Standing at the scratch.., p.45
Standing at the Scratch Line, page 45
“Where is Elmo Thomas?” Big Daddy asked. He had to stop himself from smiling: Booker had recommended the exact same path of action he would have.
Further conversation was preempted when the door opened and Sarah walked in, followed by her son, Frank. She had a big smile on her face. “Why Skip, Big Daddy told me you were going to be here. I just didn’t think you’d pass without greeting your sister and nephew.” She went over and kissed his cheek in a manner that clearly indicated that she had other things on her mind than greeting her brother. “Why don’t you shake hands with your uncle, Frank?” she said with a smile, but her eyes were throwing daggers at Booker.
Frank could hardly complete the pro forma action with his uncle because he too was staring at Booker. “What are you doing here?” he challenged, an angry expression contorting his face.
“We’re talking business. My business! So, it’s none of your business!” Big Daddy said the words with relish. His only legal son was such a painful disappointment to him that in a perverse manner, he now desired to cause this son some discomfort.
“Surely you don’t mean that,” Sarah said with a frown. “This is your only son. He’s going to be your heir. He should know the ins and outs, especially the orders you’re giving the servants.” She gave Booker a meaningful look.
“I mean it! He’s useless! Booker here has done better—”
“You’re not going to compare your only son to a Nigra bastard!” Sarah pronounced “Negro” in such a way as to indicate she meant to say “nigger” but her breeding wouldn’t allow her. Sarah began hyperventilating behind a handkerchief that she pressed to her mouth. Her son, Frank, who was used to ignoring these episodes, rushed to her side with pretended concern. Neither Skip, who grew up with her, nor Big Daddy moved a muscle.
“Some bastards are worth something, while others who have all the fortune from birth are not worth manure,” Big Daddy said easily.
Big Daddy’s words made Sarah drop her pretense and stare at him with hatred. She turned to her brother. “That’s your nephew he’s insulting. Aren’t you going to say something?”
Skip knew on which side his bread was buttered: he put up his hands and backed away. “This is between you all.”
Sarah turned and marched from the room. Frank was left standing there in confusion. With an expression and a gesture, he made a silent plea to his father, but his father simply made a fist and gave the thumbs-down sign. Frank Bolton, humiliated in front of his half-white brother, shuffled from the room with head down and fallen shoulders.
“Maybe we could use someone with Mr. Frank’s skills,” Booker suggested as Frank neared the door. “I have a plan I’d like to discuss with you that could involve him.”
Big Daddy looked at Frank’s face and saw a look of pure hatred directed at Booker. Instead of being thankful that Booker would want to include him, Frank hated him all the more for having the audacity to show charity. Big Daddy turned to Booker and saw him smiling in response to Frank’s look. Big Daddy was beginning to like the situation more and more. Maybe Booker was smarter than he thought. Just what did he have planned for Frank?
“Alright, Frank, you can stay!” Sarah started to reenter the room, but Big Daddy stopped her. “Not you, Sarah. You’ve accomplished your goal: Frank is part of the meeting. Now close the door!”
Big Daddy turned to face the three men in his office with a big smile. He was planning on enjoying the competition between Booker and Frank. It seemed that Frank had all the advantages, but Big Daddy wouldn’t give even money for his success. It was a terrible thing to say, but he could see his blood more clearly in Booker.
T U E S D A Y, D E C E M B E R 2 8, 1 9 2 0
Christmas Day had passed without word from King. He had been gone over a month. Serena did not know where he was, nor did she have anyone to contact who could tell her. All he had said before he left Bodie Wells was that he might be gone for some time. Initially she figured his trip had something to do with his bootlegging business. He had made several short weekend trips in the past, returning each time with wads of cash and cases of liquor. Yet this time was different. As the weeks passed, she began to fear the worst. It even entered her mind that he might be dead. It was the darkest and loneliest holiday season that she had ever spent. She had never endured so much time in silence. She missed her sisters and her little brother and felt an aching sense of loss when she thought about her mother. But she cried on no one’s shoulder. She gritted her teeth and kept herself busy.
