Ella ran around in front of him and walked backward so she could look him in the eye. “It ain’t over for me,” she said. She nodded at Violet, who now walked in-step with Hampton. “And not for her.” She looked over his shoulder at the Bessemer City workers behind him. “And not for them neither.”
“It’s over,” he said.
They reached the side street where they’d left the truck parked. Hampton kept walking, but Violet stopped, shook her hand free of his. He looked back at her. “Come with me,” he said.
“Where? Your room?” Violet said. “And what then?”
“Come home with me,” Hampton said. “To New York.”
“Are you serious, Hampton?” she said. “I can’t just leave. Not like you can.”
“No one’s leaving,” Sophia said. “Let’s all just talk about this. Let’s talk about what we do next.”
Hampton turned and walked away from them.
Violet called his name.
“Let him go,” Ella said.
The boardinghouse was only a few blocks away, and Hampton’s fury pushed him toward the solitude it offered. All he wanted was to be alone in his attic room so he could pack his things for the trip home. He was as angry as he’d ever been in his life, but more than that he was embarrassed and sad. He’d walked a hundred yards or so when he turned and saw that he could see the lit field where the rally continued. The dark shapes of bodies moved in silhouette in front of the stage.
Hampton slipped the rifle strap from his shoulder and raised the gun, pointed it at the bodies in the field, felt the weight of his finger on the trigger. He had never fired a gun before. He had no idea how far a bullet would go or what damage it would do if it arrived, but he felt a near-overwhelming urge to shoot indiscriminately into the crowd of white people, to hurt and humiliate them the way he’d been hurt and humiliated. Neither he nor his father had invited violence, but it had found them. His father had met it, and Hampton wondered if he would meet it too.
But he could not squeeze the trigger. He lowered the gun, tossed it into the trees by the road, listened as it crashed through the branches. Throwing the gun caused the pain in his side to flair, and he touched his ribs, wondering what he would feel if one or more of them were broken.
He continued walking south toward Franklin Avenue and the boardinghouse. He crossed over and saw the huge, glowing form of Loray. He thought he heard the sound of footsteps behind him, but there was no one there. His eyes searched the long shadows cast by tall trees and the unlit places in between houses. He found himself desperate to discover the shape of a man rushing toward him. Maybe his imagination had created the sound; maybe he wanted the violence of another confrontation, wanted to exercise the hate that had laid its hand upon his soul.
He reached the house and climbed the three flights of the back staircase to his room in the attic. He turned on the lamp and sat down on the bed. Tomorrow he would send a cable to Weisbord and demand a return ticket to New York.
He reached into his back pocket, found the photograph of his mother and father. He stared at it for a moment, and then he propped the photo against the lamp. He lay down and stared at the ceiling and pictured his parents back in Mississippi, tried in vain to envision his father’s face, but a memory of a time before that night did not seem to exist. He realized that the only memories he had of life with his father spanned the course of the few hours during which they’d fled for their lives.
Hampton closed his eyes. He knew he was waiting for something, but he did not know what it could be.
Chapter Eleven
Albert Roach
Friday, June 7, 1929
Jealousy nearly split Albert’s heart in two that sunny afternoon as he and Tom Gibson stood on the sidewalk and watched hundreds of old boys march by in their Confederate battle grays. The crowd of bodies swelled around the two men, nearly pushing them off the curb and onto the street, where the veterans—most on foot with canes in their hands, some seated on the backs of convertible automobiles, the rest standing atop garlanded flatbed trailers—paraded down Trade Street beneath an early summer sun, the bodies of the marchers and the shapes of the cars and floats hardly registering shadows on the blacktop below.
Estimates were that 150,000 people had flocked to Charlotte for this four-day celebration of Confederate valor, and Albert believed that every single one of them stood alongside him. Aside from the smell of the asphalt where it radiated beneath the veterans’ boots and the vehicles’ tires, Albert’s nose caught the smoky-sweet scents of cigars, the reek of sweaty bodies pressed too close together, the whiffs of hot dogs and chili, homebrew, and popcorn.
“There he is,” Tom said. He raised a hand and pointed across the street. Albert looked and saw O. Max Gardener in a suit and tie and black stovepipe hat standing on the other side of a battle-flag-swathed barrier. Dozens of official-looking people surrounded him. “It’s a pretty important day when the governor comes calling, ain’t it?”
“I reckon it is,” Albert said, but seeing the governor only made him feel worse. He’d never fought in a war, had never done anything that anyone could view as heroic. Albert Roach knew he was the last person who would warrant a visit from the governor.
It didn’t help things that Chief Aderholt had suspended him again—this time for drinking on the job—and try as he might, Tom’s little speech en route to Charlotte hadn’t helped either.
“Let’s just have us a nice time,” Tom had said from behind the wheel. “Do a little drinking, get away from Loray and that goddamned strike.”
Tom had been drinking when he’d said it, had been drinking since the moment he’d left home and picked up Albert. He’d driven with a Mason jar of white lightning tucked between his legs, and he and Albert had passed it back and forth until it was empty. Albert may have been sad standing there on the sidewalk as these heroes passed him by, but at least he was drunk, and that was better than just being sad.
Although Albert still had another week left in his suspension, he carried a pistol holstered beneath his jacket. Watching the soldiers march and hearing the bands play and seeing the red, white, and blue crepe paper strung from cables above the street made him want to retrieve his gun and fire it into the air in celebration. But he knew that Tom, who’d had even more to drink than Albert had, would be irritated by the attention.
It had been nice at first. The day was bright and warm, not yet hot on this first Friday in June. When they’d arrived the streets had been busy, but not quite as full as they were now, and they’d strolled along the sidewalk taking discreet sips from the Mason jar.