“Get out of here, pig!” she said again.
Her appearance shocked Albert as much as what she said. She couldn’t have been any older than sixteen, tall and thin with black hair and a face that looked as if it had been laid over her skull and pulled tight. The girl elbowed a woman standing beside her and said something to her that Albert couldn’t hear. The other woman turned and looked at Albert. She spit at him too.
Soon ten or fifteen people were taunting him, calling him “pig” and “fat boy.” A few of them even knew his name. A young man pushed his way through the crowd, his hands clenching a wooden placard on a stick. The sign read solidarity forever.
“Get out of here, Roach,” the man said. Albert didn’t recognize him, and it was strange to hear his name spoken by someone he’d never seen before. It thrilled him. “You ain’t the police no more, Roach. We know you. Get on out of here.”
Albert thought the man would stop marching toward him, but he kept coming, and as he got closer Albert prepared himself without fully realizing what his body was doing. By the time the man was within arm’s length, Albert had swiped the stake from his hands. The man stepped back, shocked, but not shocked enough. He charged toward Albert, and that was when Albert swung the stake, the placard’s slim edge catching the man’s face like a knife blade. His cheek fell open against his jaw, and blood covered his face, poured onto his shirt. It looked as if his throat had been cut, and Albert half-expected him to fall to his knees and die right there.
A woman’s scream rose up from the crowd, but Albert didn’t have time to see to whom it belonged. They were on him almost immediately, and he was suddenly aware that he and Tom should not have come to the mill tonight.
He swung the sign, and it was enough to keep the crowd at bay, but it moved slowly as it cut through the air like a giant fan. Albert tore the placard free so that all that remained was the stake, and he swung it like a billy club, aiming for heads and shoulders and knees. It was the first time in a long time that he felt as if he were accomplishing something, as if he were getting something done, making a difference.
In a drunkenness that quickly gave way to rage once his mind computed what the women had called him and what the boy did in disrespecting him, it did not matter to Albert that the people he struck were primarily women, some of them young and some of them very old. They were all part of the same enemy. As he swung the stick and felt the jolt of bodies, he pictured himself atop a garlanded float sixty years from now, a proud veteran of this heroic struggle on the streets of Gastonia on the night the Loray strike came to an end.
A voice called his name, and he saw Tom pushing his way through the crowd, his pistol drawn and pointed toward the sky. He tripped over something and fell to the street, squeezing off a shot that ricocheted against the blacktop and caromed into the night. The crowd dispersed at the sound of the gunshot, and Tom got to his feet and pointed his pistol at the strikers, who were fleeing in all directions.
“Stop!” Tom yelled. “Police!”
Albert gave chase, the stake raised over his head, but Tom caught him and spun him around.
“What the hell happened?” Tom asked.
“I was attacked,” Albert said. He shook free of Tom’s grasp. “And I didn’t have my goddamned gun! They could’ve killed me, Tom!”
Tom looked up, scanned the crowd, the majority of which was headed up North Loray Street in the direction of the tent colony and union headquarters.
“Who attacked you?”
“All of them, damn it. Every single one of them. They could’ve killed me.”
Tom looked up the street at the backs of the fleeing strikers, then broke into a run behind them. Albert didn’t know what else to do, so he followed. He could hear Tom screaming something but he was too far behind him to hear what it was.
The moon had risen fully, and beneath its light Albert watched as dozens of people scattered through the tent colony on the west side of the road. Oil lamps swung from posts, casting an eerie yellow light and throwing long, thin shadows against the white canvas tents. He heard voices, screams, women’s calls for men to get their guns and go out to the road. They were being attacked.
Up ahead, electric lights burned inside the union headquarters. The door opened and slammed shut, opened and slammed shut again. Loud voices came from inside. Someone extinguished the lights one by one, and the building and the night around it fell into darkness.
Tom was still running, so Albert ran too. His side pained him, and he held his hand cupped against it to stave off the ache, the hot dogs and candied apple and whiskey gathering in the back of his throat. He wanted to stop, catch his breath, but he feared being left behind. Tom slowed as he drew closer to the union building. He held his pistol with both hands, held it pointed at the door, only ten or fifteen yards away. Sirens wailed in the distance. Albert knew the rest of the police department would be there soon, and in his drunkenness and exhaustion he couldn’t decide whether or not that was a good thing.
“Come on out of there!” Tom yelled, his gun still drawn and pointed at the door.
“Go to hell!” a voice said from inside.
Tom took a running leap and kicked the door. It didn’t budge. There was laughter from inside.
“Go to hell!” another voice said.
The sirens were behind Albert now, and beneath their noise he heard the sound of tires coming up the road. He turned and saw two police cars pull into the gravel and skid to a stop. Their doors flew open, and officers scattered, two of them running behind the building. Aderholt climbed from the driver’s seat of his automobile, and Albert felt his stomach lurch in his throat. His mouth flooded with bile.
“What the hell, Roach!” Aderholt yelled. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Albert turned and looked for Tom to make sense of what had just happened, hoped he’d be able to explain the past few minutes in a way that made some kind of impression on the chief, that displayed some of the bravery and honor that Albert believed he’d shown.
“We were attacked!” Tom said. He held his gun down by his side and rubbed the knee of the leg he’d used in trying to kick in the door. He nodded toward the building. “They’re holed up inside here.”
Aderholt looked from Tom to Albert.
“You been drinking, Roach?” Aderholt asked.
“No, sir,” Albert said. “I just wanted to come down here and help out.”
“Help with what?” Aderholt said. “What could you have possibly helped with?”
He brushed past Albert, walked up to the building, and knocked on the door.