The Last Ballad(115)

“I tried to take him to Charlotte, but he wanted to go back to his boardinghouse. I said no, but he threatened to go back whether I took him or not. And I thought it would be safer for us both if I just drove him.” He looked up at her.

“There were police everywhere, Katherine. Percy Epps stopped my car. He had a detective with him. A Pinkerton, Kate. Do you know what that means? He asked me what I was doing there.” He shook his head. “And I didn’t know what to say because why in the hell should I have been there?”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. There was nothing I could say, and they knew.” He leaned forward and clasped his hands. “They knew something was wrong.”

“What did you do?”

“I drove off. It was the only thing I could think to do.”

“Where’s Hampton?”

“I left him in Statesville,” Richard said.

“Statesville?” She stepped into the room, considered sitting beside him on the davenport, but something stopped her. “What’s in Statesville?”

“The train station, Katherine. Epps said they were checking trains in Charlotte and Spartanburg. Statesville was the only place I could take him.”

She stared at him, wondering if she could believe him, if she should believe him. She remembered what she’d heard Richard say the night of Claire’s engagement party about the child that Ella had lost. Katherine had been so disappointed in him that night. She wondered if he’d disappointed her again.

“Did you really take him to Statesville?” she asked.

He looked up, his face a mix of disgust and anger.

“Of course I did,” he said. “Where the hell else would I have taken him?”

“Did you see him get on the train?”

“No,” he said. “I thought the twenty dollars I gave him would see to his getting on the damn train.”

She stared at him for another moment, finding herself desperate to believe him.

“What happened to your face?” she asked.

He touched his bruised cheek, put his fingers to the cut above his eye. The blood had dried tacky, and when he lifted his hand away he rubbed his finger and thumb together.

“Someone followed us,” he said.

He reached for one of the cloth napkins on the table and dipped it into the water pitcher. He touched the napkin to his head, then looked at the watery, pink blood on the cloth.

“A car swerved around me and slammed on its brakes. Another car hit us from behind, ran us off the road. My head bumped the steering wheel.”

Katherine remembered what Ella had told her about the Council, about her fear of being on the roads at night.

“Who was it?” she asked. “Epps?”

“I don’t know,” Richard said. “It could’ve been anyone.”

“Is he all right?”

“Who?”

“The boy, Hampton. Is he all right?”

Richard tossed the wet napkin onto the table and stood.

“You keep saying ‘boy’ as if he’s some child, Katherine. He’s no child. He’s twenty-five. He’s an adult.”

“So you talked to him?”

“Jesus, of course I talked to him,” he said. “It’s a long drive to Statesville. And we’d almost been killed, twice. Conversation was easy after that.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Is that really important?”

“The strike?”

“What’s important is that we never talk about this again. What’s important is that Claire never mentions our visitors to anyone. Ever. I’ll have someone in the mill shop look at repairing the car. No one can know about this.”

He bent forward and picked up the napkin. He dipped it into the water again and held it to his forehead.

“You’re a hero, Richard.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head.

“Please,” he said. “Please don’t.”

“You saved his life.”

Richard walked around the table and stood in the middle of the room. Katherine saw how bruised his face was, how deep the cut above his eye. Whiskers darkened his cheeks. He looked tired and older than she’d ever seen him look before. She realized just how much of her life she’d spent with this man, and in the quiet of the house, the same quiet that she would hear forever once Claire married Paul and left them for good, Katherine understood how many years of her life still stretched out before her with this man by her side. She wanted them to be good years, empty of disappointment and sadness and this crushing quiet that had grown up between them.

“It’s true, Richard,” she whispered. “You saved him.” She stepped toward him and took his hand. He let her hold it as if he could no longer bear its weight. She saw that he stared at the empty spot on the cabinet where the record player had been. Katherine felt his fingers tighten around hers.

“I wasn’t trying to save him,” Richard said. “I’m trying to save us.”


Gaston Transom-Times



June 8, 1929, Afternoon Edition

ADERHOLT SLAIN BY MURDEROUS STRIKE-GUARDS OF N.T.W.U.

Redoubled Effort to Apprehend Fred Beal With the death of Chief of Police O. F. Aderholt earlier this morning after being shot in the back Friday night by assailants at the tent colony of the Loray strikers, county and city officials turned with redoubled zeal to the task of apprehending Fred Beal, organizer of the mob that led Chief Aderholt to his death and wounded several officers.