Counting on Grace (14 page)

“Time to give it back,” he says with his hand out. He means the notebook.

“I haven't written all the names yet.”

“I can get the rest of them later.” He's talking fast now, his voice close to my ear. “Grace, I want to take a picture of all the kids in the mill. Can you get them to meet me after work?”

“Where?” He talks to me as if we are both workers and we have a job to do. Together.

“Outside the mill gates. Can you do that?”

“Sure,” I say with a shrug, but I'm not sure. We all scatter like bugs when the mill bell rings. I'll make Arthur help me.

French Johnny is starting down the row toward us.

“Give the notebook back now.”

“I wish I had one of these,” I say, but I hand him the little book and it disappears quick into his pocket. He sets me back up in the same place, leaning against Marie.

French Johnny and Mamère almost crash into each other at the end of the row and now they're both headed our way.

“Three of my frames are waiting on Grace,” Mamère says loudly. “You're taking too much time, mister.”

Mr. Hine ain't looking at me. He's staring back down into the hood at the top of the camera and making that eye scoot forward and back again. Finally it stops. We stare at each other. I can see a little tiny me in the eye at the end of the tube and for a second, this scared feeling fills up my throat.

“Stand away, all of you,” he says to the others, and his chin is tucked so far down that his voice sounds like it's coming from under a rock.

Mamère and French Johnny pull off to the side as if the three-legged dog with its funny box head might bite them. I'm glad I'm resting against Marie. She makes me feel safe.

“Hold very still, Grace.” Mr. Hine pulls a black square thing straight up from the back of the camera just as he calls to me in a sharp voice, “Keep your eyes open as long as you can.”

“Don't you hurt her—” I hear my mother say, and the eye of the camera opens wide suddenly as if it means to gobble me up. Then everything happens at once. With one hand he throws a match onto the powder while he squeezes a black bulb at the end of a cord with the other. There's a
flash and everything goes white like something has blown up right in the middle of my eyeballs. Smoke tickles my nose. Inside my closed eyes, I can see circles floating out wider and wider from a middle black dot. That's the way an echo would look if you could draw it, I think.

“What the devil was that?” roars French Johnny.

“Grace, open your eyes,” my mother shouts in my ear, shaking me all the while. “She's blind, she can't see.”

“She's fine,” says Mr. Hine, his voice near now, and I feel his hand come to rest on the top of my head. “Don't worry, Mrs. Forcier.”

I like them all squabbling over me for that moment, but I know I can't wait no longer so I open my eyes. First I see something that looks like the ghost of Mr. Hine hunched over his camera just at the moment when he squeezed that bulb and the light flashed. But he's not there no more. He's right beside me talking over my head to French Johnny. The ghost picture fades and next, I make out Arthur, who's standing by his frame for real. He's mouthing some words at me over and over again, and pointing at Mr. Hine's back.

“He's the one,” Arthur's saying.

And suddenly I know what he means.

Mr. Hine is the answer to our letter.

Mamère cuffs me on the head when she finds I didn't go blind. I barely feel it, but there is no reason to hit me. I was just doing what French Johnny and Mr. Hine told me to do.

When Mr. Hine says he only has a couple more pictures to take, French Johnny tells him to pack up his equipment and move on out. It was the flash and the smoke that scared French Johnny the most. Fire can gobble up a mill in no time ‘cause there's so much to burn. All that cotton dust in the air and the threads whirling around just waiting for some little spark to light on them.

And suddenly, like things clicking into place in the back of my brain, I remember Mr. Wilson getting on the train that morning. So French Johnny was in charge and he's the one who let in Mr. Hine. And if the mill had burned down when Mr. Wilson was away then fat French Johnny was going to be in a big barrel of trouble.

“That man is
fou, complètement fou,”
mutters Mamère.

I stop in my tracks to tell her the good news.

“Mr. Hine is boarding with us tonight. He knows he's got to pay before he eats.”

“Well, that'll make up some of the money he stole from our paycheck fooling with you,” she says.

Here is the big surprise. “It'll make up more than you think, Mamère,” I say. “I told him he had to pay a dollar and he said fine. He'd be there.”

She stares at me with a little look that says, Well, Grace, sometimes maybe I
can
count on you. She don't say it out loud, but her face says it. At least that's what I decide to think.

When Arthur passes me in the row, he says, “I was right, wasn't I? He's the one.”

“He wants to get all the kids together after work. To take a picture. You tell them?”

“Where?”

I have to think fast. “Around the front side between the big door and the little hill.” The mill owners are the only ones who ever use that front door.

Arthur nods and moves away quick when his mother waves to him.

It ain't till later when I am catching up with my doffing that I think of something terrible. If Arthur is right about Mr. Hine being the answer to the letter, then that committee might shut down the mill and we won't have jobs no more. And this Mr. Hine is spending the night in our house, in Pépé's bed. What if he tells Mamère what he's trying to do?

He won't tell Mamère. He'll just make secret notes in his little book.

Yes, he will. He'll tell her and she'll order him out of the house.

So what? Long as we got his dollar who cares about Mr. Hine?

But I like him. I want to talk to him more. I want to see if he'll give me a notebook to write in. And what if he tells Mamère about the letter?

Who cares about the letter? It was signed with that long word. Miss Lesley said nobody would ever guess who wrote it.

Mamère will know. She knows Miss Lesley wants to keep us kids out of the mill. And she hates her. If she gets Miss Lesley fired, then I can't go to school no more.

All this thinking is what my bad brain does. It makes me forget where I am, so sure enough Edwin's clearing board fills up and ten ends in a row go down. I yell to Mamère, who throws the shipper handle with such a look and shoves me aside the way she does when she wants to piece up fast as possible.

