The Last Ballad Read online

  She stepped away from the road and stood in the shaded, high grass beneath the trees. It was spring, and it felt like spring. The limbs above her were thick with bright green leaves. Ribbons of wisteria twined through the branches, the heavy fragrance mingling with the damp, musky scent of the wet earth. Across the street, clumps of azaleas lined the road into downtown, the pink and purple flowers already beginning to wilt. The sight of the withering blooms and the scents of wisteria and mud laid a delicate finger upon Ella’s memory. Something stirred inside her as if attempting to fire a childhood recollection, perhaps something she’d promised herself she would never forget. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, took in the scents, but all she could think of was what might happen next, and she could not uncover the shadow of nostalgia that lurked in the corner of her mind.

  Instead, she thought again of Mr. Musical and the week she and her brother Wesley had spent sitting side by side on a weathered wooden bench in the small, hot schoolhouse, the schoolmaster scrawling numbers and figures on a dusty chalkboard. Ella’s own life had been a series of additions and subtractions, and she wondered how Mr. Musical would condense it all into some kind of equation that would make sense to her six-year-old self: her childhood minus her father’s failure as a tenant farmer equaled the family’s move to the smoky lumber camps deep in the Blue Ridge. More minuses: Wesley’s leaving for Detroit; the flu that killed her mother, followed so quickly by her father’s death from a falling tree. Those minuses equaled her all alone at sixteen standing in the train station in Bryson City, where she somehow added John Wiggins when she was supposed to have added a ticket north to a life with Wesley and his wife like he had promised in his letters.

  In her mind, the equation of her life spread across the chalkboard, more minuses than pluses, more losses than gains. Her and John’s move from the mountains to the tiny town of Cowpens, South Carolina, and her first job in a textile mill coupled with the plus of Lilly’s birth, another plus almost two years later when Otis arrived just as they had to move again, this time to the scarred, ruddy soil and lint-heavy air of Gaston County, where her losses had racked up so quickly and so painfully in so few years. All this time and all this traveling made Ella feel as if years and years had somehow slipped by without her having the chance to count them or even mark them as they passed. She’d been swept along in a current that she could not control, and all of it had brought her here to Charlie, to the American Mill, to the union leaflet in her pocket, to this new life growing inside her. She thought about what Charlie had said that morning, about how the strike might get her nothing but killed. He might have been right, but she might have been right too. She would die if she carried on this way, and then where would her children be? She’d already lost Willie, and she knew that her unborn baby wouldn’t have any better chance than the others had had.

  She heard the sound of an automobile and stepped toward the road. An old truck passed. Three colored boys wearing nothing but overalls sat in the back, the oldest one holding a fishing pole. The youngest boy waved. Ella waved back. The other two boys did the same. She watched the truck until it rounded the bend in the road that led toward Stumptown.

  If she left now and returned home, she’d catch her children right as the church doors opened. Maybe they’d go down to Violet’s house for something to eat. Or maybe Charlie would come over and sit on her porch and strum his guitar and they would sing something together. Lilly and Iva and Rose would trade the stuffed dolls they’d made from old stockings. Otis would disappear into the dark woods and come back an hour later with wet clothes. Wink would sit right there on Ella’s lap and take it all in.

  She turned to her right and looked down the road that led to Gastonia and the uncertainty of the strike. She could go or not go. Those were her only two choices, but, in that moment, neither of them seemed any good.

  That’s when she saw it: the specter of the huge black truck belching smoke above the eastern horizon. Once she’d seen it she couldn’t look away. She feared it might be a nightmare vision that her sleeping self had sent to her by way of warning.

  As it drew closer, Ella saw the faces of two women peer at her from behind the dirty windshield. The truck creaked to a stop at the crossroads, lurched forward, and stopped again. Its engine shook the ground. The driver, a girl who didn’t appear a day older than fifteen, opened the door and looked out at Ella where she stood on the side of the road.

  “You waiting for a ride?” the girl asked. She had olive skin and dark eyes, thick, wavy, brown hair, and an accent Ella had never heard before. She wondered if the girl came from another country.

  “I’m heading to Gastonia,” Ella said.

  “For the rally?” the girl asked.

  Ella nodded. A woman in the passenger’s seat leaned across the driver and looked down at Ella. Her pale face was thin and pinched, her hair tucked up under a bell-shaped hat. She could’ve been thirty or sixty.

  “At which mill do you work?” the woman asked. She was from the North.

  “American,” Ella said.

  “Which one?” the northerner asked.

  “Number Two.”

  The two women in the truck looked at one another. The younger one said something to the northerner that Ella couldn’t hear, and then she looked down the road in both directions as if hoping more people would materialize. She looked at Ella.

  “Where’s everybody at?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ella said. “Church, maybe. Home. I don’t know.”

  “You ain’t got friends?” the girl asked.

  “I got a couple,” Ella said.

  “You couldn’t bring none of them?”

  “I tried,” Ella said. “None of them were interested.”

