Chapter 3

Ivory woke to the calls from Maybella, “Ms. Irons, Ms. Irons!” Her eyes were full of sleep and blur, Maybella coming to view at the foot of the bed with a smile. They wished each other a good morning and Ivory was told to get out of bed as she was going for a grand tour of her father’s factory.

“But I’ve already seen his factory!” Ivory complained, hair like a twisted beehive.

“Yes,” Maybella said, moving to wrestle with the sleepy child, “but it’s publicity like your father likes. There will be men there writing and taking sketches for the papers, child, maybe your price too.”

Ivory shot up straight. Joshua!

“You been possessed by some kind of devil, Ivory? What’s the matter?”

And suddenly Ivory got real small again, grinning from the corner of her mouth with a blush red enough for Christmas. She ruffled the heavy white blankets off her little body and stepped out of bed, Maybella taking her lead. “Just, uh…a dream I had, you speaking of princes made me remember.”

Maybella played along and didn’t push the matter, rushing Ivory into the bathroom and reminding her of how much her father hates being late. It was but only fifteen minutes later when they emerged, Ivory sure to be the belle of any ball in a green dress with lace pattern at the neckline and a black corset beneath.

Maybella found a pair of heels to match Ivory’s corset and helped the young lady out from the room, making sure to make her bed and tidy the small scatter of this and that which had accumulated. The two exited the room and made their way down the long corridor, into the long wooden staircase that spiraled twice before landing on the floor below. Waiting for them was Henry Irons looking as sharp as only he could.

“I am the luckiest father in the world,” Henry said, taking his daughter’s hand before kissing her cheek. “I’m sure you feel rested, how early you went to bed.” His smile grew as they walked hand-in-hand to the door.

The first smile of the day always hurt Ivory’s face. “Ha, well, yes–yes, father. I may have spent one-too-many moments up at the bar and felt the need to excuse myself.”

Henry laughed as he opened the door for his daughter, allowing them to step out into the bright morning. “Not too worry my dear. If such a confession will allow you to forgive yourself, your mother was something similar to you in this regard.”

Ivory could have shot to the moon, learning of such a thing about her mother. “Really?!” For a few moments she was brighter than the sun.

She stepped up into the dark wagon which was pulled by two horses, Queen and Devil, and steered by a muscular man, Richard. Henry followed and closed the door behind them, inside he retrieved a metal flip-open container and fetched himself a cigarette, lit it up and began to smoke.

The wagon took off, clicking and clacking over the gravel pathway before turning left onto the road. Ivory stared at the chimney that was her father, her mind drifting to the other man in her life. What are you doing, Joshua?

Joshua, other than fighting off the vicious hangover, was knee-deep in cow shit and mudslide. Brody Montgomery, the man who kept his ear to the ground for any jobs of use for Joshua and folks alike, had gotten a call early that morning about something tumbling into something else on a farm and causing a nasty chain reaction. So, like every morning, Joshua packed up what he needed and made for the job. He’d walked for almost an hour.

The horse-drawn carriage slowed as Ivory stuck her face against the window, into view came the massive arms factory which she hadn’t seen in years. It was bigger and busier than she remembered; pillars of black smoke pumping color into the bright sky, bursts of flames shooting out doors and men covered in soot standing about having a smoke. Her father smiled as he watched her eyes fill with awe. Within a few moments the carriage came to a complete stop.

Richard knocked on the carriage. “Mr. Irons, Ms. Irons!” He then opened the door and pulled down the two steps, allowing for the passengers to exit comfortably into the rubble.

Ivory didn’t mean to grimmace, but she found herself doing so as they trotted over the filth below towards the main entrance door. There wasn’t an eye in the lot that wasn’t on her, and suddenly she pulled her purse closer and kept her head down until the crunching below stopped.

They’d reached the concrete floor inside.

