The Last Ballad(94)

The three children were frighteningly thin, all angles and sharp edges and quick, cutting eyes and bare feet with thick, yellow calluses. The girls, whose names were Lilly and Rose, wore long cotton dresses that once upon a time must have been white but were now an earth-tinged tan that nearly matched the color of the girls’ skin. The boy, whose name was Otis, wore tattered knee-length breeches and a cotton shirt that seemed to have been made at the same time and of the same material as the girls’ dresses. The sight of the children and the cabin in which they lived made Hampton ashamed of his bleach-white shirt, the pressed pants, his leather wingtips.

“Is that him?”

Hampton looked toward the voice and saw a small white woman with dark hair standing in the cabin’s doorway. She wore a collared dress and loose stockings, and she was as thin as the children. She had a young baby in her arms. The baby held what looked like a stuffed sock in its hands and gnawed its tip.

“This is Hampton Haywood,” Sophia said. She touched Hampton’s elbow as if to prompt him. “And this is Ella.”

“Hello,” Hampton said.

Ella nodded, adjusted the baby on her hip. “Welcome to Stumptown,” she said.

Hampton was shocked by the poverty before him, but the source of his horror was the only thing that surprised him. He’d actually expected to come south and find poor Negroes living hand to mouth, barely getting by on what they could earn, save, or grow, but he hadn’t expected to find white people living this way.

He followed Sophia through the yard and up the rickety porch steps. The three older children opened the truck’s doors and climbed inside. The horn honked. Hampton turned and saw Lilly behind the wheel. She raised her hands as if asking Sophia a question. Sophia held up the set of keys so the girl could see them. “Learned my lesson last time,” she said. The girl frowned.

They stepped up onto the porch. Ella kissed the baby’s head and handed him to Sophia.

Ella stepped back and looked at Hampton. She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms as if appraising him. She looked at Sophia. “I thought you might’ve mentioned something to him about dressing fancy.”

Hampton looked down at his clothes. He thought she might be joking, but it became clear that she wasn’t. He’d never felt fancily dressed before. In the city he spent more time wondering whether his clothes were fashionable enough. It had never occurred to him that he would ever feel overdressed and out of place.

“I guess I forgot,” Sophia said.

Ella stepped toward Hampton. She opened the buttons on his cuffs and folded the sleeves up each forearm; then she unbuttoned the top button on his shirt. Hampton didn’t move, not because he was scared, but because he was surprised. He’d never had a woman he didn’t know, much less a white woman, touch him with such abandon. He’d never been so aware of someone’s skin as it brushed against his own, her thin fingers as they grazed his arms.

“Put this in your pocket,” Ella said. She held up his wristwatch. She’d removed it without his knowing. Hampton looked at Sophia and raised his eyebrows, gave her the first real smile he’d given her since arriving the night before. Sophia kissed the baby’s cheek and stifled a laugh. Ella stepped back and stared at him. She crossed her arms again.

“Wait right here,” she said. She disappeared into the dark cabin.

“I didn’t know about the dress code,” Hampton said. He slipped his watch into his pocket. “Anything else you need to tell me?”

“Nothing comes to mind,” Sophia said.

Ella reappeared holding a dipper full of water. She tossed the water at Hampton’s shoes, as if she were putting out a fire. The water landed between his feet and splashed onto his wingtips. He made to jump away from it, but it was too late; they were soaked, the leather already turning dark.

“What the hell?” he said.

“Go on out in the yard while they’re wet,” Ella said. “Stomp around, get them good and dusty. We’ll be ready to go after that.”



They left the truck parked at Ella’s and set off up the road. Ella’s children stayed behind and played in the truck. Hampton overheard Lilly arguing with Otis about whose turn it was to “drive.”

Sophia and Ella walked ahead of Hampton, and he wondered what someone might think if they were to lift a tarpaper flap and look out their window to see a finely dressed black man following close behind two white women in an all-black town. The sun was hot on his face, and he assumed it was nearing 10 a.m., but he hesitated to consult his hidden wristwatch for fear of drawing Ella’s attention.

“You think she’ll come?” Sophia asked.

“I hope so,” Ella said. “I’d feel a whole lot better if she did.”

Ella and Sophia turned off the road and followed a path toward a cabin that looked just as pathetic as the one in which Ella and her children lived. But there was a domesticity about this place that Ella’s lacked. The path was lined with flowers and short shrubs. Colored bottles hung from one of the trees and clinked together almost soundlessly in the breeze. Clothes hung drying from a line on the porch.

As the three of them drew closer to the cabin, a woman of imperceptible age came around from the backyard. She wore a head kerchief and a long dark dress and held a hoe in her hand. She smiled when she saw them and leaned the hoe against the side of the cabin, wiping her hands on the seat of her dress.