Empire Falls

Textile beyond its tax advantages. Under the Whitings, the mill had operated with New England frugality and virtually no debt, whereas the new owners, claiming the need to modernize in order to be competitive with foreign operations, heavily mortgaged every existing piece of machinery in order to expand lavishly. Local workers had questioned the wisdom of this approach from the start. Given the new debt structure, those who knew the operation intimately, including Grace, did not see how the mill could possibly show a profit for many years. Acceptable, perhaps, had the new owners exhibited any signs of patience, but they appeared singularly lacking in this corporate virtue .
    The threat of closure, imagined or implied, sent shock waves through Empire Falls, and when a new labor contract was negotiated, its principal features were longer hours, a new definition of what constituted overtime, the elimination of numerous jobs, pay cuts and diminished benefits. Of course employees grumbled, but they also understood the next year would determine the mill’s very existence. When overall productivity indeed rose nearly 28 percent—remarkable, given the mill’s deteriorating conditions—the workers congratulated themselves that if the mill wasn’t in the black as a result of their concessions, they’d at least managed to guarantee another year or two at their now less personally profitable jobs .
    Which was why they were stunned when Hjortsmann announced that both mill and shirt factory would close anyway. In less than a month the mill was completely looted of its mortgaged machinery, which was disassembled and placed on trucks destined for Georgia and the Dominican Republic. In fact, it took less time for the mill to be emptied than for its employees to understand the truth of their situation, that Empire Textile had been bought for this very purpose, and their heroic efforts to make the mill profitable had simply swelled the coffers of Hjortsmann International. This would never have happened under the Whitings, people said, and a delegation was sent to discuss the possibility of old Honus Whiting and his loyal employees purchasing Empire Textile, but by then the old man was in extreme ill health and his son, C. B., remained in Mexico. Only a few understood the new family dynamic, in which Francine Whiting held the real power. She, not her husband or her father-in-law, had brokered the sale of the mill, quite possibly, some whispered, with a complete understanding of Hjortsmann’s ultimate intention .
    Some employees were offered jobs in Georgia, but few took up the offer to relocate. They had houses and mortgages, and the real estate market was already grim, thanks to the closing of two smaller mills the year before. True, people weren’t sure how they’d pay those mortgages now, but they had kids in school and family nearby that might be able to help a little, and many irrationally clung to the possibility that the mill might reopen under new ownership. They stayed, many of them, because staying was easier and less scary than leaving, and because for a while at least they’d be able to draw unemployment benefits. Others remained out of pride. When the realization dawned that they were the victims of corporate greed and global economic forces, they said, okay, sure, fine, they’d been fools but they would not, by God, be run out of the town their grandparents and parents had grown up in and called home. The fortunate ones were older, their modest houses nearly paid off; close to retirement, they would limp to the finish line, then help their less fortunate sons and daughters as best they could .
    Grace Roby was one of the few who might’ve been tempted to head south, but to her the offer was not extended. When Miles’s brother was born, she’d taken a year off and then returned to work part-time until he was old enough to attend kindergarten. Though she’d worked at the shirt factory longer than most of the people who were offered the relocation deal, the hiatus meant that she didn’t have the required consecutive years of service to qualify. After searching for work for more than a year and exhausting her unemployment benefits, Grace had just about concluded that they would have to move away from Empire Falls anyway, perhaps to the Portland area , when she received an unexpected phone call from a man named William Vandermark .
    What Mr. Vandermark, who worked for a Boston firm, begged to inquire was whether