The Invited(64)
. . .
The drive was pretty and didn’t take nearly as long as she’d expected. On her way out of town, she passed Ferguson’s, the pizza and sub shop, and, on the outskirts of town, a place she and Nate hadn’t ventured into yet: Uncle Fred’s Smokehouse—advertised by a sign with a smiling cartoon pig holding a plateful of bacon, which seemed profoundly wrong to Helen.
She drove through forests, past green fields full of white-and-black Holsteins grazing, and through tiny, picturesque villages with gazebos and little white churches. It was all postcard perfect: a landscape without the billboards, big-box stores, strip malls, and eight-lane highways she was used to in Connecticut. She thought of her father and how he always talked about building a cabin out in the woods, someplace where he could hear himself think. He would have loved this: all the forests and fields, how the air smelled fresh and green. It was like going back in time. She imagined the landscape had changed little since Hattie’s time. There were paved roads and power lines now, but the hills, mountains, and fields were no doubt the same. Had Hattie ever come this way, riding in a Model T perhaps, or on the train, along the old tracks Helen spotted running beside the road here and there?
After forty-five minutes, she saw the sign welcoming her to Lewisburg, HOME OF THE STATE CHAMPION LEWISBURG LIONS! She found the old mill without any problems: a sprawling brick complex along the riverbank. There were construction vehicles of all sorts: a bulldozer and crane, trucks full of lumber, a fleet of electrical contractor vans. Helen pulled up alongside a sign advertising one-, two-, and three-bedroom condos and commercial spaces for rent. She parked the truck and got out.
“All right, Hattie,” she muttered to herself as she stood looking at the brick building nearest her. “What am I doing here?”
She walked down a brick-lined path to one of the buildings, where a sign on the front door warned, HARD HAT AREA. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
“Applications are over at the office,” a voice behind her said.
“Huh?” She turned, saw a tall, wiry guy in a white hard hat. He was wearing clean khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt and carrying a clipboard. A foreman or manager, she figured.
“There’s an office set up in that blue trailer back there,” he told her, gesturing with his thumb. “You can pick up information and an application for the condos, apartments, office spaces.”
“Actually,” Helen said, “I was just hoping to have a look around. I’m interested in local history and I understand the mill was once an important part of the town.”
He nodded. “It sure was. Until the fire anyway. I suppose you can look around, if you want. Just steer clear of the work areas, okay? It’s not safe.” He started to turn away.
“Do they know what caused it?” Helen asked. “The fire?”
“I’m not sure they ever found out,” he said. “The worst of the damage was down at the north end.”
“Where’s that?” Helen asked.
“Here, I can show you,” he said. “I was heading down that way anyway.”
She followed him down the walkway to the right. On their left, the massive old brick mill loomed. It was a beautiful building, three stories tall with large windows, a big bell tower over the front entrance. There were men on the roof, and she could hear power tools and hammering inside. Beyond it, she heard the murmur of the river. The man in the white hard hat walked quickly, speaking as he went along.
“The story goes that management was tired of the girls sneaking out for smoke breaks or to meet their fellas or whatever it was they were sneaking out for. So they took to barring the doors from the outside once all the workers were in. Let ’em out when the bell rang for lunch, then at quitting time.”
“They locked them in?” Helen was horrified. Her eyes fell on the tall doors leading into the mill, imagined fists pounding on them, the crushing weight of all those women trapped inside pushing, desperate for escape.
“That’s what folks say. The ones who remember. The ones who made it out of the fire. I’m from right here in Lewisburg, so I grew up hearing the stories. That day, maybe someone was having a smoke inside because they couldn’t go out anymore? I guess we’ll never know how it started, but they say the building went up fast. Dry timbers, all that cotton.”
They got to the end of the building, and Helen could see that the whole last quarter of it was redone in new brickwork, the bricks a more vivid red, the mortar more pale.
“This whole end of the building was gutted. We had to tear it down, rip everything out, and rebuild.”
Helen looked over to the right, down along the river where a massive amount of rubble had been bulldozed into a pile: burned and snapped boards and timbers, rusted machines and gears, a small mountain of bricks with black fire marks.
“Since they couldn’t get out the doors,” he said, “they broke windows, jumped through. Some made it. A bunch didn’t.” He shook his head, the hard hat shifting a little. “Hell of a way to go.”
Helen imagined what it must have been like to be trapped inside, lungs filling with smoke, the heat from the fire growing stronger, screams and chaos all around you. Hopefully it was the smoke that got them, not the flames.
“You know,” he said, “between you and me, it’s probably a good thing you’re not interested in a condo.”