“This is a fine car,” Ella said, certain that she’d already said something to that effect earlier. Then, “Nobody’d think to follow a fine car like this one.”
“What do you mean follow?” Kate asked.
“The mill’s people have been following us when we head home after meetings,” Ella said. “They’ll run you off the road. Come up on you and hit your bumper, try to crash you. They’ll shoot at you too, least that’s what I’ve heard. I hadn’t ever been shot at though.”
“Who are the ‘mill’s people’?” Kate asked. “Employees?”
“I don’t know,” Ella said. “Nobody knows. I reckon you’ve seen the ads in the newspaper run by the Council. We figure that’s who it is. Each time it happens we say, ‘Well, the Council was out last night.’ Back in April, a mob tore down the first headquarters and broke into the commissary. People said it was the Council that did that too.”
“It sounds terrifying,” Kate said.
“Aw, we’re fine in a nice car like this one,” Ella said. She ran her hand along the dash. “This is the nicest car I’ve ever rode in.”
Kate smiled, looked over at Ella, looked back at the road.
“Would you like to drive it?” Kate asked.
Ella laughed.
“I can’t drive a car like this,” she said.
Kate laughed too.
“Believe me,” she said. “If I can, you can.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Let’s find out,” Kate said. She looked over her right shoulder, then she slowed and pulled to the side of the road. She parked the car, put on the brake.
“What are you doing?” Ella asked.
“Let’s switch,” Kate said. “You drive.”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on,” Kate said. “You’ll never know unless you try. Tonight’s the first time I’ve driven the damn thing.”
Ella looked from Kate to the road in front of them. It had stopped raining, but the wipers were squeaking across the glass. Kate turned them off. It was quiet.
“Let’s switch,” she said again. She raised her eyebrows.
Ella smiled, nodded her head. The women laughed awkwardly as they climbed around one another in the front seat. Ella caught scents of powder and faint perfume as Kate moved over and around her. She found herself sitting in the driver’s seat, the powder and perfume floating in the air. She lifted her hands, closed her fingers around the steering wheel.
“All right,” Kate said. She pointed to the floorboard at Ella’s feet. “Put your left foot there. That’s the clutch. And your right foot goes there for the gas and right there for the brake. Go ahead, press the clutch.”
Ella did. Kate moved Ella’s hand from the steering wheel to a lever beside it.
“This is the gearshift,” she said. “Let’s put it in first, and then lift your foot off the clutch and give it some gas.”
Ella did as she was told. The car rolled forward.
“That’s it,” Kate said. “Give it more gas. Ease it back onto the road.”
Soon Ella had the car cruising along. Darkness and intermittent flashes of light flew past her window and streaked across her eyes, but Ella didn’t see anything aside from the road directly in front of her.
“You’re moving at a good clip now,” Kate said. “I can’t believe you didn’t think you could drive this car.”
“That’s just because I ain’t driven one before,” Ella said.
“What?!” Kate said, laughing. “Never?”
“Never,” Ella said. “Never until now.”
She pressed her foot more firmly on the gas pedal. The car picked up speed. With each second that passed, Ella felt as if another layer of time, another layer of herself were peeling away. It thrilled her. She thought of a book she’d read when she was a girl, The Time Machine, one of the few books her mother had had in the stringhouse at the lumber camp. She remembered how the machine had allowed the Time Traveler to go back millions of years, and she imagined herself doing that now as she rocketed through space in what felt like the middle of the night. She did not know about fuel or mileage or any of the particulars of automobile travel, but she felt that if she could just keep driving in the straight line in which she was driving now, she could pass Bessemer City by, go through Shelby and Forest City, past Hendersonville and Asheville and into the Smoky Mountains. She didn’t want to go back millions of years. She just wanted to go back far enough to find herself as the young girl who’d never left home, whose mother and father were both still alive, whose children somehow existed in the world as well and would be waiting for her on the porch at the lumber camp.
Ella wanted to drive past American Mill No. 2. She wanted to slow down, pull into the gravel lot in front of it, lean her elbows on the horn until the night shift came outside. She wanted to stand up on the hood and organize them all right there. Mostly, though she didn’t want to admit it, she wanted them to see her inside this fancy car with a woman dressed as fine as Kate. She wanted Goldberg’s brother and Dobbins to come out and get an eyeful of Ella May behind the wheel of an Essex Super Six.
But instead, she kept driving as she drew closer to the mill, and then she drove past the turn she would have taken that led right to it. She reached the crossroads, the same crossroads where she’d been standing and waiting when Sophia and Velma appeared on the horizon. She turned left on the Kings Mountain Highway and headed for Stumptown. Her foot found the brake, and she slowed when they got closer to the road that would take them down into the cluster of cabins and trees.
“I don’t think I should drive down in there,” Ella said. “We might get stuck. Water runs off the highway and swamps the road.”
“Oh,” Kate said. “Of course. Maybe pull off here. We can leave the car and walk.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Ella said. “I’m fine to go on my own. It’s what I’m used to.”
“I want to see you home,” Kate said, “and I want to see where you live.”
“You don’t want to see it,” Ella said. “There’s nothing to see. You probably live in a big, fine home. I’d be embarrassed for you to see mine.”
“Don’t be silly,” Kate said. “I’m sure it’s lovely.”
Ella parked the car and took the keys from the ignition. She closed her hand around them for just a moment before giving them to Kate. The two women crossed the road and walked down into Stumptown. It had stopped raining, but it was cloudy, and there wasn’t much light.
“Watch where you walk now,” Ella said. “There’s holes that’ll get your shoes good and wet. Just walk along behind me. I could do this with my eyes closed.”
A few lights burned in the cabins they passed, and a few people recognized Ella’s shape as she moved down the road toward home. They called out to her, and she said hello, said, “I’ve got a friend here with me,” and they said, “Okay, well, y’all have a good night,” and Ella said, “You too.”
“How did you come to live here?” Kate asked.
“You mean how’d I come to live with colored folks?”
“Well, I didn’t mean—”