The Last Ballad(121)

She’d gotten to her feet by the time the first gunshots rang out, and she knew that what she heard were not backfires from an engine. None of the strikers had brought weapons, and she could not understand why someone would be shooting at them. But the sound of the blasts scattered the people who’d toppled from the overturned truck, and they ran past Ella. When she looked toward the other truck in their caravan she saw strikers streaming over the sides and pouring from the tailgate. Before she knew it she’d crossed the road and was stumbling down a hill toward a shallow stream. More gunshots rang out.

She didn’t know why she was running. She was certain that some kind of mistake had been made, that some confusion had spun events into motion and would eventually unwind them. Her shoes splashed through the stream, the hem of her dress snagging for a moment on a fallen branch.

Sprays of blue and purple wildflowers grew along the water, and as she ran past them Ella marked their beauty, thinking what a strange thing it was for her to notice them in such detail at this moment. She did not know who ran in front of her or beside her or behind her, but she was aware that the dirt had blackened and hardened, and she discovered that she ran through the first rows of a cotton field, the bolls exploding in white puffs all around her. There were more gunshots behind her, and she wanted to drop to her knees and take shelter, but the field was open and the cotton plants low, and there was nowhere else to go.

So when she heard someone call her name from the road behind her, she knew for certain that she was being invited back to the scene of the accident. She knew that something would be explained to her that would make clear that a mistake had been made. She heard her name again. She stopped running, turned, and held a hand to her eyes to block the sunlight. That’s when she saw the glint of steel, followed by a shot that tore into her chest and knocked her back into the cotton.

It was quiet now. The sky above her was blue, with soft spreads of clouds. The sun was warm on her face, the earth cool against her back. She wanted to sigh, but she found that her lungs would not let her take a breath, so instead she closed her eyes and opened them slowly, turned her gaze to the rows of cotton she lay between. She didn’t realize how brisk the day had been until she watched the breeze move through the cotton, turning it this way and that, her eyes taking in the bright white bolls where they clung to the branches. She felt her heart slow, something warm and comfortable overtake her. She wanted to reach up and touch one of the bolls, to feel its softness against her fingers, perhaps hold it to her cheek, but she found that she could not lift her arms. Instead, she spread her fingers so that they opened across her belly, the roundness of which she was just barely able to register. She lay with her eyes fixed on the cotton, pondering the tiny life inside her that she would never meet.

Look at that cotton, baby, she thought. What a small thing. What a small, little thing.





Chapter Sixteen

Brother





Saturday, September 14, 1929



The streets around Loray were choked with police, no sign of strikers or a picket line or the outside agitators the newspaper had warned of. Brother drove the abbey’s Model T truck along Franklin Avenue, Father Gregory’s rifle resting on his lap, the box of shells on the seat beside him. He’d sat inside the confessional until he was certain the woman had gone, and then he’d fled out the front doors into the sunlight. In the orchard across the street, he’d seen Father Gregory on his hands and knees gathering apples into a basket. He’d found the keys to the automobile on the hook in the kitchen where they always hung.

He pulled to the corner across from Loray. A policeman stood speaking with men in suits. They looked like reporters. Brother opened his door and called to the policeman.

“Where’s the rally?” he asked.

The policeman frowned and stepped off the curb toward the truck. “Why?” he asked. “You from out of town?”

“No,” Brother said. “I work with the monks at the abbey.”

“Oh,” the policeman said. “I’m sorry, I just thought.” He looked north, down the street in the direction of where the strikers’ headquarters had sat just weeks earlier. “We shut it down. No protests today.”

“What about the Bessemer City group?”

“They stopped them at the bridge.”

“Who’s they?” Brother asked.

“I don’t know,” the policeman said. He smiled. “Just they.”

He headed west out of Gastonia for the open highway that led to Bessemer City. As soon as he crossed the bridge he saw dozens of cars and trucks parked on the side of the road. A truck had tipped over and come to rest on its side in the field below. Men stood along the road and stared down at the truck. Most of the men were armed. In the field, black and white strikers sat bloodied and shaken. A few of them dared to walk back toward the road, the bravest of them screamed taunts at the armed men.

Brother parked the truck and took up the rifle, chambered a round, and stuffed more into his pockets. He felt and heard the ammunition clink against the Mason jar, and he pulled the jar loose and tossed it onto the floorboard. He climbed out of the truck and shimmied down the bank toward the field, where people stood in groups, some attending others who appeared injured. He searched each face for Ella’s, but he did not see her. He reached a creek that cut through the field. He stumbled, and fell on the mossy rocks. The rifle slipped from his hands, and he got to his knees and felt around in the water until his fingers found it. He stood, then raced toward the high cotton on the other side of the creek.