Mr. Hine's dollar is getting used up before it even hits our kitchen table. After that, I shut my brain down. I don't let myself think about anything but counting bobbins. Even so there is no way to make up all the time lost on Mamère's hank clock and there is nobody to blame for that but me.

When the closing bell goes, I scoot over to Arthur and we race down the stairs before anybody can stop us.

Mr. Hine is waiting around the corner of the mill when Arthur and I lead the pack of kids past the gate and down a little path.

“Where are you all going?” the guard yells after us.

“To play a game,” I yell back, and he don't pay us no mind after that.

“Grace,” Mr. Lewis Hine says first thing. “I need you to help me.” Just like we are old friends and I've been helping him for years. The others stare at me in surprise. This man needs Grace, the bumbling left-handed doffer, who's always in trouble? they're thinking.

“Yes, Mr. Hine,” I say smartly.

“Is everybody here?”

I look around and count. Seventeen. “Just about. As many as Arthur and I can get.” Delia's not here, but that's fine with me. She'll be helping take Mamère's mind off me.

“I'll do the boys first. It settles them down,” he says in a low voice as he unpacks Mr. Graflex from his carrying box. He has a hurrying nature to him and I know why. If he gets caught with that camera again anywhere near the mill, he'll probably get arrested. “Arrange them against the brick wall between that door and the window, shortest in the front. I'll want their names and ages before they leave.”

The only reason the boys pay me any mind is ‘cause they aren't sure about this man and they are specially careful around the camera. But they do keep horsing around and falling over one another and shifting places. Their hats are all skewed funny. Hubert and Pierre Gagnon lounge about with their arms around each other's shoulders and their chins stuck out, pretending this picture-taking
happens every day. Felix stands in front with his arms crossed and his legs spread, looking like
he
owns the mill. Arthur sets himself up in back, acting as if he's the only person in the world, just the way he does when he's got a book in his hand. He stands straight up at attention and waits with a frown on his face like a soldier boy about to be shot.

When Mr. Hine comes up behind me, he uses his voice to still them. Maybe he was a teacher before he started the picture-taking business ‘cause a bunch of kids don't seem to bother him one bit.

“I'm going to count backwards from three,” he explains to the boys. “Once I've focused the lens, you all must stay absolutely still. You'll see me pull a black shade out of the side of the camera. That's the dark slide. At that moment, the negative is ready to be exposed. Once I squeeze the little black bulb with my right hand, you'll see me push that shade back in again. Then you can relax.”

They nod, serious now, as if they understand one word he's saying.

“Are you all ready?”

They take up their positions. He rearranges Julien to stand in back of Dougie and this time they stay put.

“It's not going to hurt them, is it?” Bridget asks me, her hands up shielding her eyes.

“Nah,” I say like I know all about it. “He's not even using the flash this time the way he did with me.”

Just as he said, he pulls the slide out and slams it back in so quick that nobody knows he's all done and they stay frozen.

“Done, boys,” he says with his notebook out now.
“Starting in the back row.” He points at Arthur. “I want your name, your age, your job and how long you've worked in the mill.”

“Is this for the head office?” Hubert asks.

Mr. Hine don't answer the question ‘cause he's too busy scribbling down
Arthur Trottier, age 12, doffer, 3 months.

Next picture he herds us all together, boys and girls. He stands me in the front. I can't really see the eye of Mr. Graflex when it opens and closes ‘cause the sun is so low in the sky it's making me squint.

“We can't stay no longer,” I tell him. “Chores to do.”

Not to mention that my feet are hurting bad and Mamère is going to chop my head off. He nods, still scribbling, and everybody bolts, some up the hill to Mr. Dupree's and beyond to their houses. When he looks up from the notebook, it's just him and me and Arthur.

We help him pack up. I take the spindly dog legs that don't weigh much. Arthur staggers around when he first tries to lift the leather pouch. It's holding all those black squares Mr. Hine slides in and out at the back of the camera.

“I can't afford to have you drop those glass plates,” he warns Arthur. “That's two days of work right there.”

“I've got them,” says Arthur. I can see the strap digging into his shoulder, but he don't complain. Mr. Hine walks right close behind him on our way up the hill just in case Arthur should slip.

“Are you the reader Miss Lesley told me about?”

“We both are,” Arthur says, and that surprises me.

“He's the best, I'm second best,” I say. “But he can write better than me.”

“You did just fine this morning in my notebook.”

“I'm slow.”

“Her right hand don't work as good as her left,” Arthur explains. I don't need him telling people my business, but for once, I let him be.

“When did you see Miss Lesley?” I ask.

“I went by the school. She thinks you kids shouldn't be in the mill.”

“She's right,” says Arthur.

“You have to keep quiet about all that at our house,” I warn Mr. Hine. “Or you can't board over. You promise?”

“I promise. Your parents want you working, then.”

“Of course. We need to eat and pay the rent and the store bill,” I say. I mean to sound like Mamère and I do.

“You did come ‘cause of the letter, didn't you?” Arthur asks.

“Did you write it?”

He looks shifty. “I wrote the words down.”

“And I expect Miss Lesley told you what to say.”

“We both helped her,” I tell him.

Arthur's leaning into the hill with that heavy pouch slung across his back. “I'm getting out of the mill fast as I can,” he pants.

“How are you going to do that?”

“I've got plans.”

“We've got some of our own too, young man. You wait for us to take care of it.”

“Your committee?” I ask.

“That's right.”

“Grace says you won't bother with a bunch of mill kids in this little town,” Arthur tells him.

“I came here, didn't I?”

“You can't shut the mill down,” I cry. “Where would we go without jobs?”