by Ken Busato
Chapter 5
The cough comes every now and again; it takes the wind out of me. These many weeks away from my home have left me exhausted and sick. Everyone is suffering. Mama, who will give birth any day, is always tired, and most days she can’t come up with the energy to get out of bed. Papa tries the best he can, but he is not used to his new job, and he comes back every night to our one room later and later. Sometimes, he reeks of alcohol. He and Mama quietly fight. Liam seems to be adjusting to this new life a little. He has made friends with some of the boys who live near.
We try our best to adjust to this city, New Lanark, but it’s so different from the farm life we left back in Argyll. Food comes from the market instead of the field, and people are everywhere. It’s next to impossible to find any time to myself. Back home, when the cool wind started to blow in soft gusts across the land, I would close my eyes and pretend the wind was lifting me up, carrying me to places I could only dream about. But in this place, the wind, when it blows, carries with it the smell of fuel mixed with other odours too awful to describe. There are no flights of fancy here.
Within a week of arriving, I got work at a cotton mill. Mama was angry, but there was not much else I could do. Many kids work there. Along with adults, there are three hundred of us spinning cotton into thread. The work space for each of us is small: we are almost working right on top of another. The noise is loud, and when I leave each day I have a hard time with my ears. No matter how hard I try to stay clean, the work is dirty. Sometimes, I can feel the cotton fluff filling my lungs, and I have a cough I can’t shake. The smell of machine oil covers my skin and clothes. No amount of scrubbing can take away the stench.
The man who owns the mill is Robert Owen. I sometimes see him walking, but I don’t stare for fear of being hit on the back of my head from one of the female supervisors. I have heard the adults talk about Mr. Owen. They say he is peculiar, with strange ideas about how business should run. He is interested in the health of his workers. One time, the adults stopped working for a few minutes and were told to start dancing. It was the strangest thing to see, but far be it from me to question what goes on in a factory. I thought it was a normal thing to do until I saw all the children laughing. As far as Mr. Owen is concerned, a healthy worker does more, so it’s important not to get sick. When I told Papa, he shook his head and laughed himself. He said it was one of the strangest things he had ever heard.
Mr. Owen also thinks education is important. I know a few letters, but I can barely read. For at least thirty minutes near the end of the day, all the children are brought to a tiny room where we go over a lesson, usually from the Bible. It was the first bit of schooling I have ever had outside of what I learned from Mama. I tried to take in as much as I could, but when you work for so many hours, it’s difficult to concentrate at the end of the day.
Papa’s job is much worse than mine. He works out by the water to bring in kelp. It’s dirty work. Every day, he has to walk out far into the salt water, sometimes up to his neck, to cut seaweed, and then he has to drag the kelp back to shore. I didn’t understand at first what was so important about kelp, but I learned it’s used to help make glass and soap.
Sometimes, Papa does not go out into the water. When they bring the kelp to shore, it has to be burned with straw for up to eight hours. When Papa works the fire his clothes and skin smell terrible. He gets close to the fire, pounding and raking the kelp with a long iron club. When he comes home, he is so tired he can barely speak. If I smell alcohol mixed with that of burnt kelp, I know not to say anything.
Uncle Willie was in jail for a week when he was released. Papa was able to send word about where we were going, so it was not too hard for Willie to find us in our small little room in Blantyre, an area of New Lanark close to the Clyde River. He looked awful. I think he was roughed up while in jail, but Uncle Willie would never say anything about what happened. He simply smiles and tries to act as if nothing has happened to him, or us. He’s a brave man for trying to pretend nothing has happened, but I remember full well what those two town guard did to him outside our home.
There are five of us all living in one room, with many other Scottish families all around us. Everyone has a similar story: people evicted from their homes to make way for sheep. Most nights, there is a fire outside, and people gather together to talk proudly about their clan. Usually, some of the men try to sing a song or two, but most nights there is no one willing to help carry the tune. Mostly, the men talk about the future.
“There is no point in staying here,” a man named Robert Docherty said one evening. Mr. Docherty had a room very close to ours. His wife, Arwen, is nice and polite, and his son’s age is close to Liam’s. “Many people are quitting Scotland altogether, making their way to America. The land is good for farming, and there’s a hell of a lot of it to go around for hard working, honest folk.”
“I’ve heard some of those stories too,” said Papa, “But how can you put your trust in men who say such things? Just because someone says something does not make it true.”
“Aye,” replied Mr. Docherty. “You may be right. I’m not saying I’m heading out this very minute, but you got to think about where you’re living now.”
“It’s a God awful shame where we are living now,” said Willie.
“That’s true,” said Mr. Docherty. “You don’t think things are going to get better here? That all of a sudden, the Lairds will have a change of heart and give us back the cottages and lands that were taken away from us. Nah boys, we have to look after ourselves.”
“We all feel the same way about it. They force your family away from the only place they’ve ever known. They take away what it means to be a man.”
“Aye John,” Mr. Docherty replied. “There’s nothing worse than not being in charge of things. That’s why I am going to think long and hard about staying here or not. I want to be in charge of making decisions for my family.”
Mr. Docherty and Papa talked a while about their clans. Mr. Docherty comes from a proud tradition of Scots, with men who also fought long ago in Culloden. Unlike great Uncle Donnan, many of Mr. Docherty’s relatives died in that battle, leaving many poor women widowed.