Live Strong

CHAPTER 1

SO MUCH FOR DREAMS

Fifty-two hours after the fire, twelve-year-old Caroline O’Donnell opened her eyes. Third degree burns scorched her legs, arms, and one side of her remarkably beautiful face.

She heard footsteps and a woman’s voice. Doctor! She’s awake!

The words hardly registered with Caroline, but the woman who scurried up to her bedside wore the starched white uniform of a nurse; that, she recognized.

It’s all right, the nurse said, peering down at Caroline with a broad, flat face framed with tortoise shell eyeglasses.

Caroline first instinct was to throw off the covers and find out exactly what kind of mischief her brothers had gotten themselves into while she was sleeping, but her hands and arms were strapped to the side of the bed. What’s going on?

Shhh. It’s all right. The doctor will be right in, the nurse said, seeing the wide-eyed look of panic that swept across Caroline’s face. I’m your nurse. Everyone calls me Iris. You can, too.

Iris pushed a strand of rich black hair off Caroline’s forehead and carefully adjusted the sterile cloth that draped over the right side of her face.

What is that? Caroline tried touching her face, What’s going on?

Before the nurse could answer, a tall, lean man stepped up to Caroline’s bedside. He gazed down at her with an awkward smile. Hello, he said with as much warmth as he could muster. We were wondering when you might join us again. I’m Doctor Greenly. I’ve been—

What’s going on? What’s that on my face? Caroline tugged at the restraints on her hands. An orderly and a second nurse raced into the room. Where am I? Where am I?

You’re in Saint Luke’s General Hospital in Lexington, Greenly said.

Lexington?

Yes. Greenly used the palms of his hands to hold her down. Help me! he said to the orderly.

When the orderly gripped her wrists, Caroline fought back. Greenly glanced at Iris and said, Two CCs of morphine. Stat. Then he looked back at Caroline. It’s okay, Caroline. You’re—

Caroline panicked. She kicked her legs wildly and screamed, What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?

There was fire, Greenly said sharply.

A fire? Caroline stopped kicking. She felt the prick of the needle and a burning sensation in her left arm. What fire?

You have some nasty burns that we’re doing our best to care for, Greenly said. He could see the drug working. Your Aunt Mae’s here. She wanted to see you as soon as you woke up. She’s just out in the hall.

Greenly gave Iris a quick nod, and the nurse hurried for the door.

When the door opened again, Mae O’Donnell, a woman as physically generous as she was generous of heart, lumbered into the room. Her cheeks were flushed and chubby beneath a crisp, white bonnet. She huddled at Caroline’s side and drew a sharp, painful breath when she saw the glazed, frightened look in her niece’s green eyes. Tears spilled over from Mae’s own bloodshot eyes and streamed down her face.

Oh, dear God, you came back to us, Mae whimpered. Caroline’s hair seemed a safe place to touch, and Mae reached out to her with the fingertips of one hand. She used her other hand to smear the tears across her own face.

Caroline was scared. She had never seen her aunt cry before. Aunt Mae? What are you doing here? What are they talking about, a fire?

Yes, child, Mae said, her expression brimming with sympathy and turmoil. At the house.

Caroline shuttered. Bolts of pain raced along her legs and arms and settled in her chest. Her vision blurred from the drugs swimming in her veins. She whispered, A fire? No! Please. That can’t be—

Yes, child. It must have started in the—

In the bedroom. It was the coal oil lamp. The coal oil lamp. Four words that turned Caroline’s life into a nightmare. Four simple words.

Aunt Mae touched Caroline’s hair again. They don’t know how it started yet.

Caroline knew. She could see it so clearly that the memory caused her to stop breathing. They were huddled in the big bed beneath the ragged quilt their mama had sewn for them. She, Mackie, and Paulie; so cold they could see their breath. Mackie’s hands felt like ice sickles. His gloves were shot through with holes, but Caroline made him wear them anyway. The ramshackle cabin that they had called home since Mama died was so filled with cracks that the wind used it like an old flute.

It’s my fault, Caroline uttered, her words slurring.

Now the despair slipped into a growing pool of guilt that no twelve-year-old should ever have to face. Caroline tried to follow the flurry of activity that her sudden reappearance into the conscious world had elicited, but the drift of her thoughts was like a scrim of coalescing clouds that she could barely penetrate.

