by Wiley Cash
“A fellow night owl,” he said. He smiled. “Do you mind if I join you?”
Before Claire had the chance to think about his question, much less answer it, the stranger sat down across the table from her.
“You don’t mind?” he asked after he’d already settled himself.
“Of course not,” Claire said, and then, “I was just about to return to my room.”
“Well, I won’t keep you,” he said. “You go back to your room whenever you’d like.” He looked toward the window. “Nothing like a train at night,” he said. “You agree?”
“Yes,” Claire said. “Did you just board?”
“No,” the man said. “I boarded in D.C. I’ve been in my berth, working.”
He sat back, folded his hands in his lap, and stared at Claire with a cool, distant smile. His eyes fell on the empty glass of milk.
“Trouble sleeping?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I mean, earlier, yes. But I’m feeling tired now.”
“Are you traveling with family?”
“What?” she asked. The stranger’s questions, which she realized were normal, predictable questions, seemed to be delivered in such a way that she didn’t quite understand them.
“Are you traveling with family?” he asked again.
“No,” she said. “I was in Washington. With my classmates. I’m in college.”
“Wonderful,” he said. “Wonderful.” He felt around in his pants pockets, removed a billfold, and set it on the table. On top of the billfold was a silver badge with an eagle cresting the top of it. A banner unfurled itself across the badge’s middle, but it was turned and caught the light in a way that kept Claire from being able to read it. The man searched his pockets until he found a pack of cigarettes.
“Cigarette?” he asked.
Claire looked at the pack where it rested on the table. She felt emboldened by her anonymity. It was the middle of the night. Mrs. Barnes was old; she had probably been asleep for hours. Even if she were to wake she probably wouldn’t shuffle down the hall and come to the dining car this late at night. Were they to find her smoking, none of the girls would mention a word about it to anyone. She wondered what Paul would think to see her here, alone, speaking to a colored man close to her own age and having a cigarette with an older man, a stranger in the middle of the night. She was going home. Her life would change soon, and she did not know what lay ahead, but this moment in the middle of the night was exciting and uncertain and tinged with danger, and she could not help herself.
“Yes,” she said. “Please.”
The man picked up the pack and gave Claire a cigarette. Then he shook another free of the pack and put it between his lips.
“Now, if only we had some matches,” he said.
Hampton walked back into the dining room. He slowed when he saw someone sitting with Claire. Something changed in his face. Something must have changed in Claire’s face as well, because the stranger turned to see what had caught her eye.
“Oh, good,” the stranger said. He lifted his cigarette toward Hampton, raised his voice. “Matches?”
Hampton stood still for another moment, and then he walked toward their table. He took a book of matches from his pocket, struck one, and held it over the table. The stranger didn’t move, and it wasn’t until he looked at Claire and raised his eyebrows that she remembered that she held a cigarette between her fingers and realized that the match had been struck for her. She put the cigarette to her lips and leaned toward the flame, drew on it. Claire chose not to look up at him, and from the corner of her eye she saw the flame’s reflection in the train’s window. She imagined someone standing outside the train and seeing this burst of light upon her face as the dining car rocketed past in the middle of the night.
The match had burned down more than halfway, but Hampton simply moved it across the table toward the stranger. The man leaned toward it and lit his cigarette as well. Hampton shook the match to extinguish it. He placed the book of matches on the table. He balled Claire’s napkin into his fist and picked up the empty glass and plate.
“Anything else?” he asked without looking at her.
“No,” Claire said, but what she wanted to say was “I’m sorry.”
He nodded and walked through the dining room and disappeared the way he’d come. She watched him go, her hand resting on the table before her, the lit but unsmoked cigarette burning between her fingers.
The stranger tapped an ash into an empty coffee cup that had been left out for the breakfast service. He leaned across the table toward Claire.
“Was that boy bothering you before I came in?”
“No,” she said. “He was in here when I sat down. He left when we stopped back there, at Charlottesville.”
“You sure?”
“Yes,” she said. Her face had grown warm, as if she’d been caught doing something that she should not have been doing. She feared that she was blushing. “I’m fine. Really.”
The stranger looked at her for another moment. She held his gaze in hers. She thought that to look away would mean that she’d been caught in some kind of lie, and she hadn’t lied; she simply hadn’t known what to say.
“So,” he said, flicking his ash into the coffee cup again. “What were you and your classmates doing in D.C.?”
“Sightseeing, mostly,” Claire said. She looked down at her cigarette, then brought it to her lips.
“What did you see?”
She inhaled, looked at the stranger, watched his face as the smoke spread between the two of them.
“Just the usual things,” she said. “The things everyone sees: the White House, the Capitol, the monuments.”
The man raised his eyebrows and gave a half smile as if he’d been expecting to hear what Claire had just said, had been expecting to hear that she’d only seen and done the things that tourists always saw and did. Claire looked down at the coffee cup between them. She turned it toward her and peered at the ash inside.
“Senator Overman gave us a long tour today—well, yesterday,” Claire said. She set the coffee cup upright, raised her eyes to the stranger’s.
The stranger cocked his head and smiled.
“How interesting,” he said. “I just met with Senator Overman. You must be with the group of young ladies from North Carolina.”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“What’s your name?”
Claire remembered what she’d just said to Hampton, and now she spoke without hesitation. “Donna,” she said.
“Donna what?”
“It’s not important.”