The wind had died down for the first time in a week. Sounds of traffic echoed along the corridor of Main Street as people returned to their homes after the dinner hour. With a fire crackling in the potbellied stove, Serena sat in her rocking chair holding a letter addressed to King Tremain, Bodie Wells, Oklahoma. There was no information about the sender. The handwriting was in a bold, irregular scrawl. Serena picked up the envelope and held it up to the light of the bulb: there appeared to be two sheets of paper within it. She considered the possibility that the letter might contain some clues to King’s whereabouts, yet she set the envelope back down on the highboy as she had done a hundred times before. As always her examination led to no conclusion.
Her days were spent working with Sampson in the receiving, inventorying, and placement of shipments of fabric, leather goods, foodstuff, ammunition, hunting weapons, and an assortment of other items for the general store. The stock was coming in rapidly. The store would be ready to open in the middle of January. The carpenters completed their work in the main building, including her dress shop, and had begun to work on repairing the barn and granary outbuildings. There was always work to do. Sometimes she and Sampson worked themselves to the brink of exhaustion. She had chosen to stop going to the beauty parlor, because the talk generally centered around the latest gossip. After two weeks she had heard all the stories twice, plus she had neither time nor the inclination for gossip.
Her nights were spent in the second-story flat above the store in the rocking chair beside the stove. In the beginning, her principal pastime was reading the Bible, but through Clara Nesbitt she discovered a whole new range of fiction and poetry. She now spent evenings reading stories by Chesnutt, J. Weldon Johnson, and Hughes. But there were many evenings when she was incapable of visualizing the concepts and images developed in print. On such nights she was filled with doubt and fear and would return to stare at the letter on the highboy many times.
Outside on the street, there was the sound of boisterous men laughing and talking. The weather had taken an unseasonal temperature swing upward into the low forties and some drovers and farmhands suffering from cabin fever had come to town to drink and carouse at the Black Rose, located a mile outside of Bodie Wells. Serena looked at the tall pendulum clock and saw that it was after eight o’clock in the evening. It was late for a bunch of men to be on the street; during the winter all town businesses closed at six in the evening. It occurred to her that the men might have come from the cockfights that Lightning was rumored to have every fortnight or so. Her perplexity ended when she heard a loud banging on the store’s front door.
“Tremain, come out! I hear you’s the one responsible fo’ killin’ my brothers! Come on out here and deal with me like a man! I’m Elmo Thomas and I’m callin’ you out!”
Serena stood up and walked over to the window and pulled the curtains back to look down on the street below. She could see two men standing in the street. The loud banging on the store door continued. Shades were pulled up and curtains were opened up and down the street as people peered out their windows to see the cause of the commotion. Serena knew that no one but Marshal Bass would come to her assistance.
“Tremain! Are you yellow? Come out and deal with me face-to-face!” More banging.
Serena donned her shawl and then went to the bureau and took out a revolver that King had given her. With gun hidden under the shawl, she went downstairs to open the door. When she reached the bottom of the stairs Sampson stepped out of the shadows holding a shotgun. He followed her to the door, which she unlocked and opened.
Elmo Thomas stood there swaying with drink. He was a muscular brown-skinned man whose nose had been broken many times, and he had a twisted, evil smile. He leered at her and said, “Where Tremain? He afraid to come down and deal with me? Do I have to come in there searchin’ for him?” He pushed open the door roughly, throwing Serena backward. Elmo would have continued on into the store if Sampson had not jammed the barrel of the shotgun into his throat and shoved him up against the wall.
“Don’t make any sudden moves, Mr. Thomas. The shotgun has a hair trigger,” Serena advised. She straightened her shawl. And don’t come back here again, Mr. Thomas. My husband will come looking for you in due time. If I know him, he’ll be happy to visit you after I tell him about this.”
Despite the shotgun against his neck, Elmo threatened, “If I ain’t seen him by New Year’s Day, I’m gon’ come back here and burn this place down!”