Eastern Kentucky, the heart and soul of illiteracy and penury, was littered with cabins and shacks dependent upon coal for everything from heat and light to hot water. Every soul from Pikeville to Cumberland used coal oil for their lamps; electricity was a pipe dream. Kids like Caroline grew up with the smell of coal oil in their nose. She had been taught to be careful. Her mama had drummed the lessons into her long before she could walk or talk or even think about striking a match. She knew they were dangerous because she saw fires breaking out in broken down hovels all over the mountain. Next to the coal miners, the firemen of Pike County were the most overworked men in Pikesville. You never brought a coal oil lamp into bed with you. Never. Caroline knew that.

But it was so cold that night that she began to worry about Mackie’s asthma, and she wanted to keep a close eye on him. If she could keep his mind occupied with Huckleberry Finn or Moby Dick, then maybe he wouldn’t feel the cold so much. Sometimes, in the winter, when their dad could hardly put a decent meal on the table, and when coal was rationed like food stamps, they had to resort to desperate measures. And three kids in one bed huddled together like sewer rats was a measure they employed regularly. Caroline read. Just don’t fall asleep! How many times did she whisper that to herself? The last thing Caroline remembered was Huck and Jim steering their raft onto the Mississippi River and the sound of Mackie’s heavy breathing.

I fell asleep. Her green eyes were glassy and brimming with tears. I didn’t mean to.

Of course you didn’t mean to, Juice, Mae said meekly. Of course you didn’t.

Then a sudden burst of panic nearly made Caroline sick, and she tried climbing off the bed again. Aunt Mae! Where’s Mackie? Where’s Paulie?

The doctor, who had turned his attention to the IV drip feeding antibiotics into Caroline’s arm, stopped cold. The nurse administering to the dressing on her legs fumbled with a pair of scissors and sent them clattering to the floor. A forlorn mask settled upon Aunt Mae’s face. The dread in her eyes scared Caroline in exactly the same way as the helplessness in her father’s eyes had when Mama died three years ago: the doctors blamed it on a kidney infection; Caroline blamed it on a life so filled with despair that death probably seemed like a blessing.

She shivered involuntarily. Every inch of her skin crawled.

Mackie’s dead, baby, Aunt Mae said. The smoke took him. He didn’t suffer though. I promise you that.

Caroline’s tongue grew thick and papery, and her face flashed with heat. There was not enough air in the room to fill her lungs. There wasn’t enough air in the whole world to fill her lungs. She managed a whisper so laced with anxiety that Mae flinched. Paulie?

Paulie’s sleeping in the next room, Aunt Mae replied, though she didn’t say anything about his burns. She turned her eyes up at the doctor.

Greenly looked at Caroline and said, You can see him when he wakes up.

Caroline wanted to cry, but there were no emotions left to tap and no faith left to produce them. A thought rolled off her tongue as if it had been there all along but her mind hadn’t quite been able to get hold of it. Or didn’t want to. Where’s Dad? she asked flatly.

Mae took her hand. We don’t know, Juice. We don’t know. The police went to the mine and told him what happened, but no one’s seen him since. He—

What? Caroline couldn’t grasp this. The morphine drew her further and further into a world of darkness. She felt like she was drowning. She couldn’t concentrate. He must have gone back into the mine. He must of—

Aunt Mae shook her head. A streak of anger raced along her spine and touched the corners of her mouth. She drew her shoulders back. No. Your father’s gone, darlin’. He’s gone. When you and Paulie get out of here, you’ll move in with your Aunt Mae here in Lexington.

But…? Caroline tried drawing her knees up to her chin, the way she always did when raising her two brothers got to be too much and she just wanted to hide. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t move her legs because of the restraints, and she couldn’t bend her back. When she closed her eyes, a flood of tears she hadn’t even known was there overflowed onto her cheeks. It’s my fault.

Aunt Mae reached out for her. No, she said plainly. It was an accident. It’s not your fault. You’re twelve-years-old, Juice. Your dad should have been there and not in some bar drinking whiskey. The coal stove should have been stoked. He should’ve fixed those walls years ago. He— Suddenly, Mae was crying again. She twisted her head back and forth and swatted the tears away. It’s not your fault, baby. Believe me, it’s not.

Twelve hours later, the pain woke Caroline out of an anguished sleep, and no amount of morphine could dull it. A scream brought a nurse and two doctors running, and no amount of medical training could keep the ominous look off their faces. It was just beginning. In 1938, they treated burns with ointments made of clover and petroleum, and most burn victims became morphine addicts long before the pain subsided.

