Standing at the Scratch Line (55 page)

“Ain’t no needin’ of you gettin’ out yo’ buggy. We had enough visitors today,” Aunt Ida said gruffly.

“I ain’t no visitor. This is my house,” Charles said as he tethered the mule to the railing that ran parallel to the porch. “I done come home to take my rightful place.”

“Yo’ rightful place is where you’s going in the hereafter,” Ida pointed downward emphatically with a finger. “You ain’t got no place here!”

Charles looked up to the porch, rainwater pouring off his hat. “You ain’t got no right to judge me! You don’t know what I been through! I don’t have to answer to you!”

“You have to answer to God!” Beulah declared in a loud, indignant voice. “You’ve broken his commandments and soiled your home with the taint of temptation!”

“Ah, Beulah, whose side is you on?” Charles said as he mounted the stairs to the porch. “You know how hard I worked to keep this place. Ain’t no legal way to keep me from my home!”

The front door swung open and Serena stood there with the lever-action Winchester pointed directly at Charles. She cocked the gun and stood silently.

Charles paused, momentarily disconcerted, then regained his composure. He turned to Beulah and said, “Find Amos and have him put Homer in the barn.”

“Have you gotten down on your knees and prayed to God for forgiveness?” Beulah demanded, pointing her finger at him.

“Beulah, I’s soaking wet. I just wants to change my clothes and sit by my fire. I ain’t got time to spend talkin’ with you ’bout my ’lationship with God. Now, excuse me.” Charles turned to face Serena, who had not moved. “Put down that gun, girl, and maybe I’ll give you ’nother chance. There’s still a family here to take care of.”

Serena shook her head. “You give me another chance?” she challenged sarcastically. “Like it was me who was found doing it in a barn!”

“You ain’t gon’ shoot me! And I had just ’bout enough of yo’ sass. Put down the gun befo’ I gets real mad!” Charles took two steps toward Serena. He never got any further. The blast from the gun boomed deafeningly in the confined space of the house. Charles felt the passage of the bullet as it creased the top of his head and blew his hat out into the middle of the yard. The heated discharge from the gun hit him full in the face, driving him backward off the porch. He fell in the mud at the bottom of the stairs.

“My God, child,” was all Beulah could say as she looked at Serena with shock. “That was yo’ daddy!” Beulah rushed down the stairs into the rain and stooped beside the sprawled form.

“He’s not my father,” Serena said in a toneless voice. “My father died a long time ago.”

“You didn’t intend to shoot him, did you, honey?” Ida asked, her face a furrowed pattern of concern. “ ’Cause no matter what he done, he’s still yo’ blood.”

“He isn’t hurt, Aunt Ida, unless he broke something when he fell off the porch. I just grazed him.”

“Did you see her? Did you see her, Beulah?” Charles raved angrily, rubbing his eyes. “She tried to kill me, her own father! By the grace of God, I was saved!”

“If I had wanted to shoot you, I could have,” Serena asserted. “If you believe that God saved you, why don’t you try to come up these stairs again.”

“Watch yo’self!” Beulah warned Serena. “You don’t want to blaspheme against the power of the Lord!”

“Let her talk,” Charles countered, wiping the mud from his face. “You’ll see, she’s got the devil in her and she’ll do his bidding.”

“If I’ve got the devil in me and I’m not a liar and an adulterer like you, what have you got inside of you?” Serena demanded.

“I’m gon’ to get the law. I’ll show you that you can’t throw a man off his farm!” Charles turned and went to pick up his hat in the middle of the yard.

Serena cocked the rifle and fired a shot into the hat, which flew several feet further out into the muddy yard. “That’s just to show you that my aim is still true,” Serena declared. “So don’t even try to stand with the family at the funeral!”

Charles threw up his hands and decided not to chase his hat. He untethered Homer and climbed into the buggy. “I’ll be back,” he called over his shoulder. “I ain’t finished yet!”

In accordance with Serena’s wishes, Charles did not return to the farm until after the funeral. His threat to get the sheriff was empty because Charles had no desire to have it commonly known that his seventeen-year-old daughter had shot his hat off and driven him from his land.