  “You want to join the union?” the woman from the North asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ella said. “I figure on learning something about it first.”

  “You a capitalist?” the girl asked.

  Ella looked down at the clothes she wore: the same white dress she’d worn the day before, one of two she owned that didn’t embarrass her; the soles of her dusty black shoes caked in mud; her loose stockings, the hole in the left knee that the women couldn’t see. She looked up at the girl.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t have the cash money to be capital about nothing.”

  The girl smiled. She turned and looked at the passenger.

  “There’s room in the back,” the older woman said.

  “We’ve got a few more stops to make,” the girl said. “Pick up a few more interested parties. I just hope they got more friends than you.”

  Ella walked alongside the truck. High, wooden rails lined its bed. It gave the impression that a dog pen had been set down atop it.

  The truck was so tall, it wasn’t until Ella reached the open tailgate that she discovered that the truck’s bed was empty. She stood there a moment, the smoke and heat of the exhaust gathering about her. She considered whether or not to climb in, whether or not to go around to the driver and ask to ride in the cab with the two women. But the gears grinded and shifted, and the truck jolted forward. Ella reached up and grabbed the railing and pulled herself inside on her belly.

  The truck lurched through the crossroads, and Ella raised her eyes and looked up as she passed beneath the twining wisteria. She felt speed gather around her, knew that they were following the Kings Mountain Highway west in the direction from which she’d come. If she had stood and looked to the south, she could have seen the red mud road that led down into Stumptown, could have marked Fox Denton’s crumbling shack as the truck passed by it. But she did not stand, and she did not look. Instead she closed her eyes and leaned her head against the rails.

  She waited until the truck had slowed and made a right turn that carried them north. Once she knew for certain that Bessemer City was behind her, she opened her eyes and stood and looked out over the roof of the truck at the road before her. The wind blew her hair back and made her eyes water. Tears st
reaked her cheeks. The wind wanted her to sit down, but she refused.

  Chapter Two

  Lilly Wiggins

  Sunday, December 25, 2005

  Edwin, I want to tell you up front that I do not write very many letters. I do not write much of anything these days, so please forgive my handwriting. I am much more likely to send an email than I am to pick up a pen and write a letter and then search this house for an envelope. Yes, old ladies do write emails. It is 2005, after all, so do not be surprised if you happen to receive an email from your aunt Lilly one day. Although I would prefer to telephone you as I always have, I do not resent technology like some old people pretend to. Those same old people who complain about the Internet are kept alive by medicine and machines that did not exist even five years ago. They’d prefer to lick a stamp with their crusty old tongues than hit “send” on the computer. Don’t even get me started on stamps. As I write this now I am already combing my mind for a place in this house where I can find a stamp or two to make certain this letter reaches you. If I send it. I will probably send it. I hope I do, anyway.

  Needless to say, I arrived safe and sound tonight despite your worry about me driving home after dark on Christmas. The roads to Asheville were empty, which I guess is what one should expect on Christmas night.

  This evening, when the two of us were standing on your porch before I left and we heard the panther cry from the zoo down in the park, it brought back many memories that I had not thought of in a long time. I did not tell you about these memories then because I did not know how to tell you about them, but I want to tell you now.

  You may remember that your mother and father often took you to the zoo when you were a little boy, but you may not remember that I would go along with you when I visited, especially after you lost your mother and Otis was working and could not take you. But sometimes your father would come with you and me. During those trips to the zoo, Otis was the same as he always was. Quiet, withdrawn, especially after he lost your mother. My little brother did not change very much during his lifetime. Perhaps none of us change very much.

  Edwin, it was remarkable for me to hear that panther cry out there in the dark tonight. So many things came back to me.

  I always listened closely to how you spoke when you were a little boy. Would you have your mother’s soft, low-country drawl, or would you have your father’s twang? At the zoo, what were you, two, maybe three years old, you’d point to the panther and say “line” just like your father said it, just like I would’ve said it if I weren’t thinking so hard about speaking and acting “properly,” something that you were expected to become back in the 1930s if you were a young woman who attended a normal school in order to make a life as a teacher. But you were just a boy and you were not interested in speaking “properly,” nor should you have been, and you would point to the panther and say “Line! Line!” and your mother would laugh and say, “Yes, baby, ‘lie-yun,’” extending the word to two full syllables when you were able to get the job done in only one. This is not to say that your mother did not have a beautiful voice. She was a gorgeous woman, inside and out. You can’t say that about very many women who are as striking as your mother was. Secretly, though, I was happy that you spoke like your father, that you spoke like me when I am able to forget myself.

  Tonight, after we heard the panther roar, you told me that you felt bad for it. You said you were afraid it roared at night because it was lonely in that cage all by itself. And then you said something about the sadness of even an animal spending Christmas alone. Forgive me, Edwin, I’m being sensitive, I know I am, but there was something in the way you said it, the way you looked at me or did not look at me, that embarrassed me, that made me feel that perhaps you thought that about me and that was why you invited me down to spend Christmas with you and Sarah and Owen. And I wondered if, every time I call you on the telephone, you hear my voice and mistake it for the cry of loneliness.

