A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Miserable Mill (2 page)

Chapter Three

Morning is an important time of day, because how you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have. For instance, if you wake up to the sound of twittering birds, and find yourself in an enormous canopy bed, with a butler standing next to you holding a breakfast of freshly made muffins and hand-squeezed orange juice on a silver tray, you will know that your day will be a splendid one. If you wake up to the sound of church bells, and find yourself in a fairly big regular bed, with a butler standing next to you holding a breakfast of hot tea and toast on a plate, you will know that your day will be O.K. And if you wake up to the sound of somebody banging two metal pots together, and find yourself in a small bunk bed, with a nasty foreman standing in the doorway holding no breakfast at all, you will know that your day will be horrid. You and I, of course, cannot be too surprised that the Baudelaire orphans' first day at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill was a horrid one. And the Baudelaires certainly did not expect twittering birds or a butler, not after their dismaying arrival. But never in their most uneasy dreams did they expect the cacophony, a word which here means "the sound of two metal pots being banged together by a nasty foreman standing in the doorway holding no breakfast at all", that awoke them. "Get up, you lazy, smelly things!" cried the foreman in an odd-sounding voice. He spoke as if he were covering his mouth with his hands. "Time for work, everybody! There's a new shipment of logs just waiting to be made into lumber!" The children sat up and rubbed their eyes. All around them, the employees of the Lucky Smells Lumbermill were stretching and covering their ears at the sound of the pots. Phil, who was already up and making his bunk neatly, gave the Baudelaires a tired smile. "Good morning, Baudelaires," Phil said. "And good morning, Foreman Flacutono. May I introduce you to your three newest employees? Foreman Flacutono, this is Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire." "I heard we'd have some new workers," the foreman said, dropping the pots to the floor with a clatter, "but nobody told me they'd be midgets." "We're not midgets," Violet explained. "We're children." "Children, midgets, what do I care?" Foreman Flacutono said in his muffled voice, walking over to the orphans' bunk. "All I care is that you get out of bed this instant and go straight to the mill." The Baudelaires hopped out of the bunk bed, not wanting to anger a man who banged pots together instead of saying "Good morning." But once they got a good look at Foreman Flacutono they wanted to hop back into their bunks and pull the covers over their heads. I'm sure you have heard it said that appearance does not matter so much, and that it is what's on the inside that counts. This is, of course, utter nonsense, because if it were true then people who were good on the inside would never have to comb their hair or take a bath, and the whole world would smell even worse than it already does. Appearance matters a great deal, because you can often tell a lot about people by looking at how they present themselves. And it was the way Foreman Flacutono presented himself that made the orphans want to jump back into their bunks. He was wearing stained overalls, which never make a good impression, and his shoes were taped shut instead of being tied up with laces. But it was the foreman's head that was the most unpleasant. Foreman Flacutono was bald, as bald as an egg, but rather than admit to being bald like sensible people do, he had purchased a curly white wig that made it look like he had a bunch of large dead worms all over his head. Some of the worm hairs stuck straight up, and some of them curled off to one side, and some of them ran down his ears and his forehead, and a few of them stretched straight out ahead as if they wanted to escape from Foreman Flacutono's scalp. Below his wig was a pair of dark and beady eyes, which blinked at the orphans in a most unpleasant way. As for the rest of his face, it was impossible to tell what it looked like, because it was covered with a cloth mask, such as doctors wear when they are in hospitals. Foreman Flacutono's nose was all curled up under the mask, like an alligator hiding in the mud, and when he spoke the Baudelaires could see his mouth opening and closing behind the cloth. It is perfectly proper to wear these masks in hospitals, of course, to stop the spreading of germs, but it makes no sense if you are the foreman of the Lucky Smells Lumbermill. The only reason Foreman Flacutono could have for wearing a surgical mask would be to frighten people, and as he peered down at the Baudelaire orphans they were quite frightened indeed. "The first thing you can do, Baudeliars," Foreman Flacutono said, "is pick up my pots. And never make me drop them again." "But we didn't make you drop them," Klaus said. "Bram!" Sunny added, which probably meant something like "and our last name is Baudelaire. " "If you don't pick up the pots this instant" Foreman Flacutono said, "you will get no chewing gum for lunch." The Baudelaire orphans did not care much for chewing gum, particularly peppermint chewing gum, which they were allergic to, but they ran to the pots. Violet picked one up and Sunny picked up the other, while Klaus hurriedly made the beds. "Give them to me," Foreman Flacutono snapped, and grabbed the pots out of the girls' hands. "Now, workers, we've wasted enough time already. To the mills! Logs are waiting