Caroline endured eight weeks in the hospital and spent most of that time wishing she were dead. Seeing her brother Paulie go through the same brutal treatment and endure the same excruciating pain changed her forever. Nothing would ever cut through the guilt she felt. Paulie would never be the same; Caroline could see that in the cool emptiness that lived now in his eyes. He would never laugh with the unabashed delight that so often filled their house and made life in the hills a little bit more bearable.

When it was time for the bandages to come off her face, Caroline went into a deep depression that lasted for days. She couldn’t stop crying. When it came time to face her reflection in the mirror, she refused to get out of bed. Caroline had seen the purplish scars crawling up her legs and the hideous layers of tissue rising up from her arms, the result of third degree burns. The doctors referred to the severity of the skin damage by using the word ‘charred.’ When they talked about the burns on her neck and face, they used the word ‘blistered.’ Caroline was told that blistered was the lesser of two evils. So while the bandages were still protecting the left side of her face, she allowed her imagination to deceive her into thinking the facial scars wouldn’t be as bad as those on her legs and arms.

Even though Caroline was considered shy and introspective for the most part, people had remarked upon her beauty for so many years that she had actually come to believe it was true. After all, her mother had been a shining star among the women of Pikesville - the kind of woman who turned heads everywhere she went. So when people said she was Pearl O’Donnell’s daughter through and through, no doubt about it, Caroline knew exactly what they meant. She liked being pretty. She liked the attention. She could see the affect she had on the boys in Pikeville, and she liked that too.

Caroline even harbored a ‘trivial little dream,’ as she now called it. The dream had gotten her through some of the really bad days after her mama had died. It was the kind of fantasy that had her being swept up by some passing stranger and whisk away to Atlanta or Chicago or even New York. She would become a journalist or a shopkeeper. She and her husband would go to the theater or the opera on Saturday nights. They would have three kids and two cats. She would learn to play bridge and volunteer for charitable functions. So much for dreams!

There were no mirrors in the burn center of this shabby little hospital. Mirrors weren’t necessary; Caroline learned this soon enough. The other patients, all three of them, proved to be mirrors themselves, mirrors so devastatingly vivid that they stopped looking at one another. Even more vivid, as it turned out, were the expressions on the faces of her very few visitors: the preacher from the church next door; the volunteer teacher from the elementary school off Clinton Drive; her Aunt Mae. Sure, they would try and mask the shock of what they saw. And no, they wouldn’t come right out and say, You’re too ugly and too terrible to look at. But Caroline wasn’t blind, and she wasn’t dumb.

Dr. Greenly and Iris took her to the recovery wing of the hospital in a wheelchair even though her legs worked just fine by now. She would spend another week there, they told her, before going home to Aunt Mae’s. The worst of her treatments were over. It was time to move on, to go back to school and pick up the pieces of her life, without Mackie and without her dad. She has done it before when her mama died. She could do it again. It was time.

Caroline hated the hospital. If she never saw Dr. Greenly or Iris again, it would be too soon. But given a choice, she would have hidden behind these walls for the rest of her days.

Dr. Greenly wheeled Caroline into her new room and then straight into the dressing room. He didn’t coddle her. He placed the wheelchair in front of the mirror, and Iris removed the last bandage. Take a look. It’s not near as bad as it could have been, Iris said as Caroline opened her eyes.

The scar tissue ran like a muddy red river down her right cheek, curled down and under her jawbone, and disappear behind her neck. Caroline stared at the scars until her eyes blurred. Despite her nurse’s encouraging words, Caroline could not see the other side of her face, miraculously unscathed by the flames. She could not see that her truly radiant smile was still intact, if she would only allow herself the pleasure of smiling. She could not appreciate the blind luck and sheer good fortune that had saved her life.

Caroline ordered the Greenly and the nurse out of the room. Alone with the mirror, she just stared. She pictured a hole opening up beneath her and felt herself slipping in; if she could only bury herself there forever. Who would look at her now? What would they say? It can’t be the same girl, can it? Pearl O’Donnell’s daughter? Impossible.

CHAPTER 2

THE BROKEN NEEDLE

There were two sides to the Kentucky myth - paradise and penury – and both were true in their own way.

