The Clock (2 page)

“Be quiet, Annie,” Ma said.

Pa looked out the window. “Now, Annie, I know you've had your heart set on being a
teacher.
But we can't have everything we want in life.”

But that wasn't it: it was Pa's fancy notions getting him in debt. I didn't dare say that, though. Ma said, “There isn't any sense to it. Annie can make a lot more money as a schoolteacher. She'd bring in twice as much as she will working at the mill.”

Pa went on looking out the window. He was frowning and worried, and I could tell he knew he shouldn't have bought the clock. “Don't make so much out of it,” he said. “It won't be forever. As soon as I sell that merino ram we'll be in the money. I'm just waiting until the price reaches the top.”

It wouldn't happen. Pa's schemes never worked out. He'd stay in debt and I'd be stuck in the mill forever. But I couldn't say that either.

“Besides,” Pa said, “one of these days Annie'll want to get married. She shouldn't be worrying so much about geography and arithmetic, but learning how to make some man a good wife.”

The whole thing of getting married had always worried me. Sometimes I thought about what it would be like to be married—how could I be married and a schoolteacher all at once? I mean, a wife has children to care for and a husband to look after. There wasn't any chance that a schoolteacher could be a farmer's wife. There was enough to do on a farm to keep everybody busy all day long, including the little ones. If I was to be a schoolteacher, I'd have to marry somebody who worked in a shop or a mill—somebody like Robert Bronson, who lived down our farm lane. Robert couldn't do farm work, because of having a bad foot. He worked at the mill.

“Why shouldn't she support herself?” Ma said. “I supported myself from the time I was fourteen until I was twenty-two and got married.” The way she said it made it sound as if she was better off supporting herself.

It was the wrong thing to say, for Pa was beginning to lose his temper. He slapped his palm down on the trestle table. “I don't want to be argued with about this. I've decided that Annie's going into the mill and that's that.”

“It isn't right,” Ma said. “George'll have the farm someday. What will Annie have? The only choice you're giving Annie is to get married.”

Pa folded his arms across his chest. “She'll get married. It's the only sensible choice for any woman,” he said.

I sat there, feeling terrible. For seven years, since I first got the idea in my head of being a schoolteacher, I hadn't wanted to do anything else. Right from the beginning, when I was eight years old, I used to imagine what it would be like to teach school. Sometimes when I was out in the barn feeding the chickens, and digging through the hay to find where they'd laid their eggs, I'd pretend that they were children and I was their teacher. I'd say, “Now, children, don't keep moving around in your seats so.” Then I'd recite some Latin poems for them.

Pooerous,
abullis belartum;

Minerus, starut tucartum.

The chickens didn't mind. They'd just go on clucking around my feet, pecking at the corn I was throwing down. Oh, I can't tell you how many lessons I taught the chickens; and some to the cow, too, and even Pa's famous merino ram. But I still didn't know any Latin and had to make it up.

Sheepobo, chickogo, pigupto;

Cluckok, eatcorno, pronto.

It was my dream to be a schoolteacher, and now Pa was saying I couldn't do it.

“It's that blame clock,” Ma said. Her lips were tight and straight.

Pa looked out the window. “The clock has nothing to do with it,” he said. “Annie's going into the mill in order to make herself useful.”

“Pa, I always did my share,” I said.

“It's true,” Ma said. “She did her share.”

“She's fifteen. George didn't go to school past thirteen.”

“He'll be provided for,” Ma said.

“Annie's husband will provide for her,” Pa said. “In the meantime she can do a full day's work just like the rest of us.” He looked at Ma and he looked at me to let us know that he'd made up his mind and there was no point in arguing with him anymore. Then he went out to look after the merino, and slammed the door behind him.

CHAPTER
TWO

T
HAT BLAME CLOCK
turned out to be a lot more trouble than just giving Pa an excuse to put me into the mill. Pa went on a rampage about it. He'd paid all that money for it, and he was bound and determined to get his money's worth out of it. It wasn't the eighteenth century anymore, Pa said. It was 1810, and things were changing. So he put the whole family on clock time, instead of sun time. The family was supposed to get up by it and eat meals by it, and go to bed by it, never mind if you were hungry or sleepy. I was usually hungry when I came home, and wanted my supper, but no, we couldn't eat until it was six, and the clock allowed us to.

