The Last Ballad Read online

  “See if you can sleep a little longer,” Ella said again.

  Ella made a fire and fried a piece of fatback. It would cool in time for Lilly to wake and feed the children. She looked to find four day-old biscuits waiting in the cold oven. She mixed a little of the whiskey into the honey, left it on the stove. She put the jar of whiskey back into her pocket.

  In the back room Ella closed the door and latched it behind her. The room was dark, this half of the cabin shrouded in the shadows of the trees that hung above it, but there was light enough to see the outline of a body beneath the thin blanket atop the skid. The window by her bed was open, and she could hear the spring babbling in the woods.

  “I know you ain’t sleeping,” she said. She kicked off her shoes and stepped barefoot onto the cool floor. She slipped her dress over her head. “I know you been out there somewhere all night, barely beat me here.”

  Charlie sat up in bed and looked at her.

  “I run on winged feet,” he whispered. “Like Cupid.”

  “Cupid’s got wings on his back.”

  “I got two sets, girl,” he said. “That’s how come I’m so fast.”

  “I need to start locking my window,” she said.

  “I’d just come down that chimney like Santy Claus.”

  She stifled a laugh, covered her mouth so she wouldn’t wake the children.

  “You’d better bring presents if you come down that chimney,” she said.

  “I will,” Charlie said.

  “I don’t got a chimney.”

  “Then you’d better leave this window unlocked.”

  The first time Ella had ever laid eyes on Charlie Shope was back in February when he’d catcalled her from the back of a Model T flatbed as it rumbled past on the Kings Mountain Highway. She and Violet had been crossing the field that separated Stumptown from Bessemer City on their way to work the night shift. The weather was cold and damp. The sky was white. The man’s legs were covered over with a blanket. His feet dangled off the back of the truck. A battered suitcase sat beside him. An old guitar rested on his lap. Ella and Violet watched him get smaller and smaller as the distance between them and the truck grew. He tipped his hat and blew a kiss, and then he was gone.

  They walked in silence for a moment.

  “What in the hell was that?” Ella had finally said.

  “That was a white man in a truck,” Violet said.

  “I know that,” Ella said. “Who’s he think he’s whistling at?”

  “You, white girl.” Violet forced out a laugh. “You think he was hollering at me? Shoot.”

  Violet had stopped walking, had stared at Ella. Then she looked behind her in the direction of Stumptown. A few roofs were visible on the far side of the hill. She looked toward the forest on their right, the leafless trees wispy in the distance. Then she turned her eyes to the road where the truck had just passed. The air was cold. It smelled of wood smoke. Their noses ran.

  “What in the world else was he whistling at?” Violet asked. She took a handkerchief from her pocket, blew into it.

  “I don’t care,” Ella said. “I just mind my own business.”

  Violet smiled, put the handkerchief back inside her pocket.

  “Come on, girl,” she’d said. “We’re going to be late. Neither one of us can afford that. This world ain’t going to pay you in whistles.”

  The second time Ella saw Charlie Shope was the very next night, in the spinning room at the mill. He sidled up to her where she stood on the line, took off his hat, and held it over his heart. He was small, not much taller than her.

  “I seen you yesterday,” he said, his voice barely reaching her over the noise of the machines. “Crossing the field with that colored girl.”

  Ella acted like she didn’t hear him. She kept her eyes on the strands as they coiled around the bobbins. He leaned toward her, cupped a hand around his mouth.

  “I seen you yesterday!” he hollered. Ella looked up as if she’d just realized that someone had spoken to her.

  “Yeah?” she said. “You saw me? Good for you.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You seen me?”

  Ella looked at his sweaty brown hair, his ruddy face, the gap between his front teeth when he smiled.

  “Where do you work?” she asked.

  He stood up as straight as he could. “Down in the carding room for now.”

  She shook her head, allowed her face to register a smile. The doffer boy came through, and she and Charlie both stepped back as he lifted the full bobbins from the spinners and replaced them with empty spindles. Ella moved quickly behind him, fixing the strands to the bobbins. Charlie followed her.