“I wouldn’t try that if I were you, Mr. Thomas. That might be the last match you ever light. Your family has already lost two sons. We’d be adding another to the list. Of course, I’ve heard that you breed like roaches, so the loss of three sons may hardly be noticed. Let him go for now, Sampson.”
Sampson backed off the shotgun but kept it pointed directly at Elmo.
Elmo pulled back out of the doorway and rubbed his neck angrily. “I ain’t gon’ fo’get that! Ain’t nobody put a gun on me and lived to the followin’ season.” He pointed a finger at Serena. “I’m gon’ remember you too and what you said ’bout my family! You gon’ be mine and I’m gon’ break you! You high-yellow—”
Serena interrupted. “Kill him, Sampson, if he says another thing!” Sampson moved forward with a smile, ready to pull the trigger. Elmo stepped back with a look of fear on his face. “Good-bye, Mr. Thomas!” Serena said as she slammed the door in his face.
There was a moment of silence, then Elmo could be heard screaming to the street at large: “Tremain is a damn coward! I went to call on him and he sent his woman to the door! He a yellow-bellied back shooter! He can’t stand up to nobody who’s lookin’ him in the eye! I’m gon’ come back here on New Year’s Day and turn him out and I’m gon’ burn his sto’ to the ground. I swear this on my brother’s grave!”
Serena and Sampson stood looking at each other as they listened to Elmo’s voice slowly wane in the distance. Sampson signed that he would sleep downstairs on guard for the night. She gave his arm a grateful squeeze and went back upstairs.
She walked straight over to the highboy and picked up the letter and opened it.
There were two sheets in the letter. The smaller one, perhaps half the size of its partner, was written in the same scrawl as the envelope. It was from Captain Mack and it began,
. . . I don’t know if this is one of my brother’s tricks or not, but a woman came here named Mamie. She had a little boy with her who she claimed was your son. I didn’t tell her nothing, but she gave me a letter to send to you. She told me that you told her I was about the only family that you had. I can’t tell you how good that made me and Martha feel, boy. We told her, we didn’t know where you was, but if we got a chance we would forward her letter. I hope you and your new wife is doing good. No matter what you thinking, don’t come back here! Corlis has people all over the place looking for you. You done shot his leg off and now he’s madder than an alligator with eggs.
If you decide to come back, don’t come to the mill! Corlis has got people watching us. Go to Poindexter’s and he’ll contact me. We’ll still find a way to help you just like when you was seventeen and needed money and a horse.
You take care of yourself, boy. You all we got.
Serena’s hands were trembling when she began to read the second letter:
Hello King,
I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you since you’ve been gone. You’re one of a kind. I never had a chance to tell you how grateful I was that you appointed me manager of the Rockland Palace. A regular paying job is on the path to happiness. Cap or one of the guys stop by every once in a while to make sure things are running well. The Palace is one of the most popular places in New York City and we regularly take in a profit. Life is so crazy. Now that I don’t need the money I get from singing, I have more offers for work than I can handle. I have an offer to be part of a traveling revue. I really want to do it. I want to see where my singing career will go if I invest time in it. But I have a problem and it’s not the Palace. Vince knows the ropes better than I do.
I don’t know how to tell you this, but six months after you left, our son was born. Yes, I knew I was pregnant before you left, but I didn’t want you to stay if that was your only reason for staying. If you stayed, I wanted it to be because you loved me. It was hard for me to accept then, but I realize now that you didn’t know how to love.
I came looking for you to find out whether you had learned how to love in the time that you’ve been gone. I hoped that there still might be a future for us. Even if we can’t get together, I thought you would like to see your wonderful son. He reminds me so much of you. He is not even a year old and he’s already walking. He is tough and fearless. Nothing scares him. I was hoping that I could leave him with you while I travel with the revue.
I have been talking with your lawyer friend Goldbaum and he’s the one who told me you were in New Orleans. I have been here two weeks and no one knows where you are. Please contact me as soon as you get this. I’m staying at the Tri-Color Hotel on the edge of Storyville. I really love the music that’s being played in some of the clubs down here.