for us!" "I hate log days," one of the employees grumbled, but everyone followed Foreman Flacutono out of the dormitory and across the dirt-floored courtyard to the lumbermill, which was a dull gray building with many smokestacks sticking out of the top like a porcupine's quills. The three children looked at one another worriedly. Except for one summer day, back when their parents were still alive, when the Baude-laires had opened a lemonade stand in front of their house, the orphans had never had jobs, and they were nervous. The Baudelaires followed Foreman Flacutono into the lumbermill and saw that it was all one huge room, filled with enormous machines. Violet looked at a shiny steel machine with a pair of steel pinchers like the arms of a crab, and tried to figure out how this invention worked. Klaus examined a machine that looked like a big cage, with an enormous ball of string trapped inside, and tried to remember what he had read about lumbermills. Sunny stared at a rusty, creaky-looking machine that had a circular sawblade that looked quite jagged and fearsome and wondered if it was sharper than her own teeth. And all three Baudelaires gazed at a machine, covered in tiny smokestacks, that held a huge, flat stone up in the air, and wondered what in the world it was doing there. The Baudelaires had only a few seconds to be curious about these machines, however, before Foreman Flacutono began clanging his two pots together and barking out orders. "The logs!" he shouted. "Turn on the pincher machine and get started with the logs!" Phil ran to the pincher machine and pressed an orange button on it. With a rough whistling noise, the pinchers opened, and stretched toward the far wall of the lumbermill. The orphans had been so curious about the machines that they hadn't noticed the huge pile of trees that were stacked, leaves and roots and all, along one wall of the lumbermill as if a giant had simply torn a small forest out of the ground and dropped it into the room. The pinchers picked up the tree on top of the stack and began lowering it to the ground, while Foreman Flacutono banged his pots together and shouted, "The debarkers! The debarkers!" Another employee walked to the back corner of the room, where there were a stack of tiny green boxes and a pile of flat metal rectangles, as long and as thin as an adult eel. Without a word she picked up the pile of rectangles and began distributing them to the workers. "Take a debarker," she whispered to the children. "One each." The children each took a rectangle and stood there, confused and hungry, just as the tree touched the ground. Foreman Flacutono clanged his pots together again, and the employees crowded around the tree and began scraping against it with their debarkers, filing the bark off each tree as you or I might file our nails. "You, too, midgets!" the foreman shouted, and the children found room among the adults to scrape away at the tree. Phil had described the rigors of working in a lumbermill, and it had certainly sounded difficult. But as you remember, Phil was an optimist, so the actual work turned out to be much, much worse. For one thing, the debarkers were adult-sized, and it was difficult for the children to use them. Sunny could scarcely lift her debarker at all, and so used her teeth instead, but Violet and Klaus had teeth of only an average sharpness and so had to struggle with the debarkers. The three children scraped and scraped, but only tiny pieces of bark fell from the tree. For another thing, the children had not eaten any breakfast, and as the morning wore on they were so hungry that it was difficult to even lift the debarker, let alone scrape it against the tree. And for one more thing, once a tree was finally cleared of bark, the pinchers would drop another one onto the ground, and they would have to start all over again, which was extremely boring. But for the worst thing of all, the noise at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill was simply deafening. The debarkers made their displeasing scraping sound as they dragged across the trees. The pinchers made their rough whistling noise as they picked up logs. And Foreman Flacutono made his horrendous clanging noise as he banged his pots together. The orphans grew exhausted and frustrated. Their stomachs hurt and their ears rang. And they were unbelievably bored. Finally, as the employees finished their fourteenth log, Foreman Flacutono banged his pots together and shouted, "Lunch break!" The workers stopped scraping, and the pinchers stopped whistling, and everyone sat down, exhausted, on the ground. Foreman Flacutono threw his pots on the floor, walked over to the tiny green boxes, and grabbed one. Opening it with a rip, he began to toss small pink squares at the workers, one to each. "You have five minutes for lunch!" he shouted, throwing three pink squares at the children. The Baudelaires could see that a damp patch had appeared on his surgical mask, from spit flying out of his mouth as he gave orders. "Just five minutes!" Violet looked from the damp patch on the mask to the pink square in her hand, and for a second she didn't believe what she was looking at. "It's gum!" she said. "This is gum!" Klaus looked from his sister's square to his own. "Gum isn't lunch\" he cried. "Gum isn't even a snack\" "Tanco!" Sunny shrieked, which meant something along the lines of "And babies shouldn't even have gum, because they could choke on it!" "You'd better eat your gum," Phil said, moving over to sit next to the children. "It's not very filling, but it's the only thing they'll let you eat until dinnertime." "Well, maybe