“Much obliged, Preacher,” said Clay, and then turned to Olivia. “Now that’s done, Old Woman, how about putten some supper on the table. I’m hungry.”
***
Later, when they were alone in the kitchen and Clay was having a second cup of coffee, he said, “Livy, write a letter to Virgil and tell him all about this thing and see what he says.”
“He’s your brother,” said Olivia, “I think you’re the one that ought to write to him.”
“Honey,” said Clay. “It takes me half the night just to sign my name. Now, you get here to the table and write it and I’ll tell you what to say.”
Olivia agreed; when she had found one of the children’s school tablets and sharpened a pencil with a butcher knife she sat down and waited for Clay to compose his thoughts. Finally when nothing seemed to come to Clay’s mind she said, “I’m waiten.”
“Durned if I can think of how to start out.”
“Most letters start with Dear whoever it is you’re writen to,” suggested Olivia.
“All right, then. Put down, ‘Dear Brother Virgil.’”
Olivia did as she was instructed. When she was finished writing, she looked up for further dictation.
“Dear Brother Virgil,” said Clay, “Hope this finds you in the pink of health and getten plenty to eat.”
Olivia wrote hastily as Clay warmed to what he was doing. “We are just fine and dandy here. The trout fishen is goen to start soon and I hope to hell you will be here for it.”
“I can’t say that,” said Olivia.
“What?”
“Say ‘hell’.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s going through the mails of the United States Government. They’ll arrest you for sayen a thing like that in the mail.”
“How they goen to know if I write ‘hell’ and send it through the mail?”
“They’re liable to open it,” said Olivia. “That’s how.”
“Who gives ’em the right?” demanded Clay.
“Anything you send through the mail they got the right to open,” said Olivia. “It’s the law.”
“Well,” exclaimed Clay, “I got a good mind not to do business with ’em. They got no right tellen me what I can write to my own brother. Now you write it like I tell you and if they give me any trouble I’ll deal with ’em. Take it down like I tell you. What have you got so far?”
Olivia read back what she had until she came to “The trout fishen is goen to start soon….”
“And I hope to hell,” said Clay, “you will be here for it. Trout is goen to be plentiful this year from the looks of things and you come on up here and we will catch us a bushel.” He paused for a moment to give Olivia time to catch up with him. “Are you writen it down just what I’m sayen?” he asked.
“Word for word,” replied Olivia, who had substituted “heck” for “hell.”
“Now you are probably wonderen what the devil I am doen writen to you,” continued Clay.
Olivia put down the pencil and pushed the tablet over to Clay.
“I’m not goen to write that,” she said.
“Well, say it someway else,” he said and pushed the tablet back to her.
“You are probably wondering what the goodness I am writing to you about,” wrote Olivia and waited.
“The reason is,” Clay went on, “that Clay-Boy is just about to get a chance to go to a college down there and they are willen to pay for everything but a place for him to sleep and somethin’ for him to eat. It seems to me if they wanted him bad enough they’d take care of that too, but I know about as much about college as Alabama Sweetzer knows about Sunday school.”
“Clay!” said Olivia.
“Well, you know what I’m tryen to say. Put it down anyhow you want to.”
Olivia composed the idea to her own liking, wrote it and waited for Clay to continue.
“What I want to talk to you about is maybe you’ll take Clay-Boy in with you down there and see no harm comes to him while they’re given him an education. He’s a good boy and won’t trouble you none and no matter how he turns out, I’ll spend the rest of my life maken it up to you. Yours till the well runs dry. Clay Spencer.”
Chapter 6
In May Clay-Boy graduated from high school. His graduation present, a great surprise, was his high school ring. Clay-Boy had not expected the ring because Clay had objected to throwing away good money on jewelry, but Olivia had finally convinced Clay that it was a symbol of accomplishment rather than a useless ornament.
Since no word had come from the scholarship committee at the University of Richmond Clay-Boy had no way of knowing whether the dream of his going to college would come true or not. In the meantime there were long days ahead. He discussed with his father the possibility of seeking a temporary job at the mill, but Clay would not permit it.
“I’ve said it all my life,” vowed Clay. “Not one of my babies will ever work in that sump hole and my word still holds.”
“But Daddy,” objected Clay-Boy, “it would only be for a little while. Just until I hear what they decide down at Richmond.”
“Boy,” said Clay with unaccustomed harshness, “I have gone without clothes on my back so you could get a high school education. Your mama has scrimped and saved so you could buy paper tablets to do your homework on. Many’s the night we’ve gone to bed not knowen where the money would come from to see us through the next day.
“But one thing was always certain. The school was there and as long as it was free, and we could keep shoes on your feet and clothes on your back, you’d go to it until you got education enough that you’d never end up ignorant and broken-backed and covered with mill dust like the rest of these poor fools around here. But you, boy, you’re different. You’ve got a high school education. Maybe that’s all you’ll ever get. Let’s see what you can do with it.”
