Standing at the Scratch Line (78 page)

Dietrich threw back his head and laughed. “That’s a good one, sir! It’s really great to see that you can keep your sense of humor. Whoever was responsible for this must have known something about architecture, because they set the explosive next to the supporting columns of the front of the building. It was a professional job, sir. They used a bomb device made up of both gasoline and dynamite and they must’ve had a timer—far too complex for ignorant Negroes. But that sure was a funny one, sir! Wait until I tell my men. They’ll get a howl out of that one!” Dietrich stopped laughing and suddenly became serious. “Sir, if I may, I do have a few ideas, but I don’t want to talk in front of the coloreds. You know what they say about the jungle telegraph.”

“Get these niggers out of here! I want to hear your ideas!”

Dietrich barked a few orders and the colored workers were directed to return to the salvage effort. “I’ll get a statement from each one of them before they leave, sir,” he explained to Corlis. He sat down next to the sheriff and said in a lowered voice, “I’m pretty sure it was them Italians.” Dietrich pronounced the word “Eye-talians.” He moved his chair closer to Corlis and continued speaking. “When we intercepted their big bootleg shipment last week near Possum Hollow, they threatened our men. I know that Captain LeGrande invited them last night to negotiate some kind of agreement. I think he was planning to charge them a small percentage of the shipment for free passage past the port as long as the alcohol wasn’t to be sold in New Orleans.”

“LeGrande was smart,” Corlis said with a nod. “Would have made us a pretty penny too. How did you know he invited the Italians?”

“Because he assigned me to sit at their table and keep them company. They were antsy from the start, claiming they wanted to meet right away. Since the captain was filling in for you, he didn’t have time to meet with them earlier, you know, with glad-handing councilmen and such. The captain came to the table just before he left the room and said he had one more brief meeting, then he could meet with them. These Italians were almost rude. To tell the truth, I wanted to get up and slap a few of them myself, but you know Captain LeGrande—he was calm. He said he’d be with them as soon as he could.

“The Italians left a few minutes before the explosion. They were angry as hell, saying they had never been so insulted. They threw their napkins down and one even turned over his chair when he got up and left it lying on the floor. If I had known what they were going to do, I would have killed them then! They must think we’re country fools down here!”

Corlis sat for a few minutes and fumed. His anger was growing. These bastards had robbed him of the chance of killing King Tremain slowly, the way he deserved. Revenge had been on Corlis’s mind every minute of every day and suddenly the opportunity was gone, taken by some fools who couldn’t wait fifteen minutes to have a meeting. If that was the way of it, then let them feel his wrath. He would do everything in his power to kill every one of them he could find. They had made one enemy who would never forget and he would be merciless.

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The wind had powerful arms that stretched across the landscape, and it had a thirty-mile piece of Oklahoma in its grip. It gusted northeasterly at fifty miles an hour for fifteen minutes, then rushed at forty miles an hour straight up the sides of the Ouachitas for twenty minutes without any loss of power. Even for those safe in their vegetable cellars, the roar of the wind was the voice of God. It seemed to fall directly from the heavens and it swept down upon the homes of the unsuspecting and shattered their wooden dwellings like a fist. Pieces of lumber and parts of roofs were sent tumbling as if they were child’s toys. Then came the tornado.

A wave of nausea washed over Serena. It felt like a hand was squeezing her stomach, forcing half-digested food back up into her throat. For a moment she was sure that she would throw up, but the urgency passed. Serena, Ma Wrangel, and Ida Hoskins were sitting on the floor in the total darkness of the store’s cold-storage cellar. Serena was struggling with her body to restrain every gasp and intake of breath that the nausea caused. She did not want the other women to hear her. She could feel the warm trickles of sweat running down the sides of her face.

Outside, the wind howled as it rushed along Main Street, blowing shingles loose and signs from their moorings and causing shutters to clatter as they were banged open and closed.

The nausea was returning, the pressure was building; this time it seemed unstoppable. The waves washed over her. She was caught up in the rhythm of the tide. Despite her efforts to suppress it, it began to rise in her throat.

“You reckon that twister done passed us yet?” Ma Wrangel asked.

“I ain’t about to go up and see just yet,” Ida replied. “I’ve seen these dern things jump around like a hoppy-toad; can’t predict ’em.”

The urge to throw up passed. Serena could lay back and rest once more and await the next onslaught.

“You don’t sound too good, Serena, girl,” Ma Wrangel observed with concern in her voice. “Sounds like you strugglin’ with the devil over there.”

“You’re right, Ma. I’m not feeling too sprightly. It’s probably something I ate.”

“Oh, pshaw, she hardly eats at all,” Ida Hoskins said. “I ain’t seen a body in a long time that needs a big plate of beans and rice as much as she does.”

“Rena, you best come on over to Wrangel House and let me put a steak on the griddle for you. Can’t have the owner of the best dress shop in southwest Oklahoma feeble ’cause of the want of vittles.”

“Saturday we had two families come all the way from Johnsonville,” Ida announced proudly. “When we get in those pedal sewing machines, we’ll have work for two women full-time.”

“Rena, what you say to that steak?”

“Oh, Ma, really, food is the last thought on my mind.”

