The women wouldn’t dare. They all knew how flammable the very air was, full of cotton dust that could ignite, send the whole mill up in a great ball of flames.

“Well, what if we’ve got to use the john?” Mildred Cox wanted to know.

“Then you’ll hold it.”

“And if we can’t?”

“Then you’ll piss down your leg, I imagine,” Tom said.

The bell rang and the women went to work, annoyed, sure—but there was no point in grumbling. They quickly settled at their stations, running the looms. The sound was deafening but comforting to Jane. The whole room vibrated, smelled of hot grease and warm cotton. Their fingers moved quickly, deftly, over the machines. About ten o’clock, Tom came by Jane’s loom, stood behind her, said he needed to speak with her a moment. In the office. He took her into his office, a tiny box of a room with shelves and a desk covered with piles of paper. Tom shut the door and Jane’s heart grew cold.

“I’ve been watching you,” he said.

“Oh?”

“The other girls look up to you,” he said.

She nodded. It was true. She was older than most of them, had been here longer. That counted for something. She’d learned to get by. To keep walking when Tom gave her bottom a pinch or when he stood so close behind her that she could feel his privates pressed against her. She recalled her first day on the job over ten years ago now, how Tom had seemed so kind, had said he knew her husband’s family and was happy to hire her despite the terrible state of the economy. “We’re in a depression, you know,” he reminded her. She told him she understood and would work hard, that he wouldn’t be sorry he’d hired her. And she had kept up her end. She didn’t smoke or gossip. She did good work and showed the new girls how to do good work, too. She didn’t reckon she’d been late to work one day in ten years.

“I’m going to be making cuts,” he said this morning, “letting some of the girls go.”

Jane stiffened.

“Do you want to keep your job, Mrs. Whitcomb?”

“Yes, of course.”

She needed the job. Silas was not bringing in much pay. He’d lost his job at the bank and was logging now—work that didn’t suit him and didn’t pay nearly as much. Everyone in town knew this, Tom included.

Tom came toward Jane, put his big, dirty hand on her hip, pulled her to him.

Jane pushed away.

“I thought you wanted to keep your job?” he asked, coming closer. He smelled like sausages and tobacco. His teeth were brown.