As Clay-Boy discovered in the days that followed there was simply no demand in New Dominion for a boy with a high school education. In a larger community he might have found work as a drugstore delivery boy, or an usher in a movie theatre or a messenger, but in New Dominion there were no drugstores or movie houses or Western Union offices.
Although Clay-Boy was out of school he did not lack for things to do. In the morning he delivered butter, eggs, and buttermilk to his mother’s customers—Olivia supplemented the family income by such sales. He helped his mother about the house, and he even developed the ability to operate the old manual butter churn with one hand, hold the baby with the other and somehow review one of his schoolbooks at the same time. He longed for more books to read, for there were only two books in the house. One was The A B C’s of Bee Keeping which Clay had sent away for during the depression when he thought he would try to make money selling honey. The other was the Holy Bible, and since these were the only two books and they were precious they were kept on a high shelf away from the destructive hands of children.
Twice a day Clay-Boy would make the trip down to the post office to see if any word had arrived from the University of Richmond.
One day on his way home from the post office he stopped and began to examine an abandoned little one-room house that was tucked away at the curve of the road a few hundred yards from the mill. It had been built originally as a playhouse for the children of one of the former general managers of the company. As the mill expanded and encroached more and more on the grounds of the general manager’s home, he had succeeded in persuading the company to build a larger and better home in a new location. The residence had been torn down, but the little playhouse had been of such small consequence that it had been left.
Now its windows were broken and the door had been removed and the floors were covered with cigarette butts and beer cans—the men of the village occasionally and unofficially used the little house for drinking bouts and poker parties—but still its floor was strong and the roof only leaked in a few places.
“Somebody could open a business of some kind there,” thoug
ht Clay-Boy. He sat down on the edge of the road and tried to think of something there might be a demand for in New Dominion. He reasoned that because everybody in the village was so poor it would have to be something that would cost them the least amount of money possible but still provide them with such value that they would buy.
Several days went by before Clay-Boy had an idea, one that came from a chance remark made by his mother.
“I certainly do wish I had somethen to read,” she said one night after the younger children were put to bed. “I don’t know when I had a good book to read.”
And that was when the idea of opening a rental library came into Clay-Boy’s head. There was only one drawback. He had no books to rent, but still he thought the idea was a good one, and when he told it to Laura Parker she agreed enthusiastically.
“Let me talk to some people,” she said, “and see if we can come up with some help.”
“And just who do you expect will borrow the books?” asked Clyde Goodson when she took him to the abandoned little house and told him Clay-Boy’s idea.
“Maybe the children,” she said, “We’ve taught them to read, but aside from their school books there’s nothing in their homes to read except an occasional Bible.”
“But are you sure there are enough people who can afford to rent books?”
“No,” said Laura, “the renting was Clay-Boy’s idea. What I thought we could do was somehow get some books and provide them free and let Clay-Boy act as librarian with a small salary.”
“Where’s the money coming from?” inquired Mr. Goodson.
“That’s why I asked you to come down and see the place. I want you to persuade your congregation to adopt this as a project and provide a weekly salary of ten dollars or so.”
“You obviously don’t know much about my congregation and their financial status. Ten dollars or so is about what they pay me.”
“I expected as much,” said Laura, “so I’ll use Plan Two.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll go to the company.”
“They’ll laugh at you.”
“You forget that as an old-maid schoolteacher who touches up her hair and adores Shakespeare I am the object of considerable ridicule already. Being laughed at is nothing new to me.”
“I wish you luck,” said Mr. Goodson. “You get the building and I’ll see what I can do about finding you some books.”
***
The highest authority representing the company in New Dominion was the general manager, Colonel Coleman. He had no secretary, made no appointments, so in order to see him Laura simply went to his office one morning at nine o’clock and sat until he arrived.
Laura had never been in the Colonel’s office before; because of his title she had expected it to be a monastic, military, ordered room. It was not. One dirty window admitted enough light to reveal a desk, cluttered with papers and a gooseneck lamp. Along the window ledge were stacked small sample squares of soapstone. In the center of the room was a pot-bellied stove in which no fire burned. The remaining furnishings consisted of the chair with a broken cane bottom in which Laura sat and waited.
Colonel Coleman arrived at nine-thirty. He was a tall, thin man with thin-blue alcoholic eyes and thinning blond hair. No one had ever seen him dressed in anything other than a riding habit and he carried with him always a short leather riding crop. While no one had ever seen him actually use the crop on a horse or a person, he often gave the impression that if angered he might.
He walked in the office, sat down at his desk and turned on the gooseneck lamp before he noticed Laura. When he did see her he said, without any show of surprise,
“Good morning.”
“Good morning, Colonel Coleman,” said Laura. “I’m Laura Parker.”
“I know who you are, Miss Parker,” he replied.
“I’ve come to see you about that little playhouse that’s around the corner under the mulberry tree.” Laura grew nervous under the Colonel’s bland stare. “You know the place I mean?”
“Yes,” he said disinterestedly. “I’ve been thinking of knocking it down. The men use it to drink and gamble in when they ought to be home sleeping. Why are you interested in the place?”
