The Last Ballad(29)
“Share it,” the woman said. She lay back against the skid, her legs parted enough for Verchel to see the shadow between them. He didn’t move. She sighed and scooted to the edge of the skid and stood and walked toward him. “Are you too drunk?” she asked. She took his hand. “My God,” she said, “you’re ice-cold.” She led him over to the skid and undid his trousers. “My God,” she said again, “you’re shaking.”
When she pushed him toward the bed, Verchel felt his body falling as if it might never stop, and even after his back came to rest atop the skid he felt his fall continue through the bed and into the floor beneath it, down through the earth, where he tumbled toward its hot, fiery belly. He fell with such velocity that he didn’t notice when she climbed atop him, didn’t notice as the skid and his body gave with her weight, her movement.
He lay there staring at the darkened rafters without seeing the ceiling, without seeing the wisps of blond curls that swung in and out of his line of vision, without hearing the dull scrape of the bed skid against the wood floor, without registering the encouraging, almost demanding, words of the woman atop him, who clearly wanted this thing to be done.
But what he did hear was the approaching hoofbeats that bore down upon his skull and trampled their way into his brain. At first he thought it might be the pale rider, commonly and better known as Death, but he couldn’t figure out what could’ve killed him so quickly: the whiskey or the woman or the way his body felt as both things coursed through his veins.
But it wasn’t Death that Verchel heard because Death doesn’t sing like an angel, doesn’t announce his coming with song. No, what Verchel heard above the hoofbeats were the voices of angels as they sang strains of “Glory, Hallelujah.”
What he heard next were the shouts of voices in the room across the way: Johnny Wiggins screaming something aloud that Verchel couldn’t decipher over the scrape of the skid across the floor and the words of the woman above him and the sound of something wild coming from his own throat. And then there was silence around him so that the noises in the other room were suddenly louder: along with Wiggins’s voice came the screams of the woman Sarah, who’d been seated on Johnny’s lap, and along with her cries came the cries of little Lilly and her baby brother.
Without a word, the woman climbed off Verchel and picked up her undergarments and walked toward the door and opened it. Verchel raised his head and peered across the dogtrot into the dark, gaping maw of the other room. He stared for a moment, his eyes adjusting to the spinning of this room and the bright light of the sun and the blackness of the room into which he gazed.
From deep in the dark void a pale face appeared and floated toward Verchel so that he believed himself to be hallucinating, because even in his state he knew faces could not float, could not detach themselves from bodies and hover above the earth. And then the darkness took shape and walked from the room and became whole and separate in the sunlight: the pale face and the black shape were those of Miss Myra. In her arms she carried the screaming baby boy. Miss Myra and the baby were followed by several other black figures, and Verchel had a vision not of angels that had come to save his soul, but of crows that had come to pick his body apart.
Miss Myra stopped in the open doorway, her eyes never once leaving Verchel’s. The woman Verchel had been with now slowly backed away from the door as if she could disappear into the shadows of the darkened room. She bent at the waist and stepped into her undergarments one leg at a time and pulled them up under her dress.
The baby continued to cry, and Miss Myra looked at the screaming, red-faced infant in her arms, tears streaming down his cheeks, his tiny fingers opening into and closing around the nothingness before him. Miss Myra looked back at Verchel. He sat up slowly and propped himself on his elbows. He wanted to stand, but his trousers were still gathered around his feet and he was afraid he might fall. Miss Myra whispered into the baby’s ear in an attempt to soothe him. She patted his back. She bounced him in her arms. She stared at her husband.
“Oh, Verchel,” Miss Myra finally said. “What are we going to do with them? With you?”
Chapter Four
Ella May
Sunday, May 5, 1929
The truck, piloted by the young girl with the strange accent, left Bessemer City and headed north. In the town of Cherryville a handful of crumbling brick buildings housed a few mills just outside of the small downtown. The truck came to a stop, and Ella stood and looked over the railing and gazed at the collection of buildings. The streets were still and quiet, the lone strip of sidewalk empty and dusty. Ella wondered if everyone had fled in advance of the strike organizers’ arrival, and she recalled her first sight of the truck just an hour earlier, how it had terrified her, how it had elicited only fear when the one thing she’d needed was hope. Doubt flared in her mind.
She remained peering over the rails when the truck reached Lincolnton, a larger city ten miles to the northeast. Unlike Cherryville, Lincolnton’s downtown streets teemed with people, and Ella wondered if it was court day, and she recalled the times as a young girl back in Tennessee, back before her family moved to the lumber camps, when her father would load her and Wesley into the wagon and take them into Sevierville to watch the farmers and the businessmen and county men converge on the square for court day. Her father would park the wagon and find a seat on one of the benches near the courthouse. He’d drop a few pennies apiece into her and Wesley’s upturned hands, and then he’d light his pipe and talk with other farmers while she and Wesley ducked in and out of the general store and the confectionery, conspiring on how best to spend their pennies.