For Love's Sake (6 page)

When they arrived at the ball field, the game had already started. Laurel and Christopher climbed up on the wooden bleachers and took seats beside Deirdre and her mother. Everyone looked at Laurel like she had lost her mind, and eyed their employer like an unwelcome intruder. It was a general understanding in town that the mill-workers left ‘the quality’ alone, and expected them to do the same. Now, here was one amidst them – surely sent to spy.

Deirdre and Mrs. Jones gave him a half-hearted smile, and then went back to watching the game. Most pretended that he wasn’t there, but a few wide-eyed children went so far as to twist around in their seats to get a good look at ‘His Lordship’. When their eyes met with Christopher’s, they always spun back around in terror.

“I got us some stick candy,” Laurel said, producing a handful of hard candy sticks from her dress pocket. She flipped through each multicolored variety. “Let’s see…peppermint, cherry, sassafras…and my personal favorite – horehound.”

When Christopher seemed reluctant to take one, she shoved a cherry stick into his hand. He picked off the pale blue pocket lint before placing it between his teeth. He could not remember the last time he ate candy.

Laurel offered some to her neighbors; they all declined. None of them dared make a sound, even when Deirdre’s oldest brother turned a nice double play. They clapped nervously as the young man caught the ball and threw it to the second baseman, who then threw back to first, forcing both the hitter and the runner out.

Christopher watched that action on the field curiously. “I know absolutely nothing about baseball.”

“Don’t they play in England?”

“No. But we do play cricket, which is similar.”

“Crickets.” Laurel tried not to giggle. “That sounds like a silly game.”

“We take it very seriously,” Christopher said, biting off a large chunk of his candy.

“You take everything seriously. Are all Englishmen like you, or are you just a stick in the mud wherever you go?”

A few of their bench-neighbors couldn’t help but laugh. Only Laurel Graham would have the gumption to talk like that to her bossman!

Christopher glanced around him, feeling like the butt of a joke that he wasn’t quite in on. He wanted to ask Laurel what exactly a ‘stick in the mud’ meant, but decided he would just let it go. She was distracting him from the baseball game, anyway.

After the game, Christopher and Laurel took the long way home. Everyone on Mill Hill was celebrating their victory over Cherryville, and Laurel saw no reason to hurry back to town. The two of them followed the creek bank down to the pool where the older boys often went swimming. Some of the baseball players had stripped off their dirt-caked uniforms and waded in, while their sweethearts sat in the cool shade. Many of the older girls openly admired Christopher in his crisp white suit, and even though he didn’t let on, Laurel had the impression that he enjoyed the attention.

“Deirdre’s momma invited us over for dinner, do you want to go?” she asked.

“It would be awkward,” Christopher said.

“Why?”

He stopped to swat a mosquito that buzzed around his head. “Didn’t you notice the way everyone reacted when they saw me at the baseball game?”

“They’re just nervous. They think you’ll fire them if they say the wrong thing.”

Ignoring her, Christopher stared into the pool of murky water. “Are there any fish in there?”

“Worth catching? Not really, but about a mile or two up yonder there’s an old sunken tree. It works like a dam, and the creek is good and deep there. When I was little, we used to catch a mess of bream – Danny Clay calls it the Honey Hole.”

Christopher shoved his hands into his pockets. “Are you sure he was referring to the fishing?”

CHAPTER NINE

A ring of the silver bell at the front desk summoned a gentleman who materialized from within the office. Laurel stood in the lobby of the hotel, holding a note card.

“May I help you?” he asked.

She was too busy studying the plush red carpet and gilt wall sconces to hear him the first time. He cleared his throat and repeated himself a little louder.

“
May I help you?
”

Laurel’s head whipped around to face him. “Oh, I…um…I have a note from His Lordship. Could you tell me his room number, please?”

The desk clerk frowned at her. He prided himself on running a respectable establishment, and thought very seriously against allowing this young lady upstairs alone with a male guest. There were other places in town that were happy to turn a blind eye from
that sort of thing
, but he was afraid of losing his only paying guest to them.