“I want to make it into a library,” replied Laura.
“Miss Parker, if you hope to turn this rock pile into a cultural center you’re wasting your time.”
“That is not my intention.”
“Then why?”
“Colonel Coleman, I have a student in my graduating class who I hope will enter college next fall.”
“Good God,” exclaimed the colonel. “Why?”
“Because he is an exceptional boy. I think it would be criminal for his education to stop with high school.”
“What’s the boy’s name?”
“His father works in the gang room. He’s Clay Spencer’s boy.”
“Clay is a friend of mine. We’ve often hunted together, and I know the boy too. Where’s the money coming from?”
“We’ve applied for a scholarship at the University of Richmond. If they judge by scholarship, promise and the ability to learn and to grow, I’m sure he’ll get it.”
“Hope he does,” answered the colonel. “But what’s this got to do with your making a library out of that old playhouse?”
“The scholarship we’re working for pays tuition. That’s all. Clay-Boy will need every cent he can earn this summer and more. It seemed to me that the company has done little enough for the people it employs; why couldn’t they set aside some small sum each week to pay a librarian?”
“Do you have any idea what a laugh that suggestion would get if I were to present it to the company?”
“Colonel Coleman, who is the company anyway? As long as I have taught here I have heard of The Company. Aren’t there any people in the company?”
“No people,” said the Colonel. “Just stockholders, mostly located in New York City.”
“Will you at least try?”
“Why should I risk that embarrassment, Miss Parker?”
“Because as long as this company has been in existence, and I believe that goes back into the eighteen-eighties, it has paid the workers barely enough to live on. They have worked longer hours than any slave might have worked in the old days, at dangerous jobs or else jobs so tedious it’s demeaning. The men are bent and old by the time they are forty. Their children are taken when they are still children and placed in jobs their fathers had when they were children. It makes animals out of them, not people! I can’t see how you can look at it day after day without its breaking your heart.”
“I am glad to say that I am not an emotional man, Miss Parker.”
“But you are an intelligent man. Doesn’t it stagger your imagination that out of this stone dust and red clay something has come alive in one of these children?”
“Not in the least. You forget, Miss Parker, that nobody asks these people to work here, to live here, or to stay here. They’re free to go and find jobs somewhere else.”
“But they don’t know anywhere else, except this boy who’s come along and wants to go and should go. I beg you to help him.”
“You can have the house for your library. You’ll have to clear the beer cans out and I’d advise you to put a lock on it so the men don’t go in there at night.”
“And the salary. Considering what it will go for I don’t see that fifteen dollars a week is too extravagant. What do you think?”
“It’s ridiculous for some kid who isn’t out of high school yet. As long as you’ve rooked me into this thing I’ll manage five dollars a week, and that’s it.”
“Ten, Colonel,” said Miss Parker firmly.
“Miss Parker, I operate on a budget here. There’s no allowance in it for a librarian. Five dollars a week perhaps I can bury somewhere under miscellaneous expenses. I can’t get away with a penny more.”
“Colonel Coleman, this is the first philanthropic gesture the company has made in nearly fi
fty years it has exploited these people.” Laura rose and pounded her fist on the desk.
“Miss Parker,” answered the Colonel coldly. “This is not a philanthropic organization, and I am not making this concession out of philanthropic motives. It just happens I think the boy’s father is a fine man and if he’s anything like his father he probably can make something of himself. You can have the house for your library and you can have five dollars a week to pay the kid to run it.”
It was not all she had hoped for, but more than she really expected to get. Still she could not resist just one more try. Before she could open her mouth, Colonel Coleman saw her intention. He reached in his desk, pulled out a fifth of whiskey, filled a shot glass and held it out to her.
“Would you care for a drink, Miss Parker?” he asked.
“No, thank you,” said Laura and began pulling on her white gloves.
The colonel threw his head back and tossed the bourbon down his throat with ease and relish. It might as well have been lemonade, thought Laura, who expected him to gasp and sputter.
Seeing her look of fascination, he held the shot glass out to her again.
“Are you sure you don’t want one?” he said.
“Quite sure,” she said. “Good-by, Colonel. Thank you very much.”
That night Laura sat down and wrote to churches, libraries and friends telling them of her need for books. “Even popular novels would be welcomed,” she wrote to one friend, “as long as they are not trashy, and the condition and quality of the bindings is of little importance.”
After school hours and on Saturdays, she and Clay-Boy and sometimes Mr. Goodson would work on the little house, clearing it of debris, replacing the broken windows and scrubbing down the walls with lye. Clyde Goodson found some lumber stacked in the basement of the church, donated it for shelves and then contributed his sincere if not quite expert labor to building them.
The first shipment of books came a week or so before graduation day. And then they began to arrive at the post office almost every day. They came in boxes and barrels from New York and Richmond and Washington. One afternoon after school when the little room was ready, Miss Parker and Clay-Boy went down to start placing the books on the shelves.
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