by Wiley Cash
In a drunkenness that quickly gave way to rage once his mind computed what the women had called him and what the boy did in disrespecting him, it did not matter to Albert that the people he struck were primarily women, some of them young and some of them very old. They were all part of the same enemy. As he swung the stick and felt the jolt of bodies, he pictured himself atop a garlanded float sixty years from now, a proud veteran of this heroic struggle on the streets of Gastonia on the night the Loray strike came to an end.
A voice called his name, and he saw Tom pushing his way through the crowd, his pistol drawn and pointed toward the sky. He tripped over something and fell to the street, squeezing off a shot that ricocheted against the blacktop and caromed into the night. The crowd dispersed at the sound of the gunshot, and Tom got to his feet and pointed his pistol at the strikers, who were fleeing in all directions.
“Stop!” Tom yelled. “Police!”
Albert gave chase, the stake raised over his head, but Tom caught him and spun him around.
“What the hell happened?” Tom asked.
“I was attacked,” Albert said. He shook free of Tom’s grasp. “And I didn’t have my goddamned gun! They could’ve killed me, Tom!”
Tom looked up, scanned the crowd, the majority of which was headed up North Loray Street in the direction of the tent colony and union headquarters.
“Who attacked you?”
“All of them, damn it. Every single one of them. They could’ve killed me.”
Tom looked up the street at the backs of the fleeing strikers, then broke into a run behind them. Albert didn’t know what else to do, so he followed. He could hear Tom screaming something but he was too far behind him to hear what it was.
The moon had risen fully, and beneath its light Albert watched as dozens of people scattered through the tent colony on the west side of the road. Oil lamps swung from posts, casting an eerie yellow light and throwing long, thin shadows against the white canvas tents. He heard voices, screams, women’s calls for men to get their guns and go out to the road. They were being attacked.
Up ahead, electric lights burned inside the union headquarters. The door opened and slammed shut, opened and slammed shut again. Loud voices came from inside. Someone extinguished the lights one by one, and the building and the night around it fell into darkness.
Tom was still running, so Albert ran too. His side pained him, and he held his hand cupped against it to stave off the ache, the hot dogs and candied apple and whiskey gathering in the back of his throat. He wanted to stop, catch his breath, but he feared being left behind. Tom slowed as he drew closer to the union building. He held his pistol with both hands, held it pointed at the door, only ten or fifteen yards away. Sirens wailed in the distance. Albert knew the rest of the police department would be there soon, and in his drunkenness and exhaustion he couldn’t decide whether or not that was a good thing.
“Come on out of there!” Tom yelled, his gun still drawn and pointed at the door.
“Go to hell!” a voice said from inside.
Tom took a running leap and kicked the door. It didn’t budge. There was laughter from inside.
“Go to hell!” another voice said.
The sirens were behind Albert now, and beneath their noise he heard the sound of tires coming up the road. He turned and saw two police cars pull into the gravel and skid to a stop. Their doors flew open, and officers scattered, two of them running behind the building. Aderholt climbed from the driver’s seat of his automobile, and Albert felt his stomach lurch in his throat. His mouth flooded with bile.
“What the hell, Roach!” Aderholt yelled. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Albert turned and looked for Tom to make sense of what had just happened, hoped he’d be able to explain the past few minutes in a way that made some kind of impression on the chief, that displayed some of the bravery and honor that Albert believed he’d shown.
“We were attacked!” Tom said. He held his gun down by his side and rubbed the knee of the leg he’d used in trying to kick in the door. He nodded toward the building. “They’re holed up inside here.”
Aderholt looked from Tom to Albert.
“You been drinking, Roach?” Aderholt asked.
“No, sir,” Albert said. “I just wanted to come down here and help out.”
“Help with what?” Aderholt said. “What could you have possibly helped with?”
He brushed past Albert, walked up to the building, and knocked on the door.
“Beal!” he said. “Beal, if you’re in there I suggest you come out now and have a word with me. We’ll get this all ironed out so nobody gets hurt.”