As long as it doesn’t become a habit, he decided. “Number two-ten – up the stairs, down the hall. It will be the last door on your right.”

“Thank you,” Laurel said, studying a very large potted palm.

She had never been in such a lavishly decorated room, and everything seemed to be done on a grand scale. The red and gold brocade sofas and chairs, the yellow glow of the electric lamps, and even the polished rosewood coffee tables fascinated her. She longed to run her hands over everything, but remembered that Christopher had sent for her.

Laurel climbed the polished wooden staircase, and found his room at the end of the long hallway. She knocked quietly on the door. There was no answer, so she knocked again, only a little louder this time. When the door inched open, her laughter echoed through the passageway.

Standing in front of her was Christopher, covered in a bright red rash and yellow blisters. He looked miserable, and her amusement was certainly not helping.

“It looks like you got into some Poison Oak!” she said in between her giggles.

“Whatever it is, it
itches!
”

Laurel could sympathize with him on that. Just about any child growing up in the South had fallen victim to Poison Oak, Poison Ivy, or Poison Sumac at some point. The result of coming into contact with these plants was an unbearably itchy, weeping rash.

Christopher dug at the red splotches on his hands and face with his fingernails. “Should I call for the doctor?” he asked.

“Not much he could do for you,” Laurel explained as she let herself into his room.

The crisp white cotton sheets on his enormous brass bed were turned back, trunkfuls of clothing lay strewn across the floor and over the backs of chairs; she could hear water running from the open door of the bathroom.

“Miss Graham,” he begged, “You have to help me!”

She smiled at him, thinking that all men were really helpless babies down deep inside. Here was this giant of a man practically on his knees at her feet.

“Give me some money and I’ll run down to the drugstore before it closes.”

He fished out a wad of bills and change from his pocket and thrust it into her outstretched palm.

“While I’m gone, go take the hottest bath you can stand,” she ordered.

When Laurel returned with the brown paper bag full of necessary supplies, Christopher sat on the edge of his bed, scratching at his skin relentlessly. The hot bath had helped, but only temporarily, and if the itching did not subside soon, he was afraid that he would be driven to madness.

She laid the bag on the little table beside him and pulled out its contents one by one. “Alright…first, we have Calamine lotion. This will cool your skin and stop the itching. I’d use it before bed every night because when it dries, it leaves a crust – you might not want to go outside all pink-and-white-spotted looking.”

Laurel ripped open a bag of cotton balls and poured some of the pink liquid onto one. She dabbed it on his face gently, her own merely inches away from his.

“I was wondering why you didn’t show up at the Mill today,” she said. “Actually, I started to worry...”

Christopher frowned, the creases of his face cracking the dried lotion on his skin. “It seemed like a good afternoon to go fishing. Obviously, I was mistaken!”

“Everybody gets into Poison Oak, you just have to learn to look out for it.”

Suddenly, Laurel became aware of the closeness of her mouth to his. As if he sensed it too, Christopher’s blue eyes darted into hers. They stared silently at each other until Laurel felt her face grow warm.

Gesturing to the other items on the bedside table, she explained, “During the day, use the vinegar. You’ll stink to high heaven, but it will dry up the blisters.”

He nodded, and then pointed at the two thin glass bottles. “What are those for?”

Laurel grinned and handed him one. “I took two nickels and bought some Cokes. When I feel bad, they always make everything better!”

After a week of misery, Christopher’s rashes cleared up. He had not seen or heard from Laurel since she came to his rescue, and in her absence, he learned just how much he relied on her friendship in recent weeks. When he left for work, he actually looked forward to seeing her.

Also after a week of being away, he realized just how much he dreaded returning to the mill. The tall red brick building, with its damp concrete courtyard, seemed more like a prison. High above, the smokestacks stood guard, watching everyone who came or went – seeing everything, but telling nothing. Christopher dreaded this walk every day, and wondered how many more times he would have to make it.

Pushing open the heavy metal door, he took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the cotton dust that he had still not managed to become accustomed to. He climbed the stairs to the offices, already feeling weighted down by the thickness of the air. Obviously the place still managed to run in his absence, and from the stack of papers his secretary had ready on his desk, it was business as usual. Shrugging out of his jacket, he hung it and his hat on the peg drilled into the wall, and began another long day of work.

