Standing at the Scratch Line (2 page)

Uncle Jake was lying next to a smoldering fire. He was bleeding from a bullet wound to his stomach, blood oozing out with every intake of breath, covering his shirt and pants with its dark maroon stain. There were burn marks on his uncle’s face and neck. LeRoi knelt and lifted up his uncle’s head.

Jake opened his eyes slowly. “I’m gut-shot, boy. I’m gut-shot. I ain’t gon’ be making it home with you this time.”

LeRoi said nothing. His uncle was growing steadily weaker as he watched. He felt a vast void within himself.

“You got to get out of here!” his uncle whispered. “We done walked in on some gun-running business. We done killed some pirates too. They’ll be coming back here as soon as they find out what happened.”

“I think I killed a couple of sheriff deputies too,” LeRoi mumbled, unable to take his eyes off the blood pumping out of his uncle’s wound.

“Damn! Big stars fallin’; won’t be long before day,” his uncle gasped. “Help me to the boat, boy. I want to be buried with my people.”

As LeRoi carefully lifted his uncle in his arms he said, “Looks like those DuMonts tricked us into an ambush.”

“That may be true, but two of ’em paid for this trickery. They’s lying on the other side of the island. I shot them first.”

In the distance they heard a man bellowing, “Ahoy! Ahoy Barracuda! Ahoy! We’ve been attacked! Ahoy Barracuda!”

LeRoi carried his uncle to the
Sea Horse.
If there was any chance of his survival, he had to be gotten home quickly and only the
Sea Horse
could do it.

“Don’t leave them guns and ammunition,” his uncle advised as LeRoi laid him down in the
Sea Horse.
Sweat was streaming down Jake’s face. “We gon’ need all the guns and ammo we can get if the pirates find out we was the ones who broke up this deal.”

LeRoi made sure he could push the
Sea Horse
back into the water before he started loading the boxes of rifles and ammunition. The boxes containing the rifles weighed so much that he had to drag them to the boat, lift them against the gunwale, and slide them over the side. He loaded all the ammunition before he heard the sound of another steam engine chugging in the distance. Out of ten boxes of rifles and ammunition, he left three. He pushed off and clambered aboard the
Sea Horse.

LeRoi was numb. He didn’t want his uncle to die. He focused his attention on getting the steam engine started. He pitched six logs into the fire to raise the boiler’s heat and waited for a head of steam. The engine stalled several times before it engaged with a slow mechanical clatter. LeRoi backed the boat out into the channel and turned the boat upriver. After fifteen minutes of steaming in midchannel, he passed the dark shape of a massive mangrove tree and turned into a small slough.

As soon as he rounded the first turn in the slough, three hundred yards from its entrance, he released the pressure in the boiler and cut the engine. Then he went to check on his uncle. Jake was unconscious and breathing shallow breaths. LeRoi attempted to make him as comfortable as possible and put a bundle of clothing under his head. He picked up a long stout pole, which all bayou boats carried, and began poling the
Sea Horse
slowly along. He didn’t want the noise of the steam engine to give away his position. He knew that within half a mile a larger waterway intersected and he would be able to start the steam engine again. Soon the trees overhanging the water created a dense canopy that cut the light and gave the impression of a long, winding tunnel. The fog grew progressively thinner as LeRoi pushed the
Sea Horse
further along the slough.

It was hard work, but LeRoi poled the boat steadily, changing sides to keep the craft in the center of the slough. He refused to quit. He felt that if he could just get his uncle home alive, perhaps there was a chance. There were other things to think about. He and his Uncle Jake had created a problem for the family because white men had been killed. If it had been only DuMonts that had been killed, there would have been no problem. No one would have even investigated their death. It was different when colored men killed whites, particularly sheriff’s men.

LeRoi did not waste a moment of sorrow for the men he killed. It was not a moral question for him; it was what he had been raised to do. His family had been feuding with the DuMonts for generations. Before he was ten years old, LeRoi had seen his father and two older brothers killed during a DuMont raid on the Tremains’ corn liquor still. It was a memory that remained close to the surface. He would have been killed as well if he had not hidden in the surrounding underbrush. From that day on, he couldn’t wait to go out and spill DuMont blood. As far as he was concerned, death was a natural consequence for those who were not careful or alert. His only concern about killing whites was the heat that it might bring down on his family.

LeRoi, large and unusually muscular for his age, took part in his first raid against the DuMonts when he was fourteen years old. During that raid he became what his uncle called “blooded” because he killed his first man. On his next raid, he was blooded again, but he was given greater respect for pulling an injured cousin to safety while under fire. The
Sea Horse,
rifles, and ammunition represented the booty from his fifth raid on the DuMonts and he was not yet eighteen years old.

LeRoi stopped poling and checked on his uncle, only to find that Jake was dead. He had passed away without returning to consciousness. The blood from his wound had stopped pulsing out of his body and was congealing on the deck. Jake’s face had the look of serenity. If it wasn’t for the coldness of his skin and the lack of respiratory movement, he could have been mistaken for being asleep. But he was not asleep, he was dead, and no amount of praying would bring him back.

