The Last Ballad(35)

Ella had been staring at the redheaded man’s shaking hands and did not realize that Sophia had been referring to her until someone whispered in her ear. “You ready?” a voice asked.

Ella saw Velma standing beside her.

“Don’t be nervous,” Velma said.

“I can’t help it,” Ella said.

“The stage has been checked. It’s all clear.”

“Checked for what?” Ella asked.

“Dynamite,” Velma said.

“Dynamite?”

“Shhh,” Velma said. “Wasn’t anything there.” She nodded to the skirt that enclosed the stage’s underpinning. “At a meeting last week, somebody stashed a bundle of it under the stage. They lit it too, but the fuse was too wet after the rain.”

Ella did not know whether she wanted to run or if she wanted to fall to her knees and lift the skirt around the stage and peer beneath it. Velma must have sensed her fear.

“Don’t worry,” Velma whispered. “It’s been checked. There’s nothing there.” She smiled. “Not when we got started anyway.”

Ella heard Sophia say her name. She turned to the stage at the sound of it.

“Tonight she’s joining us from down the road in Bessemer City,” Sophia said. “Ella May’s a believer in this struggle, and we’re hoping she’ll go home and organize the American Mill. She’s got a family at home to support, just like many of you, and she’s here to do her part. Remember her name, brothers and sisters, and make certain you shake her hand tonight. Ella May, you want to come on up?”

The audience could have applauded, or they could not have applauded: Ella was never able to remember. What she could remember was suddenly finding herself walking across the stage in front of all those faces. She didn’t look at Sophia, but she felt the girl standing nearby like a distant star that pulled Ella into its orbit. She remembered what Velma had said about the dynamite, wondered what it would feel like to have the stage explode, to lift itself beneath her, toss her into the air over the crowd. She shook the fear from her mind, took hold of the podium with both hands just as Sophia had done.

“Thank you,” she said. “And thank you for letting me be here tonight.” She opened her mouth, waited. She wanted to turn toward Sophia to ask what to say next, but instead she searched for Velma in the crowd. All the faces looked the same. She touched the leaflet in her pocket. Eventually, more words came. “I ain’t from here. I’m from up in the mountains in Tennessee.” A whistle came from the back of the crowd, and someone clapped his hands and hollered, “Johnson City!” The people in front of the stage turned at the sound. Some of them laughed, a few of them applauded. “Bristol!” a woman’s voice called out. More laughter, more applause. Ella felt that a game had begun, and the crowd cheered as a list of towns, cities, and counties in Tennessee were shouted out: Knoxville, Cocke County, Erwin, Elizabethton, Greeneville. Ella waited until the crowd grew quiet and the laughter and applause died away.

“Is that everybody?” she asked. The audience erupted in cheers. “I don’t want to leave nobody out.” She laughed then, and she felt the tightness in her stomach leave her body. Her heart slowed.

“It feels good to hear the names of all them places,” she said. “I ain’t visited all of them, and I’ll probably never see the Tennessee hills again, but it feels good to hear those names, so thank you.

“I reckon I ended up here the same way most of you did. The mills sent men up into the mountains, told us all about the good life down here.” Boos lifted from the audience, and Ella acted surprised that someone would boo such promises. She heard laughter, and she watched as the people in the audience slowly came into focus, and she felt as if she were looking into each individual face and seeing that they’d been made the same promises she’d been made, and there was nothing to do now but laugh at the absurdity of their own belief in those promises and the men who made them. “They talked about how much money we’d make, didn’t they? About how fine our homes would be, what nice things we could buy in town. My husband—the man who was my husband, anyway—he wanted to go. He said, ‘It sounds good,’ and I said, ‘Well, let’s go then.’ I’ve worked in one mill or another ever since, a lot of them here in Gaston County. I figure one mill ain’t too different from another: they’re all bad as far as I know.

“I work at American over in Bessemer City now. I work six days a week for nine dollars, but it ain’t enough.”

Ella stopped speaking, let her eyes linger on a young woman standing just a few feet away. She wore a homespun dress and held a sleeping baby in her arms, and as Ella stared at her she noticed how the woman swayed back and forth.

“I’ve got four kids at home,” Ella said. “I had five, but I lost one of them when he was just a baby.” She pulled her gaze from the baby in the young mother’s arms and stared out at the audience, searched the faces again until she found an older woman with a little girl standing beside her who could have been her granddaughter. “I got a little girl sick at home right now. I asked the foreman to put me on days so I could be there to care for her at night, but he won’t do it. I don’t know why. I’m doing my best for the babies I’ve still got. But it’s hard. You men might not know it the way we know it, but it’s hard.