The Last Ballad(44)

Ella found Velma in the crowd.

“Have you seen Sophia?” Velma asked.

“Last time I saw her she was getting carried out of a house inside a mattress.”

“She’s something, isn’t she?” Velma said. “Dumb and passionate, and too young to realize both can get her killed.” She smiled. “But she’s something.”

The mood of the crowd that milled about Fourth Avenue changed as the company men made their way through the yard of a shack whose rotted boards seem held together by some kind of magic. Standing sentinel on the porch was the woman Hetty, with whom Ella had eaten dinner the night before.

Hetty stood on her steps alone. Ella and a group of strikers watched the company men approach Hetty’s house, Hetty’s arms down by her sides, her body rigid. It was not until the first man’s boot touched the steps that Hetty thrust the upper half of her body inside the shack’s open door. She emerged with an old rocking chair, which she lifted above her head and hurled toward the men. The lead man ducked, and the rest of them scattered in different directions with shouts of “What the hell!” and “Goddamn!”

Hetty, her arms now empty and her chest heaving, stood and watched the men as they composed themselves. They moved past her and through her home’s open door. She followed them inside as if she’d been hired to do their work.

For the next few minutes, the crowd watched the men carry belongings out of the house and deposit them on the curb. Inside, Hetty moved from room to room and tossed whatever she could lay a hand to out into the yard. When she finished she took hold of a hammer and busted the glass out of the few windows that weren’t covered over with pine boards. By the time her home had been emptied she was on her knees, the hammer still in her hand, using its claw to pry up the floorboards just inside the door.

And that was when one of the mill’s men—a slight man in overalls—bent at the waist and laid a hand on Hetty’s shoulder and asked her to stop destroying the mill’s property. He didn’t have the chance to move his hand from her shoulder before Hetty swung the claw end of the hammer toward his leg and pierced his calf muscle through the denim pants.

Two policemen pushed through the crowd and bounded up through the yard as Hetty pulled the hammer free of the man’s leg and prepared to swing at something, anything, else. The man screamed and fell to his knees and rolled out of the doorway. Blood soaked through his overalls and dotted the steps. One officer hooked Hetty beneath her arms and the other tried to corral her wild, kicking feet.

“You sons of bitches!” she screamed. “You sons of bitches! Tell Pigface to come down out of that mill and carry me out of this house his damn self. Let him see what I got for him!” She reared her head and spit into the face of the young, scared officer above her. “I know you. I know you, Paul Bradley,” she said. “I know your people. They’re going to be ashamed of you for hurting a old woman!”

“We’re doing our jobs,” said the policeman who carried her feet. “Don’t listen to her, Paul.” They carried her across the street toward a patrol car.

“Turn her loose!” a man yelled. Ella looked up to see Hetty’s husband barreling toward the police who were carrying his wife. A rifle was in his hand. When the policeman holding Hetty’s feet turned and saw the old man bearing down upon him, he let go of her and drew his pistol. The shift in weight surprised the man named Paul. Hetty slipped from his grasp and spilled onto the street at his feet. She yelled out when her head hit the road but no one was watching her anymore. They were all watching and waiting to see what her husband would do.

“Drop that rifle, old-timer!” the policeman with the pistol said, but the old man either did not hear him or was not willing to listen, because he held on to the rifle and kept running toward them, his eyes on Hetty where she lay on the street. “Drop it!” the policeman screamed.

A loud crack like a tree limb snapping rang out against the morning. Hetty’s husband collapsed in a heap on top of her. The moment she felt the weight of him she screamed and struggled to get to her feet to discover exactly what had made him fall. The policeman leaned over the old man and grabbed his shoulders and turned him so that he stared up at the blue sky. Hetty’s husband lay there beside her, his eyes wide open, a cut that seemed to have collapsed the bridge of his nose forcing blood to pulse in streams down each side of his face.

“Emmit!” Hetty hollered. Blood shone on her neck and hands. It stained her dress. She spread the blood across Emmit’s torso as she touched his body, searching for a bullet wound that wasn’t there. “Wake up, honey,” she said. “Baby.”

“He’s dead!” someone screamed over Ella’s shoulder. “You killed him!” Ella turned to see a young woman with her hand held over her mouth as if she could cram the words back inside before the policemen heard them.

“He ain’t dead,” the policeman said, “but he will be if he moves.” He holstered his pistol and picked up Emmit’s shotgun where he’d dropped it before being cracked across the face with the butt end of the pistol. In what seemed to Ella’s eyes to have been one fluid motion, the man broke the shotgun and saw that both barrels were loaded. He snapped it closed, raised it toward the gathered crowd.

“Somebody run and get Beal!” a man’s voice cried out.