The planning for the funeral proceeded. Assistance came from many members of the church and all the neighbors around pitched in, as was normal for the community of Nellum’s Crossing. Several neighboring white families brought casseroles and participated in the setting up of the canvas tarp between the barn and the house. The tarp was intended to provide cover from the rain for the people who dropped by after the service to offer their condolences. The passing of a midwife, colored or not, was an event mourned by the whole community without regard to race.

As Serena sat in the packed church, all the events of the past few days seemed like something out of a dream. She felt a great distance from everything. The people passing in front of the coffin and those who stood around the edge of the church staring at her and whispering all seemed like paper dolls animated by dust devils, just pieces of debris spinning in circles until the wind released them.

Promptly at one-thirty Aunt Beulah stood up, indicating that it was now time for the family to make its way to the cemetery. She gave a few whispered orders, directing her squad of assistants to their preordained tasks, and began marshaling the family toward the exit.

Most of the mourners walked the half mile from the church to the grave site, but King had arranged for a hearse and a limousine for the immediate family, an unheard-of luxury for country colored folks. Since there were no paved roads in the immediate area, King had to also make sure beforehand that the automobiles could make it from the church to Pine Knoll without getting stuck in the mud. He and Sampson were standing by the limousine talking with the chauffeur about the route when Serena came up to him and took his arm.

The chauffeur, a short, stocky, brown-skinned man, took off his hat and said to Serena, “Mighty fine service, ma’am.” Serena nodded in acknowledgment and leaned against King. The chauffeur recognized that his presence was not needed and found that the other side of the car needed polishing. Sampson walked ahead along the designated route, in order to guide the vehicles.

“I want you to stay close to me,” Serena said, looking up into King’s eyes.

“No problem,” King answered easily. “Have you told any of your family that you ain’t buryin’ your mother in the plot that your daddy bought?”

“No. It was my decision and I made it. I’m sure that she couldn’t have rested peacefully in anything that Charles Baddeaux bought.”

Their conversation was interrupted by Aunt Beulah, who was herding the children and Aunt Ida to the car. After everyone was seated inside, the limousine drove slowly through the trees to the cemetery. King stayed behind to make sure that the pallbearers had sufficient help to get the coffin into the hearse.

The actual burial service was quite short, but there were two incidents that stayed in Serena’s mind. Just before the casket was lowered into the ground, Charles Baddeaux pushed through the surrounding crowd of onlookers and looked directly at Serena. He had a small bouquet of flowers in his hand. There was a tremendous look of sadness and yearning on his face. He looked from Serena to Ida to Beulah and back again. It was obvious to all that he wanted to take his place with the family.

Beulah moved to make room for him to stand beside her, but Serena stepped into the space and shook her head. Serena saw that Charles was not looking at her but staring over her shoulder. She turned and saw that King was standing directly behind her. King merely gave Charles a threatening stare. Charles placed the bouquet on top of the casket and then walked away. A corridor through the mourners opened silently for him and everyone stood still until he was lost among the tombstones.

The second incident occurred when the family returned to the limousine. Everyone boarded but Beulah. She waited until all were seated and then said coldly, “If the whole family is not allowed to stand by the graveside, then I don’t want to ride. The New Testament say, ‘. . . if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’ ” Beulah paused, staring at Serena, then said, “ ‘Vengeance is mine,’ sayeth the Lord!”

As far as Serena was concerned, the rest of the day passed in a blur of pots and pans and faces offering condolences. Once she returned to the farm, she did not leave the kitchen until the last guest was gone. She felt absolutely spent and had no desire to talk with anyone other than King.

It was just before sunset and there was a golden tint on the green rolling hills that surrounded the dark brown furrows of the tilled fields. There was a large, grassy meadow alongside the tilled fields that seemed to capture the waning sunlight on each blade of grass, creating a moving mosaic of green and yellow. It was a beautiful and peaceful scene and had no relation to the angst that Serena felt. She was standing with King near the fence that ran behind the barn.

“I’ve got to leave here and say good-bye to everything that I’ve known,” Serena spoke with sadness. “It seems so unfair. I’ve committed no crime, yet I have to leave.”

“What about your brother and your sisters?” King asked.

“Aunt Ida has said that she’d stay if it was alright with Charles.”

King put his foot on the lower fence railing. “Is Beulah going to stay too?”

“I don’t know. She hasn’t really talked to me since I shot her brother’s hat off on Thursday.”