They all waited. Albert looked toward the tent colony on the other side of the road. The oil lamps had been snuffed out. Clouds had gathered. The night had grown darker without his realizing it. He wished he had his gun, considered whispering to Tom, asking for him to give it back, but he was afraid of the chief discovering that he still carried it.
“Beal?” Aderholt said. He knocked again, stepped back, put his hands in his pockets. He waited, appeared content to do so all night.
“They attacked us, Chief,” Beal said from behind the door.
“Well, open up and let’s talk about it,” Aderholt said.
Whispered voices followed by hushes came from inside. There was the sound of something heavy sliding across the floor. Furniture, perhaps. The lock clicked. The door opened. A tall young man stepped out. He held a rifle with both hands, kept it pointed toward the sky.
“I want to talk with Beal,” Aderholt said.
“I’m his emissary,” the man said.
“Son, I need you to put that gun down,” Aderholt said.
“I’m on the union’s private property,” the man said. “I got a right to hold this gun. I got more of a right to hold this gun than y’all have to be standing here right now.”
“Send Beal out here or we’ll need to see about coming inside,” Aderholt said.
“You’re going to need a search warrant,” the man said.
“To hell with a warrant,” Tom said. He stepped forward and reached for the door, but the man blocked his way. Tom grabbed the barrel of the man’s rifle.
“No, Tom,” Aderholt said. He reached for him, but the man pushed Tom, and he fell back and sprawled on the grass. “No!” Aderholt yelled again, but it was too late. Tom raised his pistol and fired one shot that caught the man in the stomach. He dropped his rifle and fell forward. He reached for the door frame, and caught himself before he hit the ground.
The shot echoed down the street. It was followed by the sound of the windows being broken from the inside with the barrels of shotguns and rifles. The wounded man managed to pick up his rifle and open the door. He disappeared inside the building.
“Now hold on,” Aderholt said, but his words were swallowed by a shotgun blast.
The windshield in one of the police cars exploded. Everyone scattered in different directions. Albert fell to his belly and crawled along the ground to where Tom was crouched behind a car. Albert reached out, and Tom handed him his pistol. Albert’s heart lifted. He’d never fired his weapon in the line of duty, and now he’d been given his chance.
Tom raised himself, leaned over the hood of the car, and fired at the building. Another blast from inside. Shot peppered the front fender and tore at the ground beneath the car. A tire hissed as air escaped.
“Goddamn!” Tom said. He laughed, looked at Albert, who sat leaning against the front fender. “We’re in it now.”
Albert peered over the hood. Rifle barrels protruded from the headquarters’ broken windows. He fired, emptied his weapon. There was another shotgun blast, and what felt like fire ripped into Albert’s arm. He fell back, felt blood soak through his sleeve.
“I’m hit,” he said. He opened his gun, fed rounds into the cylinder, closed it. He looked over the hood, fired again.
A few last gunshots from both sides. The sound of more sirens in the distanc
e. A car’s engine fired nearby, then tires peeled off down the road. Footsteps as someone ran through the grass and then the gravel. Albert looked for Tom. He couldn’t find him. He crawled around to the front of the automobile. His fingers plumbed his arm for the wound. His flesh was numb. He could smell his own blood.
“I’m hit!” he said again.
He heard the sound of someone moving toward him on the other side of the car. He raised his pistol and took aim at the figure as it revealed itself.
“Hold!” Tom screamed. “Hold!”
He collapsed beside Albert, fell against the car, out of breath. Albert looked down, realized that Tom had dragged someone along with him. It was Aderholt.
“Chief’s hit,” Tom said. “They shot him in the back. I think it’s bad.”
Aderholt turned his face toward Albert. His skin was white against his black suit and tie. He coughed. Albert could see where blood had flooded Aderholt’s mouth.
“Why were you even here?” he asked. He coughed again. “Why?”
