by Wiley Cash
“What’s your role on the Council?” the detective finally said.
“Well, I just joined,” Richard said. He stammered. His voice was higher than it had been earlier in the evening. “And I haven’t really had the opportunity to get involved—”
“We could use you tonight, McAdam. And if you can put a call in—”
The detective interrupted Epps, asked him, “Did you call him to come here?”
“No,” Richard said. “No. No one called me. I just heard something happened, and I came right down as soon as I heard.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re here,” Epps said. He yelled something up the street, something about moving a car so that Richard could park. “Pull on up here.”
“That’s okay,” Richard said. “I need to, I need to get home.”
“But you just got here,” Randall said. Hampton heard Richard slip the Essex into gear. “Why leave?”
“Yeah, McAdam,” Epps said. “You just got here.”
“And how’d you know to come here, to this house?” the detective asked. “The mill’s a block over that way, and their union headquarters is across the boulevard.”
“Yeah,” Epps said. “How’d you know?”
“Okay, good night,” Richard said. He put the car in reverse and they rolled back down the street. One of the men called Richard’s name. He backed around the corner, stopped, and slammed on the gas pedal. They sped up the street behind the mill.
“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” Richard said. “Jesus.” Hampton heard him punch the steering wheel.
“They know, don’t they?” Hampton said. He lifted the blanket, sat up in the seat. The lights from the mill burned above the northern tree line outside his window.
“They know something,” Richard said. “I’d say they most certainly know something.”
Minutes later, once Richard had reached the dark open road, Hampton turned and looked out the back window, saw a pair of headlights coming fast behind them. He squinted into the light and imagined his father staring into the cameraman’s bulb in the seconds before his photograph had been taken for the first and only time in his life. Hampton would never see his father’s face again. He’d come south to find him, and now he was leaving him behind for good.
Chapter Thirteen
Katherine McAdam
Saturday, June 8, 1929
Katherine had been alone in the house for what seemed like hours, and as the world outside began to lighten, she realized how long it had been since Ella had first knocked on the door, since Richard had gone downstairs to answer it. She had to remind herself that she wasn’t alone in the house. Claire had gone up to her room not long after Ella and the woman named Sophia had returned to their truck and driven off into the night.
“You come back here if you need anything,” Katherine had told Ella. “You find me, okay. Let me know.” Katherine looked at Sophia. “That goes for you too,” she’d said. “Both of you. I’m here.”
Ella had seemed more relaxed after Richard had left with their friend Hampton. But now, with the house quiet and the sun preparing to rise and Richard still not returned, Katherine found it impossible to find the peace that Ella had shown.
She knew that Richard sometimes kept a bottle hidden in their closet, so she’d gone upstairs and felt along the top shelf where he kept his shoes, toes pointed out. The bottle was set in a pair of wingtips, and she closed her hand around its neck and took it down. She shook a cigarette free from the pack on the dresser and went downstairs in search of a glass and matches.
Instead of calming her nerves, the whiskey and the cigarette had done nothing but sour her empty stomach, and now she stood on the front porch staring out at the driveway, watching the night slowly give way to morning.
It was quiet. The only sounds were the calls of birds and the soft breeze that stirred the trees. Although she knew that another shift was about to begin down in McAdamville, that Edison’s Dynamo No. 31 pumped like a heart in the belly of the mill, Katherine felt that she was the only person awake in the world. She wished that Richard were still asleep upstairs. Normally, if it were a weekday, he wouldn’t stir for another hour yet, wouldn’t rise and bathe and dress for the day until 7 a.m. By that time the world would be awake, and she wouldn’t be alone, waiting, like she was now.
Her ears caught the noise of an automobile crawling up the hill. She recognized the sound of it. It was the Essex.
The car rolled through the driveway, its headlights off. Katherine caught a glimpse of Richard behind the wheel. He would not have expected to see her waiting for him on the front porch, and he did not look for her now. Instead he pulled into the garage just as he always did. Katherine all but ran through the foyer, down the hall, and toward the back door.
Richard had already parked and turned off the car by the time she called his name. He did not respond. Instead he closed the garage doors, laced a chain through the handles, and clicked a padlock shut. Katherine knew that something had gone horribly wrong.
Richard appeared ashen except for a dark spot above his right eye. When he drew closer Katherine saw that his face was bruised and his forehead bloodied. She gasped.
“My God, Richard,” she said. “What happened?”
He brushed past her and walked up the hall to the front door. He extinguished the lights in the foyer, walked into the parlor, and drew the curtains over the window. He crossed the foyer and drew the curtains in the dining room as well.
“What’s going on?” she asked. She closed the back door and walked up the hall. “What happened?”
“Turn the lights off in the kitchen,” he said.
She leaned inside the door and flipped the switch. With the lights off the dawn outside seemed even brighter.
She found him standing in the parlor, drinking a cup of cold coffee from the tray Claire had left on the table.
“Richard!” she said. “What happened?”
He poured another cup, drank it more slowly than the first. She looked at his face, the bruised skin, the blood that had dried to a sticky brown. She wondered if he and Hampton had fought.
