The Last Ballad(39)

The other women remained quiet. The sound of wax paper being crumbled replaced the old woman’s voice. Something had come over the group that hadn’t been there before she spoke.

“Pigface is the devil all right,” the pretty girl in the calico dress said. Her eyes and face had darkened as if a shadow hung there.

The gray-haired woman sighed, and then she placed a hand on another girl’s shoulder to steady herself as she got to her feet. “If he’s the devil that would mean we’re all in hell,” she said. She dusted off the back of her dress. “And I don’t think we’re there quite yet.”

The pretty girl raised her eyes to the old woman, who now stood above her.

“Hetty, you really think it’ll happen?” she asked. “You really think they’ll turn us out tomorrow?”

Hetty looked down at the girl with a look that seemed to carry both surprise and pity.

“Why, yes, girl,” Hetty said. “That’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

“What’ll we do?” asked the sallow-faced girl.

“What can we do?” Hetty said. “Walk out? We done that. Organize ourselves? Start a union? We done that too.” She sighed. “The way I see it, we got two things left to try: we can feel bad for ourselves, or we can fight.” She reached down and opened her hand, and the girl reached up and placed hers inside it. Hetty squeezed the girl’s fingers, gave her hand a little shake. “I plan to fight,” Hetty said. “I hope you do too. I hope you all do.”



Ella slept on the floor inside the headquarters that night, her back to the wall, her head resting on her hands, her mind returning to Stumptown and the faces of her sleeping children. Sophia had found an old blanket—a wiry, woolen thing that was so stiff it seemed never to have been unfolded—and Ella had used it to cover herself.

A handful of people had remained outside the headquarters all night, passing around thermoses of coffee and flasks of whiskey. Ella had fallen asleep listening as they recounted stories of the Loray strike and the other strikes they’d heard of: Lawrence, Passaic, Pineville. They’d talked about the threats they’d received since joining the union, the violence they saw when the National Guard arrived, the potential of what was to come.

She woke in the night to what she thought was the scratch of Rose’s breathing, but when she opened her eyes she saw a mouse dragging a piece of mustard-coated wax paper across the rough plank floor just a few feet from where she slept.

The next time she woke it was to the sound of laughter on the street. Ella raised herself to her elbows, felt the bones in her back and shoulders shift into place, looked around the dark room at the shapes of sleeping bodies where people had arranged pallets on the floor. She searched for the forms of Velma and Sophia, but it was too dark to see them and too quiet to search them out. Instead she stood quietly and opened the door.

Outside, night felt closer than morning, although morning was near. Several groups of men stood in silhouette on the road in front of the headquarters. None of them seemed to take note of her.

She tuned her ear to the dark field across the street. The chirping of crickets rose from the grass. She heard the sound of faraway water where it ran over rocks in a shallow, muddy gulch that cut along the field’s far edge. For a moment, in this cool almost-night with the rolling water and the crickets in her ears, Ella felt transported back to the mountains. She closed her eyes and imagined that if she were to open them she would see dawn creeping through the low clouds enshrouding the lumber camp.

A burst of laughter rang out in the quiet street. Ella opened her eyes. Instead of the lumber camp’s denuded hills she saw the same dark figures of strikers clustered in groups of twos and threes. Out on the road, the glowing, orange tips of cigarettes. The shapes of shotguns propped on shoulders. The men’s whispered voices.

Ella crossed the gravel road, stood on the edge of the field. The stage remained, but someone had removed the skirt from beneath it and taken down the lanterns.

She looked at the building behind her. Beal had instructed them to meet at the headquarters at 7 a.m. to march down to the village, where they’d wait for the evictions to begin. Ella did not know what time it was, but the sun had just risen, and she knew there was plenty of time for her to be alone before the crowds gathered again.

She walked south in the direction from which she’d seen Loray workers coming the night before. She crossed the railroad tracks, studied the yards of the boardinghouses and small shacks as she passed them. She reached Franklin Avenue, where Loray rose before her. The morning was still dark enough to see the lights burning behind the windows, the downtown streets quiet enough to hear the incessant thrum of the great machines at work inside.

Ella stepped onto the curb, walked west. How long would it take her to reach Stumptown? Three hours? Four? She’d been gone almost twenty-four hours, which was the longest she’d ever been away from her children. If she left now she could easily make it home before noon, have a few hours with her babies before her shift started. Her body ticked with desperation to see them, to touch them and hear their voices.

They were used to spending their nights alone, but she’d told them she’d be back. Violet would have made sure they had something to eat for dinner. Lilly would have gotten them ready for bed. The children would be waking now: Lilly searching the cabin for something to eat; Otis stoking a fire in the oven in expectation of breakfast; Rose coughing the damp night air from her lungs; Wink swaddled in thin blankets, his fingers closing around anything he could reach.