Standing at the Scratch Line (37 page)

The heat of the sun was causing steam to rise from the dampened earth when Serena brought a grain-laden wagon drawn by the family’s two mules into Nellum’s Crossing. As the sun beat down on her shawl-covered shoulders, she could tell it was going to get hotter. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning. She adjusted her straw hat as the large, faded red structure of the mill came into view through the trees. There were only seven buildings in all of Nellum’s Crossing, and five of the buildings were not even in sight of each other. Bellow’s General Store and Mack & Peabo’s Grist Mill were located fifty yards from each other on opposite sides of the country road, which loosely connected all the buildings to Lake Pontchatrain Road.

Serena slapped the reins again against the backs of the mules and guided them off the road toward the mill’s grain chute. The old wagon creaked loudly with its weight of grain sacks. Serena had been concerned more than once during her trip into Nellum’s Crossing that the wagon would disintegrate before she arrived. It was obvious to everyone but her father that the old wagon could no longer bear such weight over rough and gutted country roads. “Gee! Gee! Jethro, Gee,” she commanded the left-hand mule as the wagon scraped up against the milling dock.

A tall, scrawny white man with a beaklike nose and large Adam’s apple stood on the dock and watched Serena Baddeaux. He pushed back his battered straw hat and his eyes widened appreciatively as he watched her jump from the wagon to the dock. “Yes siree, it sure do look like Little Serena done growed up! How do, honey?” he asked as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

Serena knew all about Mr. Samuel Mack: the ways he used to cheat on the weight milled and how he always tried to get between the legs of every colored woman he saw. She had been bringing in wagons of grain to be milled at Mack & Peabo’s Grist Mill since she was fifteen. She was ready for him. “My father’s doing fine, Mr. Mack. How’s Mrs. Mack?”

A frown immediately flashed across his face and he swallowed angrily. “Why you askin’?” he demanded. Obviously, the thought of his wife was not conducive with the other thoughts in his head.

“Last time I was by, you told me your wife was doing poorly, Mr. Mack. I was just hoping that her health had returned,” Serena explained with a tone of innocence. She thought he was extremely ugly even for a white man. The movement of his Adam’s apple reminded her of a garter snake’s body after it swallowed a frog. “I have ten jute bags of corn weighing one hundred fifty pounds apiece,” she announced. “I know you haven’t seen this much grain in a while. I heard this mill hasn’t been used in a week. I should get a better percentage than you have posted.”

“I can always squeeze out a lower percentage, if’en you wants to come into my office and do a bit of business.” He winked at her lewdly.

“You have a sign outside that says there’s a twenty-dollar milling fee, plus the mill takes five percent for loads under five hundred pounds and three percent for loads over a thousand.”

“That ain’t fo’ coloreds! That’s fo’ whites only. Coloreds ain’t generally got the same quality as they betters. ’Course, as I said, I could maybe give you a lower percentage.”

“How much lower, Mr. Mack? Lower than the sign?” she asked while looking him directly in the eye. She watched him lick his lips and look her up and down.

“You ain’t gon’ get better but you might get close. It depends on what you got. Can’t make no deal unless I see the merchandise, can I?”

Serena was tired of Mr. Mack. She was tired of all the roles she was forced to play in the face of racism. She wanted to blurt out what she really thought. Instead, she contained herself. “Mr. Mack, you stand to make twenty dollars’ cash plus forty-five pounds of cornmeal, if you gave me what the sign says. Since you don’t want to give me a fair price, I’m going to drive all the way to Swanson’s to get the grain milled. Swanson will give me a better price.”

The frown reappeared on Mack’s face. “You gon’ sell to a foreigner?” Mack demanded. The Swansons had only lived in the parish for two generations. He smacked his leg in anger. “Jes’, what did we go and fight a war fo’, huh?” he questioned the world around him. “Certainly weren’t to give foreigners an upper hand over American-born!” Mack’s face was mottled with anger and his big nose pulsed red like a beacon.

“I have family, Mr. Mack. Are you going to give me a fair price?” Serena was calm. She was in no danger from Mack as long as she did nothing to aggravate him. Mack was a low-down, Jim Crow cheat, but he was not the kind of man who would take pleasure in smacking a woman around, even if she was a colored woman.

