Sardines and Silk

The packing floor of the Carson Sardine Cannery was already slick with fish guts and sea water by the time Effie Barter took her place at the line. The air hung heavy with salt and the sharp scent of fish. Effie kept her eyes on the silver bodies sliding past her gloves. Her hands moved without thought, slipping each sardine into its tin, pressing it flat, reaching for the next. The rhythm was the only thing that kept her mind from wandering back to her thirst for knowledge of medical procedures and anatomy. "Let me make enough money to move to Boston and get into medical school. She preferred to work then packing line as by the time the sardines reached her they had been cut. Packing was easy but it was precise work. Every tin must hold a specific number of fish and lined up a certain way. The tins went next to the saucing and sealing line and finished in the steam line which sterilized the tins before they arrived at the packing line. None of it was easy work and this year the sardines were not running like they had in the past. Several girls had been laid off and she felt happy just to be employed. "Keep my head down and my mouth shut" Effie repeated to herself several times daily. 

She had been at the work for three hours when the girl beside her swayed. Effie caught the motion in her side vision and turned just as Mabel's knees gave out. The girl dropped straight down, her forehead striking the edge of the wooden table. A wet sound carried above the noise of the machines. Mabel lay still, one arm flung across the conveyor belt, fingers still curled as if they expected another fish.

Gideon Carson was at the girl's side before the other packers could move. He barked orders at two men in stained aprons. They lifted Mabel by her shoulders and feet, carrying her toward the back hallway that led to the lunch room. Blood trickled from a cut above her eyebrow, but it was not the blood that held Effie's attention. Just below Mabel's ear, where the collar of her dress had slipped, was a small dark mark. It looked too clean to be a scrape from the table. It looked almost like teeth marks. Blood dried and  had turned black and stuck to her neck like paint. 

"Heat exhaustion," Gideon said, loud enough for the whole floor to hear. "Back to work, all of you. We lose the morning light, we lose the catch."

The girls bent over their tins again. No one looked at the spot where Mabel had fallen. Effie stayed where she was, her gloves dripping brine onto the floor. She had seen enough medical pictures to know when that was not accidental. That mark on Mabel's neck had not come from any part of the line she could name. "How could anything or anyone have bitten her?  Any why?"

Hazel Mudge stepped close enough that Effie could smell the tobacco on her breath. "Keep your eyes on the fish," Hazel said. Her voice was low and flat. "Nothing good comes from noticing things that ain't your business."

Effie met the older woman's stare for a moment, then dropped her gaze. She reached for the next sardine. The tin in front of her was already half full. Her fingers found the tail, slid the body into place, and closed the lid. The motion felt wrong now, as if each fish she packed carried some part of what had just happened.

Across the table, a girl named Doris whispered to the one beside her. "Four this year. They say the harbor's cursed."

"Shut your mouth," another girl hissed. "You'll bring it on yourself." "Who is "they" snapped Effie. She's still got to be examined by Doc Barlow. He'll say what took her. Maybe the heat, maybe she was sick but it was not murder like those other two. Those two who died, the Chinese girls from away may have been running from someone or something and ended up here. Keep in mind one was on the packing line a week before she got killed and the other didn't last a day down here. I do think she turned a lot of sheets for my mother in the few months she was down on Sea Street. Her throat was tore open like a dog got her. Gruesome death.  None of it made sense but Mabel ain't one of them ". But Effie was determined she would catch up with Doc and get a look at Mabel and get a look at that mark on her neck and ask if she can stand in when he figures out what killed her. 

The line kept moving. Effie worked with the others, but her thoughts stayed on the mark. Mabel had been breathing one moment and gone the next. That was not how heat exhaustion took a person. That was not how anything took a person on this line. 

At noon the whistle blew. The girls filed toward the long benches near the loading doors. Effie stayed at her station a moment longer, wiping her hands on her apron. When she looked up, Hazel was still watching her. The floor lead's eyes were narrow, and her mouth was set in a line that left no room for questions.

Effie walked to the benches. She sat at the far end, away from the clusters of girls who were already sharing pieces of bread and rumors. Her own lunch was a slice of oatmeal bread and a slice of cheese wrapped in paper. Mary Stone had been her mother's best friend since they were girls up on Adams Pond Road. When her husband dies falling through the ice into the pond, she moved down to Sea Street with Clara and Effie. Mary cleaned the rooms, kept the house fed and made the best bread in town. Effie ate without tasting it. The mark on Mabel's neck stayed in her mind. It had been small, almost neat, perfect teeth impressions but looked determine and intentional. Unlikey that they had pierced the juggler vein but deep enough to cause a loss of blood. She wondered how Mabel could have come to work and stand on the line if she had lost a lot of blood or even whatever had bit her had a venom that killed her. 

Gideon Carson passed through the packing area once more before the break ended. He carried a pencil and paper and spoke to the men who moved the crates. His voice carried over the low talk of the girls. He said the company would take care of Mabel's family. He said accidents happened when people got careless. No one answered him. The girls kept their heads down until he moved on. The only thing that was careless here was his attitude. Why did he even spend time on the packing floor? His family had already made more money than they could spend. Rumor was that he owed a huge gambling debt and while his father had paid it off, he was punished by having to run the day to day dirty operations on the packing floor, 

When the whistle blew again, the line started up. Effie took her place. Her hands resumed their work, but she could not stop thinking about the way Mabel had dropped. There had been no cry, no reaching out. One moment the girl had been packing, and the next she was gone. The mark beneath her ear had been the only thing that looked different.

By late afternoon the rumor had spread through the floor that Mabel had died on the way to the Doc Barrow's. Someone said it was her heart. Someone else said it was the same thing that had taken two girls the year before. Effie listened without joining in. She packed the fish and closed the tins and set them on the belt that carried them toward the sealing machine. Each motion was the same as it had been that morning, but nothing felt the same.

Hazel Mudge walked the length of the line twice during the last hour. She stopped once behind Effie, close enough that her shadow fell across the table. Effie did not turn. She kept her shoulders squared to the work and her eyes on the next fish. After a long moment, Hazel moved on.

When the final whistle sounded, the girls stripped off their gloves and aprons. Effie walked with the others toward the door that led to the docks. The air outside was colder than the factory, and it smelled of low tide. She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and kept walking. Behind her, the cannery lights stayed on. Men were already moving the crates of finished tins onto the waiting boats. The walk from the East Side of the harbor seemed long after a ten hour shift but once on the footbridge, all she thought about was getting home and out of these clothes. 

Effie reached corner of Commercial Street that led to Sea Street that led toward the house. She could still see the mark on Mabel's neck when she closed her eyes. It had been too distinct and too clean. It had not belonged to the machine or the heat or the long hours on the line. It had belonged to something else, and that something else had been happened to the  girl long before she fell.

She reached the Sea Street  house steps and paused. The wind off the water pushed at her skirts. Inside, the  "girls" would getting all dolled up in their silk dresses, low cut lingerie, dance hall dresses, costumes whatever it would take to get their clients up the stairs. Clara was likely perched on her velvet settee, thick red lipstick and over applied make up with a glass of some local bootleg whiskey in her hand. Only 45 but her black hair was already full of gray. Clara held her beauty but it was starting to go on her and she knew it. She knew it well enough to leave the sexual pursuits to her youthful dewy faced workers. Clark Murphy from up on Back River Road usually came down on Friday nights and shared her bed but otherwise, Clara was a serious business woman. 

. Effie stood for a moment longer, looking back across the harbor toward the cannery lights. Then she opened the door and went inside.