It was almost a week later when Will saw Tom Riley coming across the pasture to where he and Uncle Jed were working on the fence. When Tom reached them, he stood as if at attention, not meeting their eyes.
“I have a message for Jed Jones from Luke Brown, the miller,” he announced. “He needs help fixing the millworks.” Then he turned on his heel and retraced his steps as grasshoppers exploded from the tall grass in front of him.
Uncle Jed tamped earth around the post that Will held in place. Then he straightened up and mopped his sweating brow with his handkerchief. “Well, looks like Tom finally got around to delivering that message.”
Will nodded, almost weak with relief.
Uncle Jed went on. “We’ll go on in there tomorrow and act as if none of that unpleasantness ever happened.”
Will nodded again, silently resolving to avoid Tom whenever he could.
But when they reached the mill early the next day, Will realized he needn’t have been concerned about avoiding Tom—he was nowhere to be seen.
“Glad to see you, Jed,” the miller said, shaking hands as several of the other men echoed his greeting. “And you, young man,” he said, turning to Will, “have you come to help or to catch some more of them bluegills?”
Before Will could answer, his uncle replied, “He’s come to watch. It’s a good chance for a youngster to learn something.”
Will followed the men into the cool, dusty building and down the plank stairs to a dark, earth-floored room filled with the machinery that turned the millstone on the floor above. When his eyes had adjusted to the dimness of the wheel pit, he saw from the new wood that parts of the gears had been painstakingly repaired. Then he looked up at the complicated system of belts and pulleys that turned the gears and saw that all of the belts were new.
Following his gaze, the miller explained. “One of the Yankee foraging parties was a mite unhappy that I didn’t have any flour or cornmeal for them, and they took it out on me by ruining the millworks. Slashed the belts with their sabers and banged the notches off the gears with my own ax. But I guess I was lucky. If it hadn’t been the middle of a wet spell, they’d have burned me to the ground.”
“Looks like you did a right good job on these gears,” Uncle Jed commented as he ran a hand over the nearest one.
“What I haven’t been able to manage for the life of me, though, is to get those new belts to turn them. They just slip right off the pulley,” said the miller. “I never had this kind of problem before.”
Uncle Jed nodded, letting his gaze run from ceiling to floor and from wall to wall, studying the arrangement of gear wheels and pulleys. Finally he spoke. “I think I see the problem. Shouldn’t take too long to set things right.”
He set to work, adjusting the pairs of pulleys and making sure they were absolutely parallel. Will watched, fascinated, until the miller’s wife called them to dinner.
Will followed the men up the steps and out into the brightness of noonday. A cloth-covered table had been set up in the shade, and his mouth began to water as the smell of fried chicken reached his nostrils. And then he saw the bowls of steaming mashed potatoes, green beans cooked with great chunks of salt pork, and corn pudding. This was more food than he’d seen at one time for years!
Noticing his reaction to the heavily laden table, one of the younger men grinned. “The Yankees may have messed up the millworks for ol’ man Brown, but earlier in the war he did a lot of milling for them, and the government finally paid him. That’s how he can afford to fix the mill now, and how his missus can set a table like this one. He just bought her a cow and a whole flock of laying hens, too.”
“Mr. Brown worked for the Yankees?” Will asked in dismay.
“Son, when armed men tell you to grind grain, you grind it.”
Will didn’t like to think of Mr. Brown working for the enemy. But he had to admit the miller hadn’t had much choice.
Mrs. Brown heaped Will’s plate high with food. “Now, will you be having lemonade or milk with that?” she asked.
His unbelieving eyes turned toward the two pitchers, one filled with gold-flecked juice and floating chips of ice and the other with frothy milk.
Smiling at his indecision, the plump, pleasant-faced woman poured him a glass of lemonade. “Drink this now and have some milk with dessert.” Then, leaning closer, she whispered, “I’ve made cherry pies.”
Will took the glass and managed to thank her. Then he sank to the ground and began to eat. The taste of that first bite of crisply fried chicken brought him a rush of memories. Memories of a time when food like this was taken for granted. Memories of the family dinner hour with Callie’s succulent meals, Charlie’s wisecracks, his little sisters’ giggles, and his parents’ quiet conversation.
“Why, you’ve hardly touched your dinner! Aren’t you feeling well?” Mrs. Brown’s concerned voice interrupted his reverie.
“Stomach’s shrunk, no doubt,” said Uncle Jed. “Give him a little time for it to stretch.”
Later, when Will carried his empty plate and glass over to the table, Mrs. Brown beamed and cut him a thick wedge of pie. “Everything was delicious, ma’am,” he said, watching her fill his glass with milk.
“I’m glad your stomach stretched enough that you could enjoy it,” she said, smiling.