Oh, it wasn't very long before all of us took to hating that clock. “It's all foolishness,” Ma said to me when we were alone. “We got along perfectly well without a clock, and we don't need one now.”

“Ma, how long will I have to work in the mill to pay it off?”

She shook her head. “I don't rightly know. And if I did know, it wouldn't be my business to tell you. Besides, it isn't just the clock, it's everything.”

My heart sank. “You mean I'll have to work in the mill for years and years?”

She shook her head. “Not if I can help it. Knowing your pa, there'll be no end to it. I'll think of something.” Then she gave me a little smile. “Annie, the mill won't be so bad. Hetty Brown seems to like it.”

“But I was going to be a schoolteacher.”

“I want it for you, Annie. But now we have to bide our time.”

I was mighty curious about what it was like working in the mill. Robert Bronson had told me about it, a little, but that was mostly about his own job. I didn't know what the girls did.

Robert hurt his foot six years ago. He and his father were in a field, haying. It was bright and hot—you always had to hay in the hot weather, when the hay had a chance to dry. Mr. Bronson was going along with the scythe, the blade going
slick, slick
in the green hay. Robert was coming along behind with a rake to make sure the hay was spread out so as to dry the best. The dust was flying in the air, and naturally Robert was sweating to beat anything. The sweat and dust got into his eyes. He closed his eyes and pulled up his shirttails to wipe off his face. Without thinking about it he took a couple of steps forward. Mr. Bronson caught him in the back of his ankle with that sharp scythe. It went right through to the bone. After that Robert was laid up for a while. But it never healed right. The tendons had got cut, and he couldn't raise his foot anymore. Robert couldn't do farm work—at least he couldn't do a lot of kinds of farm work, like haying. The only way he
could
make a living was to work in a store, or the mill, and so he went into the mill.

Because of his bad foot Robert slept at the mill in the lodging with the New York boys, but on Sunday after church he came home to stay with his family. We always walked home together, the Bronsons and us, after church. I could ask him about the mill when we were walking home.

That night I lay in bed, thinking. I slept up in the loft, up as close to the chimney as I could get my bed, for the warmth. There was a little window at one end of the loft, where you could see a patch of sky, and part of a big branch of the maple tree. I'd been looking out that window all my life, watching the maple leaves grow in the spring, then go red and brown in the fall, and disappear; watching the stars move across the sky with the seasons, never moving so much that you'd notice one night to the next, but one day you'd realize that the little constellation you'd been watching was disappearing out of the right-hand side of the window and another one was coming in from the left. My days at the mill would move slow as those stars, as I got to be sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty—before I was old enough to marry. All that time in the mill; all those days. I didn't see how I could stand it.

On Sunday Robert and I walked home together. We came along slow, behind the others, because of Robert's lame foot. Pa and George and Mr. Bronson went first down the lane, talking. about money, mostly—Pa liked to talk about money. Then came Ma and Mrs. Bronson.

It was a pretty Indian summer day—the trees all red and yellow and brown, and a light purple haze in the distance over the fields.

Robert was my age, but he was full grown, and even though I was tall for a girl, he was taller by six inches. He had blond hair that lay all over to one side like raked rows of hay. It glinted in the sunshine, too, like the hay did. He had pale blue eyes that made him look sad sometimes, but not when he smiled—which he did a lot.

We walked along slow, with the others way ahead of us, and I told him all about it. “I can't stand the idea of it,” I said.

“The mill isn't so bad, Annie. Especially now that they're bringing girls in. You'll have lots of company.”

“Why didn't they ever have girls before?” I asked.