Outside the volume of the wind dropped and the silence was complete for about ten seconds. Then the wind returned more fiercely than ever. It roared as it issued from the giant maw of the west, the output of warm moisture-ridden northerlies meeting the dry cold southerlies on the battlefield of the plains. The tornado touched down in its spinning frenzy and lifted a wooden wagon from behind a shed and threw it over the Wrangel house and across Main Street, slamming it into Dorsett’s Cabinet Shop. The tornado rose like a huge vacuum cleaner and lifted the roof off the barbershop and flung it out behind the town. A tremendous shrieking rent the air as the tornado settled down on Lightning Smith’s livery stable and sucked it apart, exposing to its uncaring power the luckless animals contained within. In seconds the tornado was gone as if it had never been. There was silence.

Serena was exhausted. All she wanted to do was stick her finger down her throat to relieve the pressure in her stomach. She was willing to stay slumped on the floor if only she could rest in peace. She said nothing, pulled her knees up to her face, and rested her chin on her hands.

Ten minutes passed before Ma Wrangel said, “I think that’s it! It sounds like it’s gone on to bother somebody else!”

“I’ll take my time checkin’ on it, if you don’t mind,” Ida said. “I doesn’t mind sittin’ here a few minutes more.”

“I have to get out of here!” Serena said, overcome by another wave of nausea. She crawled to the stairs and began to climb to the trapdoor.

“Be careful. The twister is a jukey thing,” Ma Wrangel warned.

Serena opened up the trapdoor and crawled out on the floor. She lay for a moment, then pulled herself to a standing position. Ma Wrangel was climbing out of the cellar when Serena ran for the back door. Serena was vomiting in a bucket when Ma Wrangel joined her. “I couldn’t hold it any longer,” she explained as she wiped her mouth with a rag.

“Are you sure you’re alright, Rena?”

Serena nodded and stood up. She smiled. “I’m doing much better. It’s funny you should call me Rena. Only my family called me that.”

“Well, I’s part of yo’ family, girl. You part of this town now.”

Ida came running out of the back door. “That twister done tore up part of Main Street! You got to come see! There’s a wagon stuck in the front of the cabinet shop and the whole portico in front of the store is down!”

“Well, let me go check and see if my stove is still sittin’ there,” Ma Wrangel said as she walked back inside with Serena. “Rena, you be sure to come for that steak this evening, or I’ll come and drag you over!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Serena answered. Serena walked to the front of the store to survey the damage. The portico in front of the store had collapsed and some of the wooden plank walkway was gone. Main Street was littered with pieces of wood and debris. Many of the businesses fronting on the street had broken windows, splintered shutters, and pieces of their roof missing. The barbershop was destroyed. One wall was completely gone; the others had fallen inward. Bodie Wells had suffered under the heavy hand of the tornado, but that was not the most pressing thing on Serena’s mind. She was pregnant and it was not King’s baby.

She knew that when she missed her first period something was amiss, but she prayed to God that she was just late. Then she missed the second one and she knew. There was no doubt. She did not have time to devote much of her conscious energy to the problem earlier because she was concentrating on nursing King back to health. Now that he had gone back to New Orleans, the weight of her dilemma settled heavily on her shoulders. She did not know where to turn for help. Bodie Wells was a small town and she had already learned that gossip was a major pastime. Ma Wrangel wouldn’t talk, but how could Serena explain it to her. Could it be explained at all? The truth sounded like a fabrication. Serena didn’t want to lose Ma Wrangel’s respect, but most important, she didn’t ever want King to find out. She wanted to get rid of the child growing within her, as if it never existed.

There was no doubt in her mind that she couldn’t allow this baby to come to term. She had realized this while she had been busy nursing King out of the stupor into which he had sunk. Whatever he had seen and experienced during his imprisonment in the basement of the Lafayette was buried deep within him and he would not speak of it to her. In fact, he would hardly speak at all. Yet his very silence was expressive. It was a terrible, grim, brooding silence that seemed to issue out of a deep well of anger.

When she had first brought him home, he lay in bed for a full week without speaking. He did not want to sleep in the same bed as she, so she took the adjoining bedroom. Then one morning she came in and he was gone. He did not return home until dusk. Serena was beside herself with worry, but when he came in that evening he offered no explanation, nor did she demand any. Nearly a week passed before she got up in time to see him before he left. It was before first light when she heard his boots on the stairs. She followed, dressed only in her robe, and discovered him in his gun room, cleaning some pistols. The look he gave her when she entered the room nearly broke her heart; it was cold, flat, and lifeless. He left shortly thereafter with his rifles, pistols, and a military can filled with ammunition. All he gave her was a few terse words and a nod before he climbed into his truck and drove off, disappearing in the morning darkness.

It was then that she knew he had not forgiven her and it made her pregnancy all the more unwanted. She wanted to erase everything that separated them. She wanted to return to the mood and the moment that existed when he had come home bearing gifts before New Year’s. Strangely, she was almost happy when he received the letter from Claude Duryea and decided to go back to New Orleans. Although she was concerned about his safety, she needed him gone for a while so she could take steps to rid herself of the life inside her.

“Serena! Serena!” Someone was knocking on the front door. She started from her reverie as if awakened from a deep sleep and went to the door. It was Clara Nesbitt.

As soon as Serena opened the door, Clara rushed in and gave her a hug. “I’m so glad to see that you are alright. Ma Wrangel said you weren’t feeling well.”