Standing at the Scratch Line (47 page)

Journer was deeply touched. It reminded her how her father was always squeezing money from somewhere to donate to some cause or charity. Now, here, in front of her, was a manifestation of how the money had been spent. Her father, who for the majority of his life appeared to be nothing but a crippled street hawker, had helped someone become a doctor. And now that doctor was helping many others. She felt stronger, renewed, because she saw a path, a way that her life might have meaning. When she got out of the doctor’s car and said good-bye, she still carried the oppressive weight of sadness, but it no longer seemed unbearable.

She entered the Fleur-de-Lys and was immediately immersed in the drama of telling her aunt and sister that her mother was dead. The preparation of food for the early evening meal was delayed for over an hour, but with Journer’s urging, the work in the kitchen got back on track. The restaurant would stay open because that’s exactly what Ajax and Mary would want.

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After seeing King nearly twice a week all through the late months of summer, Serena did not see him during the last part of September. In fact, she did not see him again until the day the thirteen-year-old colored boy, Jimmy Sitwell, was lynched a few miles outside of Algiers. Serena never got the exact details of what caused young Sitwell to be lynched, but what she heard was that a retarded white girl had been molested. Someone reported that a Negro boy had been seen in the area half an hour before she was discovered. A mob of angry white men soon congregated and began roaming the streets looking for Negro suspects. Word quickly spread through the colored community and the men began to hide.

Serena and her parents had scheduled that Thursday to travel into the Vieux Carré, the old French Quarter, in New Orleans to see a doctor for her mother and to buy a new plow blade. By the time they had heard about the lynching, they were three quarters of the way into New Orleans. They were told by a colored man on horseback who was riding to Lake Pontchatrain. Serena’s father and mother discussed it for several minutes and decided to continue on into New Orleans. They did not want to miss the doctor’s appointment. Serena’s father lay down in the back of the wagon underneath the canvas. Serena and her mother sat on the driver’s seat and road silently to the northern outskirts of the city, to what was known as Colored Town. They had to replenish their store of basic items, so they stopped there. After a few brief conversations with some local merchants with whom they had business, it was decided that it was safer for Serena’s father to stay in a vegetable cellar at his cousin’s house than continue on with Serena and her mother. There were now roving bands of whites in New Orleans north of Canal Street who were bent on attacking every colored man they found. It would be dangerous for the women, but Serena’s mother needed to see the doctor.

Rebecca Baddeaux knew that she was dying; she merely wanted to prolong what was left of her life and perhaps find more than occasional escape in laudanum. It was the desire for laudanum as well as other medicine that now drove her forward. When the discomfort in her chest grew too great, she developed a tendency to rock back and forth; it didn’t matter whether she was standing or sitting, she swayed like kelp in a changing current. And indeed, she was in a current, flowing toward the edge of the earth through the channel of decay. Occasionally, she struggled and fought against the current, but she didn’t have the stamina. More often she found herself sitting and watching her life slide slowly over the edge, out of sight.

As Serena pulled the wagon out of an alley behind her cousin’s house, she knew her mother was struggling mightily with her illness. Serena snapped the reins across the backs of the mules to speed them up. She was determined to do everything in her power to get her mother to the doctor safely. The streets were deserted and silent. Colored Town had closed its doors. The sound of their wagon and the hoofbeats of the mules echoed loudly in the emptiness. In the faraway distance, there was a discordant roar of many voices.

At the edge of Colored Town New Orleans began, and so did the cobblestone streets. An old, dented Model A turned off a main thoroughfare and chugged toward the wagon. Serena reined the mules over to the side of the street, for they were skittish around motorcars. When the car came abreast of the wagon, the driver, a colored man in his fifties, stopped and shouted over the roar of his engine, “You folks crazy? Don’t you know they lynching Negroes?”

“I got to get my mother to her doctor,” Serena shouted in response.

The man took a look at Serena’s mother, who ignored him as she rocked back and forth. “If you’s got an emergency, won’t any doctor do? There’s a colored doctor named Washington three streets over from here.”

Serena looked at her mother questioningly, but saw no response, so she turned back to the man. “No sir, I got to take her to her doctor.”

“Well, the way you’re going, you gon’ run right smack into the Klan ’cause they is marching through up and down Ramparts Street. You ought to stay on the back streets outta their way! They ain’t gon’ care you is just womens! They willin’ to take anybody. They burned that boy to death earlier today and they still hungry for blood!”

“We’re going to Front Street near Beauregard Square. What’s the best way?” Serena asked.

“Take a right at the next street and stay in Colored Town ’til you hit Bridgewater. Take Bridgewater to Front and take a left. God be with you.” The man’s car sputtered and clanged as it drove away.

Serena and her mother were left alone in the desolate street. She followed his directions. Whenever she heard noises or other cars coming, she pulled the wagon to the side, tethered the mules, climbed into the back of the wagon with her mother, and pulled the canvas over the both of them. Fortunately, there was not much traffic in Colored Town, but once she had entered New Orleans, Serena had to be more vigilant. She and her mother had to stop and hide under the canvas three times before they reached the doctor’s office.