we can get up a little earlier tomorrow," Violet said, "and make some sandwiches." "We don't have any sandwich-making ingredients," Phil said. "We just get one meal, usually a casserole, every evening." "Well, maybe we can go into town and buy some ingredients," Klaus said. "I wish we could," Phil said, "but we don't have any money." "What about your wages?" Violet asked. "Surely you can spend some of the money you earn on sandwich ingredients." Phil gave the children a sad smile, and reached into his pocket. "At the Lucky Smells Lumbermill," he said, bringing out a bunch of tiny scraps of paper, "they don't pay us in money. They pay us in coupons. See, here's what we all earned yesterday: twenty percent off a shampoo at Sam's Haircutting Palace. The day before that we earned this coupon for a free refill of iced tea, and last week we earned this one: 'Buy Two Banjos and Get One Free.' The trouble is, we can't buy two banjos, because we don't have anything but these coupons." "Nelnu!" Sunny shrieked, but Foreman Flacutono began banging his pots together before anyone could realize what she meant. "Lunch is over!" he shouted. "Back to work, everyone! Everyone except you, Baudelamps! The boss wants to see you three in his office right away!" The three siblings put down their debark-ers and looked at one another. They had been working so hard that they had almost forgotten about meeting their guardian, whatever his name was. What sort of man would force small children to work in a lumbermill? What sort of man would hire a monster like Foreman Flacutono? What sort of man would pay his employees in coupons, or feed them only gum? Foreman Flacutono banged his pots together again and pointed at the door, and the children stepped out of the noisy room into the quiet of the courtyard. Klaus took the map out of his pocket and pointed the way to the office. With each step, the orphans raised small clouds of dirt that matched the clouds of dread hovering over them. Their bodies ached from the morning's work, and they had an uneasy feeling in their empty stomachs. As they had guessed from the way their day began, the three children were having a bad day. But as they got closer and closer to the office, they wondered if their day was about to get even worse.

Chapter Four

As I'm sure you know, whenever there is a mirror around, it is almost impossible not to take a look at yourself. Even though we all know what we look like, we all like just to look at our reflections, if only to see how we're doing. As the Baudelaire orphans waited outside the office to meet their new guardian, they looked in a mirror hanging in the hallway and they saw at once that they were not doing so well. The children looked tired and they looked hungry. Violet's hair was covered in small pieces of bark. Klaus's glasses were hanging askew, a phrase which here means "tilted to one side from leaning over logs the entire morning." And there were small pieces of wood stuck in Sunny's four teeth from using them as debarkers. Behind them, reflected in the mirror, was a painting of the seashore, which was hanging on the opposite wall, which made them feel even worse, because the seashore always made them remember that terrible, terrible day when the three siblings went to the beach and soon received the news from Mr. Poe that their parents had died. The children stared at their own reflections, and stared at the painting of the seashore behind them, and it was almost unbearable to think about everything that had happened to them since that day. "If someone had told me," Violet said, "that day at the beach, that before long I'd find myself living at the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, I would have said they were crazy." "If someone had told me" Klaus said, "that day at the beach, that before long I'd find myself pursued by a greedy, evil man named Count Olaf, I would have said they were insane." "Wora," Sunny said, which meant something like "If someone had told me, that day at the beach, that before long I'd find myself using my four teeth to scrape the bark off trees, I would have said they were psychoneurotically disturbed." The dismayed orphans looked at their reflections, and their dismayed reflections looked back at them. For several moments, the Baudelaires stood and pondered the mysterious way their lives were going, and they were thinking so hard about it that they jumped a little when somebody spoke. "You must be Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire," the somebody said, and the children turned to see a very tall man with very short hair. He was wearing a bright blue vest and holding a peach. He smiled and walked toward them, but then frowned as he drew closer. "Why, you're covered in pieces of bark," he said. "I hope you haven't been hanging around the lumbermill. That can be very dangerous for small children." Violet looked at the peach, and wondered if she dared ask for a bite. "We've been working there all morning," she said. The man frowned. "Working there?" Klaus looked at the peach, and had to stop himself from grabbing it right out of the man's hand. "Yes," he said. "We received your instructions and went right to work. Today was a new log day." The man scratched his head. "Instructions?" he asked. "What in the world are you talking about?" Sunny looked at the peach, and it was all she could do not to leap up and sink her teeth right into it. "Molub!" she shrieked, which must have meant something like "We're talking about the typed note that told us to go to work at the lumbermill!" "Well, I don't understand how three people as young as