Counting on Grace (17 page)

“I shall get one also,” she tells us.

“He promised to send me pictures,” I say. “And a notebook.”

“Mr. Hine makes lots of promises,” grunts Arthur. They moved him and his mother to the back of the room the day after I told him they would. He barely speaks to me now when we pass in the row. It's not my fault you got moved, Arthur Trottier, I want to say, but I'm leaving him be. I've got this feeling that he'll explode if I so much as look at him crossways.

“Changing minds takes time, Arthur,” says Miss Lesley. “I know how you feel, though. I'm as eager to have you back in school full-time as you are to be here.”

“I doubt it,” he says, and buries his nose back in his new book. She give me a look that says, What's wrong with him? But I just shake my head ‘cause for once, I don't know what to tell her.

I'm itching to move my pencil into my other hand the way I've started doing in Mr. Dupree's store when I write down those lists for Papa. But Miss Lesley's standing behind watching me the whole time. The steamy hot air is making my skin stick to the bumpy wood of the desk and I've got to keep waiting for my clumsy right hand to catch up with my brain. I peel one leg off the seat of the chair and then the other. Outside, I can hear the kids yelling down in the shallow part of the river. None of us knows how to swim, but we all know how to cool off on Sundays.

Suddenly this whole schooling business seems stupid to me and I put down the pencil and stand up before I even know what I'm doing.

“Miss Lesley, I am never going to pass no test for the Normal School. I am never getting out of the mill no matter what you say. Sunday is the only day I've got to cool off in the river and that's where I'm going.”

At least that makes Arthur lift his face out of his book. They both stare at me for a second without saying nothing. Last time Miss Lesley threw me out of school. Now here I am again quitting on my own.

“You're right, Grace,” she says with a nod. “Go on.”

I'm halfway down the hill before I wonder what I was
right about. That I'm never passing no test or I'm never getting out of the mill. Or that Sunday is the only day for the river. Or all of it.

It don't matter what she thinks, I tell myself.

One afternoon I am doffing Edwin, who shares a row with Mrs. Trottier's first frame. Arthur don't name his machines the way I do.

I can feel Arthur moving along behind me, but I get done first. When I turn around, I see him crouch down to reset the builder. Nothing strange about that ‘cause he always does that for his mother. But then he walks back to the gearbox and begins fooling around in there, which is a thing we're never supposed to do. I think, what's he cleaning in there for, it's still early in the week, and then I hear him yell “READY” at his mother and she's got her head down and without her knowing she's gonna be spinning more than thread, her foot finds the rail to jog. The belt moves, the gears turn and Arthur's hand gets picked up and carried around just like he meant it to. Maybe the screaming is coming from me and maybe it's coming from Arthur, but all I know is he's gone and put his fingers in that place between the sprockets and they're chewing his hand all to bits.

I run to his mother, who's lifted her head ‘cause of the disturbance, but still she can't see she's spinning her boy's bones into thread and I butt her from behind. I shove her foot off the rail and yell at her to throw the shipper handle,
throw it, jumping to try and get it, but in the end it's Mamère who reaches up over both of us and shuts that frame down. Ends are popping all over the place and I can just see the top of Arthur's head where it's lying on the greasy floor. By the time I slide my way up there, French Johnny is lifting him and there's blood mixed with the oil and when Arthur's face bobs past me, flopping along in French Johnny's arms, his eyes are closed and his face looks pasty gray like bread dough.

“Is he dead?” I ask the air, and someone whispers behind me that the boy's hand has been mangled by the machine and he's passed out from the pain.

Whenever I close my eyes, all I see is his hand disappearing into that mess of gears and the sick come up my throat.

Arthur lost the middle two fingers on that hand. His good one. The one he writes with. The doctor from the next town come and sewed up whatever pieces of the in-sides were hanging out, and now Dougie says it's all wrapped up in a fat dirty bandage. Arthur ain't been outside the house since it happened, but Dougie peeked in the window to look at him. Dougie would. He don't understand a thing about privacy.

