“Yankee Doodle,” the man shouted. He opened his mouth wide and shouted, “Yankee Doodle.”
So that was what a Yank was like. Doris had never seen a Yank before — not to know he was a Yank! Nell and Fanny laughed.
Crowds of niggers laughed. Crowds of mill hands standing and looking laughed. The man on the platform had fairly to lift the drunken man up. He got him almost up once and then let him fall, just to make a fool of him. The next try he got him up. “Like a fool. Just like a fool man,” Nell said.
The man performed well after all. He didn’t at first. He fell and fell. He’d get up on the trapeze and then he’d fall on the platform. He fell on his face, on his neck, on his head, on his back.
The people laughed and laughed. Afterwards, Nell said, “I cracked my damn sides laughing at the damn fool.” Fanny laughed hard too. Even Grace laughed a little. Doris didn’t. It wasn’t her laughing day. She felt all right but it wasn’t her laughing day. The man on the trapeze fell and fell and then he seemed to get sober. He performed all right. He performed well.
The girls had a Coca Cola. They had a “Milky Way.” They had a ride on the ferris wheel. There were little seats so you could sit two by two. Grace sat with Doris and Nell with Fanny. Nell would rather have been with Doris. She let Grace be. Grace didn’t set ’em up like the others did, one a Coca Cola, one a “Milky Way” and one a ferris-wheel ride, the way the others did. She couldn’t. She was broke. She was laid off.
*
THERE are days when nothing can touch you. If you are just a mill girl in a Southern cotton mill it doesn’t matter. Something lives inside you that looks and sees. What does anything matter to you? It is queer about such days. The machinery in the mill gets on your nerves terribly some days, but on such days it doesn’t. On such days you are far away from people, it’s odd, sometimes then you are most attractive to them. They all want to crowd up close. “Give. Give me. Give me.”
“Give what?”
You haven’t got a thing. You are just that way. “Here I am. You can’t touch me.”
Doris was in the ferris wheel with Grace. Grace was scared. She hadn’t wanted to go up in it, but when she saw Doris was going, she got in. She clung to Doris.
The wheel went up and up and then down and down... a great circle. There was a town, a great circle. Doris could see the town of Langdon, the court house and some office buildings and the Presbyterian church. She could see, around a shoulder of hill, the smoke-stack of the mill. She couldn’t see the mill village.
She could see trees where the town was, a lot of trees. There were shade trees before houses in town, before the houses of people who didn’t work in any mill but in stores or offices. Or who were doctors or lawyers or maybe judges. Not having any use for mill people. She could see the river stretching away in a great bend around the town of Langdon. The river was always yellow. It never seemed to get clear. It was golden yellow. It was golden yellow against a blue sky. It was against trees and bushes. It was a sluggish river.
The town of Langdon wasn’t on a hill. It was just on high ground. The river didn’t go all around. It went on the south side.
On the north side, far away, were hills.... It was far far away up where Grace used to live when she was a little girl. Where the waterfalls were.
Doris could see people, looking down on them from above. She could see lots of people. Their legs went in a funny way. They were walking about the fair grounds.
The river that went past Langdon had catfish in it.
Niggers fished for them. They liked to. Hardly any one else did. Whites hardly ever did.
In Langdon, right in the busiest parts, not far from where the best stores were, there were nigger streets. No one but niggers went there. If you were white you didn’t go. White people ran the stores in the nigger streets but whites didn’t go there.
Doris would have liked to see the streets of her mill village from up there. She couldn’t. A shoulder of land made it impossible. The ferris wheel went down. She thought, “I’d like to see where I live, from high up there.”
You couldn’t rightly say that people like Doris, Nell, Grace and Fanny lived in their houses. They lived in the mill. All week nearly all of their waking hours were in the mill.
In the winter they went when it was dark. They came away at night when it was dark. Their lives were walled in, shut in. How could any one ever know who hadn’t been caught and held from childhood, through young girlhood and on into womanhood. It was the same with the mill men. They were a special people.
Their lives were in rooms. The life of Nell and Doris in the spinning-room of the Langdon mill was in a room. It was a big light room.
It wasn’t ugly. It was big and light. It was wonderful.
