The Last Ballad

by Wiley Cash

  Brother slept on a cot in a closetlike room in the monastery’s basement. Here, while listening to water pass through the pipes and the sounds of the forest outside the basement door through which he was allowed to come and go as he pleased, he would lie awake until sleep found him, the tips of his fingers touching each angle of the tiny wooden chair that sat upright on his chest. He pondered the promise he’d made to himself to be good, to know good, to do good.

  And then he saw Ella May Wiggins, and his memory of beholding Sister coupled with the dark guilt of his past life caught up with him there in a crowded field in Gastonia. Like Sister, this woman Ella stood atop a stage with a vast audience spread out before her. It was a cool evening in early May, not long after dark. Brother stood with Father Gregory and Father Elian on the edge of the crowd, shoulder-to-shoulder with gaunt-faced millworkers, policemen, and newspaper reporters. He and the two monks had traveled the few miles to Gastonia to help feed the strikers who they had learned would be evicted from their homes the following morning. He had expected to help them, but he had not expected to see Ella or to feel her story uncoil itself in his heart.

  And then she sang, and Brother was struck dumb by the beauty of it.

  Chapter Six

  Claire McAdam

  Friday, May 10, 1929

  The train had departed Washington, D.C., at 10:35 p.m. By the time Claire and her friend Donna had settled themselves in their bunks it was near midnight and they were drawing close to Manassas. Claire’s body still pulsed with anger and hurt, and she’d been unable to fall asleep after the argument she’d had with Donna. Claire slipped her hand from under the blanket and felt around for the train schedule she’d tucked beneath her mattress. She unfolded it and held it to the faint moonlight that trickled through the curtained window by her bunk. On the schedule she saw the name of the great battlefield that her fiancé Paul’s father had spoken of, the place where Paul’s great-grandfather had fought the first real battle of the Civil War, when it seemed the whole campaign would be short and certain.

  Claire recalled the face of Paul’s great-grandfather, a man whom she’d never met and had only seen in the huge oil portrait that hung in the Lytles’ keeping room in the family’s old plantation on the North Carolina coast. She’d imagined the gray-bearded man in the portrait sitting atop a powerful white horse on a muddy battlefield strewn with the bodies of young southern boys.

  Claire rested her head on the stiff pillow and lifted her left hand so that the diamond on her engagement ring caught the light. She tried to ignore the heavy breathing coming from the bunk below her, but the sound of Donna’s peaceful sleep annoyed her.

  Donna’s father’s connections had been what allowed the young students from the North Carolina College for Women to travel to Washington, and it had been his personal friendship with Senator Lee Overman that had secured them a tour of the city by one of the nation’s most powerful congressmen.

  “I grew up in Salisbury believing that Lee Overman was the greatest man alive,” Donna had told Claire on the train ride to Washington the day before. They’d been sitting beside one another in the dining car. Claire had been writing a letter to Paul. She’d promised him that she’d send him a piece of mail with D.C. postage.

  “My daddy always told me that Senator Overman was the only man in Washington willing to protect my ‘southern womanhood,’” Donna had said. She’d gathered her thick red hair into a ponytail and fastened it. Claire envied Donna’s beauty, the ease with which she moved and spoke and acted. Claire was twenty-one, but she still perceived herself as a quiet, passive child with mousy brown hair, who lived with an acute fear that someone might be judging her. It made her feel very small. She’d sensed Donna’s eyes on her, and she’d scribbled a sloppy heart at the bottom of Paul’s letter before signing her name.

  She had batted her eyes at Donna and dropped her voice into a low-country drawl. “And how can the senator expect to protect the womanhood of a saucy number like you, my lady?”

  Donna had looked at her without smiling; then she’d turned toward the train’s window.

  “My daddy used to say, ‘Donna baby, Lee Overman would lynch every damn nigger in this country if he had to.’ And as I got older I knew what that meant, and it scared me to hear my father talk that way. It still does.”

