by Wiley Cash
“We want a vote, Fred!” she yelled.
The crowd booed. Another glass bottle, this one half-full of what looked like liquor, landed in the grass in front of Hampton and Violet. A rotten tomato struck the back of the white man in front of him. The man stumbled forward, whipped his body around, and searched the crowd. Hampton refused to meet his eye.
“Hold on,” Beal said from the stage. “Everyone hold on, stay calm.”
“We want a vote, Fred!” Ella said again. “We want a vote!”
“Membership’s closed!” a man’s voice screamed from the middle of the field.
“Take those niggers home!” another yelled.
Ella acted as if she hadn’t heard the men’s voices. She kept her eyes locked on Beal where he stood on the stage. Sophia lifted the rope and stepped under it. She cleared her throat, then she started shouting.
“In the founding documents of the National Textile Workers Union, as well as in the charter of the party that supports it, it is outlined that all workers, regardless of gender, race, or class, shall be offered membership if they embrace the tenets of the union,” she said. “And, Mr. Beal, I can assure you that the brothers and sisters I have brought with me this evening embrace the tenets of this union.”
“We’re calling for a vote!” Ella said.
“Give them their damned vote if that’s what they want,” a woman’s voice said.
“A vote is all we’re asking for,” Sophia said.
Beal’s eyes scanned the crowd. He pushed his hair off his forehead. His skin glistened with sweat.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He looked to Carlton Reed, who stood beside him. Beal leaned toward Reed. They spoke quietly. Reed nodded his head. “Okay. Let’s take a vote,” Beal said. “All those in favor of accepting the contingent from Bessemer City, please raise your hand.”
In unison, Sophia’s and Ella’s hands shot up over their heads. Hampton raised his as well. Boos rained down on them.
“Put your hand down, nigger!” Chesley yelled. He dropped the rope and walked toward Hampton, who kept his hand raised. “Put your hand down, nigger. This vote’s open to union members only.”
“I am a representative of the American Communist Party,” Hampton said. He removed his wallet from his back pocket and opened it to search for his membership card. “Which is the governing body of this union.”
Chesley smacked the wallet out of Hampton’s hand. It landed between his feet. He looked down, saw that the photograph of his mother and father on their wedding day had slipped from his wallet. He bent to retrieve it.
“Bow, nigger,” Chesley said. He reared back and kicked Hampton in the ribs.
Hampton sprawled in the grass, sucked down two huge gulps of air. The crowd opened up and formed a ring around them. He gathered his wallet and the photo and stuffed them into his back pocket. And then he was on his feet. He lunged at Chesley and threw his arms around his body, lifted him off the ground, and slammed him onto his back. Chesley still wore the rifle on a strap over his shoulder, and he rolled to his feet, the rifle in his hands. He held it pointed at Hampton’s chest. Violet screamed.
Then Hampton heard the sound of people gasping around him. He realized his eyes had been closed, and he opened them and saw that Chesley held the rifle with one hand and the other hand was at his throat, pulling at something wrapped around his neck.
Chesley tried to look behind him but couldn’t, and Hampton saw that Ella held a small knife beneath Chesley’s chin. She’d wrapped her other arm around his neck, used it to pull him backward, to expose his throat to the blade. She spoke into his ear.
“I’m from the same mountains you’re from, Mr. Chesley, and nobody ever taught me to talk like that,” she said. “Where’d you learn to talk like that?” She tightened her arm around his neck with a jolt that caused Chesley to flinch. He opened his mouth to speak, found that he didn’t have the air. “Now, I need you to just let go of that rifle, and then I won’t have to stick this blade into your neck.” He held the rifle out in front of him as if waiting for someone to take it. “Just go ahead and turn it loose,” Ella said. “That’s it.”
Chesley let go of the rifle. It fell to the grass. Hampton bent and picked it up.
“We cannot fight one another!” Beal said from the stage. “That’s what they want, and we can’t let it happen.” He waited, but Ella did not let Chesley go. “Ella!” Beal screamed. “Ella May!”
