The Last Ballad(30)
But today was Sunday, and court did not meet on Sundays in the Sevierville, Tennessee, of her childhood, nor did it do so here in Lincolnton, North Carolina. No, the crowd before her had gathered only to confront the truck in which she rode, and by the time Ella had embraced this realization—the realization that the crowd was composed entirely of men, no women or children in sight—the girl behind the wheel had already decided that no one in Lincolnton would be traveling with them to the rally in Gastonia.
The dozens of men—dressed in suits and overalls and shirtsleeves and trousers—waited in the middle of the street as if forming a barrier to the truck’s passage. Their numbers spilled over to the sidewalks. Others watched from inside buildings and leaned from windows. The truck picked up speed as the first projectiles struck its sides and crashed onto its bed: bottles, bricks, lengths of pipe that clattered like blasts of thunder when they landed beside Ella. Impulse told her to gather these missiles, stand, hurl them back toward the men who’d thrown them, but as things continued to fall like hailstones around her she could do nothing but cower in the driver’s-side corner of the truck bed.
She did not remove her hands from her head or open her eyes or raise her face until she felt certain that the last of the launched weapons had landed in the truck or somewhere outside it. When she looked toward the open tailgate she found a man struggling to climb inside. His face, handsome if not for its anger, was red with exertion, his blond hair ringed damp where his bowler hat had blown from his head during the chase. Behind him swarms of men ran after the truck screaming all manner of curses about Russia and communism and whores and Reds. The man who clung to the back of the truck kept his eyes on Ella. He grasped the railing and tried to climb inside, but his foot slipped off the bumper. He spat at Ella.
“You damn union bitch,” he said. “You damn commie bitch.”
He tried to climb inside again, but by the time the sole of his shoe met the tailgate, Ella already held a brick above her head. She first smashed the fingers of the man’s left hand where they had wrapped themselves around the railing. He screamed, unclenched his fingers. His foot slipped from the tailgate again and for a moment it looked as if he would fall, but he managed to cling to the truck, his ruined left hand flailing for a hold. Ella brought the brick down on the back of his right hand where he’d kept it flattened against the bed. The bones crunched like a pinecone crushed underfoot, and in the brief moment before he tumbled from the truck and cut somersaults in the road Ella saw the fear of death touch the man’s eyes.
She sat down, surrounded by shattered glass and dusty crumbles of red brick and rusted pipes that rolled around the bed as the truck bounced along. She watched the horde of men surround the fallen man where he lay prone in the road and help him to his feet. She felt no relief in seeing that he had survived. She felt nothing for him, nothing for the other men. Not fear or intimidation and certainly not pity.
The truck slowed again when they reached the town of High Shoals. Ella allowed her body to shift, to let her right shoulder come to a rest against the railing as the truck turned onto a shadowed lane. Bottles and other things the men had thrown still rolled around the truck bed. The brakes squealed, then hissed as the truck came to a stop. The engine vibrated so that Ella’s hands appeared to tremble of their own accord. She looked down, watched her hands for a moment, made her hands into fists to stop their shaking.
Ella heard the sound of one of the truck’s doors opening and slamming shut. She couldn’t tell which one. Then the sound of the other door doing the same. She imagined the two women being yanked from the truck and pulled into the trees by men who’d been waiting for them. She wanted to stand, to look over the railing, to leap to the road and break off at a sprint and put as much distance between her and the truck as she could. But the same survival instinct that had fueled her to act in Lincolnton now forced her to remain silent and still. She picked up a length of pipe that had rolled to a stop at her feet. She waited, tried to hear over the engine, the truck trembling beneath her with its own impatience.
The appearance of a face at the tailgate startled her, and Ella raised the pipe as if she might hurl it at the person she saw. It took a moment for her to recognize the face as belonging to the girl who’d been driving the truck.
The girl smirked at Ella. “I come in peace,” she said. She looked down the lane behind her, where the late-day sun found the road through the heavy trees. She turned back to Ella. Her eyes searched the otherwise empty truck. She spoke over the noise of the engine. “Seems like plenty room,” she said. “I thought I’d let Velma take a turn behind the wheel.”
The girl climbed up into the bed just as the truck lurched forward. She fell to her knees, pivoted, and kicked at the back of the cab, barely missing Ella’s left shoulder. “Goddammit, Velma!” she screamed. She looked at Ella. “Sorry,” she said, “but goddammit, Velma!” She kicked the back of the cab again. A knock came from the other side. “She can’t drive for shit,” the girl said. She turned so that she and Ella sat side by side facing the open tailgate. They watched the view before them shift while the driver attempted a series of maneuvers to return the truck to the main road.
The girl removed a tin of tobacco from her dress and rolled a cigarette. She gestured toward Ella, but Ella shook her head.
“Don’t smoke?” the girl asked. Ella shook her head again. “Nasty, ain’t it?”