  It was clear that Donna did not think much of Senator Overman or her father or the men’s connection, but it had not kept Claire from feeling proud that morning before their tour when Donna had introduced her to the senator as “the daughter of Richard McAdam, owner of the McAdam Mill in Belmont.” The senator had smiled at the mention of Claire’s family name.

  “I know things are rocky down in Gaston County with the strike,” the senator had said. “Give your father my best, and tell him we’re doing everything we can to put an end to this trouble.”

  “I will,” Claire had said. “I’ll let him know.” She had nodded and smiled, but she’d had no idea what the senator had meant.

  Overman was old and white-headed, and he’d shuffled along before the group of young women and their chaperone and pointed out everything they’d hoped to see: the Washington Monument; the Capitol Rotunda; the White House, where the senator had promised that President Hoover was in residence at that very moment, since the two men had spoken that morning.

  Their last stop of the day had been the Lincoln Memorial. Their chaperone, Mrs. Barnes, had stood with her back to Lincoln, as he sat on the chair that seemed so much like a throne. The monument was barely seven years old. Its white marble shone glossy and smooth in the late afternoon light.

  “People don’t ever believe this story,” Mrs. Barnes had said, “so none of you have to believe it either.”

  The girls had all stopped talking and turned and looked toward Mrs. Barnes. Some of them had even drawn closer to hear her more clearly. She was an old woman, perhaps as old as seventy, and she rarely spoke, except in the classroom, and even then she spoke in such a way that the girls had to focus their ears to fully understand what she said.

  Claire had been standing by Senator Overman, who was certainly older than Mrs. Barnes, and when she began her story with her back turned on Lincoln, the senator seemed to sense something in her tone that hinted that her story might be his own story as well. He’d stopped midsentence, stopped telling Claire about witnessing the completion of the statue’s body just a few years earlier. He’d dropped his hands where they were gesturing and drifted toward Mrs. Barnes, who stood on the edge of the shadow cast by the portico above them.

  “It was early April 1865,” Mrs. Barnes said, “and I was just three years old, but my birthday was coming up in June, and I’d already been told that my daddy wouldn’t be there. My sister, Margaret, who I called Sissy—called her that until she died—had already told me that Abraham Lincoln had killed my daddy at a place called Chancellorsville. It sounded like a far-off place, and I had no idea where it was. I don’t think I even knew what killed or dead meant then. I was so young. But I knew those words made Sissy and my mother sad, and I hated Abraham Lincoln for doing those words to my father, for making my mother and sister feel that way.

  “Richmond was already burning. Our boys had set the fires themselves during their retreat: the bridges, the munitions, the harbor. Maybe they didn’t expect for it to keep burning after they’d left. It was after midnight on the second night of the fires when we finally left our home and made our way down Bank Street toward my mother’s sister’s house, my aunt Jess. Her husband was away at the war too, but he would come home that summer. She was lucky. He was lucky too.

  “We were coming down Ninth Street right by the Capitol. Parts of the city glowed in the distance, and you could smell the smoke and all the different smells of the things that were on fire. We were coming down the hill right by the Capitol and it was all right there before us, the whole city on fire, burning right there before us.

  “We turned east on Bank Street. I don’t know who recognized him first, my
mother or Sissy, but I know it wasn’t me because I didn’t know what he looked like. I was carrying my doll and a little parcel of clothing that Mother had given me. There were some stockings and a pair of shoes stuffed down inside there too. I remember I was crying because Mother wouldn’t hold my hand. Her arms were full, and she couldn’t have held my hand if she’d wanted to. Sissy’s arms were full too, and I was too young to understand that to hold my hand would’ve meant that they would have had to leave something behind. I cried and cried. I was mad, but I was scared too.

  “Now that I think of it, Sissy was the one who recognized him out there on the steps. He had his arms folded across his chest. He had on a dark suit just like you see in photographs of him. No hat, nothing on his head. He was just standing there all by himself, watching. I remember seeing the light from the fire shine on his face where he was sweating. It was a warm night, probably even hotter because the city was burning, and he had on a jacket and a tie. He’d probably just come up from the river.

