“We turned east on Bank Street. I don’t know who recognized him first, my mother or Sissy, but I know it wasn’t me because I didn’t know what he looked like. I was carrying my doll and a little parcel of clothing that Mother had given me. There were some stockings and a pair of shoes stuffed down inside there too. I remember I was crying because Mother wouldn’t hold my hand. Her arms were full, and she couldn’t have held my hand if she’d wanted to. Sissy’s arms were full too, and I was too young to understand that to hold my hand would’ve meant that they would have had to leave something behind. I cried and cried. I was mad, but I was scared too.
“Now that I think of it, Sissy was the one who recognized him out there on the steps. He had his arms folded across his chest. He had on a dark suit just like you see in photographs of him. No hat, nothing on his head. He was just standing there all by himself, watching. I remember seeing the light from the fire shine on his face where he was sweating. It was a warm night, probably even hotter because the city was burning, and he had on a jacket and a tie. He’d probably just come up from the river.
“But I know it was Sissy who first whispered his name. Mother hushed her as if saying it again would get his attention, would draw his eyes away from the fires to look at us. But when I understood who he was I called out to him. I wanted to ask him why he killed my daddy. I wanted to tell him how sad I was that my daddy wouldn’t be coming to my birthday party in June. That he wouldn’t be able to sing me camp songs or bring me candy like he’d done the first time he’d come home from the war. I wanted to tell him those things.
“And he must have heard me when I called his name. You may not believe it, and you don’t have to believe it, but he turned and looked at us from where he stood right there on the steps on the south side of the Capitol, Richmond burning all around us, the smoke almost choking us to death. He looked right at us, and I swear he nodded his head. What he meant in doing that, I can’t say. It could’ve meant hello or good evening or nice to see you, but I know for a fact that it did not mean I’m sorry, and sorry was the only thing I wanted him to be.”
Claire and the other girls stood there staring at Mrs. Barnes’s back while she looked out over the mud and grass that led toward the Washington Monument, her black hat pulled low and her black coat pulled tight around her against the late afternoon chill.
Claire’s heart had swelled at the romance of the story, but it was Donna who’d broken the silence, the spell that Mrs. Barnes’s story had cast, a story that had enraptured the old senator just as much as it had enraptured Claire. Donna’s white skin was soft and beautifully pale in the waning light, and when she turned to stare at the monument behind her, the setting sun caught her coppery hair and burned it a brilliant red. Donna leaned toward Mrs. Barnes and raised her hand and pointed at Lincoln.
“Was he that tall?” Donna asked. A few of the girls had laughed.
Mrs. Barnes composed herself, then turned slowly, her eyes alighting on Lincoln’s face for just a moment.
“No,” she said, “of course not. Don’t be silly.”
Minutes later the group was making their way down Independence Avenue when they heard someone call the senator’s name from the other side of the street. Claire looked up to see a man in a dark suit darting through the traffic, horns honking and tires squealing to a stop. A dozen gaunt-faced men and women in mismatched secondhand clothes followed behind him, their eyes wide with terror. The oldest of them could have been fifty; the youngest of them, a skinny wisp of a girl, couldn’t have been any older than ten.
The man who’d called out to the senator stood before Senator Overman and the group of young women as if he hoped to block their route to the Capitol. The rest of the ragtag party gathered behind him. All of them were panting, trying to catch their breath. If it had been any colder their breath would’ve steamed before them like horses that had just pulled sleds across fields deep with snow.
“Senator,” he said, “my name is Carlton Reed. I’m with the Labor Defender.”
Claire caught his northern accent, noticed his expensive suit. He talked fast, as if he knew the senator had better things to do and was already planning his escape.
“Sir,” Reed continued, “I have with me here today a few members of the Gastonia, North Carolina, local of the National Textile Workers Union, and we’re in town to—”
“I know who you are, son,” Overman said, “and I know why y’all are here.”
“Sir,” Reed said, removing his hat, “you may be aware of the Montana senator’s inquiry into the southern textile mills. Well, today’s hearing was canceled after our party arrived, but we had the good fortune to meet with Senator Wheeler and Senator La Follette of Wisconsin, and my question to you, sir, is why does it take two northern senators to initiate an investigation into—” But Overman stopped him, went so far as to place his big, open palm on the man’s chest and give him a gentle push so that Claire’s group would have room enough to pass them on the sidewalk.
“I understand, son,” the senator said, “and I applaud your efforts, but if you’ll excuse me I’m engaged with a group of proper ladies from North Carolina.”
“We’re proper ladies from North Carolina too,” a woman in the textile group said. She stepped out from behind Reed and blocked the sidewalk.
“Ella,” Reed said. He touched the woman’s shoulder, but she took another step away from him so he could not reach her without following. She was a small, thin woman in a dingy white dress. She wore a man’s long coat and a black knit cap that was pulled tight enough to nearly cover her eyes.
“We’re all proper,” the woman said. She took her hand from her coat pocket and motioned toward the people behind her. “And we’re hungry and tired and poor too.”
“Ella,” Reed said again.
“I see,” the senator said. He stepped back and looked at the group as if appraising them. “It looks like you strikers are all decked out in your union-issued finery.”
A few of the group, the women especially, looked down at their clothes. One of the men tugged on his lapels and buttoned his suit jacket.
“Senator, are you suggesting that these men and women are in costume?” Reed asked.
“What I’m suggesting is y’all go home to Gastonia and call off this strike and get back to work,” Overman said. “Quit playing these games. Quit allowing the communist to dictate your lives.” He turned to the thin, young striker who’d been standing quietly. “And you, young lady, you need to return to school.”
At that, the woman named Ella flew toward the senator and perhaps would have knocked him down had Reed not grabbed her by her shoulders.