The Last Ballad(13)

“You ain’t still thinking about going to that rally today?” he asked, his question more of a statement than a query. His warm breath was in her hair, on the back of her neck.

“Sunday’s my day off,” she said. “I reckon I can go where I want.”

He sighed.

“What do you want with a bunch of communists?” he asked. “Governor already called in the National Guard. Beat up a whole bunch of people. That strike won’t get you nothing but killed.”

She pictured Rose’s tiny feet and skinny ankles sticking out from beneath the blanket that morning. She thought of how Wink had cried when her milk dried up when he was just three months old. She thought of the biscuit crumbs sitting in the empty pan atop the stove, the fatback’s grease the only thing left behind in the skillet, the apple and half sandwich Goldberg’s brother had thrown away before her eyes. Her nine-dollar pay wasn’t coming until Friday, and most of it already gone to rent and store credit.

“Well, I reckon me and these babies are going to die if we keep living this way,” she said. “So what’s it matter?”

“It matters to me,” he said.

She kicked off the sheet, sat on the side of the bed, turned toward him. “What should I do, Charlie? Wait on you to bring it home? You can’t even keep a damn job.”

“You know millwork ain’t my thing.”

She laughed, looked toward the window, put her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. “It ain’t my thing either, Charlie. If you got something else in mind for me to do, then tell me, and I’ll do it. Otherwise, this union’s my last chance.”

“I don’t want a girl of mine out there running around with a bunch of Yankee reds.”

“Well, I ain’t yours,” she said. She looked up, folded her arms across her knees. “And this ain’t your bed or your house neither. If you think any different I reckon it’s time you move on.”

She heard his hand slip from beneath the sheet. Instead of closing her eyes, she stared at the wall where the light moved across it. She was prepared for a slap or a punch, so it was only the surprise of his hand reaching around her to caress her belly that made her flinch.

“Come on,” he said, “you’re my girl.”

Ella wasn’t afraid of him any more than he was afraid of her. They’d gone at it before. He’d hit her. She’d hit him. Two weeks ago he’d shown up drunk in the middle of the night, looking for her ex-husband, a man she hadn’t seen in over a year. Charlie had pulled a knife on her when she’d come outside, and she’d chased him off into the woods. Charlie was the kind of man to which nothing good could happen. He was a rough sort. She knew that she was a rough sort too, but she worked hard and took care of her children, and she deserved some measure of softness, a moment of kindness, to be touched softly and kindly every now and then: Charlie Shope was the only measure of those things that she could find. They were both nearing thirty, both mired down in the kind of poverty they’d never see the end of. She’d been married before—she reckoned she still was—and she had four children she’d managed to keep alive.

Charlie’s finger traced a circle around her navel as if branding her, and she thought of the tiny life taking root on the other side of his touch.

“You’re my girl,” he said again.

“I’m nobody’s,” she said.

“Come on,” he said, “sing me a song.”

“I’d rather you just get the hell out of my house,” she said, but even as she said it she knew it wasn’t much of a house: more like a two-room shack with a cookstove over in one corner of the crowded front room. In the chilly back room there was nothing but a low skid and a window always left unlocked unless she was mad. No, it wasn’t much of a house, but it was hers as long as she could make rent. That was something to be proud of.

“Did you know the communists think whites and coloreds are the same?” he asked.

“I know we’re all poor, if that counts for anything,” she said. She stood from the bed, curled her toes into fists. “And I work with coloreds, and you used to. And you go to them for liquor and who knows what else.”

“It ain’t the same,” he said. “It ain’t the same as believing it.”

“Well, I got to believe in something,” she said. “Might as well believe in the union.”

“Union ain’t going to save you,” he said. “There ain’t no kind of life in these mills.” He leaned on his elbow and propped his chin on his fist. He watched her dress. “Music’s how I’m going to make my name.”

She smiled, laughed just so he’d hear it.

“Keep on,” he said. “You’ll see. You won’t catch me running around with communists. And you won’t catch me making the rich man richer by working in his mill.”

“If we could all just make the big bucks strumming an old guitar like you, Charlie, we’d close the mills down, wouldn’t we?”

“Keep on,” he said again, “but I’m telling you, your voice and my music, we could make a damn sight of money. Leave this old place, go to Nashville.”

“I ain’t going to Tennessee,” she said. “I ain’t crossing those mountains again.”