Chapter Twelve
Hampton Haywood
Saturday, June 8, 1929
A loud pop in the distant night caught Hampton’s attention. He opened his eyes and looked toward the window, waited to hear the sound again. The photograph of his mother and father still rested against the lamp.
Another pop, silence, then another. They were gunshots, volleys of them. He didn’t know what kind of guns he was hearing, didn’t know whether they were being fired in celebration or anger or defense. He thought of the picket Beal had planned. Hampton sat only a block from the mill, less than a half mile from the headquarters. He’d be able to hear shots from either location.
He sat up on the side of the bed. He considered going to the window and looking out, but something told him to remain seated. His first thought was that a mob had overrun the headquarters. He’d heard of the night back in April when vigilantes stormed the union’s first headquarters on Franklin Avenue while the National Guard stood by and let it happen.
Footsteps echoed from the street in front of the boardinghouse. Hampton reached for the lamp and extinguished it. Outside, the footsteps ran past the house and down the street. He listened until he couldn’t hear them anymore.
Sirens wailed up on Franklin. Hampton was certain that something had gone terribly wrong. He tried to decide what time it could be. Midnight? Perhaps later?
The floorboards gave way under his steps like piano keys. He opened his bedroom door, revealing the dark hall and the landing at the top of the stairs. He opened the door a little farther and peered past the doorjamb. He listened to the crystalline ring of the house’s silence. On the other side of the hall, a man named Stamp Dixon stood in the door to his own room in plaid boxer shorts and a white undershirt. Hampton had heard that Dixon worked as a bailer at Loray, one of the few jobs the mill offered Negroes. Hampton had never asked him directly, but it was clear that Dixon had no interest in either the union or a fancily dressed Negro from out of town.
The two men stood looking at one another across the hallway. In Dixon’s gaze Hampton felt every misgiving he’d feared about his trip south. The man’s face appeared stoic, but something in his eyes also portrayed disgust and disapproval. He stepped back into his dark room and closed the door quietly. Hampton listened as the lock clicked, listened to the springs give as Dixon returned to bed.
Hampton stepped back inside and closed the door, locking it just as Dixon had. The wail of the sirens still came from up around Franklin, and Hampton figured that whatever was making the noise—a police car or an ambulance—had parked at the scene.
What could he do aside from wait? After the anger he’d faced at the rally, he didn’t feel safe leaving the house. He had nowhere to go, no one to take him in, no one to hustle him out of town, where he could catch the next train to New York. Sophia and Ella and Violet were probably miles away in Bessemer City. They wouldn’t learn of the gunshots and the sirens until morning.
Loud voices rose from the street outside Hampton’s window. He pulled back the curtain, kept his body in the shadows of the room, and looked out onto the street. A group of ten or so men walked quickly past the house and away from whatever was happening on Franklin. One of them stopped and looked back. The group continued on until another man stopped and spoke to the lone member who’d paused.
“Come on!” the man called out. “You want to go to jail?”
Hampton let go of the curtain. There was nothing he could do now but wait until morning.
He knew he must have fallen asleep because the noise he heard jolted him upright: a loud bang, followed by another. The sound of automobile doors slamming shut. He scrambled off the bed and went to the window, where he opened the curtains just wide enough for one of his eyes to look out on the street. Trees obscured his vision but he could see a vehicle parked in front of the boardinghouse. He realized the sirens had stopped, but at what point he did not know. Then, on the porch downstairs, out of sight from where Hampton stood at the window, someone banged a fist against the front door.
He stepped, nearly fell, away from the window. He looked around for something with which to protect himself, but his room was nearly bare: the cot, the small table, the chair sitting before it. Nothing that would be any match for a gun or a knife or a gang of men like the group he’d seen on the street earlier.
