The Last Ballad(110)

“What happened?” he said. “I heard gunshots, then sirens.”

“It’s Beal,” Sophia said.

“He’s shot?”

“No,” Ella said. “There was a raid. Police were shot. Get inside.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Ella’s got a friend who can help,” Sophia said. She grabbed Hampton’s arm and pulled him toward the open driver’s-side door.

“I’m not sitting down in the floor like some boy,” he said. He’d ridden into Gastonia crammed into the back of Reed’s car. He didn’t want to ride out of town the same way. He walked to the back of the truck, put his foot on the bumper, and climbed over the tailgate. He felt the truck give when Sophia and Ella sat down inside, heard them slam their doors. The engine fired. He lay on his back.

His mind tried to track the turns that Sophia took as she drove, but Hampton did not know the city well, certainly not beyond downtown and the Loray village. Headlights whipped by. He tried to sink his body as low as he could, tried to will the light from catching him. Above him, streetlights streaked by like comets. When the truck slowed in traffic he could hear people’s voices, passing automobiles, horns honking, and the occasional siren off in the distance.

After a few minutes, Hampton sensed that they’d left the city. The sky darkened above him. The night grew silent. Sophia now drove without stopping, took curves without slowing. The truck creaked and rocked. Hampton closed his eyes, tried to steady himself, struggled to keep the dizziness from turning to nausea.

Sophia slowed the truck and pulled it to the side of the road. Where were they? In the country? A neighborhood street? Another town?

The passenger’s-side door creaked open. He heard Ella’s voice. “Excuse me,” she said. “Excuse me.”

“What you need?” a man’s voice asked from the side of the road. Hampton made himself as flat as possible. He closed his eyes, waited.

“Do you know where Katherine McAdam lives?”

“Well, sure,” the man said. “In the McAdam house.”

“Can you tell me how to get there?” Ella asked.

“What are you girls doing out this late?” he asked.

“We need to see the McAdams,” Ella said.

“Well,” the man said. He spoke slowly, as if considering each word, as if considering whether he should be giving directions this late at night to two women alone in a truck. “You just keep going up Main Street here. And once you pass the big Baptist church you just take a right on that next road there. The McAdams live at the end of it. You can’t see the house from the road, but it’s back there.”

“Thank you,” Ella said.

She closed her door and they rumbled off up the road. The engine groaned when they reached the hill.

There were no lights on inside the house, but there was starlight and moonlight enough for Hampton to see that the house was large. He and Sophia stood in the yard and watched as Ella walked up the steps to the wide, covered porch and stood before the door. She knocked, waited, knocked again. A light came on in a window on the second floor. Another light came on in what Hampton assumed was the hallway beside a bedroom. The added light made it even clearer that the house belonged to someone incredibly wealthy. It was the nicest home Hampton had ever seen in person.

A porch light came on, bathing Ella in yellow. Hampton heard someone fumble with the door on the other side. He was tempted to step away from the light, return to the truck, and let Ella and Sophia take care of things without him becoming a distraction to the white people he was certain must live here. But before Hampton could turn away the door opened and revealed a middle-aged white man with a thin mustache. He wore a robe and a pair of spectacles, his eyes and his hair proof of the deep sleep from which he’d just awoken.

The man stared at Ella as he tightened the sash around his robe.

“Can I help you?” he asked. He looked past Ella to where Sophia and Hampton stood side by side in the dark yard, almost out of reach of the light coming from the house. Hampton was prepared for the man to ask them all to leave, to threaten to call the police, to go inside and return with a rifle or some kind of weapon. Instead he stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door nearly shut behind him as if shielding Ella’s eyes from any valuables inside the house.

“Yes, sir,” Ella said. She bowed her head slightly. Her voice had taken on a tone of nervousness and uncertainty that Hampton had not heard before. “Good evening, sir. I’m sorry to bother you so late. Is Kate at home?”

“Kate?” the man said. He looked at Ella as if the name confused him. “What’s this about?”

“Well, sir, and again, I’m sorry to bother you like this, but I was hoping to speak with Kate.”

“Richard,” a woman’s voice called from inside the house. The man pushed the door open and looked up as if he were looking toward the second floor. Hampton took a step forward, lowered himself a little, and followed the man’s eyes. He saw a woman standing by the railing at the top of a wooden staircase. Her brown hair was pulled back in a bun, and she wore what looked to be a blue silk robe. “Let her in,” the woman said.

“What is this, Katherine?” the man asked. “What’s this about?”

“Let her in, Richard,” the woman named Katherine said.