The Cotton Mill

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Many times Jason had wondered what his life would have been like if his parents had not decided to move back to Fries from Danville when he was two.

After his father had gotten out of World War II, he returned to Virginia to his wife and two daughters. He found there were no jobs, even for returning veterans, in the New River Valley. So Colin Campbell loaded up his wife Leah, and daughters Josie, 7, and Lisa, 4 into a borrowed car, and departed for greener pastures in Danville, Va. After trying four rental houses in two months, the family of four finally settled into a small, four-room tobacco tenant farmer’s house. It was the typical residence of the area. Clap-board served as the siding, while the tin-roof, with an assortment of advertisement signs patching various holes, kept most of the rain out. A covered porch ran the twenty-foot width of the front. This shady escape made the searing Piedmont days almost tolerable, although the grassless front yard kept a dust cloud settling on anyone, or anything, sitting on the porch. The rent was right for the family’s finances, $2/week. The owner, an older man who came to be known as Mr. Wall, never asked for the rent. He often let it go unpaid during harder than normal times. The couple’s jobs in the Dan River Mills factory barely managed to feed and clothe the family. The young girls helped by tending the chickens, and taking daily food scraps that were collected from neighbors to feed a young pig that Mr. Campbell had obtained by trading a genuine German Swastika flag. (The flag had been obtained by trading a carton of Camels that he had won playing poker on the ship he served on. Colin only smoked Winston, so it wasn’t much of a sacrifice.)

The first two weeks were spent cleaning the house, as no one had lived in it for a year. Leah, always a good housekeeper, spent two days scrubbing the floors. The walls were more difficult as they consisted of plaster over wood lath, covered with multiple layers of deteriorating wallpaper. Sun-faded walls were evident in the various locations where the previous inhabitants had hung pictures and calendars. Leah wished that they had the money to buy new wall-paper before they moved their scant pieces of furniture in, but she knew that would have to wait.

The kitchen door opened onto the small back porch, 3’ by 4’. The two steps leading down to the hard packed dirt would have to be replaced, for they had rotted to the point of falling in. A temporary solution was made by taking six railroad ties found in the junk yard to the rear of the house, placing four on the ground, followed by two on top. The ties had been used to support the cars that had been salvaged in the junk yard out back by the cemetery, but by now there was nothing left of the cars to be sold, so the ties would never be missed.

Ten feet away from the kitchen door was the hand-dug water well with its rope and pulley system to lower the bucket in and out. Josie, the eldest, was in charge of getting the water three times a day. In the morning she would get two buckets for preparing breakfast. In the afternoon after school she’d fill the buckets for cooking dinner. After dinner, she would get the water so that she and Lisa could wash the dishes. She was given the job over Lisa by virtue of the fact that her arms were long enough to reach the rope after standing on top of an empty wooden Pepsi crate. Her arms, though, weren’t quite long enough to reach the bucket once it was brought up. She then had to tie the rope off to the side of the well, take a steel rod that Mr. Campbell had brought from the factory that had a hook on the end, and snag the water bucket, pulling it to the side to pour into the bucket she was carrying. It took a few times to master the technique, but after the third day, Josie had acquired the skill without spilling more than a cup full of water in the transfer.

The house, as did all the others in the area, had no in-door water, and hence also no in-door bathroom. As in most of the rural south of that day, a johnny-house, or outdoor toilet, served as the convenience facility. The girls did not mind this as all of the other houses they had lived in had the same facilities.

But they did not like going to this one after dark. Unlike the others, this house had an old abandoned grave yard in the back. Ten small stone slabs with unreadable names and dates located the sunken ground that pock-marked the grown-up briar patch. By the second day the children had lived in the house, the other children of the neighborhood had informed Josie and Lisa that this wasn’t just an ordinary graveyard. This burial ground was for the crazy house over in South Boston. The lunatics that had died there, with no family, had been buried here, identified with no names or dates. Late on winter nights, the girls were warned they would be able to hear the moaning of the lunatics because they were cold, or the clanging of the chains they had been forced to wear.

The friends also shared that at times children had gone to the toilets after dark, the parents thinking they were in their beds, and the ghosts had actually locked the door, leaving the kids in the outdoor necessary until the next morning. One winter, it was reported a little boy actually woke up the next morning with his butt frozen to the toilet seat.