Their life was in a little narrow hallway inside a big room. The walls of the hallway were machines. Light came from above. A fine soft spray of water, really mist, came from above. That was to keep the flying thread soft and flexible for the machines.
Flying machines. Singing machines. Machines making walls to a little alive hallway in a big room.
The hallway was narrow. Doris hadn’t ever measured how wide it was.
You began as a child. You stayed until you were old or worn out. The machines went up and up. Thread came down and down. It fluttered. You had to keep it damp. It fluttered. If you didn’t keep it damp it would be always breaking. In the hot summer the dampness made you sweat more and more. It made you sweat worse. It kept you wringing wet with sweat.
Nell said, “Who gives a damn for us? We’re only machines ourselves. Who gives a damn for us?” On some days Nell growled. She swore. She said, “We’re making cloth. Who gives a damn? Some whore maybe’ll get her a new dress out of some rich man.” Nell talked plain. She swore. She hated.
“What difference does it make who gives a damn? Who wants them to give a damn?”
There was lint in the air, fine floating lint. It was what gave some people tuberculosis, some said. It might have given it to Ed’s mother, Ma Hoffman, lying on her couch, Ed had made, and coughing. She coughed when Doris was there at night, when Ed was there in the daytime, in the afternoon when he was lying in his bed, when he was reading about General Lee or General Grant or Napoleon Bonaparte. Doris hoped her kid wouldn’t get it.
Nell said, “We work from cansee to can’t see. They got us. They got the bee on us. They know it. They got us hogtied. We work from cansee to can’tsee.” Nell was tall, swaggering, profane. Her breasts weren’t big, like Doris’ — almost too big — or like Fanny’s or too little, just nothing, a flat place, like a man, like Grace’s. They were just right, not too big or not too little.
If a man ever got Nell he’d get her hard. Doris knew that. She felt it. She didn’t know how she knew but she knew. Nell would fight and swear and fight. “No you don’t. Damn you. I ain’t that kind. You go to hell.”
When she gave up she’d cry like a child.
If a man got her, he’d have her. She’d be his. She wouldn’t talk about it much, but... if a man got her she’d be his. Doris almost wished she were a man to try, thinking of Nell.
A girl thought of such things. She had to be thinking about something. All day, every day, thread, thread, thread. Flying, breaking, flying, breaking. Sometimes Doris wished she could swear like Nell. She wished sometimes she were Nell’s kind, not her own kind. Grace said, when she was working in the mill on the side where Nell now worked, once at night, after she had come home... a hot night... she said...
Doris was rubbing Grace with her hands, softly, strongly, the way she could rub, not too hard, not too soft. She rubbed her all over. Grace liked it so. She was so tired. She could hardly do her dishes that night. She said, “I got thread in my brain. Rub it there. I got thread in my brain.” She kept thanking Doris for rubbing her. “Thank you. Oh, thank you, Doris,” she said.
In the ferris wheel, Grace was scared when it went up. She clung to Doris and shut her eyes. Doris kept hers wide open. She didn�
�t want to miss a thing.
Nell would have looked Jesus Christ in the eyes. She would have looked Napoleon Bonaparte in the eyes or Robert E. Lee.
Doris’ husband thought Doris was that way too, but she wasn’t just the way her husband thought she was. She knew that. Once Ed talked to his mother about Doris. Doris didn’t hear it. It was in the afternoon when Ed had wakened and when Doris was at work. He said, “If she had a thought against me she’d tell it. If she had even a thought about another man she’d tell me.” It wasn’t true. If Doris had heard it, she would have laughed. “He’s got me wrong,” she would have said.
You could be in a room with Doris and she’d be there and not there. She’d never get on your nerves. Nell said that once to Fanny and it was true. —
She didn’t say, “Look. Here I am. I’m Doris. Pay attention to me.” She didn’t care whether you paid attention or not.
Her husband Ed could be in a room. He could be reading there on a Sunday. Doris could be lying down too, on the same bed, beside Ed. Ed’s mother could be lying on the front porch on the couch Ed had made for her. Ed would have put it out there for her so she could get the air.
It could be hot summer.
The baby could be out there playing on the porch. He could be crawling around. Ed had made a little fence so he couldn’t crawl off the porch. Ed’s mother could watch her. Her cough kept her awake.