“It’s not important?” the stranger repeated. “Come on. You’re a southern gal, aren’t you? Riding in a fancy dining car in the middle of the night, getting tours from senators? Names are always important to girls like you.”
“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 fat
her 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.
He smoothed the lapels on his black suit and ran his hand over the red silk tie that Katherine had presented him with that evening while he’d stood trimming his mustache before the bathroom mirror. She’d said something about Claire and Paul, about their engagement. She may have even said something about Richard and herself, perhaps something about their own engagement, but as usual Richard had not been able to slow his mind enough to listen to her, to take in her words and register their meaning. His ears had sped through Katherine’s speech, and now all he could picture were her beautiful but sad brown eyes that sought his in the bathroom mirror.
He pushed the memory from his mind and smiled at the two girls in the lobby. Nadia giggled with relief. Grace rose from her seat.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” the two sisters replied.
“Thank you for keeping our guests as dry as possible.” In the ballroom on the other side of the doors, the band struck up another song. Richard tried to catch the tune over the sound of the voices inside, but he didn’t recognize it. He smiled at the girls. “Of course it rains like this in Wilmington too,” he said, “but you’d never know it by how my future in-laws are acting.”
He slipped his hands into his pockets and walked across the lobby toward the entryway. As if by instinct, Grace and Nadia both stepped toward the door so they could open it should Mr. McAdam want to step outside, but Richard was not yet ready to step outside. Instead, he stood by the chair where Grace had just been sitting and pulled back the curtain and looked out the window at the evening. It was near dark, the rain still falling in great smacks against the already sodden earth.
“I’m expecting a few more guests,” Richard said. He let the curtain close and turned back to Grace and Nadia. “Do you know Mr. Guyon?”
“Yes,” Grace said.
Richard wasn’t surprised. Everyone in town—even those not in textiles—knew Hugo Guyon by now, the superintendent at Loray Mill, a northerner but still one of the most powerful men in the city, a man now mired in the politics of the strike that had unfolded over the past few months with violent speed.
“And you’ve heard about the strike?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Grace said.
Nadia nodded her head yes. “I’ve heard about it too.”
“Well, apparently my future in-laws heard about it as well, but it seems that hearing about it wasn’t good enough. When they left the Armington this evening they asked the driver to take them by the mill so they could see the strike for themselves. The people picketing in front of the mill weren’t too happy at the sight of a big black limousine cruising by for an eyeful.” He pictured the scene as he’d been imagining it since first hearing of it only an hour or so earlier: the screaming, dirty faces of women and children pressed against the car’s windows, fists beating against the glass, knees and feet kicking against the doors. He stifled a smile. Something about the fear he’d seen on the Lytles’ faces had pleased him. “The strikers left a nice dent in the front left fender and busted out one of the headlights. Nearly scared the Lytles to death. Mrs. Lytle was still crying when they arrived.” He shook his head and fought the smile again.
“Can you imagine that?” he asked. “Wanting to see something like a strike, as if it’s a spectacle or a parade or a baseball game? Wanting to see the tent colony? Can you imagine it in this weather? This rain? All those haggard people, sopping wet, those smoky oil lamps. Mr. Lytle said it looked like the Allied front.” He shook his head. “That man has no idea what war looks like.”
It suddenly came to his mind that Claire must have told the Lytles about the group of strikers she’d encountered in Washington during the tour with Lee Overman. She’d cried when she’d told Richard about how poor and hungry they looked, about how she feared that something bad was going to hap
pen to them after some singer had confronted the senator. Claire had to have told Paul as well, and Paul had to have told his father, and George Lytle just had to see the tragedy of humanity for himself.
Outside, the rain had ended and the silence of its not falling now filled the lobby. The music stopped and the ballroom broke into applause.
Headlights flashed across the windowpanes, followed by the sound of an automobile coming to a stop in one of the parking areas. Richard turned and looked at both Nadia and Grace. “Thank you so much for your help this evening,” he said. “Tell your father I said as much when you see him. I’m sure he’s tucked away in the kitchen overseeing dinner. He always does such a wonderful job for us. Tonight’s no exception.”
He opened the front door and stepped into the night. Water dripped from the canopy of pine boughs that shadowed the already dark lawn in front of the club. He stood beneath the portico without moving. White columns ran along the porch on either side of him. He peered into the darkness in search of the car whose headlights he’d just seen and whose tires on the wet road he’d just heard. In the distance, raindrops glimmered on the hoods of the automobiles parked beneath the pines. A door slammed shut, then another, and Richard heard footsteps approaching. He held his breath and steeled his nerves. The silhouettes grew closer and Richard recognized the Wrights, an older couple from his and Katherine’s church, a man and woman with whom his parents had been close friends before they’d passed. Mr. Wright saw Richard standing on the porch and raised his hand in greeting. His other hand grasped his wife’s elbow as if steering her down the wet path toward the stairs.
“Hello, Richard,” Mr. Wright said, his thin face and gray mustache lit by the light coming from behind Richard. Mrs. Wright looked out at Richard from beneath a plum-colored pillbox hat, a spray of yellow flowers set into its brim. “I’m sorry we’re late,” Mr. Wright said. “Wanted to wait out the rain. Didn’t know we’d be waiting this long.”
“Oh, it’s perfectly all right,” Richard said, smiling, exhaling. Although no one would ever know, it embarrassed him to be so relieved at seeing the couple instead of Guyon. “Dinner hasn’t started yet. It’s just been music and dancing so far.”