In most areas of the State, you could see both without straining your eyes. There were places you could see forests as lush as the tropics carpeting rolling hills and filling the air with scents so powerful that Mother Nature herself would have to smile. The forests didn’t discriminate. Oaks and walnut trees grew in concert with dogwoods and poplars, and hickory and sycamores gave way to swatches of pines so dense that even the unconscionable quest of the logging industry had trouble making a dent. There were places where the hills had an air of movement to them, earthen waves spilling out like an ocean making its way to the Tennessee and West Virginia borders.

The countryside was home to thousands upon thousands of acres of horse farms and so many miles of white plank fencing that the mind began to see it as a simple work of art. Every farm seemed to come equipped with Colonial mansions or sprawling Tutors. There was palpable air of aristocracy and wealth.

Look deeper into the landscape and for every acre of wild grass there was a broken down shack or a tired trailer house. For every horse reared for breeding and speed, there was one trapped in a barbed wire-enclosed corral and covered with flies. For every debutante, there was a schoolgirl with black teeth. For every scholar, there was an illiterate hillbilly with a 65 IQ. Kentucky.

Wartime Lexington didn’t disappoint in the duality of this myth either. Not that a war waging on another continent could cut into the sweep of green and blue carpeting the surrounding hills. Not that pockets of shacks thrown together with baling wire and sheet metal and dotting those hills with a certain infamy were a product of the war. Lexington may have been better known for its educational institutions and its colonial architecture, but it was the city’s industrial backbone that fed the pulse of the country in 1943. While most able bodied men donned a uniform and marched into the heat of growing conflicts both in Europe and the Pacific, a good number of their mothers and sisters, wives and girlfriends found employment in the textile and sewing factories that formed a corridor of industrial disease along the railroad tracks that broke Lexington into a town with two hearts, one just barely hanging on, and the other beating fast and furious on the blood, sweat, and tears of the former.

Caroline, nearly six years removed from the Pikeville fire that took her younger brother’s life and left her other brother confused and bitter, lived off Brockington Road with her Aunt Mae. The house was a rambling two-story affair in dire need of paint and a new roof. The train yards that serviced the factories to the north, the logging industry to the south, the coal mines to the east, and two thousand train cars a day occupied a tract of land exactly a block and a half from the house. They endured a constant barrage of noise thanks to the mashing of steel-on-steel, a symphony of train whistles and truck horns, and the squeal of cargo cranes and steam engines. The house shook every time a train entered the yard and trembled every time one rolled out; it was like clockwork, cruel and inevitable.

After 61 years, Aunt Mae had become accustomed to it. She had also lost 90% of her hearing. After five years, eight months, and three days, Caroline had become resigned to it. The barrage from the train yard was a constant reminder of her failures, and she was grateful for that.

She woke up every morning at 4:30. It was the only time of day she appreciated or enjoyed, and the reason was simple. She was alone. She drank coffee on the broken porch that ran along the front of the house and watched the sun break across the train yards. In that light, Caroline thought, anything was beautiful.

She dressed in the dark. Every day she wore the same cotton mid-calf skirt, the same long sleeve blouse, and the same leather boots. The last thing she put on before leaving the house was a faded yellow shawl. Caroline wore it like a scarf, shielding her scarred face from an indifferent world and tying it off just below her chin.

Nearly six years. Caroline closed the door behind her. Aunt Mae would sleep for another hour and then make her way to the magazine stand she helped run in the depot. Paulie would take a bus forty minutes to the Lucy McGill School for Special Learning where the focus was on what they called the socially and mentally ‘challenged.’

Caroline turned toward the mills, taking the alley that ran away from Brockington Road and intersected Crescent Lane where the merchants were just beginning to arrive.

Like she did most mornings, Caroline bought cigarettes at the corner newsstand. Vincent Bigrandi, the Italian proprietor, moved behind the counter on crutches and most people didn’t take him for blind. Since birth, he had told Caroline when she first started patronizing the stand. But I could describe you to a tee, just by the sound of your voice. And he had done a pretty good job, Caroline realized. Pre-fire.

Today she left Vincent a dime tip, and he protested. Not on your life. Not unless they’re giving raises I don’t know about over at that slave mill you work in six days a week.

It’s only a penny, Caroline replied.

A penny sounds like bass drum. A dime sounds like a snare. Vincent sneered as if the obvious was the obvious no matter how you came to the conclusion. That was a snare and I want it out of my jar.