  “I’m just in the carding room for now,” he said.

  “What’s ‘for now’?” she asked.

  “The carding room,” he said. “I’ll be weaving here soon, and I make most of my money with my guitar anyway.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  He stopped following behind her, asked, “Did you see me out there on the road yesterday or not?”

  “If I seen you I don’t remember it,” she said. “And if I remember you I done forgot you already.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “We got all the time in the world to get acquainted. I’m going to marry you.”

  Ella laughed and looked over at him again, noted the greasy cowlick he’d smeared down on his forehead.

  “I already had me one husband,” she said. “Took me ten years to run him off. I ain’t got that kind of time anymore.”

  “All right, honey,” he said.

  She fought another smile.

  “Heard Dobbins is heading this way,” she said. “You better go on. You don’t want to get fired your first night in the carding room, especially when you ain’t even in the carding room.”

  “Hell,” he said, “it’d be worth it if you keep talking. What’s your name?”

  “Busy,” she said.

  “Okay, Busy,” he said. “I’m Charlie. Charlie Shope. But here soon you’ll just be calling me sweetheart.”

  The third time she’d laid eyes on him was five nights later, when his face appeared on the other side of a row of spinners.

  “When do you go on break?” he’d hollered.

  “No time soon,” Ella said. She moved down, kept her eyes on her work. He followed her on the other side.

  “I’m serious,” Charlie said. “When?”

  Ella stopped working, looked up at him. He smiled. “I get fifteen minutes at ten p.m.,” she said. She went back to her work.

  “Perfect,” Charlie said. “You know Mose?” he’d asked. “The old colored man down in the opening room?”

  “I seen him before,” Ella said.

  “I spent all week saving up a quarter dollar for him to go outside for a smoke and a nip with the boys.”

  Ella laughed, said, “Takes a disciplined man to save that much money.”

  “You can tease,” he said, “but at ten p.m. the clock’ll start ticking on that quarter.”

  A few minutes after 10 p.m. she found him in a dark corner of the opening room, hunkered down between huge mounds of raw cotton. He stood when he saw her, and then he smiled and let his body fall backward and disappear into the white fluff.

  “You’ve never experienced such comfort,” he said. Ella could barely see him in the near dark. Just a shadowed space with eyes and teeth sunk into all that whiteness. She laughed when he coughed, picked a stem from his mouth, flicked it toward the floor. He reached up for her and she took his hand, allowed herself to be pulled toward him, allowed him to kiss her, to run his hands up and down her back, through her hair, but she laughed and pushed his fingers away each time they fondled the buttons on her dress.

  Afterward he climbed out of the cotton and lit a cigarette. He drew on it and then held it out to her. She stood and dusted the cotton from her dress and smoothed back her hair, pinned it into a bob at the nape of her neck.

  “You ain’t supposed to smoke in here,” Ella
said.

  Charlie laughed, took another drag. “You ain’t supposed to kiss on strangers in here either.”

  “I suspected you for a rule breaker first time I seen you,” she said.

  “See,” he said. “I knew you’d seen me.”

  “I just remember some hobo whistling like a fool from the back of a truck.”

  He reached out and brushed the cotton lint from her dark hair.

  “You’re pretty,” he said.

  “And you’re a damn liar.”

  He laughed. “You’re sweet too.”

  “And you’re a damn liar,” she’d said again.

  Ella woke to the sounds of her children’s feet moving across the floor in the other room. She’d dozed a little after climbing into bed beside Charlie, but her body had not released itself into sleep. She heard Lilly at the stove, heard her hush the children while serving the fatback and biscuits. She heard Rose cough, heard Lilly say, “Take this,” followed by Rose’s whimper and the sound of the spoon scraping honey from the glass.

  She slipped out of the bed and opened the door and stepped into the front room in her bare feet. The children all sat on their pallets eating biscuits and gnawing on the tough strips of fatback. They looked up at her.

  “Hey, babies,” she said.