The heavy meal made Will sleepy. He yawned as he followed the men down into the dark wheel pit, but its coolness revived him. He watched Uncle Jed work, impressed by his careful, confident approach to the job and by the other men’s obviously increasing respect. Wasn’t there anything his uncle didn’t know how to do?
At last Uncle Jed straightened up. “That look about right to you, Luke?” he asked.
“Sure does,” replied the miller. “Let’s try ’er out. Will, you go raise the sluice gate.”
Will hurried up the stairs and dashed out the door. Just above the mill wheel, a wooden gate had been lowered to divert the water from the mill race directly to the pond. How was he supposed to raise the gate so the water could drop down onto the huge waterwheel? The control must be inside, he realized.
Will ran back into the mill. Against the wall was a wooden lever. He released its T-shaped handle and used all his strength to push it down, feeling the tremor of the gate inching its way up. He locked the lever into position and stood at the narrow window, watching the stream of water fall onto the waterwheel. The huge wheel gave a shudder and slowly began to turn. Gradually it picked up speed, and above its creaking, Will heard the steady slapping sound of the belts as they whirled around the pulleys, the hum of the turning gears, and the triumphant shouts from the men in the wheel pit. Uncle Jed had done it!
Will had to see for himself. He raced down the stairs, passing the men as they were hurrying up them. Alone in the wheel pit, he watched the millworks in operation. Uncle Jed had known just what to do, he marveled. At last he tore himself away from the hypnotic spell of the machinery and ran up to the floor above where the miller was emptying a sack of wheat into the funnellike hopper above the millstone.
“Come here, boy,” the miller called. “Come over here and watch!” He turned a lever and lowered the top millstone so that it would grind the grain against the bottom one. The whole building vibrated as the giant stone began to turn.
The miller’s helper headed for the stairs, and Mr. Brown turned to Will. “I want you to go with him,” he said, gesturing toward the young man, “and bring me the first sack of flour.”
Will and the miller’s helper watched the flour sift through the mesh bolting cloths after it came down the chute from the floor above. “Where’d Mr. Brown get the grain?” Will asked. He had to shout to make himself heard over the noise of the machinery.
“From Ohio,” was the answering shout.
Imagine having to ship grain to Virginia! Will thought. Before the war, the Shenandoah Valley had produced so much wheat its mills ran twenty-four hours a day. But then General Sheridan and his Yankee troops had ravaged the Valley, destroying the crops, burning the mills, and—
“You look angry,” shouted the miller’s helper.
“I was thinking about how the Yankees burned the mills in the Valley,” Will shouted back.
The miller’s helper shrugged. “That’s the way it is in wartime. I was with our cavalry in Pennsylvania when we burned Chambersburg. Houses, shops, hotels—we sent them all afire. Burned most of the city.”
Will stared at him. He looked like a perfectly ordinary young man, but he’d just admitted to burning people’s homes! At least Sheridan had ordered that the homes be spared when he sent his army to plunder the Valley, though the skeletal chimneys scattered along the pike showed that the fires had sometimes gotten out of hand.
Will turned to watch the flour pouring from the chute and tried not to think about Confederate soldiers burning Chambersburg. When the sack was filled, the miller’s helper sewed it shut with long stitches and knotted the string at the end. Will shouldered the sack and climbed the stairs.
When he reached the top, the miller called to him. “Bring that on over here!” he said. Then, taking it from Will, he held it out to Uncle Jed. “This first sack of flour goes to the man who made it all possible!” he said grandly.
Amid the cheers of the other men, Uncle Jed took the sack. “I’m much obliged for this,” he said. “And I know Ella’s going to be right happy to have it.”
As Will started out the door with his uncle, he heard the miller say, “Don’t the rest of you leave yet—there’ll be a sack of flour for each of you, too.”
Outside, Mrs. Brown called to them. “Take these leftovers in case you get hungry on the way home,” she said, handing Will a napkin-covered basket. “There’s butter and eggs for your aunt, too.” Then, brushing off his thanks, she hurried back to the house.
As they headed toward the road, Will saw a tall figure standing under the sycamore watching the water turn the creaking mill wheel. It was Tom. Uncle Jed raised his hand in a silent greeting, and after a moment’s pause, Tom grudgingly returned the salute. Will thought he saw the hint of a smile under his uncle’s bushy beard.
A few minutes later they stopped at the roadside spring, and while Uncle Jed drank a dipperful of the cold water, Will lifted the napkin from the basket and peeked inside. Besides a dozen eggs and the round of butter wrapped in a damp cloth, there was enough fried chicken for supper, and a whole pie! He grinned, thinking how surprised and pleased Aunt Ella and Meg would be.
“Not bad wages for a day’s work,” Uncle Jed commented as he shouldered the sack of flour and they started off again.
“ ‘The laborer is worthy of his hire,’ ” Will said, wondering if his uncle would recognize the biblical quotation.