Standing at the Scratch Line (49 page)

There is a mood that grows and takes shape among a pack of men, similar to that shared by communal predators such as wolves and hunting dogs. The mood is particularly strong when the men are bonded by either singleness of purpose or by weakness. Serena was a nigger woman traveling alone with her infirmed mother, an easy victim in their eyes. There was a moment of anxiousness and hesitation while the mood continued to build. The men jostled each other to see which one of them would make the first move.

“Tonight we are doing the sheriff’s work! You have been deputized to hunt and search for the men responsible for killing two officers of the sheriff, not to mess with some nigger woman!” The man with the lantern had a commanding voice. “We have to set up a roadblock at Nellum’s Crossing by five this morning. That’s still a good hour away. Herbert! Tom! Get on your horses! We have to ride!”

The man with the lantern introduced himself to Serena. “I’m Sergeant Cassidy of Orleans Parish. Tell Mr. Shannon that Ned Cassidy helped you get home unharmed.” He put out his lantern and led the men into the night.

The last man to leave was Tom, and he leaned out of his saddle to say to Serena, “You’ll be seeing me later. I’ve got plans for you!”

Serena drove on for more than an hour in the darkness before resting the mules. She avoided Nellum’s Crossing and followed one of the canals northward. She kept going in the direction of the Shannon estate in case one of the riders from the roadblock discovered her. She planned to turn off just before she reached Shannon’s Landing, for her father’s farm lay in the lowlands on the edge of the estate.

Just before Pointe Bijou, the road led into a dark grove of trees. Both Jethro and Homer snorted and their ears went up. Serena could tell from their reaction that it was not a big cat or a bear, for the mules were not afraid. She hissed over her shoulder, “Somebody’s waiting for us in this grove of trees.”

Serena held on to the reins tightly as the wagon entered the grove. The fear was a solid weight in her stomach. She felt exhausted and distraught. The nightmare was not yet over. What else can happen? she wondered.

A man came riding out of the shadows, “Remember me? I said I’d see you again.”

It was Tom. Serena could tell by his voice. She took the knife from beneath her cushion and placed it on her lap under the folds of her shawl.

“Just pull your wagon over here. I got a nice place all laid out for us. If you do what I tell you the first time, then I won’t have to get rough. You got it?”

Serena was almost relieved that it was only Tom. She snapped the reins on the mules to keep them moving through the grove.

“Hey, didn’t you hear what I said? Now I warned you! You should have listened to me!” Tom rode his horse close to the mules and attempted to grab the reins, but Serena thwarted him. Tom then tried to clamber aboard the wagon from horseback. Serena slashed him across the face with the butcher knife and he fell between his horse and the wagon. The wagon rolled past him without stopping. Tom got to his feet screaming, “You goddamn nigger whore! I’ll kill you for cut—” There was a soft thud and Tom was silent. Even in the darkness, Serena could see the knife hilt protruding from his white shirt, surrounded by the growing stain of blood. Tom pulled a revolver from his holster and raised the weapon in Serena’s direction, but he never had a chance to take aim. There was another thud. This time another blade entered his neck. He gurgled and then fell over backward.

Serena reined the mules to a halt. King pulled himself to a kneeling position with a grimace and said, “You got some fire in you, girl! You alright by me.”

Serena nodded and stared into the darkness where Tom’s body was lying and asked in a quiet voice, “Where did you learn to be so good at killing?”

“The army,” he answered as he clambered over the wagon’s side and dropped to the ground. He almost crumpled to his knees but he straightened up with an effort and made his way over to Tom’s body. Serena saw that King walked with a limp and that his pants were discolored by blood.

“You’re hurt. You shouldn’t be walking. Get back in the wagon,” Serena commanded.

“Yeah, one of those good old boys cut me a little taste, but it ain’t nothin’ vital. Remember what the old man said about being practical?” King asked as he was going through Tom’s pockets and possessions.

“You mean Uncle Joe? He’s a coward! He had nothing to say to me!”

“Just ’cause you don’t understand it, don’t mean it ain’t sound advice. He said, ‘You don’t live long if you ain’t practical’ and he was right. It’s time for us to go our separate ways. That’s what is practical. I’ve got a long ride to get home.” King pulled Tom’s body into the bushes and cleaned his knives on Tom’s shirt.

Serena jumped down from the wagon. “No reason to ride all that way bleeding. Let me bandage you up.”

“This here wound is on the inside of my upper leg, I don’t think you . . .”

“What? I don’t think you . . . what?” Serena challenged him. “I live on a farm, mister. I’m not one of your dance hall girls. I know about injuries and basic medical remedies. Now, pull your pants off so I can do a bandage on that leg!”

Without the assistance of light, Serena was able to clean up the wound and stanch the flow of blood. She used torn pieces of rags to make the bandages. “How’d you get so hard?” she asked as she wrapped his thigh with the bandages.

“I owe it all to the American Army.”

“You aren’t in the army now and the war is over,” Serena reminded him.

“You don’t think this is war? Damn people hangin’ colored children from poplar trees while they party and drink! Forcin’ themselves on any colored woman they want. This is war, woman! Like DuBois say, ‘. . . the problem of the twentieth century gon’ be the color line!’ I got to get on,” said King. “Here’s two hundred dollars.”

Serena looked at the paper money in her hand. Two hundred dollars was a small fortune. “What’s this for?” she asked suspiciously.

