Standing at the Scratch Line (67 page)

“Not in my joint, you won’t!” Wichita said and two of her men appeared next to her with shotguns.

King smiled. The blood was bubbling in his ears. Every fiber of his being was alive and he did not want to leave without killing Elmo. “Looks like you might do some of yo’ customers along with me if’en you use them scatterguns. And you can’t be sure you’ll get me!”

A man at a table stood up slowly with his hands high. “I ain’t part of this and I ain’t got no gun. I’s gon’ take my leave now.” Two other men stood up as well. One of them stuttered, “I-I-I ain’t c-c-come to t-town for no tr-tr-trouble either!”

“If too many people start movin’, I’m gon’ commence to shootin’!”

“Don’t do it, King,” warned Bass. “We’ve completed our business here.”

“We ain’t finished!” King disputed. “You know sometime down the line this dog’s gon’ try and bushwack me!”

Wichita descended the steps. “King Tremain, before you run all my customers away, can we palaver?” She was a beautiful brown-skinned woman with big doe eyes and long, curly black hair that fell around her shoulders. “I can’t let you kill any more people in here. Let my boys carry Elmo over to Johnsonville where he’s wanted for robbin’ their bank. They’ll try him and send him on to Idabel Prison. If you want to kill him after that, it’s your affair.” She turned to Elmo. “You leave here with your life. What do you say?”

King looked down at Elmo, who was sitting on the floor holding his crushed hand. “You want that, Elmo? Or would you rather just get on yo’ horse and ride on home?”

“You ain’t gon’ let me go!” Elmo answered.

“I’ll give you a twenty-minute head start. In the darkness, you might have a chance. Or, you could end up like yo’ brothers! You make the choice.”

Elmo looked around the room and saw no support in the eyes of the onlooking crowd. “I takes Johnsonville.”

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“This sho’ some nice material you got in here, Mrs. Tremain. Bodie Wells done needed a sto’ like this for some time,” Ida Hoskins said as she examined a bolt of fabric.

“It comes all the way from New York, Mrs. Hoskins,” Serena declared with pride. “We expect to carry a different selection of fabric in the summer, so don’t buy all the material you’ll need for the year on one shopping trip.”

“Do y’all barter? I ain’t got enough money for what we needs,” Ida said quietly, not wishing to share the information with the other customers who were looking at the store’s wares. Ida Hoskins was a small, wiry, brown-skinned woman. Although her clothes were worn, they were clean and neat.

Serena nodded. Ida looked dependable. Serena asked, “What are you bartering?”

“I sews good. I sees you got clothes patterns. If’en somebody want some of them things in yo’ catalogs, I could make them, or I could work helpin’ to make adjustments on them ready-made dresses you got in the window. Or, I could bring you some meat when we butchers in the spring. My husband cures a mighty mean ham.”

Serena went behind the counter and got a book and returned to Ida and said quietly, “Mrs. Hoskins, we allow up to twenty-five dollars’ credit. Why don’t you get things you need and we’ll total up and you’ll just sign the book for the amount.”

“What about interest? Bolton and Little charge interest.”

“At Tremain Dry Goods all we care about is that you pay what you owe. We don’t have interest on our accounts.”

“Well, I’ll say!” declared Ida Hoskins with a smile. “I can see you gon’ get a lot of business. And I don’t mind puttin’ the word out myself.”

“You do that, Mrs. Hoskins. You do that.”

There was the sound of someone running on the wooden planks outside the store. Serena looked up and saw Cordel Witherspoon run by. He turned into the main store. She heard his panicked voice jabbering at King, and then he ran out of the store and down the street.

King put his head in the dress shop. “Clara’s mother done shot Booker Little.”

“What? When?” Serena exclaimed with surprise.

“Shot him dead in front of Marshal Bass’s office,” King answered. “Point-blank range.” He walked over to the cash drawer and began to count its paper money contents.

Ida Hoskins shook her head. “I declare, that don’t sound like Flo Nesbitt.”

Serena took off her apron and asked, “Why? Why would she shoot Booker?”

“She must have found out it was him what told those white men when Clara would be travelin’ to Johnsonville last month.”

Serena took out a brush and hurriedly began to reposition the pins in her hair. “Is it true? Did Booker tell those white men about Clara’s going to Johnsonville to get her paper printed?”

“Yeah, it was him,” King answered as he continued to separate the bills into different denominations. “We matched them hoofprints we saw with his horse. Lightning even kept the shoe. Then, of course, we had that piece of material from his suit. We knew it was him.”

“Why did you wait? Why didn’t you do something about it? Clara was attacked almost a month ago.”

“I wanted to do him, but Mace and Marshal Bass thought it might cause reprisals from Big Daddy, Booker being Big Daddy’s house slave and all. They thought we should wait until just before the election to bring out the information. I guess that’s why Bass showed Flo that little snip of cloth today.”

“Do you think Bolton will tell the riders to ride on Bodie Wells now that Booker’s dead?”

“Can’t honestly say, sugar,” King said with a shrug. “Depends if he figured out that colored folks killed his white son.”

Ida put her hand over her chest. “Frank Bolton is dead? Oh, my God!”

“Yep, Booker done killed him; killed him the evenin’ after Clara was attacked,” King confirmed. “Now, Big Daddy Bolton don’t have no heir but Mace Edwards. Kind a funny, ain’t it? He might end up killin’ the only child he got left and the only one who was worth a damn!”

Serena countered, “He still has Wichita Kincaid.”

“She ain’t Big Daddy’s daughter. She’s his wife, Sarah’s daughter!”

