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Chalk Hearts (summary) |
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For the Children
Short
 Created on 12-6-07
 Views(27)
 Story Rating G
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For the Children It was nearly 10 a night when I had a coughing fit set to nearly make me choke to death that day before everythin’ happened. It took Mr. Marsh two seconds to have me on the floor with the stick on me back, it’s been a while since he been on me like that. Mostly I’m a hard working girl of 9 although the dust and strain on the limbs hurts somethin’ real bad sometimes.I hadn’t had a bad coughin’ fit in a while but Mr. Marsh beat me till I turned a bad shade a blue and it was finally quittin’ time. I got one less o them textiles done than all them other kids so I’d have to do it the next day.But Tommy Smith made it all better. He’s 10 and he’s awful sweet on me and why, I think I might love that boy and he might sure love me back. Tommy, he dreams he got wings like them pretty angels we hear about.“Beth-y I tell you when I gets the chance I’ma take you and fly away from this dirty smelly place an we can get us married like other fold and have good lives,” he tells me when he see’s me crying somethin’ really bad.I says back, “Tommy you’re a nice boy and I will fly away with you but can’t we please take Mr. Marsh too?”And then we laughs at the joke cause ain’t nobody gonna take an evil old man like that Mr. Marsh the overseer if they gets t’ leave. Why just last week he pulls Catherine Best up cause she’s getting’ heavy in the head and beats her ‘till she’s a bleedin’ real bad. We found her in bed next mornin’ for work not movin’ and real cold like so’s we took her out and put her in the river cause we didn’t’ have no time to bury her proper an all what with work startin’ at early 5.Then the rosy cheeked curly haired little Mary took poorly after a good dip in the cistern for gettin’ the dirt in ‘er throat. She a sweet girl and been here on’y two weeks. Her parents took her home wi’ them and not a souls seen her since. They say that ol’ man death stole her for him and she’ll be up there in heaven singin’ wi’ them pretty angels.Some o them younger girls was cryin’ real bad cause they all liked little Mary and missed the girl. The older boys spit in their faces and said ain’t no one live forever, babies, and then both them girls and them boys get a beatin’ for being late the mornin’.I’m old enough not to cry no more, I does my work good and hard each day and when I get some time I go with Tommy an’ he protects me from the bad stuff and all the meaner older kids what like to pick on me.It was strange the day after me beatin’ when I saw Tommy drop. I knowed somethin’ was horrible wrong cause he never dropped at work. He was a good strong worker an’ he’d a never stop in the middle of a day.Mr. Marsh wasn’t lookin’ his way and William Baker tried to help him back up cause everyone likes Tommy but he couldn’t by hisself. His face was all ashy and pale and he was shakin’ real awful. Then old Marsh turns and see’s my boy Tommy there and I knows that look in his eye and I get mighty scared. He picks up the boy I might love and dunks him in the cistern but he still can’t stand so the beatin’s sure not done.He gets the mill master, Mr. Blane, and they starts to kickin’ him real bad so he’s blood pools on the floor and soaks through to me feet. Then Mr. Blane picks him up and shakes him but he’s gone all limp now so he don’t cry or nothin’. It’s the most awful silence then.Then I hear Mr. Marsh say he’s sure dead and that’s it. I run to my boy Tommy cryin’ bad and pick up his body and starts to run. Mr. Marsh tried to follow me but he trips on a machine and gets a crack in his knee.I keeps right on runnin’ even though Tommy’s awfully heavy and I ain’t got nothin to run on, nowhere to run to neither. I makes it outta the factory and I makes it outta the town. Then I find a good spot, kiss my Tommy good bye while cryin’ and set him in the river.What to do know? I ain’t got no money and I ain’t got no job and I ain’t got no Tommy to say it’s all right.I spot a ship in the ‘arbor and I heads for it then when no ones lookin’ I sneak on deck and hide in a coil of rope. I sit there, rockin’ back and forth and cryin’, missin’ my Tommy through the cold night till early next day I feels the boat a rockin and we’ve taken out to sea. Maybe we’ll end up in that place they’re callin’ America and I can start again. A new life and I new girl I be but I couldn’t never forget my Tommy. It’s 1860 when Elizabeth Putnam (Beth-y) returns to London, a beautiful young woman of twenty- five. The pearls at her throat and diamonds on her fingers prove great wealth for one so young.News spreads quickly to the wealthy young gentleman in the area that this women does not have a suitor. But they do not know that it is not men Elizabeth came back for. In fact no one knows why she came back- or who she used to be.The gossip spreads quickly about the young woman walking through graveyards at night, checking every tombstone. How she travels to Cheapside ever day to ask about some of the old textile mills and factories. What could such a lovely lady want with such horrible information?Many of the bolder women ask if they knew her mother or father. The reply is always the same, a gorgeous smile as she says, “I hardly think so, Madame, as I was orphaned at such a young age”. But one thing was certain- everyone in London could tell she was pure English born- definitely from the city.After a short while the Elizabeth Putnam mystery goes out of style- until one night almost a year after her arrival in London several people catch her running home from a graveyard at night. What could she have found in her desperate search? The least of the guesses was the truth: that she had found the grave of ‘rosy checked, curly haired little Mary.’Suddenly stories about the girl are reborn, as is Elizabeth’s hope of accomplishing her goal for coming back. No one knew that eh death date of the little Mary was exactly when Beth-y guessed it had been, the day she took poorly and was taken home by her parents.It was a freezing cold night, like the night on the ship 16 years previous when Elizabeth ran away, that she heard her first news of Mr. Marsh and Mr. Blane. Old man Blane was long dead but the evil Mr. Marsh was usually drunk and just as bad as ever.Elizabeth Putnam left London to go back to her home in America 4 days later. No one linked her to the death of Benjamin Marsh and no one had seen her down by the river one day collecting human bones. Mr. Marsh was found where the bones had been and there was a new grave in the cemetery that read simply: ‘My Tommy’.Anyone who stood at that grave to long heard the shrieks of children being beaten to death or drowned in an old textile mill.And Ms. Putnam was never seen again except as a lone figure every August 15th at the tombstone of her Tommy.
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