Ella finally turned loose of Chesley and stepped away from him. He coughed, touched the place on his neck where the knife had pressed against his skin. Hampton grabbed Violet’s hand, reached for Ella, took her arm. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“This is all bullshit,” Sophia said.
Hampton looked at her, nodded toward the group of black workers, all of whose faces wore looks of terror. “Let’s go,” he said again.
At first the crowd was silent as they passed through it. Hampton let go of Ella but held tight to Violet’s hand. He felt the weight of Chesley’s rifle where he’d slung the strap over his shoulder. The applause began near the stage, and by the time they’d reached the edge of the crowd on their way to the road, the audience had begun to chant, “Niggers go home!” over and over.
One of the older women in their group had begun to cry, and her crying was the only sound they made as they walked back to the place where they’d left the truck. Sophia ran and caught up with them. Hampton clutched Violet’s hand and pulled her along. They were far ahead of the rest of the group, and he didn’t care if they were moving too fast for some of the stragglers to catch up.
“We’re not giving up,” Sophia said. She spoke as if she were running out of breath. “This ain’t the final word.”
“I ain’t giving up,” Ella said. Her voice came from behind Hampton. He did not turn to look at her.
“This is over,” Hampton said. “This was over before it started.”
Ella ran around in front of him and walked backward so she could look him in the eye. “It ain’t over for me,” she said. She nodded at Violet, who now walked in-step with Hampton. “And not for her.” She looked over his shoulder at the Bessemer City workers behind him. “And not for them neither.”
“It’s over,” he said.
They reached the side street where they’d left the truck parked. Hampton kept walking, but Violet stopped, shook her hand free of his. He looked back at her. “Come with me,” he said.
“Where? Your room?” Violet said. “And what then?”
“Come home with me,” Hampton said. “To New York.”
“Are you serious, Hampton?” she said. “I can’t just leave. Not like you can.”
“No one’s leaving,” Sophia said. “Let’s all just talk about this. Let’s talk about what we do next.”
Hampton turned and walked away from them.
Violet called his name.
“Let him go,” Ella said.
The boardinghouse was only a few blocks away, and Hampton’s fury pushed him toward the solitude it offered. All he wanted was to be alone in his attic room so he could pack his things for the trip home. He was as angry as he’d ever been in his life, but more than that he was embarrassed and sad. He’d walked a hundred yards or so when he turned and saw that he could see the lit field where the rally continued. The dark shapes of bodies moved in silhouette in front of the stage.
Hampton slipped the rifle strap from his shoulder and raised the gun, pointed it at the bodies in the field, felt the weight of his finger on the trigger. He had never fired a gun before. He had no idea how far a bullet would go or what damage it would do if it arrived, but he felt a near-overwhelming urge to shoot indiscriminately into the crowd of white people, to hurt and humiliate them the way he’d been hurt and humiliated. Neither he nor his father had invited violence, but it had found them. His father had met it, and Hampton wondered if he would meet it too.
But he could not squeeze the trigger. He lowered the gun, tossed it into the tre
es by the road, listened as it crashed through the branches. Throwing the gun caused the pain in his side to flair, and he touched his ribs, wondering what he would feel if one or more of them were broken.
He continued walking south toward Franklin Avenue and the boardinghouse. He crossed over and saw the huge, glowing form of Loray. He thought he heard the sound of footsteps behind him, but there was no one there. His eyes searched the long shadows cast by tall trees and the unlit places in between houses. He found himself desperate to discover the shape of a man rushing toward him. Maybe his imagination had created the sound; maybe he wanted the violence of another confrontation, wanted to exercise the hate that had laid its hand upon his soul.
He reached the house and climbed the three flights of the back staircase to his room in the attic. He turned on the lamp and sat down on the bed. Tomorrow he would send a cable to Weisbord and demand a return ticket to New York.
