Standing at the Scratch Line (59 page)

“We’re comin’, Phillip,” Journer called out in response. She stood up and flashed a smile of even white teeth at Serena. She held up a mirror for Serena to see herself. “I know this ain’t the way you was thinkin’ of gettin’ married. It may not be a ceremony made in heaven, but you sho’ gon’ look like an angel.”

“You look beautiful,” Martha confirmed.

“You ready?” Journer asked. Serena inhaled deeply and nodded her head.

The three women stepped out of the room into a large, high-ceilinged storage area. Crates and boxes were stacked along one side almost to the roof. Reverend Pendergast was standing on a soapbox in front of King’s truck. He had a Bible in his hand and he was wearing a red-and-black church robe. King walked over and stood before him as Claude escorted Serena toward the makeshift altar.

For some reason, the ceremony seemed to blur for Serena. Pendergast’s voice seemed far away, as if he was talking in another room. Primarily, all she could hear was the beating of her heart and the rustling of her dress. She remembered turning to King and looking in his eyes and saying, “I do,” and she heard him say the same words to her, but all other sounds were muffled. When he slipped the ring on her finger and she saw the jewels twinkling in the pale light of the warehouse, her vision blurred with tears. It was the most beautiful moment she had ever experienced.

“I now pronounce you man and wife,” Pendergast intoned. “King, you may kiss the bride.”

Serena felt King’s arms around her and she felt as if she was wrapped in a warm blanket. Then his lips touched hers and she pressed herself against him and felt the hardness of his body against her. Sensations of hope, doubt, and awe twisted together like the strands of a braid, creating substance out of air, and bound her heart and thoughts to her new path into the future.

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Cordel Witherspoon had not completed his lunch when the Thomas brothers entered Wrangel House looking for Joshua and Mariah Morgan. From the way they burst in, the two brothers were looking to cause trouble. Cordel watched as they pushed their way roughly between the tables of the crowded dining room. The Thomases were from a large family of sharecroppers who scratched out a living from the sullen earth west of town. They had lived on the same parcel for nearly a hundred years and they had farmed the soil until it was listless. As a result, many of the fourteen children worked in Clairborne or, as common theory held, stole whatever they could carry or drag off. For some unknown reason these two Thomas brothers had taken a particular dislike to Cordel and they were always roughing him up when the opportunity arose. Fortunately for Cordel, they saw the Morgans first. Leon Thomas, who was the burlier of the two brothers, walked over to the table the Morgans were sharing with another couple and said in a threatening tone, “You was warned to get out of town! You sold us some bad feed! It killed two of our horses!”

Mr. Morgan, an older, chocolate brown–skinned man in his late fifties, replied in a calm raspy voice, “All scores are settled. I paid you for the loss of your stock in front of Marshal Bass. We’ve closed our business and we will be leaving town as soon as we get a fair offer for our property.”

“You must be hard of hearin’!” Cyrus Thomas sneered as he joined his brother at the Morgans’ table. “He told you to be gone by the next time we was in town. You ain’t listening!” Cyrus grinned, showing big gaps in his teeth. He put his hand on the hilt of his knife.

“We don’t want no trouble here, Cyrus!” Ma Wrangel said as she waddled into the dining room from the kitchen. She was a big woman, but she moved quickly on her feet. “You got a problem, get Marshal Bass. He’ll handle it without bloodshed.”

“You shouldn’t be havin’ no gutter slime like this eatin’ in here!” Leon declared to the room in general. “Now, Bass been called away. It look to me like us townsfolk got to take care of this problem.”

“You’s right, Leon. Maybe we ought to escort them to the edge of town with some tar and feathers.”

The dining room was silent. Cordel picked up his bread and sopped the last of his stew out of his bowl and prepared to slip out without being seen. He knew no one in the dining room would stand up to the Thomases without the backing of Marshal Bass. He didn’t want to see the Morgans humiliated for they were good people, but he was helpless to stop the Thomas brothers. He was nearly to the door when a woman’s voice made him stop and turn around. It was the light-skinned woman who was sitting at the table with the Morgans. She and her husband were new in Bodie Wells, and nobody knew much about them except that they seemed to have money.

“Why don’t you leave these people alone? If you have a legitimate problem, do as Mrs. Wrangel said and wait for the town marshal to handle it.” The woman spoke as if she had no fear.

“Was I talkin’ to you?” Leon demanded. “You better shut yo’ mouth, if’en you don’t want me to shut it fo’ you!”

“I’ve never been shut up when I wanted to speak and I won’t be now!” The woman was bold. The attention of everyone in the dining room was riveted by her next words. “You men are just bullies. Picking on people you know can’t stand up to you! You wouldn’t dare act this way if somebody was standing up to you!”

