Standing at the Scratch Line (88 page)

“I’m not a killer. Killing isn’t my first option! I don’t let myself sink to the level of my enemies!” Mace replied.

“Them is pretty words,” King said with a smile. “Let me tell you somethin’ ’bout real life! Colored folks wouldn’t own nothin’ if they wasn’t ready to fight to hold on to it! The Indian done showed us you got to be sneaky ’bout the way you fight! Can’t be nothin’ organized, or they’ll wipe you out like they did the Indians that stood up to ’em. You got to use their own tricks against ’em! We ain’t doin’ nothin’ that colored folks haven’t been doin’ since slavery. My grandpappy used talk about kidnappin’ overseers and hidin’ they bodies in the swamp! This here is the same thing!”

“That’s just an excuse to cover your desire to spill blood!” Mace rejoined.

King guffawed. “I don’t need no excuse to spill blood! I do it when it’s necessary and it’s necessary now! Let me ask ’Tavius and Cordel somethin’!” King turned to Octavius and Cordel. “Do you believe y’all could’ve had any type of life in this here town with this fool alive?” King nudged Dalton’s leg with his foot.

“I ain’t a killin’ man,” Octavius answered with a deep breath. “But my common sense tells me this man is better off dead. It be clear to me that he hates colored folk! I know this goes counter to what you’s thinkin’, Mace, but I got to agree with King. You can’t negotiate nothin’ with somebody who hate you! Dalton was gon’ try to take us back to slavery times. A lot of colored folks was gon’ get kilt befo’ this was gon’ be settled, if’en he lived to carry out his threats. And I believe he was gon’ try to do what he said! We got to kill him!”

“No! No!” Dalton gasped from the floor. “Y’all niggers just stay out’n Clairborne less’n you got work there and things will be fine! I was just talkin’ through my hat befo’. You ain’t got to kill me!”

King kicked Dalton hard in the stomach. “Did I hear you say nigger again?” he asked as Dalton vomited on the floor. “I didn’t hear yo’ answer!” King growled.

“This is sickening!” Mace said, the disgust showing on his face. “The man is down! Let him be!”

“You’d rather it be a colored face that takes the beatin’, ain’t that right?” King prodded. “You want colored folks to die for what you believe, while you show what a big man you are negotiatin’ meanin’less shit with the white man!”

“You insult me,” Mace said in a soft voice. “And if I return the favor I risk death. It’s really wonderful having you in charge!” Mace stood up. “You don’t need me here! I’ll leave now. I won’t be a part of this!”

“That’s too easy,” King replied. “You want to believe him, take him with you! You’re the mayor! Make yo’ bigwig decision. Nurse him and let him go!”

“You sell me short,” Mace answered. “I’m a better man than you make me out to be.”

“That’s too easy. Let’s vote on what we gon’ do with him first,” King interjected.

Mace answered, “When you killed his deputy, you eliminated our ability to vote objectively. Our vote will be in direct reaction to the action you’ve already taken.”

King nodded his head. “You right. I see that, but that don’t change nothin’! I just forced the decision that was gon’ have to be made. If we do ’em both here and now, ain’t nothin’ to link ’em with us and it’s good riddance!”

Mace looked at King for a long time in silence. “I may have been wrong to think that we could negotiate with him, but in making that error I was seeking the higher ground. I was trying to let Jesus into my decision making. I am trying to be a Christian. It’s hard work and I don’t always succeed, but I want that philosophy to enter into every decision I make. I don’t want to play God and dispense my own version of justice. I seek only to be a good man, a good strong Afro-American man. I know, rather I believe if we let him go now, it would spell the destruction of Bodie Wells. Still, I will not have a hand in killing him. I cannot, I will not let his barbarism make me less than I strive to be. Perhaps it’s best that I take my leave now.”

“The words you said are good,” King admitted. “It ain’t my thinkin’, but I respect you for the stand you’s takin’ and I apologize for insultin’ you. You’s a good man. You think differently than me, but you’s a man.” King stuck out his hand. “What you said reminded me of a friend of mine, a man we used to call Professor. He was a good man too.”

“I accept your apology,” Mace said, shaking King’s hand. “But I don’t think we’re traveling in the same direction because you will always have death around you and I want to nurture and encourage living and building.”

King smiled. “Death is part of living. It be a cycle.”