He reached into his back pocket, found the photograph of his mother and father. He stared at it for a moment, and then he propped the photo against the lamp. He lay down and stared at the ceiling and pictured his parents back in Mississippi, tried in vain to envision his father’s face, but a memory of a time before that night did not seem to exist. He realized that the only memories he had of life with his father spanned the course of the few hours during which they’d fled for their lives.
Hampton closed his eyes. He knew he was waiting for something, but he did not know what it could be.
Chapter Eleven
Albert Roach
Friday, June 7, 1929
Jealousy nearly split Albert’s heart in two that sunny afternoon as he and Tom Gibson stood on the sidewalk and watched hundreds of old boys march by in their Confederate battle grays. The crowd of bodies swelled around the two men, nearly pushing them off the curb and onto the street, where the veterans—most on foot with canes in their hands, some seated on the backs of convertible automobiles, the rest standing atop garlanded flatbed trailers—paraded down Trade Street beneath an early summer sun, the bodies of the marchers and the shapes of the cars and floats hardly registering shadows on the blacktop below.
Estimates were that 150,000 people had flocked to Charlotte for this four-day celebration of Confederate valor, and Albert believed that every single one of them stood alongside him. Aside from the smell of the asphalt where it radiated beneath the veterans’ boots and the vehicles’ tires, Albert’s nose caught the smoky-sweet scents of cigars, the reek of sweaty bodies pressed too close together, the whiffs of hot dogs and chili, homebrew, and popcorn.
“There he is,” Tom said. He raised a hand and pointed across the street. Albert looked and saw O. Max Gardener in a suit and tie and black stovepipe hat standing on the other side of a battle-flag-swathed barrier. Dozens of official-looking people surrounded him. “It’s a pretty important day when the governor comes calling, ain’t it?”
“I reckon it is,” Albert said, but seeing the governor only made him feel worse. He’d never fought in a war, had never done anything that anyone could view as heroic. Albert Roach knew he was the last person who would warrant a visit from the governor.
It didn’t help things that Chief Aderholt had suspended him again—this time for drinking on the job—and try as he might, Tom’s little speech en route to Charlotte hadn’t helped either.
“Let’s just have us a nice time,” Tom had said from behind the wheel. “Do a little drinking, get away from Loray and that goddamned strike.”
Tom had been drinking when he’d said it, had been drinking since the moment he’d left home and picked up Albert. He’d driven with a Mason jar of white lightning tucked between his legs, and he and Albert had passed it back and forth until it was empty. Albert may have been sad standing there on the sidewalk as these heroes passed him by, but at least he was drunk, and that was better than just being sad.
Although Albert still had another week left in his suspension, he carried a pistol holstered beneath his jacket. Watching the soldiers march and hearing the bands play and seeing the red, white, and blue crepe paper strung from cables above the street made him want to retrieve his gun and fire it into the air in celebration. But he knew that Tom, who’d had even more to drink than Albert had, would be irritated by the attention.
It had been nice at first. The day was bright and warm, not yet hot on this first Friday in June. When they’d arrived the streets had been busy, but not quite as full as they were now, and they’d strolled along the sidewalk taking discreet sips from the Mason jar.
But as the streets had filled and the parade began, Albert found himself forlorn, as if his own disappointment would suffocate him if he didn’t do something. He ate two hot dogs all-the-way and a candied apple covered in peanuts, but none of it made him feel any better.
“You didn’t miss a damn thing not going to the war,” Tom said during the ride back to Gastonia after the parade. The setting sun bronzed the waters of the Catawba River as they crossed the bridge into Gaston County. “All I did in France was drink and whore, and hell, you can do that here in Gastonia.” He laughed, looked over at Albert, slapped him on the leg. “Shit, Roach,” he said. “Come on. You need to liven up. Let’s find you a drink or a girl, one.”