  “But I know it was Sissy who first whispered his name. Mother hushed her as if saying it again would get his attention, would draw his eyes away from the fires to look at us. But when I understood who he was I called out to him. I wanted to ask him why he killed my daddy. I wanted to tell him how sad I was that my daddy wouldn’t be coming to my birthday party in June. That he wouldn’t be able to sing me camp songs or bring me candy like he’d done the first time he’d come home from the war. I wanted to tell him those things.

  “And he must have heard me when I called his name. You may not believe it, and you don’t have to believe it, but he turned and looked at us from where he stood right there on the steps on the south side of the Capitol, Richmond burning all around us, the smoke almost choking us to death. He looked right at us, and I swear he nodded his head. What he meant in doing that, I can’t say. It could’ve meant hello or good evening or nice to see you, but I know for a fact that it did not mean I’m sorry, and sorry was the only thing I wanted him to be.”

  Claire and the other girls stood there staring at Mrs. Barnes’s back while she looked out over the mud and grass that led toward the Washington Monument, her black hat pulled low and her black coat pulled tight around her against the late afternoon chill.

  Claire’s heart had swelled at the romance of the story, but it was Donna who’d broken the silence, the spell that Mrs. Barnes’s story had cast, a story that had enraptured the old senator just as much as it had enraptured Claire. Donna’s white skin was soft and beautifully pale in the waning light, and when she turned to stare at the monument behind her, the setting sun caught her coppery hair and burned it a brilliant red. Donna leaned toward Mrs. Barnes and raised her hand and pointed at Lincoln.

  “Was he that tall?” Donna asked. A few of the girls had laughed.

  Mrs. Barnes composed herself, then turned slowly, her eyes alighting on Lincoln’s face for just a moment.

  “No,” she said, “of course not. Don’t be silly.”

  Minutes later the group was making their way down Independence Avenue when they heard someone call the senator’s name from the other side of the street. Claire looked up to see a man in a dark suit darting through the traffic, horns honking and tires squealing to a stop. A dozen gaunt-faced men and women in mismatched secondhand clothes followed behind him, their eyes wide with terror. The oldest of them could have been fifty; the youngest of them, a skinny wisp of a girl, couldn’t have been any older than ten.

  The man who’d called out to the senator stood before Senator Overman and the group of young women as if he hoped to block their route to the Capitol. The rest of the ragtag party gathered behind him. All of them were panting, trying to catch their breath. If it had been any colder their breath would’ve steamed before them like horses that had just pulled sleds across fields deep with snow.

  “Senator,” he said, “my name is Carlton Reed. I’m with the Labor Defender.”

  Claire caught his northern accent, noticed his expensive suit. He talked fast, as if he knew the senator had better things to do and was already planning his escape.

  “Sir,” Reed continued, “I have with me here today a few members of the Gastonia, North Carolina, local of the National Textile Workers Union, and we’re in town to—”

  “I know who you are, son,” Overman said, “and I know why y’all are here.”

  “Sir,” Reed said, removing his hat, “you may be aware of the Montana senator’s inquiry into the southern textile mills. Well, today’s hearing was canceled after our party arrived, but we had the good fortune to meet with Senator Wheeler and Senator La Follette of Wisconsin, and my question to you, sir, is why does it take two northern senators to initiate an investigation into—” But Overman stopped him, went so far as to place his big, open palm on the man’s chest and give him a gentle push so that Claire’s group would have room enough to pass them on the sidewalk.

  “I understand, son,” the senator said, “and I applaud your efforts, but if you’ll excuse me I’m engaged with a group of proper ladies from North Carolina.”

  “We’re proper ladies from North Carolina too,” a woman in the textile group said. She stepped out from behind Reed and blocked the sidewalk.

