The Last Ballad(84)

“Thank you,” Ella said. “I won’t forget this. And I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.”

“Please don’t,” Kate said. “And please don’t even think of it.” She stared at Ella for a moment, reached out, closed her hand over both of Ella’s where they rested on her lap. “It’s late,” she said, smiling. “I may not care about my husband’s opinions of me, but I also don’t want him to contact the police and report me missing.”

“I’ll walk you up,” Ella said. She picked up Charlie’s rifle. “Make sure you feel safe.”

“No,” Kate said. “I’ll be fine.” She stood up and stepped off the bottom step. She turned, looked down at Ella. “I know the way.”

“You sure?” Ella asked. “Charlie’s harmless, especially to someone like you. He’s probably passed out somewhere by now anyway.”

“I’ll be okay,” Kate said. “I’ll yell for you if I need you. You can come save me.” She put on her jacket and cinched its belt around her waist. “It was wonderful to meet you, Ella.” She reached down, took Ella’s hand. “I hope I see you again.”

“I hope so too,” Ella said.

Kate squeezed Ella’s hand, then turned and walked up the road. Ella watched her go, watched until the darkness swallowed her. Her first thought was to gather the jars, go inside, and hide the money. Put it out of her mind and fall asleep quickly. She’d get up in the morning and tend to the children, spend the day canvassing the mills.

But right now, she didn’t have to move, did she? She could sit on the cabin’s steps and let the warm, humid night fold itself around her. She’d go inside soon enough. She’d hide the money. She’d lie in bed and allow herself to go over each step of the evening, to recall each thing she’d said and heard, everything she’d seen. She’d sleep well and wake in the morning and see her children. She closed her fingers around the envelope, remembered that Kate had written down the address of her home in McAdamville. Ella’s life, which had already changed so much in such little time, had changed again.

The sound of music drifted toward her where she sat. She raised her head and listened, wondered if it was Fox Denton’s phonograph, something she’d never heard this far down the road. She closed her eyes, listened closely, and then she heard the music for what it was: the faraway sound of Kate singing “Two Little Blackbirds” as she walked up the road alone.





Chapter Ten

Hampton Haywood





Monday, June 3, 1929



His father had shot and killed a white man in Mississippi in 1910. Hampton had been six years old at the time and had slept through the sound of the man yelling and beating on one side of the cabin’s door while his mother and father whispered and prayed on the other. But what he hadn’t slept through was the sound of the shotgun blast. It had jarred him awake. He opened his eyes, moved his body just enough to look at his two-year-old sister Summer where she lay in bed looking back at him, her open eyes portraying the same measure of fear and surprise that she must have seen in his own.

His mother threw open the bedroom door and struggled to lift Hampton and Summer from the bed at the same time. Hampton had a clear memory of clawing through the blankets as he and his mother fumbled their way toward one another, while Summer cried at the fear of seeing their mother move with such silent fury. Hampton’s mother carried him and Summer into the cabin’s other room. She sat him down, and he watched while she balanced Summer on her hip and gathered what food they had: biscuits, a jar of preserves, dried beans.

Hampton watched his father lean the shotgun in the corner, watched him reach for the framed picture of a praying Jesus that hung on the wall. He removed the small photograph that had, for as long as Hampton could remember, sat in the corner of the frame. His father looked at the photograph for a moment. It was a picture someone had taken of him and Hampton’s mother not long after they’d been married, when she was sixteen and he only two years older. He slid the photograph into the front pocket of his overalls, bent to the mattress he shared with Hampton’s mother, and slipped his hands beneath it and ran them along the floor. He gathered folded dollar bills and a few loose coins and slid them into the same front pocket. Hampton’s father stood and took in the room as if he already knew for certain it would be the last time he’d see it. He found a sack, began to stuff the family’s clothes inside.

His father hurried out of the bedroom, the sack of clothes in one hand, the shotgun in the other. No one had spoken yet.

Hampton’s father cradled the shotgun in the crook of his right arm, knelt and scooped up Hampton. He felt the shotgun press against his back. He turned his head, saw the barrel inches from his face, smelled the bitter residue of its blast.

“Lydia,” his father said. “Let’s go.” Hampton’s mother did not respond, and she did not turn around. She adjusted Summer on her hip, continued the search for food. “Lydia,” he said again.

She stopped moving. Tears streaked her cheeks. She wiped them away with her free hand and then picked up the sack of food she’d gathered.

The cabin’s interior had been whitewashed years earlier. Hampton saw that the buckshot had left a hole and what appeared to be dozens of black fingerprints on the door where the dark night seeped into their home. Hampton had never been awake this late at night, and that, combined with the sound of the shotgun, told him that he should be terrified of what could be waiting for them outside.