Standing at the Scratch Line (30 page)

“Your father had to go and act the fool!” her mother said with both concern and anger.

“Ain’t nothin’, Journer, just a few cuts and scrapes. I’ll be perky in the mornin’,” her father chuckled. He took Journer’s hand in his and said, “The important thing is, you is alright.”

Despite his attempt at joviality, Journer could see that her father was hurting. “What happened?” she asked.

Her mother answered. “He went to decoy the DuMonts off you and then did too good a job of it. He got caught and then got stubborn and wouldn’t tell them he didn’t have the money on him. From what I hear they kicked and beat him for a good half hour before we got some folks out to get them off of him. Them dogs even broke your father’s wooden leg!”

“It ain’t nothin!” he proclaimed, trying to push himself up to a seated position. “But we gon’ have to stay on the alert. We have to arrange to have somebody always sittin’ shotgun, whether we’s opened or we’s closed.”

“Slow down, ol’ timer,” her mother urged with affection. “You don’t want to make no sudden moves and leave that gray fur on the bed.”

“Don’t be talkin’ about my wig now, woman,” her father warned as he wincingly put his hand on top of his head to ensure that everything was in order.

“Ajax, honey, it’s up there, lookin’ like a beat-up rug,” her mother confirmed as she helped him lay back. As she was adjusting his pillows and blankets she said, “You best not be worryin’ about the goin’s on in the restaurant. You just get better, that’s yo’ job!”

“It ain’t no time to be sick, Mary! There’s things to do and arrangements to be made. We got to protect ourselves from what’s got to be comin’,” her father protested. “We got to call a meetin’ of the Colored Merchants and Caterers Association. We gon’ need help! Just think if we prove that somebody can stand up to these hoodlums, then maybe others’ll try. Hot damn!”

“Ain’t no need for profanity or any more shenanigans, Ajax Matthew Braithwaite,” her mother chided, wiping his face with a towel. “You got to rest, honey. You’s beginnin’ to sweat again. Let’s leave him rest for a while.” Her mother stood up to usher her two daughters out of the room.

Journer worked side by side with her sister, Sarah, and Aunt Willa until closing time. She was asked over twenty times by different customers to recount the events leading up to her escape, but she declined. She wisely did not want to add to the DuMonts’ level of indignation. After the day’s-end cleanup had been completed and the receipts had been totaled, the storm shutters were closed and locked. Journer joined her mother and sister at the kitchen counter to drink the last of the pot liquor left from a cauldron of collards and ham hocks.

“Tell us what happened,” her mother said, looking at her over the rim of her cup.

“Two of DuMont’s men followed me as soon as I left the riverfront. I tried to lose them in Market Square and I would have gotten away, but then Phillip called to me and kept calling me until DuMont’s men found me.”

“How did you meet up with the stranger?” Sarah asked, poised on the edge of her stool with anticipation. Sarah had been a plain girl and had grown into a plain woman, not ugly, but plain. She had married the first man who asked her to marry him right out of school and now, ten years and three children later, she was unhappy with married life.

“He came out of nowhere. I think he was just passing in the street and I called to him. I didn’t think he’d come to help me but he—”

“What did he look like?” Sarah interjected. “I heard he was young.” Sarah spent her days and nights dreaming about the romantic interlude that she deserved to experience but would never have. She saw romance and mystery everywhere but in her marriage.

“He was young, somewhere between twenty and twenty-five,” Journer said with a trace of a smile at her sister’s predictability. “But his age wasn’t the most interestin’ thing about him.”

“What else did you find so interestin’ about this young man?” asked her mother.

“He gave me a ride on his horse and took me right to the bank, sayin’ he had business there too. When we got there, we went around to the back door where Mr. Rambo runs the colored bank. I stood in line ’cause there was about three people in front of me. I think Reverend James was there and that nose-in-the-air, high yeller daughter of the undertaker was ahead of me, actin’ all prissy.”

“Not Lela Archambeaux?” Sarah asked, shaking her head. “I thought she was going up north to some colored college?”

“I heard she was pregnant by Billy Bigelow,” Mary added.

“I don’t know nothin’ about that, but this man, he walked up to Jethro Pugh, you know that big, senseless fool Old Man Hollister hired to guard the colored side of the bank? Well, he walks right up to him and tells him that he’s got business with young Mr. Hollister. Well, Jethro tells him to get in line. He don’t believe a colored man’s got any business with young Mr. Hollister.”

“I ain’t ever heard of one who had,” confirmed Mary.

“Well, big stars fallin’, it won’t be long before day!” Journer said with a smile. “Mr. Hollister came out of the bank and greeted this colored man like they was old friends. They even moved Mr. Rambo out of his office to have a meetin’.”

“What you say?” Mary exclaimed with a slow, surprised smile. “This young man must got some money or somethin’! But puttin’ Old Big-head Rambo out of his office, ain’t that somethin’? I’ll bet Old Big-head liked that! What you say!”

Journer laughed. “You’s right, Mama. The look on Mr. Rambo’s face said everthin’. He was actin’ all indignant, shakin’ his head like an old gobbler, but young Mr. Hollister just shooed him out of the office. Old Rambo’s so full of himself that he’s probably still huffin’ and puffin’ around.” Journer had both her mother and sister laughing at her imitation of Mr. Rambo’s neck movement.

“So, what’s his name?” Sarah asked, with her hands on her hips.

“King Tremain,” answered Mary Braithwaite. “If you listened a little bit more, Sarah, you would have heard his name said several times tonight. It seems like a lot of people know him. He got quite a reputation in the French Quarter as a gambler and cardplayer. This here boy could be a bundle of dynamite, if what they say is true.”