The doctor’s house and clinic were enclosed in a large two-story building that had wrought-iron balconies and a large interior courtyard. Serena guided the mules through the courtyard to a stable behind the doctor’s building and walked her mother upstairs. The doctor, a tall, thin Scots immigrant with pale, translucent skin and carrot-colored red hair, was surprised to see them. He said in his thick Scottish brogue, “You’re a wee bit late. I dinna think you were comin’. But if you braved the madness in the streets, I’ll see to you as soon as I finish with me other patients.”

Serena took her mother downstairs and waited in the servant’s quarters, where the doctor’s maid lived. The maid was shocked to hear that they had driven by wagon nearly twenty miles on the day of the lynching. She rushed to make Serena’s mother comfortable on her rickety bed and gave them both a steaming hot cup of coffee. After they had been waiting for nearly an hour, there was a commotion in the doctor’s office upstairs. The maid was called for and she complied obediently. Serena sat by her mother and watched helplessly as she continued to rock in rhythm to inner forces.

The maid returned after half an hour had elapsed. She informed them that the doctor had been called away because of an emergency. Some white men had been shot outside the Klan headquarters. From what Serena was able to piece together from the disjointed narrative of the maid, six of the men had just disembarked from two cars and had started up the stairs of the building when a man, also dressed in Klan garb, walked out the front door. The man produced two guns and fired without warning. Three of the men were seriously wounded and three were dead. The sheriff had rounded up a posse to search for the killer because two of the men who were killed were sheriff’s deputies. Two additional dead men were found inside the headquarters, and the klavern’s safe had been robbed. The killer had made his getaway in one of the victim’s cars. The sheriff had issued an all-points bulletin on the car and every Klansman in the area was out looking for the killer. A colored man, who may have witnessed the killer’s escape, was also wanted in connection with the shooting.

The maid advised Serena that it would probably be safer for both her and her mother to stay off the streets for the rest of the night. The maid, whose name was Patience, said there were rumors in the colored community that it was a colored man who did the killing at the Klan headquarters. But the sheriff, in an effort to protect the Klan’s reputation, was saying it was a gang of white men and that they were only looking for a colored man in connection with the crime.

The fear that she had suppressed ever since they had entered New Orleans caused her legs to tremble. It wasn’t noticeable to anyone else, but she couldn’t stop it. Serena refocused on her own mission, which was now to get her mother home safely after she had been seen by the doctor. The safest alternative was to arrange to stay into the evening. She asked Patience if she could feed and water the mules in the doctor’s stable. Patience willingly showed her the stables, the feed bins, and the stalls where she could put the mules. Patience went back to her quarters and left Serena to unharness the animals. Serena watered and fed the mules before placing them in the stalls. She brushed Homer down and checked his hooves to make sure he hadn’t cracked them on the hard cobblestone streets. When she went in to brush Jethro down, she spoke coaxingly and moved slowly. Although the mule had known her most of its life, it was suspicious of humans and had to be coaxed before it would allow itself to be touched. Serena did not even attempt to check Jethro’s hooves. She would leave that task for her father. While she was grooming Jethro, she felt someone looking at her. Serena turned and saw a red-haired white man in his early twenties staring at her.

“You working for my uncle?” he asked, his eyes appraising her from head to toe.

“No, sir.” She met his gaze. The way he was looking at her, she knew he was going to be trouble. She moved up near Jethro’s head and grabbed his bridle, so he wouldn’t try to bite her.

The man opened the gate and stepped inside the stall. “Maybe we should get to know each other. I’m the doctor’s nephew.”

Jethro’s ears laid back. He didn’t like anyone standing behind him; that’s where the lash came from.

Serena held on to Jethro’s bridal, wondering when he would kick.

The man took a step forward and pulled back immediately, for he had stepped into fresh manure. That act saved his life. Jethro lashed out with both hind legs, thudding against the stall’s gate and splintering the wood. The hooves missed the man by six inches. The man did not even open the gate—he vaulted over it. He stood outside the stall, staring at Serena. It was clear from his expression that he blamed her for the mule’s action. The man pointed at Serena and started to say something, but the sound of the doctor’s horse and buggy entering the courtyard stopped him. He left the stables without another word.

Serena breathed a deep sigh of relief. She resolved to get the butcher knife out of the wagon and keep it with her. Outside the stable, Serena overheard the conversation between the man and his uncle, the doctor.

“It was strange to see, that I’ll tell you,” the doctor said as he jumped down from his carriage. “Bodies in bloodstained white sheets lying all around the entrance of the building. And two dead inside as well.”

“I heard it was a gang of men who did it,” the nephew stated.

“It was one lone man,” the doctor corrected.

“One man? Uncle Steve, you know one man couldn’t kill eight men, especially armed men!”

“It was one man,” the doctor reaffirmed. “I heard it from one of the dying victim’s lips. He saw the man’s face before he donned his hood. He told me and the sheriff just before he died. It was one man. A colored man with two-tone shoes.”

Serena’s heart leapt at the news that a colored man was bold enough to march into the Klan’s headquarters and not only rob them, but kill a few members as well. It could only be one man, she thought, as a sudden pang for King’s safety overcame her. Serena felt nothing but resentment toward whites. It was only fair that they got some of what they dished out. What should have been a simple little trip into New Orleans had turned out to be a nightmare all because of the whites’ hatred of colored people. Now she had to be careful whenever she went to check on the mules, because she didn’t want the doctor’s nephew to catch her in the stables alone. There was no doubt in her mind that he meant to rape her. She decided to leave the stables before the doctor went inside.