“But death is on the down side, living is on the up side,” Mace countered, donning his hat. “Gentlemen, whatever decision you make, I’ll be prepared to live with. Good day.” Mace sidestepped Dalton, stepped over the deputy’s body, and walked out the door. Cordel got up and locked the door after his departure.

“Let me take him off yo’ hands and I’ll take care that his body is never found,” King suggested. “He’ll disappear like Deputy Jessup, won’t be a trace of him found.”

“You did Jessup?” Octavius asked dumbfounded.

“Let’s just say I helped him find his final restin’ place,” King answered with a smile. “What you say, boys?”

“What about his car?” Cordel asked.

“You disassemble it like you did Frank Bolton’s car,” King suggested.

“How you gon’ get him out of here?” Octavius asked.

“Cordel, go get a rug from my store and we’ll wrap him in it,” King said with a smile. “But first, drive his car around back and leave it by my barn. Oh, and tell Sampson to come back with you.”

Once Cordel left, Octavius said, “In a town this small, you got to watch yo’self, King. Word gets around. Then once it gets around here, it gets to Clairborne. After that, they come for you.”

“Yo’ words got the ring of truth,” King agreed. “I’m thinkin’ it’s about time to pick up stakes anyway. Bodie Wells gon’ have some serious problems to deal with now Big Daddy ain’t protectin’ it.”

“You right about that!” Octavius replied. “The death of Big Daddy means the water is gone, probably soon as next year. We’ll still have water pumping through the cistern, but not enough to irrigate everybody. It gon’ be tough times ahead for Bodie Wells. Even with Dogget, we still gon’ have problems with night riders and other such cowards. Shoot, in ten years this place may be just a ghost town.”

“You gon’ stick it out?” King asked.

“Ain’t no place I want to go,” Octavius said with resignation. “Ain’t no place else I’d rather fight to stay either. I guess I’m an Oklahoma boy through and through. They gon’ have to kill me to get my land. There’s a lot colored folks buried in the ground all around here, folks that worked they heart out tillin’ and plowin’, folks that fought both Indian and white alike to keep this little piece of earth theirs. They blood is flowin’ in me and I can’t turn my back on ’em. My father was lynched outside of Clairborne and they left his charred body hangin’ on a tree about a mile from town. Old Josh Morgan, Tobias Dorsett, and Lightnin’ Smith took a wagon one night and cut him down. I was maybe four or five years old at the time, but I helped bury my father. Ain’t no way I could leave this place.”

“Well, I ain’t got that attachment,” King said as he stood up. “But I admire it, ’cause that’s the kind of toughness that colored folks gon’ need to make this country their own.” King turned toward Dalton, who was sitting up, leaning against the wall. “Colored folk gon’ be part of this here country despite you and yo’ kind! Who knows, maybe someday there’ll even be a colored president.”

Dalton spat on the floor in response.

Cordel and Sampson entered through the back door of the office and King turned to Dalton. “Yo’ time has come and we gon’ see what you’s made out of! Let’s tie him up and gag him, Sampson.”

Dalton struggled, but he was easily overpowered. Within minutes he was gagged, rolled in the rug, and carried out to a waiting truck.

Octavius followed King and said, “I got to ask you a favor.” King nodded in response and waited. “I takes marshalin’ serious,” Octavius said as he stuck a toothpick in his mouth. “I ain’t never killed nobody, much less tortured ’em. I couldn’t rest easy if I knew I delivered somebody over to be tortured. I’s askin’ you to make it quick for him. I know he wouldn’t do the same for us, but I’s askin’ anyway.”

“I’ll do what I can,” King said with a nod of his head and walked out of the marshal’s office.

When King and Sampson returned to the store it was nearly nine o’clock in the evening. They closed and locked up the barn and the garage for the night. Then Sampson went in for dinner while King remained outside, sitting on the back steps of the store. He was lost in thought. After half an hour, Serena came out and joined him. She said nothing, but merely sat on the steps next to him.

There was a sliver of a moon rising in the eastern sky. To the north, the shadowy, looming presence of the Ouachitas reached high into the darkness. Strands of high, dark, gray clouds stretched across the dark blue expanse, pushed by atmospheric western winds. The bright firmament of the Milky Way was only sporadically shrouded by the passing clouds and its distant galaxies seemed to beckon all who could look heavenward and dream.

“What are you thinking about?” Serena asked.

