The Last Ballad(6)

The schoolmaster’s name had been Mr. Musial, and when he introduced himself Ella had misheard him, and although she never spoke his name she always thought of it as Musical. Mr. Musical had been short and thin and well dressed like Goldberg’s brother, but unlike Goldberg’s brother, Mr. Musical had a violent limp that wrenched his face into a grimace when he walked. Ella and Wesley had heard that he’d served in the Civil War, and she’d imagined that he’d been a hero and had suffered his injury in battle, but in reality an angry horse had taken a bite from his thigh and gangrene had set in; he’d lost the leg just above the knee and had never even shot the rifle he’d never learned to load. The schoolchildren did not know, no one in the small community actually knew, but Mr. Musical’s leg was made of wood from the hip down, his knee joint nothing but a shiny metal socket that swung wildly no matter how slowly he walked or how much he struggled to control his gait.

A chair sat in front of Goldberg’s brother’s desk, but he did not ask Ella to sit down so she did not sit. He pushed himself back from his desk and put his hands in his lap. His thin lips formed a straight line.

“I’m glad you joined us for your shift this evening,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Ella said. She did not look at him when she spoke, choosing instead to focus on the other things on his desk aside from the ledger and ink pen: a small wooden globe with etchings too faded to read; an empty mug; a half-eaten sandwich of some kind; a shiny red apple.

“I say that because you missed last night’s shift.”

“Yes, sir,” she said again.

“Mrs. Wiggins,” he said.

“It’s May.” Her eyes darted to his for a moment, returned to rest on the half-eaten sandwich.

“What?”

“It’s May. Ella May.”

“I’ve got Wiggins written down here.”

“It’s May,” she said again. “I told Dobbins to change it, but I guess he didn’t.”

“Why have you been missing your shifts, Mrs. May?”

“Shift,” Ella said. “I just missed the one last night.”

“No,” Goldberg’s brother said. He leaned toward his desk, picked up a clipboard, flipped through a sheath of papers. “No, you missed one in January and one in March.”

“It’s been a long time since March,” Ella said. “Even longer since January.”

“That’s not the point,” he said. “Why are you missing shifts?”

“I got a sick little girl at home. She gets bad at night, and I had to stay home,” she said. “I asked Dobbins to put me on day shift, but he won’t do it. Maybe I should’ve asked you.”

“Dobbins handles shift change requests,” he said.

“Well, he didn’t handle mine,” Ella said. “And now he told me to come down here, and that’s just going to set me back even more.”

Goldberg’s brother leaned back in his chair, placed his hands in his lap again. Ella stared at the sandwich, tried to judge what kind of meat rested between the slices of bread.

“You have a sick little girl,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Please look at me, Mrs. May. I can’t tell whether or not you’re being truthful unless you look at me.”

She lifted her eyes to his, saw that he stared at her intently, saw that her missed shift must mean a great deal to him, but she knew it meant even more to her, because she would not be paid. “Why wouldn’t I be truthful?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. May. People often don’t tell the truth when they lay out of work. Sick means drunk. Sick means gambling. Sick means lazy. I don’t know what a sick little girl means.”

She felt blood rush to her face, knew that her cheeks were flush with color. Her guilt, or whatever it was she had just felt, faded. She imagined throwing herself across the desk, reaching for his neck, his eyes. “Sick means my little girl’s sick,” she said. “That’s what it means.”

He stared at her for a moment, then lifted a wastebasket from beneath his desk and swept the sandwich and apple into it. He returned the wastebasket to the floor.

“What if all my employees had sick children, Mrs. May? What about me? What if I had a sick child at home and decided that I couldn’t come to work? Who’d run this mill?”

Ella had never seen Goldberg’s brother’s family, knew nothing about them aside from their existence and the existence of the older brother. She had never been inside the Goldberg’s large brick home and she had never met anyone who’d been inside it either. She envisioned electric lights and running water and warm blankets and bedsheets and a pantry full of food and a cooler full of ice, a pair of soft, warm slippers tucked beneath a neatly made bed. A baby might cry out somewhere upstairs, and a nurse or a maid or a young cousin would ascend a grand, curved staircase and open a nursery door and whisper something kind and reassuring to the child inside.

“Yes, sir,” Ella said.

“Who’d run this mill?” Goldberg’s brother asked again.

“Nobody.”

“That’s correct: nobody. And you know who runs your spinners when you decide to lay out on a shift? Nobody.” He leaned forward again. “But I can assure you of this, Mrs. Wiggins: it’ll be much easier to find someone to operate your spinners than it will be to find someone to run this mill. I expect you’ll keep that in mind next time you find yourself with the desire to stay home.”