Standing at the Scratch Line (46 page)

Mary’s eyes were closed and her face was contorted in pain. Although her clothes and hair were singed, she had no serious burns. It was the bullet hole in her chest that was causing her problems. With every breath she took there was a terrible gurgling sound.

Journer felt a sudden and intense rush of guilt. All the hateful thoughts she had directed at her mother flashed across her consciousness. She shook her head; she had not asked for this. This was not her doing. She had not called death down upon her mother. She reached out and took her mother’s inert hand in her own.

“Mama! Mama, it’s me, Journer!” she said, holding her mother’s hand.

Mary Braithwaite was delirious. “Water! Water! Please, I’m so hot and thirsty.”

Phillip knelt beside Journer and shook his head. “She shouldn’t have anything to drink until the doctor examines her.”

“Where is the doctor?” Journer demanded. “She’ll die before he gets here!”

“I’ll find him!” Phillip said as he stood and looked around. He ran toward the church.

“Journer,” Mary whispered, lifting her head feebly, her face grimacing in pain. “Oh, Journer, I’s so sorry, honey.”

“Just be quiet, Mama. The doctor will be here soon,” she answered, holding her mother’s hand to her cheek. Journer had cursed her mother after her father’s funeral and had refused to see her or speak to her ever since. She had heard that her mother had been volunteering at Mount Zion Hill Church, but she had studiously avoided seeing her. Journer had believed there were only ill feelings in her heart for her mother, but all the anger and the blame were swept away, like vapor before the wind, by the vision of her mother struggling on the edge of death. She begged God to let her mother live.

Mary coughed and winced with the pain. “I tried to stop ’em, Journer! I tried to stop ’em! I pulled the mask off’n one of ’em and scratched his white face good!”

Journer caressed her mother’s brow. “You did good, Mama! You did good! Please just lie quiet ’til the doctor gets here. Save yo’ strength!”

Mary nodded and lay silently for several minutes, her breathing gurgling irregularly. Suddenly, her back arched and her hand clasped Journer’s in a fierce grip. She groaned. “Oh, God, I comes befo’ you naked and sinful! Please forgive me bein’ stupid and ignorant!”

“Mama! Mama, what are you sayin’?”

Mary turned to face her daughter. “I begs yo’ forgiveness! Befo’ God, I begs it! I was wrong! I was wrong! A restaurant ain’t worth the happiness of yo’ chil’ren!”

“Mama! Mama, you don’t have to—”

“Let me finish, Journer! I ain’t got long! I needs to say, I’s proud to have you as my daughter! I don’t deserve you, but I’s proud! You done picked yo’self up and you’s doin’ the right thing! You’s a good woman. Yo’ father was right! You got to protect yo’ spirit! You got to have dignity! I was wrong, honey! I was wrong! Please forgive me! Forgive me!”

Journer started to cry. “There’s nothing to forgive, Mama! You were makin’ the best decision for the family. I should be askin’ yo’ forgiveness! Forgive me for cursin’ you, Mama! Forgive me!”

“Just keep doin’ right, girl! You’s helpin’ colored folks! You and Phillip’s got my blessin’! Just remember to treat my grandchil’ren better than I treated you! Teach ’em about dignity!” Mary started coughing, each cough racking her body with spasms. Blood started flowing out of the bullet wound. Pain lanced through her body and she arched her back again. She squeezed Journer’s hand tightly, then released it. She had passed out.

“We need a doctor here!” Journer screamed. She clutched her mother’s unconscious body to her breast and rocked slowly back and forth.

“How long have these people been lying here in the dust?” a voice demanded. Journer looked up with a start and recognized the young colored doctor from Virginia. “Are you in shock?” he asked Journer as she gazed up at him without comprehension.

“Uh, no suh,” Journer answered as she put her cheek against the cold flesh of her mother’s face.

“There’s nothing more you can do for her,” the doctor advised her gently. “Why don’t you let her lie in peace and come and give me a hand?”

Journer was stunned. She hadn’t realized her mother was dead. She allowed the doctor to take the body out of her arms. The sense of loss was unspeakable. She hadn’t finished grieving for her father and now her mother was dead. The sadness by itself would have been bearable, but feelings of guilt made her want to fall down in the dirt and scream for another chance. She decided it was better to occupy her mind with work than dwell on the death of her parents. Journer shook off the trauma, which seemed to bind her limbs with invisible cords. “I’ll help you, Doctor,” she offered.

