by Wiley Cash
After a few minutes, Hampton sensed that they’d left the city. The sky darkened above him. The night grew silent. Sophia now drove without stopping, took curves without slowing. The truck creaked and rocked. Hampton closed his eyes, tried to steady himself, struggled to keep the dizziness from turning to nausea.
Sophia slowed the truck and pulled it to the side of the road. Where were they? In the country? A neighborhood street? Another town?
The passenger’s-side door creaked open. He heard Ella’s voice. “Excuse me,” she said. “Excuse me.”
“What you need?” a man’s voice asked from the side of the road. Hampton made himself as flat as possible. He closed his eyes, waited.
“Do you know where Katherine McAdam lives?”
“Well, sure,” the man said. “In the McAdam house.”
“Can you tell me how to get there?” Ella asked.
“What are you girls doing out this late?” he asked.
“We need to see the McAdams,” Ella said.
“Well,” the man said. He spoke slowly, as if considering each word, as if considering whether he should be giving directions this late at night to two women alone in a truck. “You just keep going up Main Street here. And once you pass the big Baptist church you just take a right on that next road there. The McAdams live at the end of it. You can’t see the house from the road, but it’s back there.”
“Thank you,” Ella said.
She closed her door and they rumbled off up the road. The engine groaned when they reached the hill.
There were no lights on inside the house, but there was starlight and moonlight enough for Hampton to see that the house was large. He and Sophia stood in the yard and watched as Ella walked up the steps to the wide, covered porch and stood before the door. She knocked, waited, knocked again. A light came on in a window on the second floor. Another light came on in what Hampton assumed was the hallway beside a bedroom. The added light made it even clearer that the house belonged to someone incredibly wealthy. It was the nicest home Hampton had ever seen in person.
A porch light came on, bathing Ella in yellow. Hampton heard someone fumble with the door on the other side. He was tempted to step away from the light, return to the truck, and let Ella and Sophia take care of things without him becoming a distraction to the white people he was certain must live here. But before Hampton could turn away the door opened and revealed a middle-aged white man with a thin mustache. He wore a robe and a pair of spectacles, his eyes and his hair proof of the deep sleep from which he’d just awoken.
The man stared at Ella as he tightened the sash around his robe.
“Can I help you?” he asked. He looked past Ella to where Sophia and Hampton stood side by side in the dark yard, almost out of reach of the light coming from the house. Hampton was prepared for the man to ask them all to leave, to threaten to call the police, to go inside and return with a rifle or some kind of weapon. Instead he stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door nearly shut behind him as if shielding Ella’s eyes from any valuables inside the house.
“Yes, sir,” Ella said. She bowed her head slightly. Her voice had taken on a tone of nervousness and uncertainty that Hampton had not heard before. “Good evening, sir. I’m sorry to bother you so late. Is Kate at home?”
“Kate?” the man said. He looked at Ella as if the name confused him. “What’s this about?”
“Well, sir, and again, I’m sorry to bother you like this, but I was hoping to speak with Kate.”
“Richard,” a woman’s voice called from inside the house. The man pushed the door open and looked up as if he were looking toward the second floor. Hampton took a step forward, lowered himself a little, and followed the man’s eyes. He saw a woman standing by the railing at the top of a wooden staircase. Her brown hair was pulled back in a bun, and she wore what looked to be a blue silk robe. “Let her in,” the woman said.
“What is this, Katherine?” the man asked. “What’s this about?”
“Let her in, Richard,” the woman named Katherine said.
Richard stood as if uncertain of what to do, but then he opened the door just wide enough so that Ella could pass by him without the two of them touching. Ella raised her hand and gestured over her shoulder to where Sophia and Hampton stood.
“I’ve got friends with me,” she said.
“Show them in, Richard,” the woman at the top of the stairs said. “All of them.”