People are talking.

“He must have been trying to clear lint out of the gears.”

“It wasn't cleaning day.”

“He's a dizzy one.”

“Whatever was the boy thinking?”

I'm the only one who knows Arthur was fixing to do whatever he had to so's he could get out of the mill. I just never did imagine he would commit a crime so horrible against his own self. Even if I had figured out what he was planning to do, I was never giving Arthur no cause to call me tattle again. And maybe this time I should have. Thinking like that makes my head pound something terrible.

My mother says nothing for once. That first night when I can't sleep, she makes me up a hot brew of herbs like she used to do for Pépé. When I throw it all up, she still don't say a word, but calls to Papa. He wipes my face down with a wet cloth and holds me in his lap till my stomach stops turning over. I fall asleep like that.

Mrs. Trottier's machines were down all the rest of that day and the next. When she dragged herself back in on the third day, Mamère and Delia both covered for her when they could. Mamère even sent me over to doff for her twice that afternoon. She was all in a muddle, Arthur's mother. I had to remind her two times to clear her scavenger rolls and she looked at me with these empty eyes like her mind was far away somewhere.

Not one of us is working with any heart in it. At break, Mamère don't even try to get the women singing. We sit in a circle and chew our food and swallow as if we are pushing rocks down our throats. All I can see is Arthur's hand disappearing inside that gearbox and when Dougie wonders out loud whether pieces of his fingers ended up in the thread, I slap him so hard, he actually shuts up for once and stays as far away from me as he can.

Arthur and his mother don't come to Mass on Sunday, but we pray for them. Mamère leads the singing as usual, but with no organ backing them up, the choir sounds weak and spindly. There ain't a breath of air in that upstairs room ‘cause of the terrible hot spell that's dragged on and on. We are all used to the heat, which builds up something fierce in the mill, but being pressed so close to one another with no frames to separate us can make a person feel real sick from breathing in all that body smell. The old-goat stink of the frames is even better than that. Two of the women faint and have to be carried out. Even Père Alain seems happy when Mass is finished.

I go over to the schoolhouse out of habit. I don't know what else to do with myself.

When I cup my hands to look through the window, I can see Miss Lesley sitting at her desk. She don't got no reason to be there, ‘cause I already give it up and Arthur ain't coming.

She's not writing or reading or nothing. She's just sitting there like the heat has knocked her stupefied.

When I tap on the window, she waves me in.

“I thought you'd given up on school, Grace.” She sounds as if she has to drag her voice up from the bottom of her feet.

“I'm just visiting,” I say, sliding into my old seat.

“Glad to have you,” she says, and I think she means it.

After a long time, I say, “I ‘spect Arthur will be back in school regular now.”

“Don't count on it.”

“He can't doff no more.”

“Anymore,” she corrects me, but with no spirit to it. “There's always work to be found in the mill, Grace, even if you're missing a few fingers. You know that better than I.”

I look away. Maybe Arthur tore off two of his fingers for no reason at all. Maybe he needed to give up his whole hand or his arm to keep himself safe from ever working in the mill again.

“It's his writing hand,” I say.

She nods, her eyes big and empty. “What his mother must be feeling,” she whispers.

I put my head down on the desk ‘cause the room is beginning to spin around on me. Must be the heat. She moves by and for just a second, like a breeze ruffling my hair, her hand comes to rest on my braids.

She give me some adding to do. “Just to pass the time,” she says as if we're both waiting for something to happen.

I like numbers. They fix my jumpy mind in one place for as long as I'm doing the problem. It's the first peace I've had since the accident.

Outside we hear somebody walking slow up the porch steps. We sit and wait, but it's taking this person an awful long time to make his way to the door. We know who it is before he comes into sight.

Arthur leans against the wall and we stare like we're seeing a ghost.

“Arthur,” says Miss Lesley.

She's got one hand over her mouth like she's fixing to be sick. We're trying hard both of us not to look at the place where the bandage is coming unraveled. Neither of us wants to see what's left there.