The Last Ballad(58)

“Abernathy.”

“Donna Abernathy,” he said. “Where are you from, Donna ‘It’s Not Important’ Abernathy?”

She couldn’t stop herself.

“Salisbury,” she said.

He cocked his head, looked at her.

“I know your daddy,” he said. “Carter Abernathy.”

Claire choked on the smoke in her lungs. She coughed, reached for the glass of milk, but remembered it was gone. She dropped the lit cigarette down inside the coffee cup instead, heard the gasp of its extinguishment. She tried her best to remember Donna’s father’s name, certain that she must have mentioned it, weighed the possibility of there being two Carter Abernathys in a town the size of Salisbury. She nodded her head, coughed again.

“Sure enough,” the stranger said, smiling. “I know your daddy. Good man.” He smoked, looked out the window. “Lot of Klan down there in Salisbury.” He laughed to himself. “If you want something handled down in Mississippi or Louisiana, all you have to do is tell the police. In North Carolina, it takes the Klan to get a thing done right.” He stubbed out his cigarette, offered Claire another, but she shook her head no. “I saw your father last year during the march on Washington. He had a lot of North Carolina knights with him. It was something to see: twenty thousand men from around the country marching in white on the streets of our nation’s capital. Very impressive.”

He looked across the table at Claire as if waiting for her to respond in some way, to say something about Donna’s father or Salisbury or the Klan or her family’s long friendship with Senator Lee Overman, but Claire couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Are you a police officer?” she finally asked.

The stranger looked surprised. He smiled, lit another cigarette, tipped an ash into the coffee cup.

“Your badge,” she said. “That’s the only reason I ask.”

He smiled. “I’m a detective of sorts, which is like a policeman.”

Claire wondered if he would say more, but he didn’t. The dining car was quiet. The stranger reached out and brushed a crumb off the tablecloth that Claire’s cookie had left behind. She wanted to get up and go back to bed, but she didn’t know how to extract herself from the situation she’d created.

“Do you live in Washington?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I live wherever my work takes me.”

“Where is it taking you now?”

“To Gastonia, North Carolina,” he said. “I understand you met some strikers from Gastonia.”

“We did,” Claire said.

“Did they have the singer with them?” he asked.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“A woman named Ella May Wiggins,” he said. “She’s some kind of hillbilly singer the union hired.”

Claire remembered the woman Ella, her dingy dress and oversized coat, her gaunt face and husky voice. The way she’d glared at Claire and the other girls as they passed.

The train slowed and Claire realized that she’d heard the brakes squeal a few minutes before. They were drawing closer to another stop. “I should go back to bed,” she said. “Try to get some sleep.”

“Yes,” the stranger said. He picked up the pack of cigarettes and returned them to his pocket. Then he picked up the matchbook Hampton had left behind on the table. He pulled a watch from his pocket and looked at it. “It’s after two a.m. now.” He left his cigarette burning in his mouth and leaned forward and pulled the schedule from his back pocket. He removed the cigarette and held it in his hand and unfolded the schedule. He studied it for a moment and smiled.

“What is it?” Claire asked.

“That’s funny,” he said. “The next stop is Lynchburg. And here we are talking about your daddy and Lee Overman.” He looked up at Claire. “Lynchburg. Isn’t that something?”





Chapter Seven

Richard McAdam





Saturday, May 25, 1929



Richard McAdam weaved through the crowd, shaking hands and accepting congratulations while dodging Negro waiters with trays of hors d’oeuvres and drinks held above their heads. The band had just struck up the first song of the evening, “It’s a Million to One, You’re in Love,” and young people, most of whom had been Claire’s friends since childhood, along with several more recent friends from the teachers college, streamed past Richard toward the dance floor as he tried to escape with as little notice as possible. Most of the guests had arrived already; there remained only one guest in particular that Richard was waiting to see, and that man was yet to appear.

The double doors that led to the lobby creaked when he pushed them open. He stepped into the otherwise empty foyer as Grace and Nadia Ingle, the daughters of the club’s manager, sprang from their seats as if they’d been caught breaking the law by relaxing for even a moment. The two girls had spent the damp evening collecting guests’ rain-soaked hats, coats, and umbrellas, and Richard did not mind finding the girls in repose. He and Katherine had known them since they were children, since their father had taken the job at the club a decade earlier. Now the girls were fourteen and nineteen. Katherine had informed him that Grace’s father did not have the money to send her back to school for her sophomore year at Peace College in Raleigh, and Richard, upon seeing the girl, reminded himself to approach Ingle about offering the family a helping hand.