yourselves were put to work in the lumbermill, but please accept my humblest apologies, and let me tell you that it will not happen again. Why, you're children, for goodness' sake! You will be treated as members of the family!" The orphans looked at one another. Could it be that their horrible experiences in Paltry-ville were just a mistake? "You mean we don't have to debark any more logs?" Violet asked. "Of course not," the man said. "I can't believe you were even allowed inside. Why, there are some nasty machines in there. I'm going to speak to your new guardian about it immediately." "You're not our new guardian?" Klaus asked. "Oh no," the man said. "Forgive me for not introducing myself. My name is Charles, and it's very nice to have the three of you here at Lucky Smells Lumbermill." "It's very nice to be here," Violet lied politely. "I find that difficult to believe," Charles said, "seeing as you've been forced to work in the mill, but let's put that behind us and have a fresh start. Would you care for a peach?" "They've had their lunch!" came a booming voice, and the orphans whirled around and stared at the man they saw. He was quite short, shorter than Klaus, and dressed in a suit made of a very shiny darkgreen material that made him look more like a reptile than a person. But what made them stare most was his face or, rather, the cloud of smoke that was covering his face. The man was smoking a cigar, and the smoke from the cigar covered his entire head. The cloud of smoke made the Baudelaire children very curious as to what his face really looked like, and you may be curious as well, but you will have to take that curiosity to your grave, for I will tell you now, before we go any further, that the Baudelaires never saw this man's face, and neither did I, and neither will you. "Oh, hello, sir," Charles said. "I was just meeting the Baudelaire children. Did you know they had arrived?" "Of course I knew they arrived," the smoke-faced man said. "I'm not an idiot." "No, of course not," Charles said. "But were you aware that they were put to work in the lumbermill? On a new log day, no less! I was just explaining to them what a terrible mistake that was." "It wasn't a mistake," the man said. "I don't make mistakes, Charles. I'm not an idiot." He turned so the cloud of smoke faced the children. "Hello, Baudelaire orphans. I thought we should lay eyes on one another." "Batex!" Sunny shrieked, which probably meant "But we're not laying eyes on one another!" "I have no time to talk about that," the man said. "I see you've met Charles. He's my partner. We split everything fifty-fifty, which is a good deal. Don't you think so?" "I guess so," Klaus said. "I don't know very much about the lumber business." "Oh, yes," Charles said. "Of course I think it's a good deal." "Well," the man said, "I want to give you three a good deal as well. Now, I heard about what happened to your parents, which is really too bad. And I heard all about this Count Olaf fellow, who sounds like quite a jerk, and those odd-looking people who work for him. So when Mr. Poe gave me a call, I worked out a deal. The deal is this: I will try to make sure that Count Olaf and his associates never go anywhere near you, and you will work in my lumbermill until you come of age and get all that money. Is that a fair deal?" The Baudelaire orphans did not answer this question, because it seemed to them the answer was obvious. A fair deal, as everyone knows, is when both people give something of more or less equal value. If you were bored with playing with your chemistry set, and you gave it to your brother in exchange for his dollhouse, that would be a fair deal. If someone offered to smuggle me out of the country in her sailboat, in exchange for free tickets to an ice show, that would be a fair deal. But working for years in a lumbermill in exchange for the owner's trying to keep Count Olaf away is an enormously unfair deal, and the three youngsters knew it. "Oh, sir," Charles said, smiling nervously at the Baudelaires. "You can't be serious. A lumbermill is no place for small children to work." "Of course it is," the man said. He reached a hand up into his cloud to scratch an itch somewhere on his face. "It will teach them responsibility. It will teach them the value of work. And it will teach them how to make flat wooden boards out of trees." "Well, you probably know best," Charles said, shrugging. "But we could read about all of those things," Klaus said, "and learn about them that way." "That's true, sir," Charles said. "They could study in the library. They seem very well behaved, and I'm sure they would cause no trouble." "Your library!" the man said sharply. "What nonsense! Don't listen to Charles, you children. My partner has insisted that we create a library for the employees at the mill, and so I let him. But it is no substitute for hard work." "Please, sir," Violet pleaded. "At least let our little sister stay in the dormitory. She's only a baby." "I have offered you a very good deal," the man said. "As long as you stay within the gates of the Lucky Smells Lumbermill, this Count Olaf will not come near you. In addition, I'm giving you a place to sleep, a nice hot dinner, and a stick of gum for lunch. And all you have to do in return is a few years' work. That sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Well, it was nice to meet you. Unless you have any questions, I'll be going now. My pizza is getting cold, and if there's one thing I hate it's a cold lunch." "I have a question," Violet said, although the truth of the matter is she had many questions. Most of them began with the