“You is one stubborn woman. You gon’ drive this point off the cliff, ain’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You made yo’ point when you nailed the schoolteacher’s hair up at the store. All this stuff about your father being dead is weak. It sounds like the way white people think, like you just gon’ imagine someone to death! Long as you got some of Baddeaux’s blood and bone, you gon’ be his child and he gon’ be yo’ father. Colored people is gon’ know yo’ father’s alive as long as that man’s breathin’.”

“His fathering was hard and always came with a heavy, righteous hand. Now that he has truly revealed himself, I’m not giving him that recognition. And I plan to continue on saying he’s dead.”

King gave her a long look. “Sometimes you gots to weigh your decisions. For example, if you got to walk through a bitin’ dog’s yard, it’s better to throw him a piece of meat or shoot him than beat him off with a stick, ’cause one day you ain’t gon’ have that stick and he’s gon’ get past your guard.” King lit a cheroot, then continued. “Yo’ daddy is the same way. He’s like a mean dog. He just wants to sink his teeth into you. He don’t care if you in his yard or not.”

“I don’t ever plan to drop my stick.”

“Maybe that’ll work, maybe it won’t. It sort of depends where you planning to go when you leave here.”

Serena sighed. “I can always go work in Black Jack Shannon’s house as a cook.”

“That what you want to do?” King asked, staring at her.

“No, I don’t want to live on a farm and I don’t want to be somebody’s servant, but I really don’t have much choice unless . . .” Serena’s voice trailed off and she gave him a wistful and mysterious look.

“Unless what?” he prompted.

“Unless I can come and live with you?”

King was momentarily speechless. Nothing on his countenance reflected his surprise, for he was a man used to covering his feelings. King let his eyes drift to watching a large red-tailed hawk that was circling slowly overhead. For a moment there was absolute silence: there was no sound of bird or cricket and there was no breeze.

Serena, sensing a reluctance on King’s part, began to modify her request anxiously. “I’m sure that I can earn my way if you just help me find a room somewhere reasonable. I won’t be a burden, I’ll—”

“Whoa! Whoa, woman,” King interrupted, raising his hands with his palms facing her. “You asked if you could live with me and the answer is yes. Now, all this other stuff ain’t necessary. What we need to talk about is how we gon’ live together. As man and wife or what?”

Now it was Serena’s turn to be speechless. Tears formed at the edges of her eyes. She was overwhelmed. She rushed into his arms and stood clinging to him. She basked in the warmth of his embrace. She looked up into his eyes. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

King paused before speaking. “Yes, but this ain’t the way I planned to do it.”

“Just how did you plan to do it?” she asked, pushing away from him.

“Well, I wanted us to get all dressed up and go out to Storyville, have a big, fancy dinner, and maybe listen to some of that new jazz music. I mean make a night of it!”

“When were you planning to ask me?”

King paused and looked down at his feet. “I ain’t never felt about anybody the way I feel about you and it’s sort of got me all discombobulated. It ain’t nothin’ I planned and it ain’t nothin’ that I thought about; it just happened. Generally, I see things pretty clear, but with you ain’t nothin’ clear! Like you ain’t even given me an answer.”

Serena smiled, flashing her white teeth. “The answer is yes. I will marry you. But I’m telling you right now, King LeRoi Bordeaux Tremain, I want more out of life than my mother got. I want to live in the city and wear expensive clothes. I want to own a big house and I want lots of children. Most of all, I want a man who loves me and treats me with respect. If you have to see other women, I’m not the one to be your wife.”

“You need to understand two things about me,” King spoke with gravity. “First, ain’t nobody care mo’ about family than me! I was abandoned by my own family when I was seventeen. For a long time the army was my family. I spent a lot of years thinkin’ about what I missed and what I wants in a family. Now, I’s ready to start my own. I wants to be the head of a house full of strong sons and daughters, but mostly I wants sons.

“Second thing is, my word is my bond. I’ll die before I go back on my word. If I say I’ll marry you and be faithful to you, you ain’t got to worry about other women. ’Course there’re a lot of dead marriages around where everybody’s faithful, but there ain’t no heart or passion. Seems to me if a woman does her part to do her best and a man does his best, there ain’t no need for anybody to roam.”