By noon, he could not take it anymore. His ears had grown used to the peace and quiet of the hotel, through whose windows he could hear the robins singing in the branches of the old oak tree out front. Now, the noise from the spinning machines below was deafening. It pounded in his ears relentlessly, giving him a terrible headache, which made the figures in the books before him blur and run together. Christopher rubbed his stinging eyes, and pushed back his desk chair. It scraped across the wooden floor.

With his shirtsleeves still rolled up, he pulled the door that opened up to the spinning room. From the catwalk, he could see the girls and boys hard at work below. The spinners and doffers were younger employees, as the adult men worked in the carding room, and the older women in the weaving room. Colored men could only work in opening and picking rooms, doing the dirty jobs that white men did not want. Very small children even “helped” their parents when not in school, learning skills necessary for a life in the mill from a very early age.

Christopher felt like telling the children to go outside and play, but instead he just walked down the metal stairs, which vibrated from the movements of the spinning machines. By then, he knew exactly which ones were Laurel’s responsibility to run, but he still meandered along the rows, pretending to inspect the work.

When he came to her section, he stopped. “Hard at work, Miss Graham?”

She never even looked up at him as she answered, “Always, Sir.”

He held out his hands to her, intending to show that his bout of Poison Oak was all but cleared up. When he did so, she grabbed them and jerked them away.

“Don’t put your fingers near the machine!” When Laurel realized her outburst, she blushed to the very tip of her nose. “It makes me nervous…”

Christopher smiled. It was the first time she had ever seen the white evenness of his teeth, or the way wrinkles fanned out from his blue eyes. Despite the pronounced lines on his face, the wide grin softened his features, transforming it almost to boyishness. If Laurel had not been so embarrassed, she would have noticed the way that smile made her heart flutter.

“Thank you for your concern over my fingers, Miss Graham,” he said, still grinning as he walked away.

“Just the girl in charge of keeping me in one piece!” Christopher said as Laurel tried to duck past him on her way out the building.

She pulled her hat down low over her face. “Please leave me alone.”

“No, I really mean it! I could just see myself doing something foolish and getting one of my fingers lobbed off.”

Laurel stopped, allowing him to catch up with her in the mill yard. Nearby, other girls watched them anxiously.

“You think it’s funny, but wait until you see it really happen!”

Christopher sobered. “I surely hope not.”

“I once saw a boy lose his entire hand. I’ve seen whole hunks of hair ripped out of girls’ heads – they all got off lucky and weren’t scalped where they stood!”

He winced. Industrial accidents were a thing of horror. Children risked their lives for $1.50 a day.
Laurel
risked her life for $1.50 a day! Christopher did not know what he would do if anything were to happen to any of his employees while at work in his mill.

She saw that her words had hit home with him. “Listen, next weekend is the Cotton Festival. Holbrooks usually gave us that Saturday off to celebrate and go to the parade. It only seems fair, since
we
are the ones who actually work the cotton…”

“Of course,” he agreed. “Go and enjoy yourselves.”

“You’ll come, too, won’t you?”

Christopher stopped walking and shoved his hands into his trouser pockets. “Are you inviting me?”

“Come if you want – or not. I don’t know about England, but over here, it’s a free country.”

“I will only come if you invite me. You see, I only
pretend
not to notice that my presence is not welcome amongst the townspeople.”

“Oh! Who cares what they think!” Laurel said, making sure she was loud enough for any eavesdroppers to hear. “You and I will go and have a wonderful time.”

CHAPTER TEN

Laurel had scrimped and saved every extra penny from her past three months’ paychecks. From her landlord, who owned the Dry Goods Store below her apartment, she purchased enough cloth every autumn to make a few new skirts and dresses. This year, she was able to make a heavy camel brown skirt, a navy blue wool dress, as well as a pale dove-gray dress for Sundays. She even managed to convince the man to let her have a few yards of pink cotton gingham at half price – since summer was over anyway.