phrase "How can you." "How can you force small children to work in a lumbermill?" was one of them. "How can you treat us so horridly, after all we've been through?" was another. And then there was "How can you pay your employees in coupons instead of money?" and "How can you feed us only gum for lunch?" and "How can you stand to have a cloud of smoke covering your face?" But none of these seemed like questions that were proper to ask, at least not out loud. So Violet looked her new guardian right in his cloud and asked, "What is your name?" "Never mind what my name is," the man said. "No one can pronounce it anyway. Just call me Sir." "I'll show the children to the door, Sir," Charles said quickly, and with a wave of his hand, the owner of the Lucky Smells Lumber-mill was gone. Charles waited nervously for a moment, to make sure Sir was far enough away. Then he leaned in to the children and handed them the peach. "Never mind what he said about your already having your lunch," he said. "Have this peach." "Oh, thank you," Klaus cried, and hurriedly divided the peach among himself and his siblings, giving the biggest piece to Sunny because she hadn't even had her gum. The Baudelaire children wolfed down the peach, and under normal circumstances it would not have been polite to eat something so quickly and so noisily, particularly in front of someone they did not know very well. But these circumstances were not at all normal, so even a manners expert would excuse them for their gobbling. "You know," Charles said, "because you seem like such nice children, and because you've worked so very hard today, I'm going to do something for you. Can you guess what it is?" "Talk to Sir," Violet said, wiping peach juice off her chin, "and convince him that we shouldn't work in the lumbermill?" "Well, no," Charles admitted. "That wouldn't do any good. He won't listen to me." "But you're his partner," Klaus pointed out. "That doesn't matter," Charles replied. "When Sir has made up his mind, he has made up his mind. I know he sometimes is a little bit mean, but you'll have to excuse him. He had a very terrible childhood. Do you understand?" Violet looked at the painting of the seashore, and thought once again of that dreadful day at the beach. "Yes," she sighed. "I understand. I think I'm having a very terrible childhood myself." "Well, I know what will make you feel better," Charles said, "at least a little bit. Let me show you the library before you go back to work. Then you can visit it whenever you want. Come on, it's right down the hall." Charles led the Baudelaires down the hallway, and even though they would soon be back at work, even though they had been offered one of the least fair deals ever offered to children, the three siblings felt a little bit better. Whether it was Uncle Monty's library of reptile books, or Aunt Josephine's library of grammar books, or Justice Strauss's library of law books, or, best of all, their parents' library of all kinds of books, all burned up now, alas, libraries always made them feel a little bit better. Just knowing that they could read made the Baudelaire orphans feel as if their wretched lives could be a little brighter. At the end of a hallway was a little door, and Charles stopped at the door, smiled at the children, and opened the door. The library was a large room, and it was filled with elegant wooden bookshelves and comfortablelooking sofas on which to sit and read. On one wall was a row of windows, which let in more than enough light for reading, and on the other wall was a row of landscape paintings, perfect for resting one's eyes. The Baudelaire children stepped inside the room and took a good look around. But they did not feel any better, not at all. "Where are the books?" Klaus asked. "All these elegant bookshelves are empty." "That's the only thing wrong with this library," Charles admitted. "Sir wouldn't give me any money to buy books." "You mean there are no books at all?" Violet asked. "Just three," Charles said, and walked to the farthest bookshelf. There, on the bottom shelf, were three books sitting all by themselves. "Without money, of course, it was difficult to acquire any books, but I did have three books donated. Sir donated his book, The History of Lucky Smells Lumbermill. The mayor of Paltryville donated this book, The Paltryville Constitution. And here's Advanced Ocular Science, donated by Dr. Orwell, a doctor who lives in town." Charles held up the three books to show the Baudelaires what each one looked like, and the children stared in dismay and fear. The History of Lucky Smells Lumbermill' had a painting of Sir on the cover, with a cloud of smoke covering his face. The Paltryville Constitution had a photograph of the Paltryville post office, with the old shoe dangling from the flagpole in front. But it was the cover of Advanced Ocular Science that made the Baudelaire children stare. You have heard, many times I'm sure, that you should not judge a book by its cover. But just as it is difficult to believe that a man who is not a doctor wearing a surgical mask and a white wig will turn out to be a charming person, it was difficult for the children to believe that Advanced Ocular Science was going to cause them anything but trouble. The word "ocular," you might not know, means "related to the eye," but even if you didn't know this you could figure it out from the cover. For printed on the cover was an image that the children recognized. They recognized it from their own nightmares, and from personal experience. It was an image of an eye, and the Baudelaire orphans recognized it as the mark of Count Olaf.