It took the Campbell parents a few weeks of wet bed sheets, something they had never had problems with the girls before, until they discovered the reason. All the logical discussions possible could not convince the girls that they should not have any fears. So the next day the parents purchased a white enamel bucket with red stripes that had several colloquial names, including a “slop jar”. This bucket then took its place at the foot of the girls’ bed. It was understood that they could make their nocturnal visits to the bucket, but come daylight, the deposits made during the night had to be taken to the outhouse. A week later, Momma Campbell no longer had to use bleach to remove the yellow stains from the girls’ sheets.

After about two years of living in the shanty, it began looking more like a house. Between each parent working 40 hours a week in the mill, and some weeks during sowing and harvest seasons, 40 hours working the tobacco fields, the couple had paid off debts left from the time that Poppa Campbell had been away in the Navy. Momma Campbell was the family banker. All checks and cash flowed through her, almost all that is.

Colin did have a revenue source that had escaped Momma’s eyes. He had learned to play a very good hand of poker during his Navy stint. During his lunch breaks at the plant, he was usually able to make just enough to buy a half-gallon Mason jar of home-brew every two weeks. This led to another skill learned during his Navy stint, the use of drink to escape loneliness and the hardships of the war. Now he no longer had the loneliness, for he was back with his family. But by this time he was addicted, and could not go more than two weeks without coming home, or rather, being brought home by the old family friend Mr. Wall, in a highly inebriated state. Mr. Wall had a very high tolerance for drink. He usually matched Colin drink for drink, but was still able to maintain his faculties, and did the driving during the drinking binges. Momma Campbell would “hit the roof” upon Colin arriving home in one of his drunken stupors. Mr. Campbell would cry and beg her to forgive him; that he would never drink again. Momma would threaten to leave, then would take him to bed, remove his soiled clothes, and place a “slop jar”, by the side of the bed for the eventual throwing-up during the night. Then she would go lie down with the girls to get some sleep.

To Colin’s credit, he never missed work due to his benders. In spite of the destructive practice, there were humorous anecdotes from the experience; such as the warm summer night that Poppa Campbell was dropped off in the front by Mr. Wall. Not wanting to share the reception that would be awaiting the father, Mr. Wall made a hasty U-turn and headed out quickly. Not quite able to master the skill of walking on two legs, Colin found it easier to crawl over the hard packed Piedmont dirt. The front porch light had been turned off and, with a cloudy, overcast night, once the headlights vanished out of site, the father no longer could find his way to the porch.

Watching from the window, Momma Campbell disgustingly came to the front porch carrying a flash-light. With a weakened battery, the ray of light appeared more as a glimmer than an actual beam. In the darkness, and in his drunken stupor, Colin misconstrued the flashlight to be a gun. Even in the alcoholic haze, his mind flashed back to all the threats his wife had made, and here, under the darkened Danville night, he was sure she was about to shoot him.

Rising up temporarily on his wobbling legs, holding his hands up in a pleading surrender, he screamed out, “Oh hell, Leah, don’t shoot me!”

Then he fell backwards from his submissive drunkenness. His head hit the ground with a thud. Rolling over quickly, but still unable to obtain balance, he quickly began a furious crawl toward the opposite side of the porch.

“Oh God Leah,” he continued to plead, “Don’t shoot me, please don’t shoot me.”

He managed to make it to the covered porch, before Momma Campbell had a chance to aim and discharge her Ever-Ready “revolver.” But while diving beneath the porch, he struck his head on the wooden porch joist.

“Oh s**t, Leah, oh s**t, you’ve done gone and shot me. You’ve shot me in the damn head”. And with that, he collapsed in a heap beneath the porch.

By this time there was no more ammo in the Ever-Ready, for the two C-batteries had lost their power. Leah let out an exasperated gasp of disgust and marched into the house.

The next morning about nine Colin sheepishly entered the house and, without a word, went to the kitchen. There he took a wash cloth and cleaned the dried blood from his head, face and chest. As he removed his blood-stained shirt, Leah, without a word, took it and threw it into a tub to soak.

Although each drunken excursion seemingly had an interesting, if not always humorous, ending, one of the other noteworthy ones occurred on a night that featured a full-moon. Again, Mr. Wall had dropped the father off and then made his hasty retreat. Unbeknownst to Colin, that day Momma had decided to temporarily relocate her clothes line from the back of the house. The usual position had become very muddy and she had had to re-do a load of wash because the neighborhood dogs had splashed mud onto the clothes. She had strung a line from the left porch post to the center post just to the left of the front steps and had hung several white towels and pillow cases up to dry. She had also strung a new line from the porch’s right front corner post to an oak tree about twenty feet away on which she had hung three white sheets.