“You risked your life to take me along. It’s payment. You earned it.”

Serena was astounded. She had never seen so much money at one time. The thoughts of all the things she could buy swirled through her head briefly, but she blocked them out and said, “It’s too much. I can’t take this.”

“You say it’s too much?” Now it was King’s turn to be astounded. “You the first woman I ever offered money to who didn’t snatch it out of my hand,” King marveled. “You got a backbone, woman, and you’s honest. You okay with me.” King limped over to Tom’s horse and painfully mounted.

“I knew it was you as soon as I heard about the shooting,” Serena said to his dark silhouette astride the horse. The words continued as if issuing from her mouth through their own volition. “I was frightened for you. I don’t think I ever worried about anyone so much who wasn’t a blood relative.”

“I’ll try and see you in the next couple of weeks. I may have to lay low a spell, ’cause one of them Klan boys saw me when I took off my hood and I don’t know if I shot him good enough to kill him.”

“He’s dead, but he told the doctor and the sheriff you were colored before he died.”

King rode out from under the trees. “Damn, it won’t take long for Sheriff Mack to make me suspect.”

“Where will you stay and how can I get in touch with you?”

“If you ever need anythin’, you go talk to Jonas Stedman, the blacksmith. He knows how to get in touch with me.”

“What about the money?” Serena inquired.

“Keep it.” King answered. “Snap them reins and get yo’ wagon goin’ and let’s get some distance between us and this spot. I’ll follow you a ways to make sure you get home.”

“Nonsense. I’m already home,” Serena protested. “I only live two miles from here.”

“Then let’s get goin’,” King urged. “Me and Sampson got to come back out here sometime tomorrow and bury that body. If he gets found, they gon’ check on yo’ story. Then we got problems.”

Rebecca Baddeaux began to sing “What a Friend I Have in Jesus” as her daughter snapped the reins across the backs of the mules and the cart rolled bumpily forward under the dim light of the night sky.

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The hot noon sun filtered in through the slats of the window blinds, laying out parallel strips of sunlight on the hardwood floor. A loud whirring fan stood upon the desk, doing little but pushing warm air around. Corlis Mack sat behind his desk pondering the events of the past evening. The remains of his homemade lunch littered the desk in front of him. Unlike his brother, he was a big, beefy man who was balding prematurely. He dabbed the sweat that was running down his brow and took several long drinks of his iced lemonade.

There was a knock on his office door, which was always open unless he was having a private meeting, and a young blond file clerk stuck her head in the door. “Major Harley is here, sir.”

“Send him in and then close my door,” Sheriff Mack growled and picked up his wastebasket and swept the debris from his lunch into it. He knew that Harley was extremely upset by last night’s incident at Klan headquarters. Mack knew it wasn’t the loss of life or the violation of Klan headquarters that disturbed Harley. Harley was concerned about one thing only and that was the whereabouts of the deeds.

Harley walked into the office with Roy Wilcox. As soon as the door was closed, Harley began pacing back and forth. “Corlis, if those deeds fall into the wrong hands, all the work I’ve done on this project is down the drain! Of course, I’m also very concerned about the men who lost their lives and what a terrible blow this is to our local organization.”

“I know one thing,” Roy said in an abrasive tone. “Ain’t nothin’ helped with the sheriff goin’ ’round sayin’ a nigger was in on this robbery. Them kind of words could give the niggers the idea that they can stand up to white men and set back all the work that the Klan done to keep niggers in their place.” Roy absentmindedly picked at the scabs on his face where he had been scratched.

Mack looked at Wilcox and made an effort to keep the sneer off his face. He was well aware of Wilcox’s position with the local klavern and also knew of his recent promotion to Grand Titan. Mack always had a few deputies join the Klan just so he could stay informed of their activities. He feared them no more than he feared snarling country dogs. They had a bite, but if one kept a cudgel handy they were easily beaten into line. He had little respect for most of the men who joined the Klan. They were generally losers: men with a lot of anger who saw themselves as failures and blamed it on someone else, cowards who could not stand by their actions in the light of day. Roy was different. He really liked killing. It didn’t matter to him whether they were women or children. And he didn’t care who knew.

“What are we going to do, Corlis?” Harley asked, running his hands through his limp white hair. He was still pacing. His face was even redder than usual. His light blue seersucker suit hung in stiff wrinkles, like tired foil, from the bulges of his body.

“I think we just wait,” advised Corlis with a smile. Harley’s distress somehow contributed to Corlis’s overall feeling of comfort. For the first time since early morning his office did not seem so unbearably hot.

“What is this wait shit? Why wait?” Roy demanded. “The Klan headquarters has been robbed! Brothers holdin’ the line against the mongrels has been shot down without bein’ given even a nigger’s chance. We got to do somethin’ strong! Like round up ten niggers and march them through the streets to Congo Square and hang they asses right there!”

“How is that gon’ get back at the whites you say committed this crime?” Corlis asked.

Roy was momentarily befuddled by the question. “Well, er, it would show the niggers that they gon’ pay no matter who’s responsible.”

Corlis gave Roy a wave of dismissal. “Let’s cut through the foolishness and save everybody some time. I don’t want no race war in this parish! I’m pretty sure I know the man who did this robbery and I think that if we keep a low profile, we’ll be able to pick him up within a week, deeds and all.”

“This ain’t yo’ supernigger theory, is it?” Roy asked in a snide tone.