“Where’s that boy?” she asked. “What did you do to him?”
“What did I do to him? Me? I drove him to the goddamned train station, Kate. Just like you asked!”
It was the tenor of his voice that reminded Katherine that Claire was upstairs. Claire had been away at school so long, that they did not stop to consider whether or not anyone could hear them when they fought. But they weren’t alone now. She looked toward the foyer, pictured Claire lying awake in bed listening to the voices coming up the stairwell.
Richard seemed to know that he’d spoken too loudly. He sighed, ran his fingers through his hair.
“They’re not still here,” he said.
“Who?”
“Those damned women.”
“No,” Katherine said. “They left hours ago. Hours. Where have you been? What happened?”
He walked around the table and collapsed onto the davenport where Hampton had been sitting just a few hours earlier.
“I tried to take him to Charlotte, but he wanted to go back to his boardinghouse. I said no, but he threatened to go back whether I took him or not. And I thought it would be safer for us both if I just drove him.” He looked up at her.
“There were police everywhere, Katherine. Percy Epps stopped my car. He had a detective with him. A Pinkerton, Kate. Do you know what that means? He asked me what I was doing there.” He shook his head. “And I didn’t know what to say because why in the hell should I have been there?”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. There was nothing I could say, and they knew.” He leaned forward and clasped his hands. “They knew something was wrong.”
“What did you do?”
“I drove off. It was the only thing I could think to do.”
“Where’s Hampton?”
“I left him in Statesville,” Richard said.
“Statesville?” She
stepped into the room, considered sitting beside him on the davenport, but something stopped her. “What’s in Statesville?”
“The train station, Katherine. Epps said they were checking trains in Charlotte and Spartanburg. Statesville was the only place I could take him.”
She stared at him, wondering if she could believe him, if she should believe him. She remembered what she’d heard Richard say the night of Claire’s engagement party about the child that Ella had lost. Katherine had been so disappointed in him that night. She wondered if he’d disappointed her again.
“Did you really take him to Statesville?” she asked.
He looked up, his face a mix of disgust and anger.
“Of course I did,” he said. “Where the hell else would I have taken him?”
“Did you see him get on the train?”
“No,” he said. “I thought the twenty dollars I gave him would see to his getting on the damn train.”
She stared at him for another moment, finding herself desperate to believe him.
“What happened to your face?” she asked.
He touched his bruised cheek, put his fingers to the cut above his eye. The blood had dried tacky, and when he lifted his hand away he rubbed his finger and thumb together.
“Someone followed us,” he said.
He reached for one of the cloth napkins on the table and dipped it into the water pitcher. He touched the napkin to his head, then looked at the watery, pink blood on the cloth.
“A car swerved around me and slammed on its brakes. Another car hit us from behind, ran us off the road. My head bumped the steering wheel.”
Katherine remembered what Ella had told her about the Council, about her fear of being on the roads at night.
“Who was it?” she asked. “Epps?”
“I don’t know,” Richard said. “It could’ve been anyone.”
“Is he all right?”
“Who?”
“The boy, Hampton. Is he all right?”
Richard tossed the wet napkin onto the table and stood.
“You keep saying ‘boy’ as if he’s some child, Katherine. He’s no child. He’s twenty-five. He’s an adult.”
“So you talked to him?”
“Jesus, of course I talked to him,” he said. “It’s a long drive to Statesville. And we’d almost been killed, twice. Conversation was easy after that.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Is that really important?”
“The strike?”
“What’s important is that we never talk about this again. What’s important is that Claire never mentions our visitors to anyone. Ever. I’ll have someone in the mill shop look at repairing the car. No one can know about this.”
He bent forward and picked up the napkin. He dipped it into the water again and held it to his forehead.
“You’re a hero, Richard.”
He closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Please,” he said. “Please don’t.”
“You saved his life.”
Richard walked around the table and stood in the middle of the room. Katherine saw how bruised his face was, how deep the cut above his eye. Whiskers darkened his cheeks. He looked tired and older than she’d ever seen him look before. She realized just how much of her life she’d spent with this man, and in the quiet of the house, the same quiet that she would hear forever once Claire married Paul and left them for good, Katherine understood how many years of her life still stretched out before her with this man by her side. She wanted them to be good years, empty of disappointment and sadness and this crushing quiet that had grown up between them.
“It’s true, Richard,” she whispered. “You saved him.” She stepped toward him and took his hand. He let her hold it as if he could no longer bear its weight. She saw that he stared at the empty spot on the cabinet where the record player had been. Katherine felt his fingers tighten around hers.
“I wasn’t trying to save him,” Richard said. “I’m trying to save us.”
Gaston Transom-Times
June 8, 1929, Afternoon Edition
ADERHOLT SLAIN BY MURDEROUS STRIKE-GUARDS OF N.T.W.U.
Redoubled Effort to Apprehend Fred Beal
With the death of Chief of Police O. F. Aderholt earlier this morning after being shot in the back Friday night by assailants at the tent colony of the Loray strikers, county and city officials turned with redoubled zeal to the task of apprehending Fred Beal, organizer of the mob that led Chief Aderholt to his death and wounded several officers.