Ivory fought to breathe as they walked through the isles, and the throb within her ears made her entire head feel as if it were being squeezed by a bear. So much heat and steel and large men throwing around pieces and fetching them from furnaces. The walk through the guts of the factory came to a halt as Henry directed them to move left into his office, where he was able to watch the entire floor if he wanted.

The door which closed behind them cut off every last bit of life from the noisy world outside. “That’s better, isn’t it,” Henry said with a smile, offering Ivory a seat across from him on the opposite side of the desk. “Who could have ever guessed our family would have ended up here?”

Something about the question made Ivory shift in her seat. “What do you mean?” she said.

“The scale of it all, the production of it all. These twenty years especially have gone by so fast, some days I still see the sticks and stones which it was in the beginning.”

“I can only imagine. After all, you have been working and building and developing for so many years now, father.” She looked around the well-furnished office space, the booze tray in the corner, the large window which allowed for a view into the workspace. “How many men do you have working for you?”

“A hundred, give or take a few.”

“And do you know any of them?”

“God, no. Why would I? They’re out there for a reason and I’m in here for a reason, them and me. They lug and shape and treat the material and I pay for it. Simple, neat.”

“But they’re workers.”

“And not my friends.”

There was a look in Henry’s eyes that Ivory had not seen before, something dark and void and seemingly endless. In that moment he no longer felt like her father, but a ruthless dictator who had a family and a kingdom to preserve. But just as the silence had gone on long enough, Richard entered the room with a plate of sandwiches that “Maybella insisted on you two eating.”

Henry did not speak through the entire meal except for the formal pleasantries, leaving Ivory to watch the men within twenty yards away without food or break or comfort and security. For the first time, she was faced with the ugly reality of what and who put food on the table and a grand roof over her head. She was less than enthused and more than willing to leave when she was asked.

The carriage ride back started quiet but did not last that way for long. Henry lit a cigarette and asked Ivory what she expected such a factory to look like in their day in age, by no means curious as to what her answer would be.

“I–I don’t know,” Ivory said, “it’s just new to me, so it’s hard. You’ve been watching men coming and going and killing themselves for you in some fashion or another since before I was born.”

“And am I to be ashamed of myself for how they turned out?” He sat just like a stone. “Adult men are what we make of ourselves, nothing more. I am who I became and they are what they became. This world is not made of rainbows and poetry and tasty cakes, Ivory.”

“But why must you hate them?” Ivory’s knuckles were fastly tightened to her knees.

“I don’t hate them, but they are simple minds meant for simple work. Hard work. Like the horses which carry us along now, love them as you shall but they are worth very little outside of this basic function. Do not conflate your mercy and love for how the world works and continues. If you wish to have a piece of this someday, or marry a successful man, you must accept the realities of the world you inhabit. We are above them.”

The carriage stayed silent while the rest of the world carried on around it; mothers yelling at their children, men yelling and fighting in the streets, horses crying out in pain or for food, but then the carriage stopped entirely.

Henry immediately began to swear up and down, stating there was no way they were home already. Another few moments passed before Richard was yelling. Henry and Ivory listened as their driver spoke of getting out of the way and hurrying along as their superiors had places to be. Again, Richard spoke of superiors and Ivory wished to never be seen again at that moment.

Richard was busy yelling at the top of his lungs and Henry was nearly biting his tongue off, leaving Ivory the only option of sticking her face to the glass to see if she could get a better look at what was going on. And that is when she nearly burst, right then and there in the carriage across from her father.

Of the multiple men hurrying to lug endless stacks of hay out from the center of the road was Joshua. Joshua Barker, in the daylight, in the flesh, tossing stacks of hay about as if they were paperweights, the muscles in his arms full of blood and soaked in sweat. She had to cover her mouth to not allow the excitement to escape. But this got her father’s attention.

“Are you alright?” Henry asked, stiff as an Oak.

“Oh yes, father,” Ivory spoke so breathy, “just fine.”