Richard opened the door a little wider. Ella turned and offered a weak smile. She went inside. Richard did not look at Sophia or Hampton, but he stood there with the door ajar. Sophia moved toward the house, walked up the porch steps. Hampton followed her. When they entered, they found Ella had already ascended the stairs toward the woman. Hampton assumed that the woman at the top of the stairs must be Kate, but he could not imagine how Ella could know and trust someone so wealthy, someone who lived so well. The hardwood floors gleamed under the foyer’s lights. A darkened hallway sat on one side of the staircase, leading to what Hampton assumed was the kitchen at the back of the house. To Hampton’s left was a large dining room. He’d glimpsed a grand chandelier hanging over a long dining table as he’d passed through the front door. Oil portraits and old photographs, what looked to be daguerreotypes, hung on the walls. On his right, just inside the door, was a sitting room.
Ella and Kate stood whispering at the top of the stairs. The man named Richard pulled his robe tight around him again, refusing—perhaps unable—to make eye contact with Sophia and Hampton.
“Richard,” Kate said. He looked up to where she stood on the floor above them. Ella was beside her. “Please offer our guests a seat, and then wake Claire and have her put on some coffee. There’s cake in the cupboard. Please cut it.” She turned away. Ella followed her. Hampton heard a door close.
Richard stared at the spot where the two women had been standing, then he lifted his hand and gestured toward the sitting room. Hampton followed Sophia inside. The room was dark, but he could see a long leather sofa and two sitting chairs. Richard turned on the light, and Sophia took a seat on the sofa. Hampton sat down beside her.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Richard said. He nodded, kept his eyes on the floor.
“Thank you,” Sophia said.
Richard nodded again and left the room. Hampton listened as he walked up the stairs. The house was quiet. Then he heard Richard knock gently on a door and say, “Claire.”
Hampton looked around the room. The two sitting chairs were on his right. Across the room, a low cabinet had been pulled away from the wall; one of its doors was open, revealing a stack of records. Hampton looked around the room, but he did not see a phonograph.
He’d almost forgotten that Sophia was sitting beside him, until he felt the warmth of her hand on top of his own. Her touch startled him. He looked at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For what? There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“For asking you to come,” she said. “For convincing Weisbord to send you. It’s my fault.”
“No,” he said. “If Beal were a better organizer—”
“It’s my fault you came to Gastonia,” she said, “not Fred’s. But we’re safe here. No matter what happened tonight, we’re safe here.”
Whispered voices floated into the room from the stairwell. People descended the stairs as quietly as possible, turned at the bottom, followed the hallway to the kitchen. Voices, louder now, came from the back of the house, accompanied by the sounds of cabinets and drawers opening and closing. Sophia and Hampton sat, holding hands, listening to the sounds of the people in the kitchen. Soon there was the smell of coffee brewing.
A few minutes later, Katherine rounded the corner and stood in the entrance to the sitting room. Ella stood beside her.
“Good evening,” she said. “You must be Ms. Blevin.” She stepped forward and reached for Sophia’s hand. “And you must be Mr. Haywood.” Hampton stood and took her hand in his, found her hands
hake firm and formal. His mind could not help but marvel at the impossibility of him touching such an elegant white woman in such an elegant home in the Carolina of the Klan and Jim Crow.
“Please, make yourselves comfortable,” the woman said. Hampton returned to his seat on the long sofa. Ella walked around the coffee table and sat in the armchair closest to Hampton. “Ella, let me speak with my husband.”
“Thank you, Kate,” Ella said.
“Of course,” Kate said. “Of course.”
Kate turned and went down the hallway. Hampton heard her voice in the kitchen, followed by Richard’s voice, which seemed louder, perhaps angry.
“She’s going to help us,” Ella said. She looked at Hampton. “She’s going to get you on the next train.”
Someone was coming up the hallway toward the sitting room. The shape of a woman filled the door, and Hampton, remembering that Kate had told her husband to “wake Claire,” kept his eyes on the table before him. It was one thing to touch a married woman in her home; it was another to look her daughter in the face.