  Wink cooed and waved both hands at her, a stream of drool spinning from his lip like the beginnings of a spider web. He reached for Otis’s shoulder and tried to pull himself up, but he fell and rolled backward onto the quilts. They all laughed. Ella sat down beside Otis and picked up Wink, set him in her lap. She rubbed her nose against his head, felt the soft fuzz of his hair on her lips, looked down at his grasping baby hands. She touched Rose’s face, felt the fatback grease on the little girl’s lips, used her thumb to wipe it away. Rose leaned away from her.

  “How you feeling?” Ella asked.

  “Happy,” Rose said, which was what she always said unless she felt sad.

  “I’m happy that you’re happy,” Ella said. She touched Rose’s face again, and the girl allowed herself to be touched. Ella cupped her cheek.

  “When you leaving?” Lilly asked. She used biscuit crumbs and sopped up the little bit of grease on her plate that was left behind by the small piece of fatback she’d allowed herself.

  Ella sighed, let her lips brush Wink’s hair again. She inhaled, breathed in the scent of his babyness. “Here soon,” she said.

  “Where you going?” Otis asked.

  “Gastonia,” Ella said.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Different reasons,” she said. “Work. Money. Different reasons.”

  “Can I go?”

  “No,” she said. “You stay here. Help your sister with these babies.”

  “No baby,” Rose said.

  “That’s right,” Ella said. “You’re a big girl.” She lifted Wink into the air and bounced him up and down. He laughed. “I’ve only got one baby left. The rest of y’all are grown.”

  She helped the children get dressed in the nicest, cleanest clothes they could find. Otis sensed the reason why.

  “We going to church?” he asked.

  “Violet’s going to take you with them,” Ella said. “And then you’re having lunch at their house. Probably a ham or a chicken. Something better than this old fatback.”

  “They don’t do nothing but sing in that church,” Otis said.

  “If singing’s all I had to do to have myself some ham and chicken I’d consider myself a lucky boy,” Ella said.

  Lilly picked up Wink. Ella kissed them all, pulled them to her. She watched as they went out the door, and she listened to the sound of their feet going down the steps.

  She went back into the other room and sat down on the edge of the bed. She closed her eyes. Exhaustion crept over her body like a fog. Charlie stirred beside her as soon as she lay down. Her back was to him, but she knew he was awake and staring at the back of her head.

  “You ain’t still thinking about going to that rally today?” he asked, his question more of a statement than a query. His warm breath was in her hair, on the back of her neck.

  “Sunday’s my day off,” she said. “I reckon I can go where I want.”

  He sighed.

  “What do you want with a bunch of communists?” he asked. “Governor already called in the National Guard. Beat up a whole bunch of people. That strike won’t get you nothing but killed.”

  She pictured Rose’s tiny feet and skinny ankles sticking out from beneath the blanket that morning. She thought of how Wink had cried when her milk dried up when he was just three months old. She thought of the biscuit crumbs sitting in the empty pan atop the stove, the fatback’s grease the only thing left behind in the skillet, the apple and half sandwich Goldberg’s brother had thrown away before her eyes. Her nine-dollar pay wasn’t coming until Friday, and most of it already gone to rent and store credit.

  “Well, I reckon me and these babies are going to die if we keep living this way,” she said. “So what’s it matter?”

  “It matters to me,” he said.

  She kicked off the sheet, sat on the side of the bed, turned toward him. “What should I do, Charlie? Wait on you to bring it home? You can’t even keep a damn job.”

  “You know millwork ain’t my thing.”

  She laughed, looked toward the window, put her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. “It ain’t my thing either, Charlie. If you got something else in mind for me to do, then tell me, and I’ll do it. Otherwise, this union’s my last chance.”

  “I don’t want a girl of mine out there running around with a bunch of Yankee reds.”

  “Well, I ain’t yours,” she said. She looked up, folded her arms across her knees. “And this ain’t your bed or your house neither. If you think any different I reckon it’s time you move on.”