Oh, by the way, a friend of yours invited me out to his farm next week. He wants to see your son. The man’s name is Alfred DuMont. He says he’s known you all your life. I’m really looking forward to some home cooking.
Your loving Mamie
Both letters slipped from Serena’s grasp and fell to the floor. She could barely walk back to her rocking chair. She seemed to have lost contact with her legs; they did not respond as they should have and trembled on the verge of collapse. She dropped into the chair like a dead weight. She sought to calm herself by putting her hands in her lap and taking long, regular breaths, timing them with the movement of the rocking chair.
She had seen a worn photograph of this woman in King’s belongings when they moved from the Toussant to the villa. She had asked him about the photograph and he had told her that Mamie had been his woman in New York. Serena had studied the woman’s photograph a long time. It portrayed a voluptuous and very dark-skinned woman dressed in big city finery in a park setting. The woman was so dark that the features of her face could only be seen in very good light. She remembered remarking in surprise that she was shocked that King would go out with someone so dark. His response had been crushing. She could recall the exact words he said: “Don’t get caught up in that color shit! Army taught me if you got the blood of Africa in you, it don’t matter what color you are, you ain’t white! It’s just another way the white got you hatin’ yo’self. Until every man jack of us is ready to be proud for what we do, rather’n what we looks like, we gon’ kickin’ our own selves in the ass! In the army I seen this color shit mess up a squad of men. Don’t be bringin’ no high yellow shit to me! I hate that!”
It was the first time they had argued. She saw another side of him that day, the side that strangers saw. It was clear that he felt very strongly. She saw it in the flash of his eyes, tone of his voice, his use of vulgarity, and the heavy, ominous presence that seemed to appear out of nowhere. She said nothing more to him about the subject of color, but she did ask him to get rid of the photograph. He refused. She started to make an argument, but he cut her off once more with the intensity of his words. “I ain’t arguin’ with you! I’m keepin’ it! It’s important to me! Don’t get it twisted! I married you, not her! Worry about today, not a yesterday you can’t change!” Without waiting for her response he had stalked out of the room and she knew better than to follow him. Serena picked up the photograph again, trying to see what King had seen in the woman. What Serena saw was a big, black, overdressed country nigger woman with hot-combed hair putting on airs. Serena was not only irritated that King refused to get rid of the photograph, but also that he had gone out with a woman so dark. She had carefully placed the picture back in his papers and left the room. From that moment on, she had felt that the woman’s presence had invaded her house, and it did not take long for her resentment of Mamie to grow into hatred. She didn’t speak to King about it, but it was never far from her thoughts.
Serena had known this woman was going to be trouble when King refused to get rid of her photograph. The letter was merely confirmation of her premonition. As Serena rocked in the chair, questions began to march past, some answered, some unanswered. What did this child mean? Was it possible that King had met up with this woman and had decided to live with her because of the child? No, that wasn’t like King. He would honor his vows to Serena, but he might bring home this child. Serena wondered what this meant for her, for her dreams. For one thing sure, her dream family didn’t have some other woman’s half-African bastard as her oldest child. That damned Mamie didn’t have the courtesy to die a natural death! Maybe the DuMonts might be helpful in this situation. She sat rocking in her chair until the light of day signaled a new sunrise.
T H U R S D A Y, D E C E M B E R 3 0, 1 9 2 0
Serena rose at six-thirty and it was bitter cold. There was frost glistening on the windowpanes as the morning sun broke over the horizon. She put two logs in the embers of the potbellied stove, bathed in cold water, and dressed for the day. When she went downstairs, Sampson had already made coffee and started a pot of beans, but the fire beneath the beans had nearly burned down to embers. Serena was surprised. It was unlike him to fail to tend to his responsibilities. She called out to him but there was no answer. She rebuilt the fire, poured herself some coffee, and sat at the old wooden table by the window in the kitchen, looking down upon Main Street. During the night, the temperature had fallen well below freezing and the wind had returned. Across the street, Serena saw icicles hanging from the eaves and a post-office poster was flapping back and forth in the wind.