Mack stood for a moment considering his decision. “What you mean, ‘a fair price’?”

“I want what the sign says, Mr. Mack.”

A voice called out behind her. “Yeah, Cap’n Mack, give her what you’s advertizin’.” King Tremain rode up with a big smile. He was riding a big gray stallion and leading another horse.

“As I live and breathe, look what the cat done brung in! I heard you was back from Mississippi, Bordeaux,” Mack answered with a big grin. He walked over to the edge of the loading dock. “Boy, if’en you don’t look mo’ jes’ like yo’ father every day that pass. You gon’ have to come by the house and see the wife! She wouldn’t let me hear the end of it, if she found out you was by here and didn’t come and see her!” Mack jumped down from the loading dock.

“I’ll do that later, if you don’t mind, Cap’n. I jes’ came by to drop off the horse I told you about. I knows you got two races comin’ up and I seen this little filly run. With the right rider she might make a little money for you.” King tipped his hat to Serena as he slid off his horse. He handed the reins of the filly to Mack.

“She sho’ is a trim little number,” said Mack admiringly as he patted the horse’s neck. “She got real nice lines.” He turned to King and said, “They both do, if you know what I mean.” Mack ogled both Serena and the filly to make his point.

“This here lady is a friend of mine, Cap’n Mack,” King said easily. “I sho’ would appreciate it if you would give her yo’ best service.”

“Oh, she yo’ friend, well maybe I can take my thumb off the scale for her.”

King said with a broad smile, “Beg pardon, Cap’n, but it’s yo’ foot she worried ’bout.”

Mack guffawed. “Not in front of the payin’ customers, boy, not in front of the payin’ customers. I’m gon’ put this little horse in the back.” Mack turned and asked King, “You sho’ you can’t stop in and see Martha?”

“I’ll tell you what, Cap’n, I’ll come back by when the lady here picks up her meal.”

“We gon’ engage the stone tomorrow, her shipment should be ready by Saturday. I’ll tell the missus you’s comin’.” Mack led the filly around the back of the mill building.

As Mack walked the horse away, King leaped up on the dock. “I hopes you don’t mind if I said we was friends,” he said to Serena.

Serena did not say anything at first. She merely looked him up and down. She wanted to make sure she had his image in her mind. He was a tall handsome man and he was light-skinned enough to be able to travel in the best company. She noted that all his clothes were store-bought.

“You talkin’?” King asked.

“We haven’t met. I’m Serena Baddeaux.” She held out her hand in the manner she imagined of a great grand dame.

King started to laugh. “Why you gettin’ so puffed up? I know who you is and I think you know me. Do we got to pretend?”

Serena frowned at him a moment. “How do you know who I am?”

“I asked.”

“Oh, that’s good.” She nodded her head and smiled at him. “How do you know Mr. Mack?”

“Him and his brother and my daddy and my uncle was all very close. They didn’t have no regular colored-white relationship. They had somethin’ special. I don’t trust too many white folks, but Cap’n Mack is one.”

“You mean your father and uncle were friends with Corlis Mack, the sheriff of New Orleans Parish?”

“That be the one, but it was a long time ago. He ain’t like his brother, Cap’n Mack. He done forgot he ever was friends with coloreds.”

“I thought your name was King. Why does he call you Bordeaux?”

“Bordeaux is my middle name. King is a name I got in the war. He’s been callin’ me Bordeaux since I was a baby. I ain’t gon’ try and change him.”

“Where do you live?” Serena asked.

“In New Orleans at the Hotel Toussant.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“You’s full of questions, ain’t you?”

“Not really. I just wondered what kind of career could a man who killed so easily have?”

“If you’s stuck on that, ma’am, I takes my leave of you.” King tipped his hat and whistled softly for his horse, who answered the call and came alongside the dock.

Serena saw with surprise that King wasn’t going to argue with her; he was simply going to leave. “I’m sorry. I meant no offense.”

King paused before mounting his horse. “Sho’ sounded like it to me.” He put his foot in the stirrup and stepped into the saddle.

He was leaving. It was not the result Serena had intended. Aside from the possibility that he might be the instrument she could use to escape the farm, she was intensely interested in seeing him again. “Will I see you when it’s time to pick up the grain?” she asked in a small voice.

King studied her for a moment. “That depends on you.”