  She heard his hand slip from beneath the sheet. Instead of closing her eyes, she stared at the wall where the light moved across it. She was prepared for a slap or a punch, so it was only the surprise of his hand reaching around her to caress her belly that made her flinch.

  “Come on,” he said, “you’re my girl.”

  Ella wasn’t afraid of him any more than he was afraid of her. They’d gone at it before. He’d hit her. She’d hit him. Two weeks ago he’d shown up drunk in the middle of the night, looking for her ex-husband, a man she hadn’t seen in over a year. Charlie had pulled a knife on her when she’d come outside, and she’d chased him off into the woods. Charlie was the kind of man to which nothing good could happen. He was a rough sort. She knew that she was a rough sort too, but she worked hard and took care of her children, and she deserved some measure of softness, a moment of kindness, to be touched softly and kindly every now and then: Charlie Shope was the only measure of those things that she could find. They were both nearing thirty, both mired down in the kind of poverty they’d never see the end of. She’d been married before—she reckoned she still was—and she had four children she’d managed to keep alive.

  Charlie’s finger traced a circle around her navel as if branding her, and she thought of the tiny life taking root on the other side of his touch.

  “You’re my girl,” he said again.

  “I’m nobody’s,” she said.

  “Come on,” he said, “sing me a song.”

  “I’d rather you just get the hell out of my house,” she said, but even as she said it she knew it wasn’t much of a house: more like a two-room shack with a cookstove over in one corner of the crowded front room. In the chilly back room there was nothing but a low skid and a window always left unlocked unless she was mad. No, it wasn’t much of a house, but it was hers as long as she could make rent. That was something to be proud of.

  “Did you know the communists think whites and coloreds are the same?” he asked.

  “I know we’re all poor, if that counts for anything,” she said. She stood from the bed, curled her toes into fists. “And I work with coloreds, and you used to. And you go t
o them for liquor and who knows what else.”

  “It ain’t the same,” he said. “It ain’t the same as believing it.”

  “Well, I got to believe in something,” she said. “Might as well believe in the union.”

  “Union ain’t going to save you,” he said. “There ain’t no kind of life in these mills.” He leaned on his elbow and propped his chin on his fist. He watched her dress. “Music’s how I’m going to make my name.”

  She smiled, laughed just so he’d hear it.

  “Keep on,” he said. “You’ll see. You won’t catch me running around with communists. And you won’t catch me making the rich man richer by working in his mill.”

  “If we could all just make the big bucks strumming an old guitar like you, Charlie, we’d close the mills down, wouldn’t we?”

  “Keep on,” he said again, “but I’m telling you, your voice and my music, we could make a damn sight of money. Leave this old place, go to Nashville.”

  “I ain’t going to Tennessee,” she said. “I ain’t crossing those mountains again.”

  “St. Louis then,” he said. “Hell, anywhere but Bessemer City, North Carolina.”

  She pulled her dress over her head and stepped into her shoes and cinched the buckles. He watched her until she picked up his overalls from the floor and tossed them at him where he lay. He dodged her throw, and his overalls sailed over his head and fell to the floor on the other side of the bed. He pointed to his guitar where it rested against the wall in the corner of the room.

  “Let’s play something,” he said.

  She picked up the guitar by its neck and raised the window. Charlie watched her from the bed. She leaned out the window and lowered the guitar until she felt it touch the earth. She dropped it with a hollow thud.

  “That’s just being ugly,” he said. “Ain’t no reason to be ugly.”

  A few hours later, Ella stood alone at the crossroads of West Virginia Avenue on the edge of downtown Bessemer City. The sun shone directly overhead. There were no clouds. The American Mill sat just one block over, and she couldn’t help but wonder what Goldberg’s brother would think if he happened to drive by and see her standing in the sun on the side of the road waiting for a group of strikers to take her to Gastonia. She doubted that he’d even recognize her, although he’d just seen her the day before. On the other hand, Dobbins would know her for sure. She’d be fired for even thinking of attending a union meeting.