Standing at the Scratch Line (48 page)

The doctor saw her as she walked back to the maid’s quarters. “Bring your mother up now. I’m sorry for the delay. You’ve been very patient.”

Serena bowed her head respectfully. “Yes sir. I’ll do that right now.”

Serena was not allowed to stay in the examining room with her mother. The doctor had her wait out in the hall.

After a half hour the doctor opened the door of the examining room and stepped out. “Your mother is dying of tuberculosis. Her lungs are filled with congestion. She doesn’t have much longer. There is nothing I can do for her but give her laudanum for the pain. I’m giving you enough laudanum to keep her through the next two months. I don’t think you’ll need more than that. If so, come back and I’ll give you some more. I just want to warn you that laudanum is addictive and if you don’t dole it out as I prescribe to you, she could kill herself with it.” The doctor looked at her sternly. “Do you understand?”

Of course she understood. She wasn’t stupid. It was just that she was suffering from nervous exhaustion. “I understand,” she answered softly.

Later in the evening, when she and her mother had both returned to the maid’s quarters, Serena heard the mules braying. She got up to go check on them when Patience stopped her.

“That’s just Mr. Tom,” Patience warned. “He’s trying to get you to come out to the stables. If’en I was you, I’d just stay put. He ain’t gon’ kill your mules.”

“Is that the doctor’s nephew?”

“Yeah, he’s a dog in heat. He tries to get some from all the doctor’s colored women patients. He don’t care if’en you married or with child. He gon’ get what he wants.”

Serena was asleep when the knock came at the door. It was an old man with dark brown skin and gray hair. Even his eyebrows and his beard were gray. He worked as the doctor’s manservant. Everyone called him Uncle Joe. He spent several minutes at the door, whispering to Patience and looking over her shoulder at Serena and her mother. When he left, Patience came over to Serena’s pallet and whispered in her ear. “The sheriff’s doing a house-to-house search. They done found the car that was used to get away. Now, they checking every colored person in town. If you don’t live here, they gon’ take you downtown for questioning and anything might happen to you down there ’cause you a good-lookin’ woman.”

“What do you think we should do?” Serena asked. She was exhausted by this seemingly never-ending nightmare.

“If’en I was you, I’d harness my mules and get out of here right now. If you stay to the backstreets, you could make it easy. Anyway, that’s what Uncle Joe thinks and he’s a pretty smart old-timer.”

“What about Mr. Tom?”

“I’ll help you. If’en we’s quiet, he shouldn’t hear a thing.”

Both women got up immediately and began to pack Serena’s traveling bag. It was decided that they wouldn’t wake her mother until the mules had been harnessed to the wagon.

There was a thin moon in a starless night sky. The grounds within the courtyard were filled with shadow. The stable was dark when Patience and Serena entered. Patience led Serena to the stalls where her mules were and then she lit a small kerosene lamp. Homer was harnessed first, since he was always easier to handle. Jethro balked and resisted, but finally allowed himself to be placed in the traces. Holding the reins in her hands, Serena led the mules out into the courtyard and hooked them up to the wagon.

Serena and Patience packed the wagon and placed her mother in the back so that she could lie down. Then Patience went back to the stable to put out the kerosene lantern. Serena pulled the wagon to the gate of the courtyard and waited in the darkness for Uncle Joe to come with the key to open the gate. While she was waiting, she heard someone come from the main house and go into the stable. Serena held her hand to her mouth in fear. She could not warn Patience without revealing herself. Within a few minutes, Serena heard the sound of a struggle going on inside the stable. She heard the high-pitched sounds a woman makes when she is being hurt. Uncle Joe came out of the darkness and unlocked the gate and pulled it open for her. She hissed at him. “Don’t you hear what’s going on in the stable?”

“I hear it and I don’t like it, but what can I do about it? Tell Mr. Tom to stop? It ain’t my business,” he muttered. “She should a known better than go into the stable at this time of night. She knows Mr. Tom. If you foolish, you pay.”

Serena was shocked. “You’re a damn coward! You’re a house nigger!”

“A house nigger ain’t so bad,” the old man said easily. “You the one going out into the night, risking your life. You don’t live this long without protection.”

“You’re not living!” Serena said as she jumped down from the wagon. “You already dead!”

