Benny Stitch's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

The list held eleven names. Benny had one machine and two hands. He sat down at dawn and started the first coat. By the third seam the machine whined. The needle slowed. It stuttered on thick cloth and dragged the thread into a knot. He oiled it and pushed on. It coughed again. He counted the orders and counted the hours. The math did not work. One machine could not finish eleven jobs, and it might die before it finished one. He stopped and set both palms flat on the table. His fingers still carried old ink stains from a life of numbers. Numbers had left him nothing to hold. He would not let this shop end the same way. He needed more machines. He had no money for more machines. He had paid three months of rent ahead. Cosmo Fenn came in with a plate of frosted rolls. His friend set them by the whining machine and listened. "That sound is dying," Cosmo said. "It won't last the week," Benny said. "I can't buy another. I can't do eleven alone." Cosmo looked around the room. He looked at the shelves, the cloth, the built-in cabinets the last seamstress had left. "You keep saying alone." He bit a roll. "There are eleven people who want their orders. Some of them can sew a straight line." Benny stared at him. "They came for me to do the work." "They came for the work done," Cosmo said. "Not for who sits at the machine." Benny thought about the old cabinets. He opened the tall one against the back wall. Inside sat a second machine, hot pink, left under a sheet by the last seamstress. He wiped the dust off. He plugged it in. The needle ran clean and fast. He had two machines now, not one. He went to the window and called the waiting line inside. "I need hands," he said. "Anyone who can hem, who can baste, who can turn a straight seam. I'll cut your wait in half and cut a fair price for the help." Three stepped forward. A woman with steady fingers took the pink machine. Two more sat at the bench and threaded needles by hand. Benny showed each one the seam he wanted. He kept the hard cuts and the shaping for himself. He passed the simple runs down the line. By dusk the whining machine had finished two coats. The pink one had finished a third. The hand-sewers had basted four hems. The list dropped from eleven to four. No order had been dropped. No customer had walked off. Cosmo poured two cups from his kettle. "You made a shop," he said. "Not a bench for one man." Benny looked at the three new workers bent over cloth. His shop had grown past his own two hands. But now he paid three people, and four orders still waited, and the old machine still coughed with every seam.