“I’m thinkin’ that our time in this here town’s comin’ to an end,” King said chewing on a stalk of rye. “It’s gon’ change now that Big Daddy Bolton’s done been killed.”

“He’s been killed?” Serena asked with surprise.

“Yep, shot and killed outside the state capitol. You got to figure this fight over water is big business. If they can kill somebody like Big Daddy, who was a big-time politician in this area for years, these people is gon’ get what they want and they ain’t gon’ let no colored town stand in their way. They ain’t just divertin’ water, they buildin’ a canal so’s they can barge the wheat they gon’ grow here to the nearest railroad depot. They been plannin’ this for years. They got politicians lined up, and them that ain’t is gettin’ snuffed. Bodie Wells is gon’ be in for hard times. After harvesttime this year, there’s gon’ be a Klan meetin’ in Clairborne.”

“How did you find out all this?” Serena asked.

“Sheriff Dalton told me this befo’ he fell down an old mine shaft,” King answered.

“You killed him?”

“I had to. He was gon’ let the Klan ride on us and said he wasn’t gon’ let no uppity niggers live within a hundred miles of Clairborne. He was the first line of the comin’ storm. He got his marchin’ orders after Big Daddy was killed and he came to Bodie Wells to make sho’ we knew our place!”

“Aren’t you afraid he’ll be found and you’ll get caught?” Serena asked, alarm in her voice.

“They ain’t gon’ find him or his deputy, but if they find them they ain’t gon’ recognize ’em. I dropped a grenade down with ’em. But I am gettin’ concerned that maybe we done lived all we can here. Maybe it’s time to move on.”

Serena’s heart was suddenly in her mouth. She was unable to speak. King had mentioned the possibility of leaving Bodie Wells. He had raised the issue himself, something she had been reluctant to do. She didn’t want to reveal to him that her principal reason for wanting to move was for LaValle’s benefit, to protect him from gossip. She sat silently, praying that King would be motivated to move on his own terms.

“If we stay here,” King continued, “we gon’ end up fightin’ for our business and our lives, and right now it don’t look like we can win. So, I’m thinkin’ that unless you’s determined to stay here, we ought to be settin’ sights on somewhere else.”

“I want to go to San Francisco!” Serena blurted out and immediately fell silent. She was afraid that she would not be able to control her tongue. Even though it was on her mind consistently for nearly two years, she had been afraid of broaching the subject of relocating. It had been her decision to buy the store and stay in Bodie Wells. If she had brought up the subject of leaving all that they had built up in the last six years King would have wanted to know why, and he would not have been sympathetic once he learned the reason for her request.

“You ready for the big city now, huh?” King asked with a slow smile. “How come you picked San Francisco? New York is where the colored folks is happenin’. Don’t you want to go there?”

“I just want to see the Pacific Ocean and I’ve heard there is a large colored community in Oakland, which is very close to San Francisco. I want to start some place where it’s new for both of us.”

“Alright, San Francisco it is! I want to be out of here by July,” King declared.

“What about our business?” Serena asked.

“Ain’t but three thousand dollars tied up in this whole shebang. Ain’t nothin’ we can’t walk away from. Shoot, we could let Ida and her husband run the store and leave the barn and livery stable to Lightnin’. When they get some extra money, they can send us some payment.”

“I have to go get Amos, first,” Serena announced. “It would be a good opportunity to take the boys down to Louisiana and show them off to my sisters.”

“You can take LaValle,” King said easily. “But Jacques will go with me out to the West Coast where we’ll look for suitable housing so’s we’ll have a place to stay when you arrive.”

The joy that Serena was feeling was dampened, but not extinguished. She did not argue. She knew that King wouldn’t concede his position on this matter, but there were other issues to be resolved. She put her hand on his arm. “I need you to promise me something. I need you to promise that you’ll never tell LaValle that you’re not his father.”

King stared at her for a long minute. “Then give him to me for a while and stop protecting him and lettin’ him hide behind yo’ skirts, ’cause that’s the only way I can make him my son.”

Serena shook her head. “You’re too hard on him! He’s not tough like Jacques. He needs a softer hand.”

“You ain’t preparin’ him to be a man! You think this white world gon’ treat him with a soft hand? A colored man got to be strong, ’cause if he ain’t all this hate out here will make him turn it on himself. You got to give him to me! Don’t let him come runnin’ to you!”

Serena shook her head again. “I can’t do that,” she said softly.