The Last Ballad(10)

“Only if Rose is better when I get home,” Ella said. “I can’t leave her here sick on my only day off.”

“I can look after them,” Violet said.

“I was hoping you’d go with me,” Ella said. “Could use the company.”

“Girl, you trying to get me killed? Ain’t no way that many white folks going to welcome a colored girl from Stumptown.”

Ella considered removing the crumpled union leaflet from her pocket and holding it before Violet’s eyes, jabbing her finger at its demand of “Equal Work for Equal Pay.” Instead, she said, “I heard the union says white and colored are the same.”

Violet snorted. “So? So what? Saying it and meaning it are different things.”

“It’s still something to say it,” Ella said. “No white folks around here say it but me.”

“What’s Dobbins going to think about you missing last night’s shift and then joining the union?”

“I didn’t have no choice about missing that shift,” Ella said. “I might not have a choice about the union either.”

“What’s Charlie going to think?”

“You know Charlie,” Ella said.

“Everybody knows a man like Charlie,” Violet said. She shook her head, gestured toward Ella’s belly. “You ain’t told him yet, have you?”

Although she held the Mason jars, Ella’s hands instinctively moved toward her flat stomach. The whiskey splashed inside the glass. “No,” she said, “I ain’t told him. I don’t know for sure yet.”

“You’re pregnant, girl,” Violet said. “Any fool can look at you and tell that, but I guess Charlie ain’t just any kind of fool. He’s a special kind.”

“I’ll tell him when the time’s right.” She turned away from Violet, stepped onto the road.

Violet called after her. “Better tell him soon. Time ain’t never right for a man like Charlie.”

Ella walked on. The sky lightened above her while the air around her cooled. She descended the road toward the end of the lane where her cabin sat. Sleep clung to her bones like a heavy coat that pulled her toward the earth. Behind the cabin, willow trees hid a spring-fed pond, and Ella could always feel and smell the water before taking the last bend in the road and seeing the clapboard shack where she and her children lived. She took the steps as quietly as she could and opened the cabin’s door, stepped over the pallets where her children lay sleeping in the front room.

Ella bent at the knees, lowered herself to the floor. She covered Rose’s foot, tucked the blanket around it. Outside, birds stirred in the trees as morning broke over Stumptown. The only sound inside the cabin was Rose’s raspy, labored breathing. Ella brushed the girl’s hair from her forehead, gently placed her hand over it. The fever had passed. Ella closed her eyes, allowed herself a quiet sigh.

When she opened her eyes she saw that Lilly had been watching her. Ella smiled. Lilly smiled back.

“Hey,” Ella whispered.

“Hey,” Lilly whispered back.

“How was she last night?”

“She coughed a lot, but she didn’t have no fever.”

“Not now either,” Ella said.

“Good.”

“Did you sleep?”

Lilly nodded her head. Yawned.

“Good,” Ella said. “See if you can sleep a little longer.” She reached into her pocket and showed Lilly the jars of honey and whiskey. “Got this from Violet. She says it’ll fix a cough. I’ll mix it up and leave it by the stove. Give it to her when she wakes up: just two spoonfuls. She ain’t going to like it, but make sure she takes it. There’ll be something for you to eat too.”

Lilly nodded her head again, watched Ella as she got to her feet. Ella stared down at her daughter for a moment, saw her ex-husband’s thin nose and light blond hair. The girl was beautiful, sweet, in spite of looking like John.

“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.