Annie, my guess is that Colonel Humphreys wouldn’t care even if you had a dozen witnesses. He’d rather let it go, and keep Mr. Hoggart content, than make a fuss over a small matter and lose a good overseer.”

  But it wasn’t just petty pilfering. “Sir—”

  He held up his hand to stop me. “Now, as far as this business of his pestering you, forcing his attentions on you—well, you’re a pretty girl. These things happen. I expect he’d been drinking.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We all know he has a weakness for rum. But so long as it doesn’t interfere with the work, I don’t imagine that Colonel Humphreys wants to know about that, either.”

  I was feeling mighty low. All along I’d figured that if I told somebody I’d have a chance. But it didn’t look that way. “Mr. Brown, I just have to get out of the mill.”

  “The best advice I can give you is to stay out of his way as much as possible. When’s your contract up?”

  “In April, sir.”

  “That’s less than three months. If you’re still unhappy at the mill, I don’t suppose your pa would want you to stay on beyond that.”

  There was nothing more for me to say. I stood up. “Well, thank you, sir, for all the trouble I put you to.”

  I cleaned myself up, for I didn’t want Pa and Ma to know anything about it, especially that I’d told Mr. Brown the whole story.

  Pa was too busy watching the clock to see how late I was, to notice that I was scuffed up a little, and when Ma did notice the bruise on my face I said I’d slipped on the ice on the road and fell, and had gone to the Browns’ to clean up, which was why I was late.

  I went off to the mill the next morning feeling dreadful low. It seemed l
ike there was no escape. I’d have to last out the next three months until my contract was up, and pray that Pa wouldn’t sign me up again. Oh, I was trapped, and there wasn’t any way out.

  On top of it, it was still mighty cold. I kept flapping my arms and trying to keep my nose from freezing. It made me late again, and when I was a half mile away I began to run, slipping and sliding on the icy snow. I was concentrating so hard on trying not to fall down that I was actually going into the mill before I realized that something was wrong. The place was dead quiet; none of the machines were running.

  I raced upstairs to my slubbing billy, to get there before Mr. Hoggart missed me. But I didn’t have to worry. The girls were all away from the machines, standing at the windows, looking downward.

  “What happened?”

  “The waterwheel’s frozen solid with ice. It won’t turn until they can knock the ice off.”

  I leaned out the window to look for myself. I was almost directly above the wheel, and had a good view of what was going on. There was ice all over the banks of the shunt and a coating of ice on top of the water in the shunt, although the water beneath was still flowing through the shunt, down the spillway, and under the waterwheel. But the wheel was not turning; it was standing still. There was ice all over it—on the spokes, on the blades, and down between the wheel itself and the walls of the spillway. Mr. Hoggart was down there, with three boys who were jabbing at the ice with poles. He was cursing a lot, for every minute that wheel stood idle it cost Colonel Humphreys money.

  They weren’t having much luck. The ice was hard and thick and wouldn’t crack easily. It was pretty plain that poles weren’t going to do it; they’d need to hack that ice out with axes. Not that we girls were in any blame hurry to see that wheel moving again. It was like a holiday for us. Every time one of the boys took a whack at the ice and nothing happened, we’d let out a low cheer. The other boys were hanging out the windows, the same as us. They were jeering and shouting at the boys down below, crying out, “Why, you ain’t got the strength of a fly, nor the brains either,” and roaring with laughter when one of the boys down below slipped on the ice and fell, even though they knew that soon enough they’d have to take their turns with the poles.