Ed could be on the bed beside Doris. He could be thinking about the people in the book he was reading. If he had been a writer he could have been on the bed beside Doris writing his books. Nothing in her said, “Look at me. Pay attention to me.” It never did.
Nell said, “She goes toward you. She’s warm toward you.” If Nell had been a man she’d have been after Doris. She said to Fanny once, “I’d be after her. I’d want her.”
Doris never hated any one. She never hated anything.
Doris could rub warmth into people. She could rub relaxation into people with her hands. Sometimes when she was in the spinning-room at the mill, keeping up her side, her breasts hurt. After she got Ed and her baby, she nursed her baby early, when she woke up. Her baby woke up early. She gave him a little warm drink again before she went off to work.
She went home and nursed her baby again at noon. In the night she nursed him. On Saturday nights the baby slept with her and Ed.
Ed had nice feelings. Before she married him, when they were going together... they both worked in the mill then too... Ed had a day job then... Ed used to walk with her. He used to sit in Doris’ mother’s and father’s house with her at night in the dark.
Doris had been in the mill, in the spinning-room, since she was twelve. So had Ed been. He had been in the loom-room since he was fifteen.
On the day when Doris was in the ferris wheel with Grace... Grace clinging to her... Grace with her eyes shut because she was afraid... Fanny and Nell in the next seat below... Fanny whooping with laughter... Nell yelled.
Doris kept seeing things.
She saw two fat Negro women, far off, fishing in the river.
She saw cotton fields, far off.
There was a man driving an automobile in a road between cotton fields. He made a red dust.
She saw some of the buildings of the town of Langdon and the smoke-stack at the cotton mill where she worked.
There was a man selling patent medicine in a field near the one where the fair was being held. Doris saw him. He had only Negroes gathered about him. He was on the back of a truck. He was selling patent medicine to niggers.
She saw a crowd, a surging crowd on the fair grounds, Negroes and whites, lint-heads (cotton mill workers) and niggers. Most of the mill girls hated Negroes. Doris didn’t.
She saw a young man she knew. He was a strong-looking red-headed young town man who had got a job in the mill.
He had been there working twice. He came one summer and then the next summer he was back again. He was a sweeper. The girls in the mill said, “I’ll bet he’s a spy. What else is he? If he wasn’t a spy, why would he be here?”
He worked in the mill the first time. Doris wasn’t married then. Then he went away and some one said he went to college. Doris got married to Ed the next summer.
Then he came back. It was tight times with people being laid off but he got a job back. They had put in the stretch out and they were laying people off and there was talk of a union. “Let’s have a union.”
“Mr. Shaw won’t stand for it. The super won’t stand for it.”
“I don’t care. Let’s have a union.”
Doris didn’t get laid off. She had to work a longer side. Ed had to do more. He could hardly do what he did do before. When that young fellow with the red hair... they called him “Red”... when he came back they all said he must be a spy.
There was a woman, a strange woman, came to town and got hold of Nell and told her whom to write to about a union, and Nell came at night, on a Saturday night, to the Hoffman house and said to Doris, “Can I speak to Ed, Doris?” And Doris said, “Yes.” She wanted Ed to write to some people to get a union, to send some one. “A communist one I hope,” she said. She had heard that was the worst kind. She wanted the worst. Ed was afraid. He wouldn’t at first. “It’s hard times,” he said, “it’s Hoover times.” He said he wouldn’t at first.
“It’s no time,” he said. He was scared. “I’ll get fired or laid off,” he said, but Doris said, “Ah, go ahead,” and Nell said, “Ah, go ahead,” and he did.
Nell said, “Don’t tell a soul. Don’t tell a damn soul.” It was exciting.
The red-haired young man had come back to work in the mill. His poppy had been a doctor in Langdon and he used to doctor sick mill people but he had died. He was on the square.
His son was just a sweeper in the mill. He played ball on the mill ball team and was a crack player. That day, when Doris was at the fair, in the ferris wheel, she saw him. The mill ball team usually played ball on the ball field the mill owned, right by the mill, but that day they were playing right near the fair. It was a big day for mill people.