“There are milk and sugar here, if you’d like,” a voice said. It seemed to belong more to a woman than to a girl, and Hampton knew that whoever had spoken was close to his own age. A silver tray was lowered toward the table; it held a pot of coffee, three cups with spoons, a carafe of milk, and a small bowl of sugar.
Hampton could not help but glance toward the woman’s face. What he found shocked him enough that he could not stop himself from saying what he said next.
“Donna?”
Upon hearing that name in his mouth, the girl dropped the tray the last inch or so. It crashed to the table, the impact overturning the carafe of milk, spilling it onto the floor. The woman gasped at the clatter. She looked back and forth between Hampton’s face and the milk that ran over the table and dripped onto the rug.
It was her, Donna, the girl from the train. Hampton was certain that she was the girl who’d wandered into the dining car in the middle of the night. The girl he’d made the mistake of speaking to when something told him he shouldn’t. The girl who he’d feared had led to his lynching when Beal ordered him off the train in Salisbury just a few days ago.
Donna held his gaze. She appeared stunned.
“Donna?” Sophia said. She looked from Hampton to the girl.
Donna blushed a pale pink. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think you may have the wrong person. My name is Claire.” She smiled, but Hampton saw her smile for the lie it was.
“Of course,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Who’s Donna?” Sophia asked.
“I’m sorry,” Hampton said. He looked at Sophia, then at Ella. “Someone I used to know. I just thought, I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
Claire now backed out of the room, nodded by way of goodbye, and then disappeared.
“Who’s Donna?” Sophia asked again.
Just then came the sound of Richard’s voice from the kitchen.
“This is unbelievable,” he said. “That’s the woman Claire met in D.C.?”
“Huh,” Ella said. “I knew I recognized that girl.” She reached out and turned over one of the coffee cups. She picked up the pot and filled her cup. She took a sip, swallowed loudly. Took another.
“What of it?” Kate said. “Who cares, Richard?”
Richard said something else, but she shushed him, cut him off from speaking.
A door banged open in the back of the house, and loud steps came up the hallway. Another door opened, closed. Richard appeared, a heavy blanket folded beneath his arm. He had changed out of his robe into a button-down shirt and trousers. His once messy hair was brushed back away from his forehead. He looked at Hampton.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Where?” Hampton asked.
“To the car.” He tossed the folded blanket toward Hampton. It landed on his lap, barely clearing the tray on the table.
“What’s this for?” Hampton asked.
“To hide you,” Richard said.
For the second time in less than a week, Hampton found himself in a white man’s automobile in the middle of the night. This was the South about which he’d always been told, but he’d never been told about the kindness of mill owner’s wives, the protective power of hillbilly women like Ella May, the willingness of a girl like Donna, or Claire, to shove the truth deep down into a place where they both hoped it would stay.
And now he was leaving this place, headed to Charlotte with money offered him by the McAdams to purchase a ticket.
“It doesn’t matter where to,” Richard had said. “Just get the hell out of North Carolina.”
Hunkered down in the floorboard of Richard’s Super Six, Hampton was leaving with nothing but the clothes he had on. The suit he’d worn down from New York was tattered and grass-stained after his fight with Beal. He reached around and touched his back pocket to make certain that he carried his wallet. It was there, but he remembered that he’d left the photograph of his mother and father by the lamp on the table back in the boardinghouse.
He sat up, tossed the blanket off him, and leaned over the seat. It startled Richard, and the Essex swerved sharply. Richard yanked the steering wheel in one direction and then in the other as he regained control.
“Go back,” Hampton said.
“Jesus,” Richard said. “You almost ran us off the road.”
“Go back,” Hampton said again.
“Go back where?” Richard asked. He slowed, turned, and looked at Hampton for a moment. “To my house?”
“No,” Hampton said. “Back to Gastonia, to my room. There’s something I forgot.”
“Are you crazy?” Richard said. “You could be killed if we go back there. You’ll be lucky if we’re not stopped before we cross the river. We’ll both be lucky.”
