“Fine,” I said again. Money and freedom. That was why I was here. The mural was bizarre and my curiosity was piqued by its strangeness, but I certainly felt no attachment to it. I just wanted to figure out how to restore it well enough to be paid and stay out of prison. I’d view the mural as nothing more than a means to an end.

I carried my bowl to the sink, then picked up my purse and the laptop. “I’m on my way,” I said, and I headed for the door.

Chapter 12. Anna

Chapter 12

ANNA

December 12, 1939

In the morning, Mr. Fiering gave Anna a tour of the cotton mill and the diminutive Mill Village, which consisted of neat rows of little houses for the mill workers and their families. There were a lot of children in the streets playing catch and chasing one another around. The Mill Village had a very separate feeling from the rest of Edenton, and from a few things Mr. Fiering said, Anna had the sense that the people who lived in its tiny houses were not viewed in a very welcoming light by the rest of the town.

The mill itself was quite an impressive sight. The long brick building was filled with workers and machinery and noise, and Anna felt overwhelmed by it all as she walked through it, Toby Fiering at her side. Ironically, though, it was the outside of the mill that she found most intriguing. Wisps of cotton were caught in the branches of the trees closest to the mill windows and Anna found the sight of them fascinating—a stunning visual she decided then and there would be in her mural along with some of the small Mill Village homes that lined the nearby streets.

After they toured the mill, Mr. Fiering dropped her off at the peanut factory, where she watched women, most of them colored, doing monotonous work on the belts that moved the peanuts from one part of the tall brick building to another. Anna liked the idea of including colored workers in the mural. She mentioned that to Miss Myrtle when she returned home from her busy day.

“Oh, honey,” Miss Myrtle said, “this town couldn’t survive without our colored folk! Between the housekeepers and the nannies and the fishermen and the people working the fields—why, they’re the glue that holds us together. Of course they’ve got to be in the mural!”

Anna couldn’t help but wonder why, if Miss Myrtle felt that way about Edenton’s colored citizens, she made Freda go outside to use her own separate bathroom, rain or shine. She wasn’t sure she would ever truly understand the people in the South.