Uncle Jake had taken him under his wing and had served as a surrogate father after LeRoi’s own father had been killed. LeRoi felt as if his heart had been ripped out of his chest. He dropped to his knees, fighting back tears, and cupped his face in his hands. It seemed that nearly everyone that he cared for was being snatched from him. It seemed like a punishment to him.

The
Sea Horse
scraped bottom and jerked to a halt. LeRoi slipped listlessly into the water, which was barely four feet deep, and checked for the obstruction. A log had been laid across the creek and embedded into the bank on both sides, one of the logs his family had planted to prevent large boats from using the slough. By rocking the
Sea Horse
up and down, he was able to jockey the boat over the log with only a few serious scrapes.

LeRoi had no words for the sadness he felt as he got back into the boat. He had only formless emotions, which brought the taste of bile into his mouth. He picked up the pole, took a deep breath, and stuck it back into the water; shoving hard, he propelled the
Sea Horse
on down the slough. He could not have said that he loved his uncle, for he had never used that word in relationship to himself, but he felt the agony of loss. And as with all such negative feelings for which he had no words, LeRoi had to distill them into something purer—like anger or hatred—in order to understand them. He burned with a hatred that was beyond his years. He now had a greater debt to repay the DuMonts, one he would never forget.

He remembered a story one of his Sunday-school teachers had told. It was about how when each person is born, he starts off as a blank page, and with the passing of each day, more of his life is written on the page. People died when there was no more room on the page to write. He had felt then, and he felt now, if he had ever started off as a blank page, it was no longer true. He felt like his page was already filling up with little mean words about loneliness, pain, and disappointment. There didn’t appear to be room on his page for words about happiness or joy.

S
 A T U R D A Y,  
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The funeral for Jake Tremain was held the weekend following his death. He was laid to rest in the family graveyard, which was located on a small hill behind the main house, the highest ground on the Tremain farm. The event was not attended by anyone outside immediate family and friends, but there were still almost seventy-five people. All the blood relatives were there, including LeRoi’s crippled great uncle, who was the unchallenged head of the family.

The mood was particularly somber because Jake Tremain was popular, but there was also something else in the air, something undefinable. LeRoi felt it in the stares he received and in the way people stopped talking when he walked past. Everyone knew that white men had been killed and there was concern and worry etched on the faces of the women. The men acknowledged him with curt nods and somber looks. No one came to stand next to him. As the preacher said the last words over the coffin, LeRoi stood off to the side by himself.

After the service, food was served. LeRoi was just finishing a plate of fried catfish and corn pone when one of his younger cousins came up to him and told him that his great-uncle wanted to see him back at the barn. A chill went through him, for the barn was the traditional place of family celebrations or family meetings whenever something terrible had happened. No one had to tell him this was not a time of celebration.

It was a large wooden structure that contained a hayloft and had a fence dividing the ground floor. On one side of the fence sick animals were kept, and the other side was used primarily for storage of farm staples like grain and feed. When LeRoi walked in, he saw that all the adult men of the Tremain family were standing around his great-uncle, Henry Tremain, who was sitting on a milking stool. All conversation stopped as he walked up to Papa Henry, as the old man was called. LeRoi looked around at the solemn faces and saw few smiles. His skill with weapons had earned him grudging respect, but his youthful arrogance was not appreciated.

“You call me, Papa Henry?” he asked, trying to control the beating of his heart.

His grandfather had light, reddish brown skin and gray, wavy hair; his eyes were dark, and glinted like coals—the combined evidence of his African and Choctaw ancestry. “We got us a problem, son,” the old man spoke slowly. “The sheriff knows you was in on the killin’ of them deputies. Those DuMont dogs went yappin’ to him as soon as they heard about your arrows. Now, the sheriff wants to come on our land lookin’ for you. He gon’ try to come with a big posse and we can’t have that.”

“What can we do about it, Papa Henry?” LeRoi asked. His face appeared unconcerned, but fear was knotting his stomach.

“Well, we been talkin’ and talkin’ and the best way, I think,” Papa Henry paused before continuing, “is for you to leave the area for a while.”

“What’s a while, Papa?” LeRoi had only been to New Orleans a few times. Other than that, he had never left the rolling hills and swampland that surrounded his family’s farm.

“A couple years at least, maybe more. We got to let this whole thing die down a little taste, before I can tell you when you can come back.”

LeRoi stared down at the hard-packed earthen floor of the barn and shook his head. He had grown up within a network of aunts, uncles, and cousins. He had never been alone. “It ain’t fair that I got to leave. I only did what Uncle Jake told me to. You hid LeMar for almost two years and he killed some white folk. How come you can’t do that for me? How come I got to go?”

“First thing is LeMar didn’t kill no deputies, and second thing is, he didn’t take nothin’ from the pirates. He just killed some swamp trash. You done killed both John Law and some pirates. We gon’ be pretty hard-pressed between the two: the badge on one side and them seafaring thieves on the other.”

“What happens to my daddy’s farm? Mama can’t work it without me.”

“That’s one of the prime lots. Maybe it’s time to give Clara and Benjamin a chance at farmin’ it. I think your mama needs to move into the main house where she can be safe.”

“Nobody is takin’ my daddy’s farm! It’s mine by rights. Every year me and Mama worked hard gettin’ the crops in. Ain’t nobody come out to help us except Uncle Jake.”