  Don’t worry about me, Edwin. I’m not lonely. I have more friends here in Coventry Village than I’ve ever had in my life, and there’s a lot to do that keeps me busy.

  So don’t worry about me, and certainly don’t feel bad for me like you feel bad for that poor panther down at the zoo. I’m not lonely. Besides, if I were lonely I would not roar. I would sit very quietly so that no one would know I was alone.

  I suppose it was serendipitous (if I’m using and spelling that word correctly) that you asked me what you did. You asked me to tell you something about your father, something about my own mother and my father. I promised you that I’d think about it, and I can tell you that although only a few hours have passed, I have been thinking about it ever since.

  You have told me before that you did not know your father well, that you knew your mother much better, although you lost her when you were eight and Otis passed only ten years ago. I’ve often wondered how well I knew Otis. Like you, I’ve often wondered how well I knew my own father in the short time I did know him. I only knew my mother for a short time as well, and sometimes I wonder how well I knew her even though every day of my life was spent with her right up until the day she was murdered. I’m assuming you do not know much if anything about her death. We have never spoken of it, and I don’t know what Otis told you about her. He did not talk about her. None of us did.

  We experienced some amount of shame for being Ella May’s children. It was not shame that we felt naturally or that she had caused us to feel. Other people put this shame upon us, but it was shame nonetheless. It made us quiet. It kept us from asking too many questions about Mother, about her life, about how and why she died. It kept us from talking about her, even to one another. I don’t know the extent of what Otis told your mother or anyone else for that matter. But you asked me, and I think you should know. You have a family of your own now, and Owen will not be five forever. One day he may ask you the questions you asked me tonight. I want you to have answers for him. I can’t give you all the answers, but I can give you some of them. Your grandmother Ella May, my mother, was murdered during a strike at a mill in Gastonia in 1929. No one knows who did it or why, although I have long suspected that at the time everyone knew who did it and there were many reasons why.

  Have you ever read any books by the North Carolina writer Thomas Wolfe? He was born in Asheville in 1900, the same year my mother, your grandmother, was born just over the mountains in Tennessee. I never knew Mr. Wolfe, but I knew his mother for a short time when I was younger. Perhaps I’ll tell you about her someday. His oldest brother Fred used to live there in Greenville, but exactly where I don’t know. Maybe it was Spartanburg. I don’t remember. I ask you about Thomas Wolfe because his most famous book is called Look Homeward, Angel. There is a line in the novel that asks, “Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?” I’ve thought about that question a lot since the first time I read the novel, which was many, many years ago. I especially think about it when the past is on my mind, when I am trying to remember things about my life that I think I’ve forgotten but secretly fear I never knew. Being unable to remember parts of your own life can make you feel like a stranger, and I figure that strangers are alone more often than not.

  Tonight, your questions about your father and our family were serendipitous because I was thinking much the same thing after what I’d decided to do during my drive down to see you this morning. I have made the drive down from Asheville to Greenville many times in my life. I have seen the same trees and road signs and buildings many times. Perhaps I have grown numb to them in some way. Perhaps I have driven past the exit sign for Cowpens many times without fully recognizing what that place meant to our family, what it means to me, to you. That is where your father Otis was born in 1920. You probably know that. Your mother probably told you if your father did not, but surely he did. It is only a few minutes away from where you were born and raised in Greenville.

  Cowpens, South Carolina: I always thought that was such a strange name for a town when I was a young girl and I would ov
erhear Mother mention it, which happened rarely. She did not have good memories of it, but that’s where Otis was born just eighteen months after me, so I suppose she had at least two good memories of our time there. I do not know why my mother and father went there or why they left the mountains. I think my father must have heard something about the mills there, about how easy it was to get a job, and Mother did not know what else to do but follow him. She was pregnant with me when they left the mountains, so what else could she do? Cowpens is the first place I remember, but I was not born there. It is embarrassing to say this, but I was born in a mule-drawn wagon on the way down to Cowpens from up in the mountains around Bryson City. I grew up hearing Mother tell about it, and I can almost hear her tell about it now, all these years later.

  Today, when I saw the exit for Cowpens, I pulled off I-26 and drove through town, thankful that I’d left home early not even knowing that I would have either the desire to see this old place or the cause to ponder questions like the ones you asked me tonight. I’m so happy that I allowed myself this one flourish of nostalgia because it brought back things I thought I had forgotten.

  I wondered what I would see of the town, and as I suspected there was not much of it to see. Downtown is mostly a collection of antique stores and civic buildings. Nothing so different from any other little downtown. The mill there, the Cowpens Manufacturing Company, I assume it was the mill that Mother worked in almost ninety years ago, was closed. A chain-link fence enclosed the entire property, and the trees had grown so wild and thick that you couldn’t see anything on the other side. I wish I could’ve seen the mill though. It may have reminded me of Mother, may have reminded me of something about my life in Cowpens that now I will never know.