Leon looked at his brother in surprise. “Ain’t this a bitch! This heifer must think she white!”

“Yeah,” nodded Cyrus, leaning on the table. “Let’s see if her man can—” Cyrus never finished his remark, for action exploded at the table.

From his vantage point near the door, Cordel could not tell exactly what happened, but when the tumult ended, he saw that the woman’s husband had Leon bent over backward across an adjacent table with a gun in his mouth. Cyrus was on the floor, leaning unconscious against the table at which the Morgans were sitting.

“Apologize to my wife!” the man demanded as he jammed the pistol further down Leon’s throat. “Otherwise I’m gon’ blow yo’ brains all over these people’s food!” The people sitting at the table jumped up and moved away. Leon was left gurgling on the barrel of the man’s gun. “Keep yo’ hands up, or I’ll let the hammer fall!” Leon nodded and kept his hands in the open. “Now, I’m gon’ give you a chance to apologize and I wants the whole place to hear you!” Leon made some muffled sounds and the man demanded, “Louder unless you’s ready to die!”

“I’s sorry! I’s sorry!”

“That’s good!” the man acknowledged. “Now’s here’s somethin’ from me to teach you some respect!” In one quick movement, the man picked up a steaming bowl of hot stew and turned it over on Leon’s face. Leon screamed in pain and anger and rolled off the table as the man stepped backward.

“My eyes! My eyes!” Leon screamed. “I’m gon’ kill you fo’ this! I’m gon’ kill you! I’m gon’ kill you!” Leon was crawling on the floor, rubbing his eyes.

“Then you must be ready to die now!” the man answered and kicked Leon in the head. Leon was knocked under the table by the impact.

The woman saved Leon’s life by pleading with her husband, “Don’t kill him, King! Please don’t kill him!”

The man called King looked at his wife, and even from the door Cordel could see death in his eyes. Cordel shuddered but he couldn’t move away; he was immobilized by the drama in front of him. The man exhaled slowly. “Okay, but we gon’ have to deal with them later!”

Leon, still blinded, was struggling to regain his footing. He gripped a table for support and was pulling himself up when King struck him again and shattered his arm with a loud crack. Leon screamed like an animal and fell to the floor. It was a horrible sound.

“King, please,” the woman shouted over Leon’s screams.

“I just wanted to leave him with somethin’, Serena!” King explained.

Cordel watched as King walked over to the table at which he had been sitting and pried loose a bowie knife that had been stuck into the table. Once the knife had been removed Cyrus slumped to the floor, and it was only then that Cordel saw that Cyrus’s hand had been pinned to the table by the knife. It was too much. Cordel turned and ran out the door. He could hardly wait to tell Lightning Smith that Leon and Cyrus Thomas had been struck down by one man. He ran all the way to the livery on the edge of town, where he worked as a stable hand.

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“What the hell do you mean they haven’t been home yet? They were in town on Monday! You went out to the Thomas farm and the family didn’t know where they were, or they wouldn’t tell you?” Booker Little tapped his cigar in a chipped clay plate and stared across the table at Deputy Oswald Simpson. The dim light from an overcast sky shed little illumination through the uncurtained window and left the storage room virtually in shadows.

“I went out there, Mr. Little,” Deputy Simpson answered, fingering a turquoise amulet that hung around his neck. “Ain’t nobody seen them boys since Monday mornin’! Ain’t no reason for the family to lie to me. I wasn’t there to make no arrests. They was worried too! It’s pretty damn cold! A body could easily freeze to death in this weather and it look like it gon’ snow some more.”

“Why didn’t you arrest this stranger at Wrangel House?” demanded Booker Little angrily as he poured himself a shot of scotch. He was a big-boned, light-skinned man with a jutting jaw and heavy eyebrows, and his jaw seemed even more pronounced with his angry expression.

Simpson shook his head and explained. “There was way too many witnesses who seen the Thomases start it all. Ain’t no way I could arrest him and make it stick!” He looked down at the bottle of scotch and the two shot glasses and licked his lips.

Booker saw Simpson’s look and ignored it. “What damn witnesses?” Booker demanded. “We never had witnesses before!”

“Well, this Negro seem like he done give ’em some backbone or somethin’,” Simpson stated. “ ’Cause everybody who was there had somethin’ to say, even Ma Wrangel, and you know she ain’t ever admitted to seein’ anythin’ before.”

“I don’t like the sound of this! I’ve worked damned hard to get to this point and I don’t want to lose it all because of some wandering, high-yellow thug! We’re on the verge of running the Morgans out; we’ve got Mace Edwards isolated and it’s three months to the mayoral election and I’ve got that wrapped up!” Booker banged his fist on the table and the bottle and glasses jiggled precariously but did not fall. “I want this troublemaker run out of town before this weekend! Do you hear me? I don’t care how you do it!”