Serena turned to Ida with surprise. “What? She had a colored child and she lived to grow up? How come she’s alive? To protect her reputation, a white woman would normally kill a child like that or send it to be raised somewhere else! Oh, this can’t be true! Flo and Mabel would have told me about this!”

Ida pursed her lips. “As far as I know, only Bass, Wichita, and Octavius Boothe know about it! I wouldn’t have known, but I overheard Bass and ’Tavius talkin’ about it a few years back.”

“How do they know?” Serena asked, her curiosity awakened.

“Well, Romelus Boothe is father to both her and Octavius!”

Serena put her hands on her hips. “I heard that Octavius’s father was lynched! So, that’s the reason behind it?”

Ida stepped closer to Serena. “Sarah Bolton done favored that particular Negro too much. What with all of Big Daddy’s playin’ around with colored women, I guess she thought she’d turn the tables on him.”

“I tell you in these small towns, folks’ lives get all twisted together,” King observed.

Serena looked at Ida. “Does Big Daddy know about Wichita?”

“Sho’ do. Him and Sarah must have some sort of agreement, ’cause he the one done set Wichita up at the Black Rose. That’s why that place don’t ever get raided and the Klan don’t burn no crosses there.”

Serena declared, “If I carried a child for nine months, I’d never give it up! It would be my child! I can’t imagine anything being more important than my child! I’d never give up a child I carried for nine months! Never!”

The church bells were tolling twelve noon as King and Serena were standing behind the counter in the store, totaling the morning’s sales. Because the storm shutters were closed as insulation against the cold, the store was illuminated by bright ceiling lights. Serena was standing next to King, watching him shuffle through the paper money.

King nudged Serena. “If we keep on practicin’ like we did last night, we just might get a chance to see how you act with a baby, Mrs. Tremain.”

Serena gave him a sly smile in return. “Was that only practice? I thought you were an expert, Mr. Tremain.”

King let his hands drift over the small of her back and come to rest on her behind. “Best bottomland in the state of Oklahoma,” he declared.

“That better be the only stretch you try to farm,” Serena teased warningly.

There was a sharp rapping on the front door. King and Serena looked at each other. “You didn’t tell that Hoskins woman to come back so soon, did you?”

“No, I told her she could start work after lunch. She shouldn’t be here until one o’clock.”

A voice outside yelled, “King Tremain! We need you!”

“Bodie Wells is gettin’ busier than dog shit on a New York street corner.”

“King! You need to wash your mouth out with soap!” Serena chided.

The rapping continued. Sampson appeared with a shotgun. He asked in sign if he should open the door and King nodded his okay. The voice of Marshal Bass said, “Open up, King! We got problems!”

Sampson unlocked and opened the door. Mace Edwards and Raymond Bass stepped inside. Both men took off their hats upon entering and nodded to Serena.

“What’s on yo’ mind?” King asked as he walked over to the two men.

“You have a place we can talk?” Mace asked.

King showed the two men into a small sitting room off the foyer. “Must be somethin’ hot for both of you to be comin’ here.” Sampson walked in behind him.

“It’s hot,” Bass answered. “Zeke Wakefield, he’s a truck driver for one of them wheat combines, walked into my office, fresh from Clairborne, and told me there’s men in the town square up there wearin’ Klan getups! He say they’re gettin’ ready to ride on Bodie Wells!”

“Why?” King asked. “Did he say why?”

“Nope. He just got out of town as soon as he could and he picked up any colored folk that he saw headin’ this way!” Bass answered. “He say everybody colored who in Clairborne is either tryin’ to get out of town or is hidin’ out. Woe to any colored man found on the street today.”

“What you want me to do?” King asked.

“We can’t afford to get into a shooting match, but we need you to stand with us. If we can get the whole town to turn out in a show of solidarity, we may be able to dissuade the whites from taking violent action.”

“Far as I know, the only thing white folks understand is violence. Talk don’t mean nothin’ to them. They sho’ didn’t listen to the Indian and they ain’t been listening to us!”

“Mace is right, King. Listen to him,” Bass advised. “If we get into a shoot-out with the Klan and we kill too many of them, they’ll call in the army and wipe Bodie Wells off the face of the map. They don’t want no stories about colored folks fightin’ back floatin’ around. It might give some other folks ideas.”

Mace joined in. “Let me try talking first! Let them take the first shot before we start fighting. I don’t plan to roll over for them, but I want a peaceful solution if it’s possible. Will you stand with me?”

“Nope! I ain’t gon’ stand in the street and face the Klan. That be givin’ my life away. Tell you what, I’ll be on a roof with an army machine gun coverin’ you. Don’t make sense to me to stand out in the street in front of a bunch of ignorant Klan boys. All they want is to spill some colored blood.”

“You have an army machine gun?” Mace asked.

“Sho’ do! And if any shootin’ starts, I promise you not many of ’em will get to see their mamas again. So, you best speak yo’ best words and plan to move if the lead starts flyin’. I’m gon’ be sendin’ some folk straight to hell!”

“Don’t be too quick on the trigger, King,” Bass cautioned. “There’s people who got their roots here, buried their family and loved ones in this ground. They gon’ want to continue livin’ here. We got to do right by them. I’m askin’ you to stay yo’ hand ’til there ain’t no other choice.”

“Long as it ain’t my folks who gon’ be sacrificed, I’ll do what you say.” There was more knocking at the front door. Sampson went out to open it. King stepped to the door of the sitting room and looked out. He saw Serena standing in the doorway leading into the store watching. She looked at him with questions on her face. King beckoned to her to come stand beside him.