Tonight, Mr. Wall had brought a friend, so the half-gallon of 160-proof moonshine had been split three ways. Poppa Campbell wasn’t quite as drunk as usual, and was able to actually walk, or, at least, teeter. He was just drunk enough though to greatly affect his vision and reasoning powers. After taking a few staggering steps toward the porch, his vision still adjusting to the moonlit night, he looked up just in time to make out the floating white apparitions to the left of the steps only about fifteen feet away.

Suddenly his body stiffened, as his heart began to race.

“Damn,” he mumbled, “Oh s**t, the girls were right.”

He was witnessing for the first time the ghosts from the graveyard just behind the house. He was afraid to take his eyes from the specters but, he surmised, they must also have been as afraid of him as he was of them. They were remaining it one place, just hovering above the porch, their ghostly bodies swaying back and forth in a spectral pattern in the wind. He began a vacillating escape to the right side of the porch, seeking refuge at the rear door of the house since the front door was being protected by the guardians of the damned. He turned his head away from the small ghostly figures to his left, just in time to run head long into the parents of the children ghosts to the right of the front porch. Campbell stumbled head first into a cottony phantom, pulling it loose from the clothes pins holding it. Now fully enshrouded within the “ghost’s” phantasmal presence, deep within its ghostly bowels, Colin began running wildly, screaming to anyone who would deliver him.

“Oh God. O help me, Jesus. Help me. Somebody help me. One of them’s got me.”

By this time Momma Campbell, awakened by the ghostly assault upon her husband, came to the door, just in time to see him run blindly into the taut permanent clothes line. It caught him just beneath the throat, the impact directly upon his Adam’s apple. Now, not able to catch his breath, he was convinced he was being choked by the remaining hordes from hell. He struggled anew to escape his captors. The line’s inherent elasticity allowed his sheet covered body to proceed about three feet, but then, like a rubber band, jerked him backwards. His head and feet found themselves in opposite directions. He and his ghostly shroud crashed to the ground in a thud. He laid there, breath knocked out, unable to resist his captors any longer; he resigned himself to submit his body, his soul, his spirit to these overpowering, hellish demons.

“Oh God, please God, please save me. They have me, God, please save me,” he wailed.

Momma Campbell went to the bedroom and removed one of the ragged homemade quilts from the foot of the bed. She walked outside to him. She lifted the edge of the sheet covering him. She threw the quilt down on top of him.

“What makes you think even a ghost would want you,” was all she said as she walked back into the house.

In spite of the drinking problem, Poppa Campbell turned into a good provider. The house continued to look better, due to Momma Campbell’s creativity. The girls began dressing better, no longer wearing the hand-me-downs from other relatives. Leah had saved money for a year to buy a portable Singer sewing machine. Training herself, she began making both her and the girls’ clothing. Soon, she didn’t even have to pay for the patterns. She could cut her own guides from newspapers and cut material from that. Much of the material actually came from the mill. If there was ever any type of flaw in a run of material, it would be rejected and could be bought for 30% of the cost of new material. The white material could then be dyed and used for dresses and skirts. Many neighbors who kept pigs would also give her the colorful printed feed grain bags. She also used some of the striped bags to make matching curtains and pillow cases. You might not be able to make silk purses from pig’s ear, but she showed that you could certainly make very nice house decor from a pig’s feed sack.

Yes, things were looking better for the family of four. They had even bought a car, an eight-year old black Ford sedan. Then, when Josie was 10, and Lisa was 8, some strange happenings began. The first noticeable event happened one morning when they were ready to leave for school. They noticed that their father had caught a ride to work. The car, and their mother, was still there.

When they asked her why, because Momma Campbell NEVER missed work, she just smiled and said, “I have a trip to make today.”

That evening when they got home, their mom was on the front porch in a chair knitting. The first thing they noticed was that she was singing. They had never heard their mom sing before. She laid her yarn down to meet the girls at the steps.

“Go look on the table,” she said after giving each of them a hug. “I have a surprise for you.”

