“Okay,” Lilly said.
Violet stood behind Iva. She had her arms around her younger sister’s shoulders to keep her warm. Violet’s eyes were closed. She hummed a tune. Iva stared at the two drivers smoking by their trucks. Violet stopped humming, opened her eyes, looked over at Ella, gave her a weak smile.
“Thank you,” Ella said.
“For what?” Violet asked.
“For sticking with me through this. I bet you didn’t know what you were getting into.”
“Don’t matter what I knew when,” Violet said. “I’m in it now.”
Ella felt Lilly’s hand find its way into hers. The girl leaned against Ella, put her cheek to her stomach, stared down at the road. Ella’s belly had begun to grow round, but she was still thin enough that John’s old coat was able to hide it. She wondered what Lilly would think when she discovered that her mother was pregnant again, that there would be another mouth to feed by the time winter arrived, that this new child, like the rest of her children, would not have a father to claim as its own now that Charlie had finally disappeared.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to Gastonia no more,” Lilly said. “I thought you said that.”
“I won’t,” Ella said. “Not after today. Today’s the last day.”
“But I don’t want you to go.”
“Well, sometimes we don’t get what we want,” Ella said.
“I want to go with you.”
“No, you can’t go.”
“But I want to.”
“I need you to stay here,” Ella said. “Look after the babies. Tell Otis to make that fire. I’ll be back.”
“When?”
“This afternoon or tonight, one. Soon as I can.”
“Iva gets to go,” Lilly said.
Violet stopped humming and opened her eyes. She looked at Lilly, and then she looked down at Iva.
“Says who you’re going?” Violet asked her.
“Mama said I could,” Iva said.
“She ain’t never said that.” Violet looked up at Ella and shook her head. “She never said that.”
“Shoot,” Iva said. She kicked at a rock. It rolled into the grass. “Thanks, Lilly. Thanks a lot.”
Ella let go of Lilly’s hand and turned the girl’s shoulders so that they faced the road that led down into Stumptown.
“Go on home,” she said. “Check on those babies. I’ll be back soon.”
“I don’t want to,” Lilly said. She raised her face to Ella and reached for her hand again, looking as if she might cry. “I’m scared for you to go.”
Ella didn’t want to admit it, not to herself and certainly not to Lilly, but fear had dogged her heart all night long and into the morning. She knew the primary fear was the fear of futility, the suspicion that nothing she could do today or tomorrow or the day after would change the events that comprised the course of her life and the future of the union.
Less than an hour later enough bodies had arrived to fill the back of one of the trucks. Ella and Violet watched as colored women and men came up the road from Stumptown and white women and men came across the field from Bessemer City. By 10 a.m. fifty or so had gathered, plenty of bodies to make for a tight ride to Gastonia.
“I hope you know what this means,” Violet said.
She and Ella stood by the bed of the last truck, a man inside helping others get settled into spots. They’d all be standing during the trip. That was the only way for them to fit.
“I hope it means something good,” Ella said.
“It does, girl. This is your doing.”
“Everybody else done it,” Ella said. “All I did was ask them.”
Violet smiled and climbed up into the truck.
Ella walked up the road and stopped in between the two trucks. She stepped into the grass on the shoulder so that she could see most of the people standing in the truck beds and most of them could see her.
“I want to thank all of you for coming,” she said. “I’d like to be doing something else on a Saturday, but this is what we have to do, so we’ll do it.” Someone whistled from the lead truck. A few people clapped. Ella stopped speaking for a moment, looked up the road toward Bessemer City, and recalled what it had meant for her only five months ago to walk this road alone to the crossroads of West Virginia Avenue. What it had meant to wait for strangers to pick her up in an automobile and carry her to her first union rally. Who had that woman been? Who was she now?
She looked back at the two trucks and saw Violet’s face peering out at her from in between the slats. “I didn’t join up in this union to be no kind of leader,” Ella said. “But the police and the bosses have either locked up our leaders or run them off somewhere. So, like I said, I ain’t no kind of leader, but I’m going to lead you now, and I need you to listen to me.
“We’re about to leave here and go into town, where there are going to be hundreds of people, maybe thousands. Some of them are going to want us there, some of them aren’t, but there’s only two kinds of people you need to be on the lookout for today: the ones holding guns and the ones holding cameras. There ain’t no need to say a word to either of them, no matter what they say to you. We’re there to be seen. Let somebody else give interviews.” She smiled, tried to fight it, but found that she couldn’t stop. “Let somebody else get shot at.
“I’m proud to stand alongside all of you,” she said. She looked at Violet. “I’m proud to be with my friends.”
She walked to the back of the second truck, where Violet waited, her hand outstretched. Ella took Violet’s hand, climbed up, and stood beside her. The driver came around and slammed the tailgate shut. The engine fired on the first truck, then the second.
They sang a few songs that everyone knew, and then Ella sang “Two Little Strikers” and “All Around the Jailhouse,” both of which she’d written after Aderholt had been killed and the strikers arrested in June. She’d sing a line and the rest of the people in the truck would repeat it, and they carried on that way while they grew closer to Gastonia. The day warmed as the sun climbed higher. Ella shrugged off John’s old coat and put her hands in the pockets of her dress to hide her belly.
The caravan crossed the bridge into Gastonia. Ella felt the truck slow and come to a stop. They waited.
“What’s going on?” Ella asked. “Why we stopping?”
One of the men in her group climbed the slats on the side of the truck and peered over and saw that the other truck had stopped as well. The engine still ran, vibrating the floor and sending tremors through Ella’s body. She heard voices, then shouts.
The truck jolted backward, and Ella stumbled. She would have been tossed over the tailgate had Violet not grabbed hold of her arm. The truck reversed itself, driving backward across the bridge slowly as if the driver were uncertain of what was happening up ahead.
“Other truck’s backing up too,” the man who’d remained posted atop the slats said. “Looks like we’re turning around.”