Stoneville, North Carolina is a tired little mill town hard by the Virginia border, one of dozens of similar little towns that used to prosper spinning cotton into yarn or weaving yard upon yard of fabric. The mills are mostly gone now, the machinery shipped off to primarily South American countries, and the towns are drying up.
From time to time, though, an enterprising Town Council will manage to snag a new industry to occupy at least a part of one of the cavernous old buildings that have stood empty for so many years. One old mill building in Stoneville now houses a manufacturing plant turning out electronics hardware -- dish antennas, microwave components, waveguides, that kind of stuff. The market is good at the moment, and there are plenty of sales to foreign countries.
That's where I come in. Some of the receiving countries insist on having their shipments inspected by a third party before they leave the plant. That's me -- the third party. I'm sent to the site by an inspection company in Miami, and I watch while they load an overseas shipping container with whatever the customer has purchased, fill out some paperwork, take some pictures, and fasten a seal to the container, which is then trucked away to the nearest port and loaded aboard a container ship with thousands of others. Usually it's a routine, kind of boring day. But sometimes a visit to one of these middle-of-nowhere sites takes an interesting turn -- like the one to Stoneville last year.
I arrived at the plant's office at the appointed hour, announced myself to the receptionist, took a seat in the small lobby, and waited for my contact. In a few minutes the door opened and there she was, all 5 feet of her, propped up on a pair of aluminum elbow-length crutches. She was wearing jeans tightly stretched over an ample bottom -- and a single short, chubby leg. Most of the other leg, the right leg, was missing. There was a plump stump, maybe half a thigh, more or less, the rest of the empty jeans leg was folded up and tucked into the waistband.
She smiled and held out her hand. "Hi, Frank -- I'm Jennifer. The container's already here. I'll walk you back to the dock."
I was astonished to see that my contact was a one-legged girl, and not a bad-looking one at that. I'm sure my mouth dropped open, but if she noticed she didn't say anything. I took her hand automatically, but I don't remember what I said. Nothing offensive, I hope.
The receptionist said, "Jen, if you'll watch the board I'll walk him back...."
"No, I'll be OK, thanks," Jennifer responded.
"It wouldn't be any trouble -- you could just sit for a few minutes...."
"Really, Beth, I'll be fine. I appreciate your concern, but I need to get away from my desk for awhile anyway. Besides, I can do the paperwork while we wait for them to load." She was carrying a manila file folder, which she waved at this point.
"Well, OK... if you think...." Her voice trailed off.
"Beth, please... don't worry! I'm fine!"
Jennifer turned to me and rolled her eyes, grinning. "Let's go around the outside. It's easier than traipsing all the way through the plant." She turned to open the front door, and I jumped to her aid, holding the door as she swung her way through.
She wasn't a particularly pretty girl, but she certainly had an attractive something about her -- aside from the missing leg. She had dark hair, bright blue eyes, and a very attractive, dimple-producing smile. She had a nice firm chest, a bit out of proportion to her short frame, but certainly interesting as it gave a little bounce each time her crutches hit the ground.
The stump of her missing leg, tightly encased in the top of the jeans leg, also had a nice little jiggle and sway to it, which I couldn't help noticing as she went ahead of me down the narrow sidewalk.
As we got to the driveway and I moved up beside her she said, "People around here don't usually try to be so damned helpful, I must say. But I have to excuse Beth -- I've been here four years and yesterday was the first time I ever came to work on crutches."
I didn't quite know what she meant. "Really...! Uh.. were you... I mean did you... uh... just lose your leg...?" It was my turn to trail off.
She laughed. "Well, in a manner of speaking, I guess. I've been an amputee since I was in high school, but I always use a prosthesis -- an artificial leg. But last Saturday the thing came apart; something happened to the knee mechanism, and just as I took a step the bottom part came loose. I was wearing a skirt, so it just sailed across the room, hit the floor and left me standing there like a stork. I was by myself in the house, so nobody saw it, but I bet it would have been a stunner!" She laughed again. So did I.
"And since there's no handy little prosthetics shop in Stoneville, I had to call the place in Durham. I have an appointment with them next week. I 'spose I should have a spare leg, but I don't, so it's crutches to work."
"Wow! Was that the first time anybody knew about...?"
"Oh no, everybody knows I'm one-legged. It was the scandal of the town at the time. It's just that, even though everybody knows, nobody at the plant ever sees me on crutches. And they don't know what I can or can't do, I guess. I'm really OK with it, though -- in fact, the leg gets pretty tiresome by the end of the day, and I always take it off as soon as I get home anyway. The only reason I was wearing it Saturday was because my mother was coming over to take me shopping."
About that time we arrived at the shipping area. She took me to the loading dock, I did my little walk-around of the empty container parked at the dock, took my 'before' pictures, and waved the loading crew into action.
"Can I offer you a cup of coffee?" she asked politely.
"Uh, sure. Nothing to do until they finish loading."
"Yeah, and that'll be an hour or so at least. We might as well be comfortable." She led me back into the plant, and into a nearby break room.
As we made our way into the noisy factory, I noticed that she was getting plenty of looks from the guys on the floor. She noticed too.
"You know," she said as we entered the relative quiet of the break room, "nobody hardly gives me a second glance when I'm wearing my leg. I'm beginning to wonder if I ought to just leave it off."
"Well, that'd work for me," I couldn't help commenting, half to myself.