“I tell you one thing,” Journer added, “he ain’t no boy except in age. There’s a hardness about him. There weren’t no question in my mind that he would have killed both those men right there and they knew it too. He got some real ice in his veins.”

“I think we’ve had enough talkin’ tonight,” Mary said to her daughters. “We got to be up early tomorrow. Remember first thing in the mornin’, somebody’s got to go over and get Doc McKenna. We don’t know how bad your pappy’s hurt. We need him and his spirit if we gon’ beat the DuMonts out of takin’ our money. So, everybody to bed. I’ll check the locks and turn off the lights.” Her daughters gave her hugs and climbed the steep staircase to the loft, which served as their bedroom.

Mary Braithwaite heaved her considerable figure erect and went around the restaurant, checking the doors. She had been a winsome lass in her youth, light of limb and step, but the pressures of bearing five children, of which two were born dead, and the years of hard labor had taken their toll. Over the changing seasons she had swollen into a stout woman with huge, rolling buttocks and sagging breasts. Her arms were flabby and she shuffled when she walked, yet her mind was still keen and there was sufficient muscle beneath the fat to work hard fifteen hours a day, seven days a week. Mary blew out the remaining oil lamp, switched off the electric light over the kitchen counter, and took a last look around. In the darkness, it was not hard for her to visualize the years past when she and her husband had worked out of a stall in Market Square or the countless times they had gone hungry to feed the children. It had taken years but they finally owned a building with electricity. It was true, the mortgage was heavy, but it was bearable without the DuMonts. Mary and her husband had big plans for the restaurant. They were even looking into the cost of putting in a flush toilet. But those were fantasies. She lowered herself down to her knees and bent her head in prayer. The family had much to be thankful for, even though they still needed considerable divine intervention.

As always, when Mary prayed in the darkness of the restaurant, she looked up at the huge electric chandelier that hung overhead. She and her husband had purchased the cut-glass fixture from an old aunt for whom it was the sole retirement reward for forty years work in the kitchens of an antebellum mansion. At the time, the aunt lived in an old shack without electricity. The white family that gave her the fixture must have had many nights of laughter over the irony of their gift. Mary and Ajax paid the old woman twice what she asked and would have paid her more except that was all they could afford, and it still took them nearly a year to pay it off. Of all the things in the restaurant, the chandelier represented the future most to Mary and her husband. It was the example of the direction in which they wanted to take their establishment.

As Mary got up from her knees, the idea that had been gnawing at the back of her mind all night sprang full-grown into her consciousness. Journer’s rescuer seemed to be the key. Since he appeared to be ready to fight the DuMonts on his own, why not allow it to appear that the Fleur-de-Lys was also under his wing. Mary knew she could create a connection. After all, she had two healthy daughters. Journer was a big-boned woman with a nice figure and a wonderful smile that drew men like honey drew flies. Sarah was more slender of build and gentler of spirit and had her own following among the young swains, until she had married.

Mary had never asked her daughters to be with someone in an intimate way, but if the family business depended upon it, she expected them to do their duty without complaint. It was no less than she had done in the early years of her marriage. “When yo’ children are hungry, you find ways to feed them,” she often said in memory of those times. Mary Braithwaite was a God-fearing woman, but she averred that a poor man’s path to God was far different than that of a rich man. She saw no immorality in any act that was done for the purpose of helping the family survive.

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The rain fell in sputtering rhythms, beating against the window pane with the sound of a snare drum playing in free meter. Outside the overcast sky did not define itself into dark roiling clouds, but instead presented an even, slate gray ceiling extending without break to the horizon. Only the wind, pushing the rain and bending the trees, gave evidence of the vast power that lay within the monotony of gray. Every once in a while a gust would rush along the eaves of the roof, pressing itself through the cracks along the tops of the walls and then whistle over the heads of the men sitting around a stained, felt card table.

Lester DuMont was speaking. “So let me hear yo’ report, Roscoe. I ain’t got time for a lot of shit! The whole damn business looks like it gon’ fall apart while I listen to yo’ stutterin’ ass!”

Roscoe, a plump, dark-skinned man who had been trying his best to relay his information, was now rendered totally incapable of speaking. He was stuck on the first syllable of his sentence, “The-the-the-the—”

Lester cut off Roscoe with a wave of his hand. “Can’t one of you other idiots tell me what the hell happened at the Merchants Association meeting?”

Dexter Benny, a short wiry man, answered. “I can tell you, Boss. They’s organizin’. Them people think they can stand up to you. There must of been forty people from Market Square. Me and Roscoe left when we saw the deacons from the Light of Zion Church.”

“Ain’t nobody got any brains?” Lester protested. “How come you just didn’t break up the meetin’ right then and there? They ain’t no merchants, they’s just street hawkers. These people ain’t got no guts unless you let them think they do. They is sheep. You supposed to be the wolf!”

“They had them more than a few carbines with ’em. It wasn’t nothin’ the two of us could’ve did against forty people,” Dexter said calmly, fingering the hilt of his knife.

Lester didn’t like Dexter. He had an inordinate suspicion of little men. He felt that they were always compensating for their size. But Dexter was extremely good with a knife and could throw it with either hand. Dexter’s skill with the blade made his casual fingering of the knife while he was answering Lester all the more unpalatable. Lester planned to deal with him in due time, but first he had bigger fish to fry. He needed time to come up with a strategy for dealing with the Merchants Association.