“It don’t matter to me what you say,” the old man continued to speak without rancor. “I’m going to close this gate in ten minutes. If you’s out, good. If you’s still in here, that’s yo’ problem.” He turned and walked away into the darkness.

Serena ran toward the stable. She was determined to save Patience. The maid had treated Serena and her mother as family. She had opened up her one-room home to them and shared her food. Serena could not leave without trying to save her.

Inside the stable, the wavering light of the lantern created shifting shadows. Serena could hear the snorts of the horses and mules moving in their stalls. She saw a pitchfork hanging on the wall and lifted it quietly from its brackets. She moved toward the human sounds; the panting and gasping and the sounds of bodies struggling on a bed of straw. She entered the empty stall next to the one in which Tom and Patience were wrestling. The stall’s walls were only as high as the gate, which was four feet. Serena raised the pitchfork and readied herself to strike. It was Serena’s intention to kill Tom with the pitchfork. She blocked out all distractions. She was totally focused on the action in the next stall. When she came abreast of the two bodies writhing on the floor, Serena looked over the dividing wall and saw that Tom was holding Patience down while he was entering her. Serena raised up and prepared to thrust the pitchfork into Tom’s exposed back. Her thrust would surely have killed Tom, if the blow had not been blocked. A hand came out of the shadows and grabbed her wrist. It was so quick, so sudden, that she hardly had time to react. Her scream was muffled when she saw the face attached to the hand.

It was King Tremain dressed in a tailored, double-breasted pinstriped suit. He shook his head, indicating that Serena shouldn’t stab Tom. He lifted a bottle of bourbon and, with a striking motion, suggested using it as a weapon. Serena stood back as if to say that if King had a better idea, go to it. King vaulted over the stall wall and hit Tom with the bottle before he could turn around. Tom collapsed on top of Patience. Serena made her way around to help Patience get out from under Tom’s unconscious body.

“I don’t know how long he’s gon’ be out,” King said. “We got to get goin’ now!”

“Who’s we?” Serena asked suspiciously.

“I got to go with you and yo’ ma now,” King explained. “Ain’t no way I can get back across the bridge to Algiers tonight and I got to get out of here.”

“Well, I can’t leave you here,” Serena said with a sigh. She knew that there was a real danger that they might all be killed if King was found in their wagon. Despite the fear, she forced a smile on her face. “Sometimes the mouse helps the lion. You’ll have to ride in the back under the canvas with my mother.” King returned her smile with his own, along with a nod of appreciation.

“What am I gon’ do?” wailed Patience as she stared down at Tom’s unconscious body. “When Mr. Tom wake up, he’s gon’ beat me and beat me and beat me! What can I do?”

King grabbed a hold of Patience roughly and shook her. “Be quiet! If you go to the doctor and tell him that his nephew was havin’ you against your will, that you had to knock him out to escape, he will protect you from his nephew. He’s one of the few decent white men around here.”

Her face wet with tears, Patience looked up into King’s eyes and for a long moment there was direct eye contact. She seemed to take heart from something she saw in his eyes. “You sho’ that will work?” Patience asked, slightly more confident in her tone.

“Yeah, he always does the right thing. That’s why he gots more patients than he has time. And got more friends than he can count. Too bad more whites don’t learn that lesson.”

King lifted Serena up to the wagon seat and walked over to the shadows by the gate. “Come out, old man. I see you. Or shall I throw my knife where I think you are?”

Uncle Joe came out of the shadows.

“Do you know me?” King asked.

Uncle Joe nodded. “You one of them outlaw Tremains.”

“You got it,” King admitted. King put his finger in the old man’s chest and said quietly, “I’m leaving you alive because I don’t want to hurt an old man unless I have to. But if you talk, I’ll see to it that you’ll pay. And I know you don’t want to be used as alligator bait.”

Uncle Joe took a step backward. He knew the reputation of the man in front of him. He also knew that King was the man who had done the killing at the Klan headquarters. “If you folks is out the gate before anybody wake up or see and I can lock up, I never saw or heard a thing. You see, I got to be practical. You don’t live long without bein’ practical.”

“Alright, old man,” King agreed as he tied the canvas down on one side of the wagon and climbed into the back of the wagon with Serena’s mother. “I hope you speak true and do as you say.”