The doctor looked around. “We’ve got to get these people to a clean and sterile area where I can dress these wounds. What’s the closest building I can use for an infirmary?” Journer had no answer. The doctor walked away to speak with one of the deacons.

It was nearly two o’clock before Journer and the doctor trudged back up the hill from the seamstress shop toward the church. The doctor was exhausted. He had completed several surgeries, including the amputation of the young man’s arm. His medical intervention had saved at least three lives. Thus, despite his fatigue, his mood was good. He was a short, thin, light-skinned man with quick, birdlike movements.

“Now what really caused all this carnage? I’ve heard night riders mentioned, Ku Klux Klan, and I’ve also heard it was just some low-down crooks. You know the real story?”

“It was the Klan. Before she died, my mama told me she pulled one of they hoods off. It got to be the Klan; they’s the onliest ones sinful enough to burn a House of God.”

“Is it because Reverend Pendergast has been speaking out on behalf of the folks in Possum Hollow? Oh, that reminds me, he had quite a gash on his head. Let’s see to him.” The doctor pulled out his watch. “Look at the time! I have to get back to my practice! Let’s hurry.” The doctor patted her arm affectionately. “I want you to know I was very impressed with your steadiness during surgery. You learned the tools I needed and in what order they were used. Yes, you were very impressive. I know what I’m talking about. I operated on wounded and dying men on the battlefield in France and I’ve never had an abler assistant! If you ever decide to work in medicine, come and see me.”

Journer had sufficiently recouped her strength to continue up the hill. “You fought in the Big War?” she asked.

“No,” he chuckled sadly. “Not hardly. Not many Negro soldiers ever got to shoot a weapon. We worked as stevedores and ambulance and truck drivers. Mostly, I worked behind the lines as a medical attendant, even though I had graduated from medical school and finished my residency. It wasn’t until the last year of the war that I got a chance to do some real doctoring, when I was sent to the front to serve in the medical corps with the Three hundred Sixty-ninth. Then I got all the secondhand equipment and crisis doctoring I could stand.”

They walked on in silence for a while, until they came to the church. Several men were standing around the front of the church with rifles and they watched Journer and the doctor attempt to pass around them.

A light-skinned colored man with red hair and freckles across his nose stepped in front of them. “Sorry, can’t go in there. They’s meetin’! Ain’t nobody allowed in.” The man nodded his head at Journer and the doctor. “No offense, folks, but that means you too.”

“I beg your pardon!” the doctor exclaimed with indignation. “I’m Doctor Thadeus Washington and I’m here to see my patient, Reverend Pendergast, and I want to see him now because I have other patients to tend to!”

A voice from a church window said, “Let the man in, Red. Somebody’s got to fix Pendergast’s head.” She saw King framed in the window, but he quickly disappeared in the shadows of the interior.

Journer and Dr. Washington entered the church and heard heated conversation in the main hall. There was a broad foyer across the front of the church, which was used primarily for the donning and doffing of rain gear. Arched doorways on either side of the foyer led into aisles of the main hall. Journer noticed that the church was dark and shadowy without electricity, but she could still see the smoke stains on the ceiling and places where the fire burned through the lathing. The voices came from the front of the church. People were sitting in the first few rows. A couple of men were standing around the altar.

As she and the doctor made their way to the front of the church, Journer heard King demand, “I want to know how the Klan knows so much about our business. They didn’t break into this church by accident, and from what people say, they knew where to look! This preacher done told somebody! The deeds are gone and he act likes he got the right to keep secrets! This man needs a serious lesson!”

“But first I’ll see he gets some serious medical attention,” said the doctor as he made his way to Pendergast’s side. Journer didn’t follow the doctor. She held back while she looked over the crowd for Phillip.

Pendergast was sitting on the stairs of the apse, holding a bloodstained towel to his head. “I admit I have made a foolish decision. I trusted someone that I should not have trusted,” he said with a quiet sadness. “I’m truly sorry for what has happened. Just give me a couple of days and I think I can clear it up! Is that all right?” he asked.

“It’s obvious to me you can’t clear shit up!” King retorted.