Albert turned and looked at Tom. Tom had his window rolled down and the sunlight poured across his face. At forty-four he was two years older than Albert, but he was also taller, thinner, and had all of his hair, and his wife was pretty and petite, with a sweet voice. Although Albert had only met the woman on a handful of occasions, she did not seem like the kind of woman who would yell or hold a grudge. Albert pictured his own wife, Eugenia, at home, sitting at the small, greasy table in the too-warm kitchen, an apron tied tight around her neck and waist, her breasts and stomach pushing against it. In the next room, little Cicely screamed from her crib. He wasn’t ready to go back there after having what should have been a grand afternoon.
“Let’s get that drink,” Albert said. Tom looked over at him and smiled. “Maybe find a woman too.”
“Now you’re talking,” Tom said.
Miss Grady Moore’s tavern was just a few miles south of the bridge over the Catawba, an old house in a thicket of woods that could not be seen from the road, but everyone knew it was there, the law included. That’s how Albert and Tom knew how to find it. They were welcomed not as officers of the Gastonia Police Department, but as mere citizens who needed to unwind.
Albert followed Tom through the front door and into a room off the kitchen whose windows had been covered over on the outside with pine boards. It was dark and musty; an old Edison phonograph in the corner spun a tinny, whiny song. They took a table by the dusty fireplace. Several other tables sat scattered around the room, mismatched and broken chairs pushed up under them. Naked bulbs hung overhead. A man and a woman drank and talked quietly at a table in the corner. The man had pulled his bowler hat low over his eyes. The couple didn’t look up when Albert and Tom entered, so Albert didn’t look their way after he’d taken a seat.
But Tom looked around as if he’d just walked into his own home. He nodded at the man and woman who sat and whispered to one another. Neither of them seemed to notice him.
“Turn that music up,” Tom said to no one in particular. He leaned back in his chair and rapped his knuckles on the tabletop. “Where’s my mistress?” he called. “Is she here? Is she near?”
Albert slipped his hands into his pockets, felt the holstered pistol jostle beneath his jacket. He watched Tom, waited to see what he’d do next. A rusty tin plate half-full of unshelled peanuts sat in the middle of the table. Albert grabbed a handful.
Lights burned in the kitchen. Albert could hear the sound of feet moving across the gritty floorboards. A woman appeared, her long brown hair pulled into a nest atop her head. She wore a long, dark shift that fell past her ankles and a dirty white apron that covered the front of her dress. She wasn’t old, but when she smiled at Tom her smile revealed wrinkles and missing teeth.
She carried a tray with a jug and two glasses sitting atop it. She sat the tray on the table and divvied out the glasses and placed the jug in between them. Tom put his arm around the woman’s waist and pulled her to him so that she half-sat on his lap. He nuzzled his head against her breasts.
“What do we have here?” he asked.
The woman let the tray dangle at her side. She put her free arm around Tom’s shoulder.
“Cherry wine,” she said. “Sweet and strong, like me.” Her laugh was more of a cackle. Tom laughed too, squeezed her around the waist, rubbed his face against her breasts again.
“Speaking of cherries,” he said. He nodded across the table at Albert. “My pal here’s looking for a girl. You know any that might be free tonight?”
“If you looking for cherries you done come to the wrong place.” She cackled again, coughed into the crook of her arm. “Ain’t none free neither.”
“You know what I mean,” Tom said. “Any girls?”
The woman leaned back and craned her neck and looked toward the kitchen.
“Ain’t nobody here but me,” she said. “Me and James, and I got him out in the woodpile. Might be some girls here later tonight, but right now it’s just me.”
Tom uncorked the jug and poured a drink for Albert and then himself. Albert watched him pick up his glass and knock it back in one big swallow. He coughed.
“That’s sweet,” Tom said.
Tom looked toward the kitchen, then turned his face up to the woman who still sat on his lap.
“I probably need to get into that kitchen while it’s empty,” he said. “As an officer of the law I need to inspect it for sanitary purposes. Make sure the pipes work, make sure anything that might be wet is supposed to be wet.”