Caroline would have smiled if she hadn’t forgotten how. She turned and started away, ignoring the proprietor’s protests and recognizing just the smallest feeling of life inside her. She hurried along the lane before people started staring. She knew they would stare. They always had and always would. She didn’t care what Aunt Mae said: that she would be better off resigning herself to a life alone. It wasn’t a matter of resignation. Caroline was a realist. Of course she would be alone, if alone meant no man and no children. But she still had the morning, and she still had her daily joust with Vincent.

Factory Row loomed ahead. Stout, worn brick buildings dropped, seemingly at random, along the tracks. In Caroline’s eyes, it was as if teams of bricklayers had been let loose without blueprints or plans or anything more creative than a child’s drawing of a box. Smoke spewed twenty-four hours a day from dozens upon dozens of chimneys because Kentucky labor was the cheapest in the south and because there was a war on. For each textile plant, there was a sewing factory – prisons without walls for nearly 2,500 women. If you lived on the west side of the tracks in Lexington, you worked in the plants or the factories or the lumberyards. Call it fate or destiny or just dumb luck. Caroline didn’t know which and didn’t care.

She fell in line with the rapidly expanding herds headed for the morning shift. She said, Good morning to Madge Coliano and nodded to several others. The older the woman, the more hunched; you could see the progression of time in their postures. It made Caroline sick. Two more days, Madge said.

And then what? Caroline replied. A Sunday spent dreading Monday? I can’t wait.

Well, aren’t you in a mood. Madge was 24. She had worked in the factory since she was 14. She had gotten pregnant for the first of three times when she was seventeen, and now looked on the ragged side of 35.

Sorry, Caroline said. Damn coffee must not have been strong enough this morning.

And here I was blaming it on the three hours of sleep you get every night, whether you need it or not.

The hoards funneled toward a fenced entrance.

The sign above the gate read: Spear and McDougal. You know, Madge said, If you’d give Mr. Leon Horn more than the topside of your head once and a while, you might find a way out of this hellhole. He’s been eyeing you for the better part of six months. Do something about it.

They showed their work permits at the halfway house out front of the doors and fell into single file. I’ll not be a spectacle for the man, Madge, nor a night on the town, Caroline said.

It’s always the wrong side of your face you’re worried about lass, Madge replied. They entered the huge cavern that housed six hundred women and their sewing machines. Everyone, management and laborers alike, called it the Pit. The name managed in a single word to sum up the tumultuous pace, the seething, ceaseless wall of sound, the dust and lint-filled air, and the numbing sense of futility. Madge gave Caroline a good-natured nudge with her elbow. And besides, it’s not a house fire that happened six years ago that Mr. Leon Horn’s interested in. It’s the fire between your legs, if I’m not mistaken.

Madge howled. She headed for her workstation. Caroline watched her, stunned and embarrassed. If you believed the rigorous and puritanical teachings of the Catholic church - and they had been pounded into Caroline’s head for so long and with such feverish conviction, that belief wasn’t a matter of intellect or emotion, it was a matter of rote and robotic behavior – that Madge should have been struck down by lightening for uttering such a thing. But Madge was still striding down the aisle, hips grinding, and boisterous voice filling the Pit with energy.

Fire between her legs? Caroline could feel herself blush. A burst of heat rose off her face. Only the petulant blare of an approaching forklift’s horn brought her back to reality. With steel forks stacked head high with bolts of cloth, the lift swept out of the warehouse doors and into the aisle like a nearsighted dinosaur. There was a longstanding rule in the Pit: machines mean more to the success of the business than mere human beings, so don’t expect them to see you, to stop for you, or to care if they take off your arm or crush you like a worthless rodent.

Caroline stepped instinctively aside, and then proceeded to give herself a good, old-fashioned tongue-lashing. Did you look in the mirror this morning? Do you really think that anyone, least of all the floor boss, is interested in you or the fire between you legs? Grow up! And don’t forget to get yourself to church tonight and beg who ever it is you pray to everyday for forgiveness.

Caroline dropped her head and started down the aisle. She stared at the floor. Her feet took her to Row G, Station 216 where a stack of pre-cut cotton swatches had been piled next to a twelve-year-old, pedal-driven Singer sewing machine.

She uncoiled her shawl from around her face and shoulders, and tied it to the back of her chair. A head full of thick, glorious, chestnut-colored hair fell halfway down her back. Her pride and joy. According to Caroline, it was all she had left of the beautiful young girl she once was. The hair replaced the shawl in covering the scars coursing down the left side of her face because Caroline arranged it just so.