“How?”

“Do you want me to come while you’re here?”

If she said no, Serena knew that King would ride away without a backward glance and another one of her possible escape routes would be closed. “Yes,” she blurted out and then was immediately ashamed by the blatancy of her statement.

“Then I’ll come at three o’clock on Saturday, how’s that?”

Serena merely nodded her head in response. King touched his hat to her again and trotted off through the trees.

Mack reappeared with a couple of his assistants. “Bordeaux gone?” he asked, as his helpers began unloading the grain from the wagon.

“Yes, Mr. Mack. He says that you’ve known him for quite a while.”

Mack laughed. “Sho’ ’nough. I was there the day he was borned. I bailed his daddy out’n jail and brought him to where Bordeaux’s mother was laborin’. That boy came out hollerin’, ready to do battle with the world. I’s the one that said he should be called Bordeaux after his grandfather. How you know ’em?” Mack beckoned for her to walk back with him toward the scales.

“Oh, I met him at an evangelical meeting earlier this month,” Serena said simply, showing the usual reluctance to share any information with whites.

“Evangelical meetin’, huh? Don’t sound much like Bordeaux to me. That weren’t when he did the DuMont boys, was it?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Serena lied, not wanting to incriminate King.

“That be another story,” Mack said as they walked up to the half-ton scale. “You know, you can go on and I’ll get my boys to take it into the shed and we’ll weigh what’s milled.”

Serena knew better than to accept that offer. If she was slow enough to fall for that ploy, Mack might skim off forty or fifty more pounds of meal.

“Thank you, Mr. Mack, but I’ll wait while it’s weighed.” Serena turned back to the wagon and took out a one-pound weight and a five-pound weight, which she showed him. “Just to check the scales,” she said with a small smile. She was within her rights. It was local custom that a farmer, even colored, had the right to check scales before the selling or milling of grain.

Serena planned to make a quick stop at the general store to pick up supplies and then head to the blacksmith’s shop to see if the new issue of
The Crisis
had come in. Serena always looked forward to visiting the general store and Old Mrs. Bellow. The store was a treasure trove of wonderful and exotic smells. When she stepped in the door she was immediately aware of the scent of dried and cured meats, spices, the barrels of pickles and pickled cabbage, and, if she came in the morning, the welcoming aroma of newly baked bread. All this was interwoven with the heavy, sweet smell of fresh-cut leather emanating from the stock of new straps, harnesses, saddles, and machine-made boots. It was a place where she fantasized about having money. Everywhere she looked there were always so many things on the neatly stacked shelves that her family needed, yet did not have the means to purchase. Sometimes she even dreamed of leaving home and asking Mrs. Bellow for a position in the store just to be in an environment of plenty.

As she was totaling up, Mrs. Bellow, the old white woman who owned the store, confided to her that the Right Reverend Pendergast had come up to the Church of the Cross to get assistance for the colored families who had been burned out by the Klan. Mrs. Bellow whispered when she spoke of the Klan. Serena knew Mrs. Bellow had no love for the night riders because she was Jewish and her only son had disappeared without a trace after he had a run-in with a man who was known to be a high Klan official. His disappearance was never fully investigated and no one was ever arrested, but it was common knowledge as to who was responsible.

After she left the store, Serena reconsidered going on to the blacksmith because it was located in sight of the Church of the Cross. It was her family’s church and she knew that in any meeting of the church elders, her father would be in attendance, and she didn’t relish the prospect of seeing her father. She did not think of it as her church because she didn’t like the six-hour Sunday Bible meeting and prayer service, nor the fire-and-damnation, altar-pounding sermons that were given every Sunday. Despite her reluctance, the possibility that there might be an announcement of who had been selected for the NAACP’s Annual Spingarn Award drove her onward to the smithy.

She saw Walter Deveroux and his son Gerard standing around the blacksmith, Jonas Stedman, while his assistant, Dante LeBrie, pumped the bellows on the fire. Jonas Stedman looked like a blacksmith. He had a thick triangular neck, which was connected to a squat muscular body. He had bulging, powerful arms that could swing a heavy hammer all day, and he was as black as the wrought iron he twisted so delicately. His smile was easy and friendly, only marred by the many gaps in his teeth. She noticed that the conversation between the men halted abruptly as she drew near.