  “Ella,” Reed said. He touched the woman’s shoulder, but she took another step away from him so he could not reach her without following. She was a small, thin woman in a dingy white dress. She wore a man’s long coat and a black knit cap that was pulled tight enough to nearly cover her eyes.

  “We’re all proper,” the woman said. She took her hand from her coat pocket and motioned toward the people behind her. “And we’re hungry and tired and poor too.”

  “Ella,” Reed said again.

  “I see,” the senator said. He stepped back and looked at the group as if appraising them. “It looks like you strikers are all decked out in your union-issued finery.”

  A few of the group, the women especially, looked down at their clothes. One of the men tugged on his lapels and buttoned his suit jacket.

  “Senator, are you suggesting that these men and women are in costume?” Reed asked.

  “What I’m suggesting is y’all go home to Gastonia and call off this strike and get back to work,” Overman said. “Quit playing these games. Quit allowing the communist to dictate your lives.” He turned to the thin, young striker who’d been standing quietly. “And you, young lady, you need to return to school.”

  At that, the woman named Ella flew toward the senator and perhaps would have knocked him down had Reed not grabbed her by her shoulders.

  “School!” she shouted. “School?!” She tried to buck free of Reed’s grasp but he was too tall and too strong. She kept yelling at Overman, her voice coming out in a husky scream. “Let me tell you something,” she said. “I can’t even send my own children to school. They ain’t got decent enough clothes to wear and I can’t afford to buy them none. I make nine dollars a week, and I work all night and leave them shut up in the house all by themselves. I had one of them sick this winter and I had to leave her there just coughing and crying.”

  Ella’s voice dropped and she was quiet for a moment. She looked from Overman to the faces of the girls from Greensboro. Her eyes met Claire’s, and something cold and wretched shot through Claire’s heart. Ella shrugged Reed’s hands from her shoulders. She looked over at the young girl whom Overman had commanded to return to school. The girl wore a dirty white dress and loose gray stockings. She was shrouded in a long black coat that seemed to have been cut for someone twice her size. Her face was sharp, her eyes sunken, ringed in pink.

  “And this one here,” Ella said, putting her arm around the girl and pulling her toward her. “Binnie here’s fourteen years old, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her, would you? This girl here ain’t been to school in years. She makes five dollars a week, and that’s more than her mother and daddy make. She used to have a brother who worked in the mill too, but tuberculosis ate at him till he died.”

  T
he senator sighed loud enough for everyone in both groups to hear him. He rolled his eyes and looked over the heads of the girls from Greensboro and toward the back of the group, where Mrs. Barnes had been standing silently. He mouthed the words I’m sorry and turned back to Reed.

  “Sir,” Senator Overman said, “I appreciate your plight, but let me advise you and your people in saying that the streets are not the place to solve issues like these. I suggest you all return home, and, sir, I suggest you return to New York City and leave these people alone.” He looked at the group of college women. His eye caught Claire’s. “Ms. McAdam, I’m sure your father’s people don’t carry on this way,” he said. “I apologize that you came all the way to Washington to encounter this behavior.”

  The senator brushed past Reed, and Claire and the rest of her party followed him. The group of strikers parted, and the girls walked between them, up Maryland toward the Capitol. Claire kept her eyes on the sidewalk. The woman named Ella coughed, cleared her throat. “You ladies enjoy your visit to your nation’s capital,” she said.

  They walked in silence behind Senator Overman. A chilly wind tumbled down the steps on the west side of the Capitol and into Claire’s eyes. She felt the sun on her back, saw her shadow thrown out before her. She heard someone sniff, did not realize it was herself until she felt the tears streaming down her cheeks. She looked to her right and found Donna walking beside her, tears streaking her face as well.

  “My father’s people aren’t like that,” Claire had said. “Those aren’t my father’s people. My father takes care of his people.”

  Claire felt Donna’s arm around her waist. She leaned her head on her friend’s shoulder.