There were voices downstairs. Whoever had been at the door was now inside. He could hear Miss Adeline’s voice coming through the floor. The other voices he could hear spoke in low whispers, but Miss Adeline nearly yelled. He tried to discern if she sounded mad or confused or scared. He couldn’t tell. He returned to the window and parted the curtain. The truck was still there. He thought of lifting the windowpane and climbing out, jumping to the ground. It was twenty feet, no more than that, but there was grass beneath. He pictured himself running down the street, cutting up through a yard, trying to hide in a crawl space beneath one of the small houses until the morning light allowed him to find his way to the headquarters, where he’d beg someone to help him.
The voices on the first floor had grown quiet, but now Hampton heard the creak of the stairs; then he heard footsteps coming up the flight toward the landing outside his room.
Like his father had done, Hampton decided he would fight with a fury fueled by fear and anger. He stomped across the room, the footfalls making him sound larger, stronger than he knew he would feel once he opened the door. He turned the lock as if chambering a round and threw open the door.
Miss Adeline’s face collided with his chest. Her forehead slammed into his lip, drawing blood into his mouth. The old woman stumbled backward, collapsed, more out of shock than the violence of the impact. The oil lamp she’d carried skidded across the floor, snuffed itself out. Hampton looked down at the old woman, touched his lip, saw the blood, tasted it. He bent toward her, and tried to help.
“You got company,” she said.
A woman’s voice, then another, called to him from the back stairs. Already on his knees, Hampton pivoted and looked around the banister. Sophia stood at the bottom of the stairs, Ella beside her.
In what seemed to be one motion, Stamp Dixon turned the lock and flung open his door so that he had to stop it from slamming shut after it bounced against its hinges. He stood above Hampton, the light of his room behind him, tucking his undershirt into a pair of pants he struggled to button at the same time.
“You damned nigger,” he said. He stepped out and grabbed Hampton by the collar, his other hand grasping at whatever it could find: Hampton’s arm, his shirt, his pants’ waist. Dixon pulled him toward the stairs, pushed against Hampton once his body teetered on the top step. Hampton felt himself going over, the small world of the boardinghouse’s attic landing and then its narrow stairwell closing in around him as he tumbled head over feet to the story below.
As he fell, he scratched and kicked at the walls, did his best to stop himself before he reached the bottom, before he heard his neck snap, b
efore the already dark stairwell was suddenly thrown into complete blackness. He caught himself halfway down the stairs, realized that he hadn’t fallen as far as he’d thought. He was on his back, his legs splayed against the wall, the fingers of both hands grasping the stair rail’s wooden spindles. Dixon stood in the hallway above. Beside him, Miss Adeline was on her feet.
“You damned nigger,” Dixon said again. He raised his hand and pointed toward the street in front of the house. “I don’t know what the hell’s going on out there, but I know you and those white girls down there got something to do with it. I’m going to tell you right now to get gone. I’m calling the police. You ain’t done nothing but made things worse. Nothing but that.”
Outside on the darkened street, Ella and Sophia begged Hampton to get inside the truck, to hunker down in the floorboard, but he refused.
“What happened?” he said. “I heard gunshots, then sirens.”
“It’s Beal,” Sophia said.
“He’s shot?”
“No,” Ella said. “There was a raid. Police were shot. Get inside.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Ella’s got a friend who can help,” Sophia said. She grabbed Hampton’s arm and pulled him toward the open driver’s-side door.
“I’m not sitting down in the floor like some boy,” he said. He’d ridden into Gastonia crammed into the back of Reed’s car. He didn’t want to ride out of town the same way. He walked to the back of the truck, put his foot on the bumper, and climbed over the tailgate. He felt the truck give when Sophia and Ella sat down inside, heard them slam their doors. The engine fired. He lay on his back.
His mind tried to track the turns that Sophia took as she drove, but Hampton did not know the city well, certainly not beyond downtown and the Loray village. Headlights whipped by. He tried to sink his body as low as he could, tried to will the light from catching him. Above him, streetlights streaked by like comets. When the truck slowed in traffic he could hear people’s voices, passing automobiles, horns honking, and the occasional siren off in the distance.