Snot Girl and Booger Boy
Chapter 9: Tours and Tales
While the twins were at school learning their ABCs (literally, for A, B, and C was all the first-graders learned on their first day, while the second-graders labored over their composition books, writing “What I Did on My Summer Vacation”—if they remembered any of the writing skills they had learned the previous year, and Father worked somewhere doing something in an office in the city, Mother was on the “Nickle tour of our humble concern,” as Mr. Weebly called it.
“Oh!” said Mother—er, Marjorie—as she rummaged in her purse for a nickel. When Betty touched her elbow and shook her head once, she stopped, realizing Mr. Weebly didn’t really want a nickel even though he seemed to nod expectantly at her.
“Where to begin, where to begin?” asked Mr. Weebly.
As Mr. Weebly, Marjorie, and Betty started down the hall, Marjorie noted that the offices were very beige. No pictures, no flowers, no decorations of any kind. Just…beige. She hoped part of her duties as Mr. Weebly’s assistant would be to add some personality to the office.
“Here’s the men’s room,” said Mr. Weebly proudly, pointing to a sign on the door that said “Men.”
“Um hm,” agreed Marjorie. “Where is the ladies?”
At this, Marjorie thought she heard Betty stifle a laugh.
“Ladies? What er, um, we only have one,” Mr. Weebly stuttered.
Marjorie motioned to Betty. “You have two.”
“I mean, um, er, yes. We only have one restroom,” Mr. Weebly said uncomfortably. “I suppose you’d better knock on the door if you need to, um, that is to say, um…”
“Go to the restroom?” Marjorie interjected.
“I told you, Dad,” laughed Betty. “There's a ladies room in the mill building, so I guess that will have to do for now, but since there are two ladies and only one man in the front office…”
“Yes, yes, I see,” Mr. Weebly said peevishly as he continued down the hall.
Marjorie squeezed Betty’s arm in solidarity.
“Now this is our breakroom,” said Mr. Weebly as he stepped into a brightly lit room that held a soda machine, a snack machine, a sink, and a coffee pot. “Betty keeps the coffee fresh.” Mr. Weebly smiled at his daughter.
Betty smiled back, chuckling. “Because if I don’t do it, somebody lets it boil down to sludge. There are a couple of extra cups for visitors, but you’ll want to bring your own.”
“I will,” said Marjorie.
“Yes. Well, that’s all for this building,” Mr. Weebly motioned to the room’s other door, which opened to the employee parking lot. “Shall we go to the mill?”
“I’ll stay here in case we have any visitors,” said Betty. Then, under her breath, “As if.”
The mill, a hot, noisy, cavernous hulk, was just across the employee lot, and a large sign over the door warned: “No Smoking and No Spitting”
Marjorie followed Mr. Weebly through the door, and the pair were immediately met by a husky man in coveralls, smoking a cigarette balanced precariously in one corner of his mouth.
“Mornin’, Mr. Weebly.” The cigarette bobbed up and down as he growled, a long ash protrusion threatening to fall at any moment, yet miraculously holding on.
“Good morning, Mr. Falldon,” said Mr. Weebly, noticing but ignoring the cigarette and its ash. “This is Mrs. Woan, my new assistant.”
“Pleased, I’m sure,” growled Falldon, not seeming very pleased at all. The ash continued to defy gravity.
“It’s good to meet you, Mr. Falldon. Are you Mr. Weebly’s foreman?”
The ash finally fell, and Marjorie watched as it barely missed Mr. Weebly’s shoe.
“I’m the foreman, yes,” Falldon said pointedly. “You can call me Buck.” Buck did not offer his hand. Nevertheless, Marjorie wiped hers on her dress as if he had.
“Mrs. Woan will be assisting me.”
“With what?” Buck asked, suspicious.
“Oh, you know, imp-improving production, cutting, um, costs, new p-products, that sort of thing,” Mr. Weebly said nervously.
“Right,” said Buck, slowly. “College girl from the city?”
“No,” said Marjorie, smiling, though Buck didn’t seem to invite friendliness. “We—my husband and the twins—live at the crossroads.”
“Twins, eh? They go to school?”
“Yes. First grade.”
“I went to the Crossroads School,” Bobbed Buck’s cigarette, the ash slowly regrowing. “I’m surprised it’s still there after what happened.”
“Why? What happened?” Marjorie asked, looking concerned.
“Can we have a tour of the, um, your, building?” Mr. Weebly said, trying to move things along.
Buck stubbed his cigarette out on the sole of his boot and slipped the butt into his pocket.