The wagon rumbled quietly out of the courtyard as King found space along the wagon side where he had tied down the tarp and made sure that he was thoroughly covered. The streets of New Orleans echoed with the sounds of vehicle horns and the harsh tones of angry voices, but there was little traffic. Serena returned along the route she had traveled into the city.

She could not be sure when she first heard the drumming sound, but by the time she could distinguish it as the sound of hooves, the wagon was moving through a large, open meadow. There was no place to hide. “Somebody’s coming hard after us,” she said softly over her shoulder. She snapped the reins to spur the mules into a trot. They responded and hurried their pace, but they were old mules. Within a quarter mile they would gradually slow down again. Serena realized this and was prepared to whip them to maintain the pace. She snapped the whip again at their flanks.

“Let the mules find their own speed,” King warned from beneath the tarp. “They ain’t gon’ outrun horses at their best speed and it gon’ look mighty strange you beatin’ them into a trot in the middle of the night.”

“Maybe you should drop out here and try to find a place to hide,” Serena suggested.

“Ain’t no place to hide in this meadow and they gon’ catch up to us before I could make the trees. No, just keep on as if you on regular business. Let’s try to bluff them.”

“They will kill all of us if they catch you in this wagon. You’re risking our lives as well.”

“If I wasn’t here and they found you, a bunch of whites ridin’ hard, your chances is iffy anyway. But you can be damn sure that if they find me, there’ll be so many of them dead, the rest won’t remember you’re here.”

“I hope you don’t expect me to feel grateful, because I don’t. I know you’re the reason they’re riding tonight. You’re the only man I know who’s crazy enough to break into Klan headquarters and come out blazing!” The hoofbeats were now a couple of hundred yards behind. Serena could hear the jingling of metal along with the hoofbeats. She looked behind but there was nothing but darkness. The horsemen had not yet cleared the cover of the trees. Serena took a deep breath. “I hope it was worth it! I hope that you got a lot of money!”

There was a muffled laugh beneath the tarp. “I got some money, but I got something better than money. I got all the papers and deeds from their safe.”

The sound of running horses grew louder still. Serena could see over her shoulder the dark silhouettes of riders issuing from the trees behind her. Male voices called out. “Who goes there?” “Lay over to the side and halt yo’ wagon!” “Stop in the name of sheriff!”

She obediently reined the mules to the side of the road and slowed the wagon to a halt.

The riders pulled up around her. There appeared to be eight or nine men in the group. Someone turned an electric lantern on her.

“Well, what do we have here?” a faceless voice asked ominously.

“Whatchoo doing out on the road in the middle of the night, girlie?” another voice inquired leeringly.

Serena kept her head down and explained in a soft tone, “I’m just bringing my ailing mother home from the doctor. She wanted to rest in her own bed.”

“What’s your name and where do you live?” the man with the lantern asked.

“Serena Baddeaux,” she answered. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the men dismount and begin stabbing various mounds covered by the tarp with a long knife. She realized that her life depended upon her wits. If she could not deflect their attention, King would be found.

“Don’t do that, please, sir,” she begged the man with the knife. “Mr. Jack Shannon will be powerful angry when we get home.”

“You one of Black Jack Shannon’s niggers?” the man with the lantern demanded.

“Yes sir, I’m his cook and I’m just trying to get my mother home in time to start his breakfast.” Serena fervently hoped that none of the men present knew Shannon well enough to dispute her claim. Black Jack Shannon was one of the most powerful landowners in Parish County. It was only partially a lie. She had actually worked as second cook for Shannon’s household and road crew for two summers and had been offered a permanent position, but she had turned it down.

“She’s lying! She ain’t got no business on the road at this time of night. I say, let’s pull her off the wagon and teach her a lesson. Hell, I feel like changin’ my luck.”

Serena recognized the voice, even though she couldn’t see the face. It was Mr. Tom, the doctor’s nephew. She felt the fear rising within her like the mercury in a thermometer on a blazing hot day. She also heard the murmurs of assent among the other riders. She was frightened, but her thoughts were crystal clear. If she was going to be raped, it would not happen without a fight. She casually felt under her seat cushion, underneath her dress, for the handle of the butcher knife. Once she had a grip on it, she waited.