“Go back,” Hampton said.
Richard turned in his seat again and gave Hampton another quick glance. “It’s too dangerous,” he said.
Hampton threw his leg over the seat and attempted to climb over. Richard kept one hand on the wheel and fought Hampton with the other. The car swerved again.
“Sit down!” Richard screamed.
“Turn around!” Hampton said. “Now!”
“Damn it,” Richard said. “What do you want? More money? I can give you more money.” He fished his wallet from his pocket and handed it to Hampton. Hampton threw it onto the front floorboard.
“Keep your damn money,” Hampton said. “If you drop me at the train station I won’t do anything except come back to Gastonia, and it’ll be morning by then. And if I’m stopped your name will be the first thing I say.”
“They’re going to kill you if they catch you,” Richard said. “Strikers shot policemen.”
“It’s my life,” Hampton said. “Drop me right here and I’ll walk back. If anyone stops me I’ll tell them I was visiting my friend Mr. Richard McAdam of Belmont, North Carolina, and his wife Katherine and his daughter Claire.”
Richard slowed the automobile without saying a word. He turned around and drove back toward Gastonia.
From beneath the blanket in the backseat, Hampton did his best to offer directions to the boardinghouse.
When Richard finally turned onto the street where the boardinghouse sat, he slammed on the brakes, and Hampton’s body rocketed forward. His head slammed into the seat, and his neck forced itself down into his body with an awful crunch.
“The police are here,” Richard said. “A lot of people. Stay down.”
“Outside the house?” Hampton asked.
“Yes.”
“Back up,” Hampton said. For a brief moment, he contemplated throwing the blanket off him and opening the door. He’d run until he could either run no longer or until someone—the police, Richard, Sophia—caught up to him. “Can you turn around? Go up another street?”
“No,” Richard said. “They’ve seen me. Stay down. He’s got a rifle. Don’t move.”
Hampton felt the Essex roll forward. Its b
rakes squealed as it came to another stop. He heard Richard lower the driver’s-side window.
“McAdam?” a man’s voice said. “What in the hell are you doing up here?”
“Good evening, Mr. Epps. I heard there was some kind of trouble at Loray tonight,” Richard said. “I thought I’d come up and see about it.”
Epps. Epps. The name tumbled through Hampton’s mind. Percy Epps. Pigface. He’d heard Sophia and Ella talk about him. The attorney for Loray, head of security. The leader of the Council.
“Trouble?” Epps said. “I’d say there’s been a hell of a lot more than trouble.”
“What happened?”
It seemed that Epps leaned away from Richard’s open window. Hampton heard him talking to someone farther up the street. He strained to hear what they were saying.
“It’s the communists,” Epps said. His voice was closer, easier to hear. “Beal sent a whole group down to the mill tonight, got the night shift all stirred up. Aderholt and some of his deputies followed the picket back up to the union headquarters. They were fired on.”
“Anyone hurt?”
“Oh yeah,” Epps said. “Last I heard, it sounds like Aderholt isn’t going to survive. They shot him in the back, McAdam. Damned cowards. They hit a couple of deputies too. A couple of the strikers were shot, but not enough of them.”
“What’s going on up the road here?” Richard asked.
“That union nigger from up north that I told you about,” Epps said. “Police are looking for him. Goddamned Beal and the rest of them ran off somewhere, but they’ll get caught. We’re watching the trains in Charlotte and Spartanburg.”
Hampton heard a third man’s voice, but he couldn’t tell what the man said.
“McAdam, this is Detective Randall,” Epps said. “Senator Overman sent him down from Washington. He’s been helping us out. Detective, Mr. McAdam is a member of our Citizens’ Council. He’s committed himself to breaking this strike.”
Richard was silent, and Hampton squeezed his eyes shut as tight as possible and prayed to a God he hadn’t prayed to since he was a boy. Make him say something. Make him say something.