Glancing at Mr. Weebly with slight annoyance, Buck said to Marjorie, “Stop me before you go home this afternoon, and I’ll tell you a story.”
As he planted a fresh cigarette in the corner of his mouth and struck a match to light it, he turned to walk deeper into the mill. “Let’s go. I don’t have all day to play tour guide,” he growled.
Six cigarettes later, Buck had shown Marjorie and Mr. Weebly (who oohed and ahhed, and yes-yesed as if this was the first time he had set foot in the building) everything there was to see in the woolen mill. Huge bales of fleece waiting to be washed, sorted, and spun; the women who burled the woven cloth and operated the spinning frames and power looms; the mill hands who moved heavy carts of bobbins, yarn spools, and finished fabric bolts around the huge building in a confusion of “Ho there!” “Excuse me!” and “Make way!” Marjorie was enthralled, confused, amazed, and sometimes nauseated by the noise, activity, odors, and oppressive heat of the mill. It all looked completely disorganized yet orderly in a way only skilled labor could manage.
Marjorie asked many questions and didn’t seem overly overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of the mill. Even so, she couldn’t pay full attention to everything Buck was showing her because of what he had said about the school. “After what happened,” and “I’ll tell you a story” didn’t seem like good things.
After the tour, she and Mr. Weebly went back to the office building and talked over coffee at his desk. Actually, Marjorie took notes while Mr. Weebly talked, outlining his plans for how she would assist him in bringing “new life” and “new efficiencies” to the Woolen Mill.
“There’s nothing really wrong with the mill,” he said. “Things run well, and we make good money, but we’ve been doing the same things, making the same products with the same machinery since my granddad started the thing, and I think we can make a few changes and do better.”
Marjorie jotted down “life,” “efficiency,” “money,” “products,” and “machinery,” but because Mr. Weebly didn’t stop talking long enough for her to say anything or ask any questions, she sipped her coffee and nodded her head appropriately. She did have some ideas based on what she saw in the mill building, but she felt like she would be more comfortable running them by Betty first because she didn’t want to seem overzealous (or naïve about the business) with Mr. Weebly.
Promptly at five o’clock, a loud whistle blew.
“Quitting time!” announced Mr. Weebly, interrupting himself mid-sentence. He stood abruptly and began stowing papers haphazardly into his briefcase.
“Oh!” Marjorie exclaimed, startled.
Before Marjorie could react, Mr. Weebly was out the door. “See you tomorrow at eight sharp!” he said.
On her way out, Marjorie noticed that Betty was already gone, so she gathered her things and headed to the employee lot. As she exited the building, though, she nearly ran into Buck, who was just lighting a cigarette.
“So, do you want to know my story about the Crossroads School?” he said.
Marjorie hesitated for a moment before nodding yes.
As the other millworkers left for the day and the employee parking lot emptied, Buck smoked a cigarette and told his story.
“About 30 years ago, when I was in sixth grade, three kids went missing from the school.”
“Oh my! At the same time?” Marjorie asked.
“No, no. The second grade teacher, Miss Aberland, sent one of the boys—I think his name was Todd—to the principal’s office for picking a fight with another kid and mouthing off to her, and he didn’t come back to class. She figured Mr. Stell, the principal, had just paddled him and sent him home.” Buck stopped to puff on his cigarette.
“And?”
“And Mr. Stell told Miss Aberland that he paddled the kid and sent him back to class. At any rate, the kid didn’t go back to class and never went home either.”
“What happened?”
“The sheriff came down from town and gathered the boy’s parents and a bunch of people from town to search for the kid. They searched everywhere, but never found a trace of him. After about a month of searching, they gave up, and the boy’s parents ended up moving away.”
“You said three children.”
“Yep. About two months after the first boy disappeared, two first graders, a boy and a girl, went missing during recess. The sheriff came back down, and they searched for them, too. They didn’t find them, either, but this time they did find a clue or two.”
“Really?”
“Yep. One of the other kids said they saw the pair going into the basement, and one of the sheriff’s deputies found the boy’s baseball cap down there. Ultimately, though, nothing came of it, and they never found those kids, either.
Marjorie seemed about to cry as she looked at Buck and said, “My twins are in first grade! I need to get home!”
As she was getting into the Checker, Buck stubbed his cigarette out on the sole of his boot and slipped the butt into his pocket.
“You might want to talk to Mr. Lingle at the store. The little girl’s was his daughter,” said Buck as Marjorie closed the door of the Checker and drove away.
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