There was to be a dance that night at the fair on a big platform — ten cents. There were two platforms, one for niggers, one for whites, not very near. Grace and Nell and Doris didn’t intend to stay. Doris couldn’t. Fanny stayed. Her husband came and she stayed.
There was to be a greased pig caught after the baseball game. They didn’t stay for that. They went on home after the ferris-wheel ride.
Nell said, speaking of that young red-haired man from town who played on the mill ball team, “I’ll bet he’s a spy,” she said. “The damn rat,” she said, “the skunk. I’ll bet he’s a spy.”
They were having the union formed. Ed got letters. He was afraid they’d get onto him every time he got a letter. “What’s in it?” Doris asked. It was exciting. He got cards to be signed up to join the union. There was a man coming. There was to be a big union meeting to come out in the open as soon as they had enough signed up. It wasn’t communist. Nell had been wrong about that. It was just a union, not the worst kind. Nell said to Ed, “They can’t fire you for that.”
“Yes, they can. The hell they can’t.” He was scared. Nell said she bet young Red Oliver was a damn spy. Ed said, “I’ll bet he is.”
Doris knew he wasn’t. She said he wasn’t.
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
When she was in the spinning-room of the mill at work she could just see, in the daytime, down the long passageway, lined with the flying bobbins on both sides, a little piece of sky. There was a little piece of tree, the limb of a tree, somewhere far off, over by the river maybe — you couldn’t see it always, only when a wind blew. A wind blew and swayed it, and then, if you looked up just then, you saw it. She had been seeing it since she was twelve. Lots of times she had thought, “When I get outside sometime I’m going to look and see where that tree is,” but when she got outside she couldn’t tell. She had been seeing it since she was twelve. She was eigh
teen now. There weren’t any threads in her head. There weren’t any threads in her legs from standing so long where thread was made.
That young man, that red-haired young man used to give her the eye. Grace, when he was there first, didn’t know and Nell didn’t know. She wasn’t married to Ed the first time. Ed didn’t know.
He got around that way when he could. He came and looked at her. She looked at him, like that.
When she was going with Ed she and Ed didn’t do anything they would be ashamed of afterwards.
She used to let him touch places, in the dark. She let him.
After she got married to him and had her baby he didn’t do it any more. He might have thought it wouldn’t be nice. He didn’t say.
Doris’ breasts hurt in the late afternoon when she was in the mill. They began hurting steadily before quitting time, when she had her baby and hadn’t weaned him yet. She was weaning him but hadn’t got him weaned. When she was in the mill, before she married Ed and when that red-haired young man came around and looked at her, she felt funny. Her breasts hurt then, a little. That day, when she was in the ferris wheel and saw Red Oliver playing baseball with the mill team and was looking at him he was at bat and he hit a ball hard and ran.
It was nice to see him run. He was young and strong. He didn’t see her of course. Her breasts began to hurt. When the ferris-wheel ride was over and they came down and had got out she told the others she guessed she’d have to be getting along back home. “I got to go home,” she said. “Got to nurse my kid.”
Nell and Grace went with her. They came home by the railroad tracks. It was a shorter way. Fanny started with them but she met her husband and he said, “Let’s stay,” and so she stayed.
BOOK THREE. ETHEL
1
ETHEL LONG, OF Langdon, Georgia, was surely not a true Southern woman. She wasn’t in the true Southern-woman tradition, at least not the old tradition. Her people were entirely respectable, her father very respectable. Surely her father had expected his daughter to be something she wasn’t. She knew that. She smiled, knowing it, although the smile was not intended to be seen by her father. At least he didn’t know. She wouldn’t for anything have upset him any more than he was already upset. “Poor old Dad.” Her father was having a hard ride, she thought. “Life has been a bucking bronco for him.” There was that dream of a spotless white Southern womanhood. She had herself thoroughly exploded that myth. Of course he didn’t know, wouldn’t have wanted to know. Ethel thought she knew where that spotless white Southern womanhood dream had come from. She had been born in Langdon, in Georgia, and at least she thought she had always had her eyes open. She was cynical about men and in particular about Southern men. “It’s pretty easy for them to talk about spotless white womanhood, getting what they want all the time, the way they do get it, usually from the browns, taking few enough risks.
Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 150