When they got there they found, fresh from the oven, still steaming hot, peanut butter cookies. They were pleasantly confused. They knew Christmas was still three months away, and that was the only time they ever had peanut butter cookies. Two hours later their dad got home. He jumped from the neighbor’s car and ran to the porch. By this time Momma had reached the door. Colin jumped the three steps in a single bound, meeting his wife at mid-porch.

“So,” Colin said as he looked wide-eyed at his wife, “what did the doctor say?”

The girls did not see their mother’s simple smile and a small nod yes. What they did see was their father grabbing their mother, hugging her, and laughing out-loud. This was one emotion they had not seen from their parents in awhile.

They then heard their father say, “Is this ok, I mean, are you ok with this?”

“Yes, yes, now that it’s happened, yeah, it’s fine. It’s wonderful.” Leah answered, as she began to cry.

They both hugged again and came into the house. They joined the girls at the wooden kitchen table with its four unmatched straight back chairs. There the family shared cookies and milk, or in Colin’s case, cookies and strong black coffee.

In about three months, almost Christmas time, the girls noticed their mother was gaining weight. This surprised them, because she wasn’t eating much, and they had actually seen her sick to the point of “throwing up”.

When Josie asked her about why her belly was swelling, Momma Campbell just smiled and said, “Because that’s where I’m storing a surprise for you girls.”

“Oh boy,” Lisa said. “Will we be getting our present for Christmas?”

“Well, I didn’t say PRESENT, I said SURPRISE, and no, it won’t be for Christmas. It will be in about four months. As a matter of fact” she said as she turned to Josie, “it will be about the time of your birthday.”

“So, I don’t get a surprise?” Lisa said, puckering her lips.

“Oh honey, it will be for both of you,” Momma Campbell said, hugging Lisa to her. “It will just get here about the time of Josie’s birthday is all.”

“Oh,” said Lisa, “will it come in the mail, like when we order from the Stairs and Woe-back Catalog?”

“It’s Sears and Roebuck honey, and naw, it won’t come in the mail.” Momma Coleman said as she laughed uncontrollably. “Umm, Daddy and I will leave for a few days, and when I come back, I’ll have it. But let’s stop thinking about that now. For now, let’s set down and write that letter to Santa Claus, because Christmas is just two weeks away!”

Josie, proud of her writing skills, ran to get several sheets of Blue Horse paper. She used the new pen she had gotten from sending in her Blue Horse Bonus Points, although she would have preferred it if she had won one of the bicycles the company gave away.

“Lisa, you can’t write good, so tell me what you want and I’ll tell Santa.”

Lisa began to tell her big sister what to write and Josie began in a slow scrawl

Dear Santa,

My name is Lisa. I am sevin years old. I have been a very, very good girl. Well, most of the time. I want a Betsie-Wetsie doll, some candy, some fruit, and bag of marbels. And a good shooting marbel. I will leave you milk and cookeys under the tree.

Josie then added to her sister’s letter.

“Also Santa, my sister Josie has been a very good sister and please bring her what she wonts.

Love, Lisa.

Momma Coleman handed her an envelope which was lettered;

TO SANTA CLAUS

North Pole

Josie handed the letter to Lisa and let her scrawl in big printed letters, LISA. Then folding the letter like her mom had taught her, she slipped it into the envelope. She handed it to Lisa. Lisa licked the sticky flap and, laying it on the table, slid her tiny fingers across the back to seal it. Josie then took another sheet of paper and began writing.

Dear Santa,

My name is Josephine. My friends call me Josie.

You can call me Josie. I have been a good girl this year. I help my momma, and help take care of my sister Lisa, which is a hard job because she gets into a lot. I would like a Betty and Bob cooking set with the dishes, and cooking things. I dont wont a doll this year, I’m to big. I also would like a new dress. I like the blue one on page 89 of the (she then looked over at the catalog on the nearby table to get the correct spelling) Sears and Roebuck catlog. If you can, I’d like some candy, fruit, and anthing else you think Id like.

Also please be good to momma and daddy, they have

been good to.

Love,

Josie

Taking the addressed envelope from Momma Campbell, Josie carefully folded the letter. Making sure her mother did not see it, she quickly slipped it into the envelope, and carefully licked the flap, and using her finger tips, pressed tightly to seal it. She did not want the letter to fall out on its way to the North Pole.

“Can I take it to the mail box?” Lisa said, clapping her hands. “Please.”

“No Lisa, the North Pole is a long ways away. We have to take it to a special mail box. I’ll take it to it when I go to the grocery store later.”