“If a man apologizes sincerely, knowing that’s all he can say to God, we have to accept it,” the doctor said as he cleaned the gash on Pendergast’s forehead with a cotton swab.

King looked at the doctor. “Who the hell are you?”

“Now, let’s not lose our tempers with each other,” Claude Duryea advised from his second-row pew. Claude turn to the reverend. “Reverend Pendergast, King is right about one thing: we need to know who you told. We don’t have a couple of days. We need to know now. We need to take action now.”

“Just give me a day,” Pendergast pleaded.

“For what?” King demanded. “You think you gon’ talk some sense into people who would set fire to a church and shoot women? You got as much a chance of that as fillin’ these pews next Sunday, when the word gets around how you been buddy-buddyin’ with the Klan and done sold a mess of colored folks down the river.”

“That’s a lie and a quarter!” Pendergast burst out with dismay. “You think lying about me is just?”

“The ‘Rev’ is a stuffed shirt, but he isn’t a traitor,” the doctor stated as he snapped his medical bag shut and got to his feet. He saw two people lying on blankets along the far wall and he went over to check on them.

“Who’s to know it’s a lie?” King asked, giving the doctor’s retreating back another long look. He turned back to Pendergast and continued. “You ain’t hurt bad. A couple of people is dead. All we got to ask is, ‘How come you ain’t dead or injured fightin’ to save the church and the people’s investment?’ ” King looked around at the people gathered in the first few pews and pointed at Pendergast. “How come he was saved?”

There was a long silence. Journer was sitting with Phillip at the end of the second row. The conversation faded for her as her eyes filled with the sight of her mother dying.

Journer stood suddenly. She felt a shortness of breath. The anger and tension in the church was stifling. She needed fresh air. Neighboring churches’ bells began to toll three o’clock and their pealing made Journer think of the Fleur-de-Lys. She had to get back and help prepare for the evening meal. It didn’t matter that she had not been back to the restaurant since the night her father was killed. She had to go and tell her sister that their mother was dead. She headed up the aisle toward the main exit. She was strangely unsteady on her feet. The bells seemed to be reverberating unusually loudly. The far wall in front of her shifted out of focus. She stopped for a moment to gather her wits and a firm hand grabbed her arm. It was the young doctor.

“Are you alright?” he inquired, staring at her closely.

“I’s jes’ tired,” Journer answered, taking a couple of deep breaths. “I’ll be alright in a minute. I gots to get back to work.”

“Where do you work? My car is at the foot of the hill; maybe I can give you a ride, Mrs. Duryea. I’ve worked with you all day and I don’t even know your first name.”

“The name’s Journer. My maiden name is Braithwaite. My family owns the Fleur-de-Lys and I would thankee kindly if’en you’s disposed to give me a lift somewheres nearer the restaurant.”

The doctor smiled broadly and answered, “I’d be happy to, Mrs. Duryea.” He turned and signaled to Phillip with a wave of his hand that everything was fine.

Just before they entered New Orleans, the doctor turned his Model A down a broad street that ran parallel to a major levee. They saw colored chain gangs dressed in ankle chains and the characteristic dirty, black-and-white striped prison garb. There were many a sweating, brown, bare-backed man shuffling in shackles under the weight of sandbags. Scattered among them were a few white guards armed with whips and rifles. Flashes of sad work songs blew in the window as they drove past. The doctor shook his head. “I hate seeing them use colored prisoners like this.” Journer had no response. She closed her eyes and felt the warm breeze on her face.

Traffic slowed to a crawl as the car turned down a narrow side street clogged with horse-drawn carts. “Is your father, the honorable Ajax Braithwaite of the African Knights’ Social Club?” the doctor asked.

Journer answered, “Yes. He was. He passed in June.”

“I heard about that. My condolences,” the doctor nodded. “Eight years ago, Mr. Ajax Braithwaite sponsored my request for donations for my medical school tuition before his social club. He even went so far as to present me to the Northern Stars as well. I was one of the young scholars in need of tuition mentioned in
The Crisis
that year. Even though I was from a different part of the country and he didn’t know me from Adam, he sponsored me. And when I was at my lowest, when money was tight and I was ready to quit, he wrote me and sent me ten dollars! He gave me hope and reminded me of my faith. Mrs. Duryea, it is because of men like your father that I am a doctor today. He’s the reason I came to New Orleans. I wanted to repay him by serving his community.”