He shrugged. “They had all the orphan boys from New York and didn't need any others. But those boys are mighty hard to control. They don't think twice about sneaking off for a snooze or stealing food from the kitchen when they get a chance. I think Colonel Humphreys and Mr. Hoggart would rather have girls, who might behave better and tend to their work. But the main reason is that Colonel Humphreys just brought in some new spinning machinery. They're called slubbing billies. When you work at them, it's really a lot the same as working at a spinning wheel. He figures that girls can do that real good, and boys don't know anything about spinning at all.”

Colonel Humphreys was the richest man around that part of Connecticut. During the
Revolutionary
War he'd been an aide to George Washington. Even though that was more than thirty years ago, he was still mighty important, and had a fine carriage, and was always going off to New York or Boston on business. I'd heard all kinds of stories about those big cities—how there were thousands of people rushing to and fro and hundreds of shops with just the grandest things in them. I wished some time I could visit a big city like that, just once, to see what it was like, but I didn't know if I'd ever have a chance. Pa had been to Boston twice and New York once, and still talked about it a good deal, but the biggest place the rest of us had ever been to was New Haven, when we went over at Christmas time to visit Pa's relations. But Colonel Humphreys went to Boston or New York whenever he wanted.

Of course, Colonel Humphreys didn't have anything to do with the mill hands. They were just hired hands to him. That's what he had Mr. Hoggart there for, to be overseer, and see that the mill ran proper and the hands worked the way they were supposed to. “Robert, what's he like, Mr. Hoggart?”

Robert shook his head. “Oh, he's a hard nut, I can tell you that. He's mighty quick to whip the boys when they get out of line. All a boy has to do is look at him cross-eyed and he'll get a whipping for it. Why, I saw him once take a shovel handle and smack a fellow so hard across his shin, it broke his leg.”

“Did he ever whip you?”

“No,” Robert said. “I'm not the same as the other boys, being as I'm tally boy. I'm higher up from them. It wouldn't do to whip the tally boy. Not unless he did something mighty bad, like stealing.”

I knew about being tally boy, for Robert had told me before. He stood by the mill door weighing up the wool that the farmers brought to sell to the mill. And he weighed up the finished yarn that was shipped out of the mill to the customers, so they'd know how much each lot was worth. “Does Mr. Hoggart ever whip the girls?”

“Well, we haven't had any girls up till now. I don't know if he will. He might. He likes whipping people, that's a plain fact.”

That worried me. Pa had whipped me when I was little, and so had Ma, when I spilled something or broke something. But I hadn't been whipped for years, not since I was maybe ten or so. “I don't think I could stand being whipped,” I said. “What does he whip people for?”

“Mostly for ruining the work. If a boy gets grease on some wool, or damages a machine, he can count on a whipping. That and stealing. These orphan boys were raised up to steal, and they'll steal something as soon as look at it.”

“What do they steal?”

“Anything they can get ahold of. Rum out of the stores. Apples, bread, cheese from the kitchen. If they wear out a pair of socks they'll steal a pair from another boy sooner than get
another
pair from the stores.”

“I wouldn't steal anything,” I said.

“It wouldn't be missed. There's enough stealing going on there as it is. When you get down to it, the biggest thief is Mr. Hoggart himself. Only nobody knows it.”

“What?” I said. “Mr. Hoggart's a thief?”

He put his finger to his lips. “Shush, Annie. I'm the only one who knows, and if Mr. Hoggart learned I knew, he'd make things mighty hard for me. Oh, yes, he would.”

I lowered my voice. “What does he steal?”

“Wool. Bags of it. Hundreds of pounds of it over a year.”

That was a big surprise, all right. I never would have thought that somebody as important as Mr. Hoggart would steal. I could understand boys stealing, and girls, too, even, for I'd stolen pieces of cheese and lumps of butter out of the keeping room myself, when I was little. But it certainly surprised me that an important man like the overseer would steal. “Are you sure, Robert?”

“Well, I can't prove it. But I weigh up the wool when it comes back all clean from fulling, and I weigh up the yarn when it's shipped out, and the figures don't tally. Oh, sure, you expect to lose some weight. But even allowing for the loss, there's too much difference between what comes in and what goes out.”