Jenny Freas fell heavily into the seat next to her. Thirty, homely, and a widow, Jenny was resigned to a life spend turning bolts of cloth into whatever the factory demanded that day. Uniforms, tents, rain ponchos, packs. And after the war, it would be women’s dresses, men’s shirts, and kids’ pants. She was Row G’s team leader, which meant she made twelve cents more an hour than Caroline. Caroline, at 17, made $.32 an hour and paid $.32 a day in union fees. She worked until her pile was gone, and the powers-to-be expected the pile to take between ten and twelve hours to complete. Today, that meant four-dozen long-sleeved Army Greens. Part of Jenny Freas’ job was to make sure no one in her row went too fast or too slow. That was a bigger issue than quality.

Caroline dubious position next to the team leader was based upon her lack of speed. Tents were her primary adversaries. Pants she managed. Shirts, which everyone in the row churned out without much effort, came a little easier.

Shirts and more shirts, Jenny hailed. My little darlin’s favorite.

Caroline rolled her eyes. She stared at her pile. Green. Always green. You couldn’t make a mistake with green. Not only that, my favorite color.

When they bury me, I want to be dressed head-to-toe in bright pink. You’ll see to that, won’t you, dear? Jenny said.

On my little brother’s grave, Caroline said, setting her thread. The whir of six hundred sewing machines sounded like the buzz of a fluorescent light just before it burned out, only amplified in multiples Caroline couldn’t calculate. It was a comforting sound. It always provided Caroline with a layer of insulation from the world. She took a pre-cut sleeve and slid the material under the needle mount. She stepped down on the foot pedal that powered the needle and found her rhythm.

For a good year after the fire, Caroline thought about Mackie nearly every waking moment. She would fashion different scenarios around how he had died. How much he had suffered. What she could have done to save him. But the thoughts were too painful. Compounded by the hideous pain of her burn therapy, it was just too overwhelming. All she did was cry. Then came her numb period. Think nothing, care about nothing, and, because feeling nothing had to be wrong, welcoming the pain. Now she believed that Mackie was in a better place and could hardly picture his face at all. She hated herself for that. But it didn’t surprise her; she couldn’t picture her mama’s face without the aid of a photograph, and she hadn’t thought about her father at all in years.

Suddenly, she realized that Jenny was clearing her throat and nudging her under the table. Guess whose giving someone on G Row a little special attention, Jenny said out of the side of her mouth. She bent her head in the direction of the freight aisle.

Leon Horn, the factory’s 28-year-old floor boss, was prowling the aisle, a benevolent despot overseeing his domain. Caroline turned her head. She pushed her hair away just enough to create a line of sight to the aisle, and Leon caught her eye. She turned away before he could smile, and her foot froze on the machine’s floor pedal. Her needle came to an abrupt halt. She jerked back in her seat, the material snagged, and the needle snapped. She still didn’t move. Finally, she forced herself to glance back. The aisle was empty. Leon wasn’t there.

Jenny looked at the damaged needle. That’s not going to help our quota, she said good-naturedly.

Sorry, Caroline said.

Not to worry. I’ll give you a hand. What’s a team leader for?

Actually, I believe it was my fault, Mrs. Freas. I’ll tend to it. The voice, deep and robust, came from behind them. Both women recognized it. Caroline froze. Jenny smiled widely. Leon Horn leaned over Caroline’s shoulder, and she could feel his hand on the back of her chair. I didn’t mean to startle you.

You didn’t, she lied.

He reached over her and smoothly unsnapped the needle box from the machine. I use to fix these things for a living, he said casually. He unscrewed the needle. Got a spare?

Caroline turned her head. She peeked out from behind a layer of hair. His face was foot away. He smiled easily. Not a handsome man, Leon had a square jaw, wide eyes, and high forehead. A twisted nose would have dominated his face had it not been for the easy smile. A spare needle, he said again. Don’t we generally keep a couple extras close at hand?

Jenny Freas held a spare needle out to him. She gets a little tongue-tied when her machine acts up, Mr. Horn.

I’m sure that’s it. Leon set about repairing the needle and had the machine running again in a matter of a minute, throughout which Caroline spoke not a single word. Leon rubbed his hands together when he was done. He took a step back. "That should do it. Like