No trace of Beal’s whereabouts has been found. The police worked during the night and into the morning to secure the arrests of other prominent members of the strike. Many suspects had fled the scene but were later apprehended. Velma Burch of Passaic, New Jersey, was arrested in a telephone booth in downtown Gastonia, phoning to New York. Sophia Blevin was arrested in Bessemer City at the home of Ella May Wiggins, a known striker. Wiggins was detained but later released when her alibi of nursing the sick wife of Richard McAdam, owner and operator of McAdam Mills, was corroborated by Mr. McAdam himself. Carlton Reed of New York City was arrested while attempting to board a train in Charlotte. Also arrested were the men who served as armed guards at the strike colony, namely Chesley Anderson of Gastonia, who has been identified by Deputy Officer Albert Roach as the man who shot Chief Aderholt. All are under arrest on charges of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill. With news of Aderholt’s death, the charge is expected to change to first-degree murder.
The trouble at the tent colony began Friday evening among the strikers themselves. It seems that disparaging remarks passed between them and a group of Negroes. Rotten eggs and other missiles were hurled, followed by a sort of free-for-all fight. Some say that the strikers themselves called the police department to help allay this quarrel.
When the police officers arrived on the scene, a voice was heard to yell, “Shoot the —— officers.” After being wounded, Chief Aderholt spent the night in serious condition at the Gaston Sanitorium as he fought for his life with his wife and children by his side.
However, at about seven o’clock this morning convulsions set in as a result of the puncturing of his lungs by gunshot. A short while later the chief suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, accompanied by other convulsions, and the end came shortly after 10 o’clock.
This great man will be mourned by many, and we will never forget his bravery. Nor will we forget the perpetrators of such a heinous crime that robbed him of his life.
Labor Defender
July 1929
SMASH THE MURDER FRAME-UP!
Defend the Gastonia Textile Workers!
14 SOUTHERN TEXTILE STRIKERS
(Members of the National Textile Workers Union)
CHARGED WITH MURDER FACE THE ELECTRIC CHAIR
8 OTHERS FACING LONG PRISON TERMS
The police of Gastonia, upon the direct orders of the mill owners, attacked the workers’ headquarters and their tent colony, fired shots into the tents, where women and children were sleeping and began shooting at the strikers and beating them with their guns. In the struggle which followed, Chief of Police Aderholt was killed. All the organizers and leading strikers, members of the National Textile Workers Union, have been arrested on a murder charge. The workers have been driven from their tent colony.
DEFEND THE RIGHT OF THE SOUTHERN WORKERS TO ORGANIZE!
RUSH ALL FUNDS to the NATIONAL OFFICE of the
INTERNATIONAL LABOR DEFENSE
80 East 11th Street, New York, N.Y.
International Labor Defense,
National Office: 80 E. 11th St. NY.
I enclose $______ for Gastonia Defense.
I further pledge $______ per week.
Name ___________________________
Address _________________________
City and State _____________________
A RALLY HAS BEEN SCHEDULED IN GASTONIA, NC
ON SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14
TO PROTEST THE TRIAL OF OUR INNOCENT BROTHERS AND SISTERS.
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
Gaston Transom-Times
Friday, September 13, 1929
Since June we have mistakenly believed ourselves rid of the Communist scourge that ordered the murder of Police Chief Orville Aderholt and the shooting of a number of brave officers in June at the Loray Mill. We found and arrested cowards like Fred Beal and other of their leaders and put them in jail. We tore down their tents. We demolished their headquarters. We thought we had flushed the Bolshevists from Gastonia and sent them packing to the dark slums of New York and New Jersey. Recently we learned that many of these same godless Bolshevists have relocated to Bessemer City, proving that even a snake with a severed head can still bite, can still spread poison, can still kill if given the chance.
Word has reached us that a great rally in support of the jailed Communists is to be held tomorrow in downtown Gastonia, a place that has had its fill of anarchy and bloodshed. Is more blood to be spilled? That is impossible to know, but if blood is to be spilled it must not be the blood of innocent, God-fearing Americans. If blood must be spilled, let it be the blood of those who seek to harm us, let it be the blood of those who murdered our beloved Chief Aderholt and wreaked havoc upon our peaceful city.
Tomorrow, we ask that every citizen—every husband, father, brother, officer, veteran—do everything in his power to confront these Communist agitators as they arrive in downtown Gastonia. We do not seek or desire violence, but we will not back down if violence is brought to our door. We will not allow more of our people to be murdered. We will not stand by quietly as our society is infiltrated once again.
PROUD AMERICANS, STAND WITH US TOMORROW AND HELP US PUT DOWN ANY INSURRECTION THAT SEEKS TO OVERTHROW OUR GOVERNMENT AND ALTER OUR WAY OF LIFE.
NOW IS THE TIME FOR ACTION.
NOW IS THE TIME FOR BRAVERY.
NOW IS THE TIME TO STOP THIS NIGHTMARE BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE.