Standing at the Scratch Line (9 page)

“God as my witness, I don’t know,” Williams answered, shaking his head sadly.

The sound of a woman’s shrieks rent the air. The screams came from the depot. The sergeant started running immediately toward the building. McHenry also trotted toward the origin of the sound. The door of the depot crashed open and Slick emerged, dragging a German woman by the arm. She was in military uniform and was fighting to escape his grip. She swung around and tried to scratch out his eyes. Slick backhanded the woman across the face and she fell in a heap at his feet.

“I caught her on the telephone!” Slick shouted in explanation. “She was calling German headquarters!”

From the other side of the tracks a voice called out, “What are you doing, nigger?” Red McGraw’s squad emerged from the cover of the forest and took up positions around the depot platform.

Slick was momentarily at a loss for words when he saw the angry white faces surrounding him. “I uh, uh, found her on the tele—”

“You hit her, didn’t you, nigger?” An angry voice interrupted Slick’s explanation.

“Looks like we got to teach him a lesson, Sarge,” another voice called out.

“Wait,” Sergeant Williams shouted. “She’s a hostile! She was telling German headquarters about—”

Shots were fired. Slick had tried to pull his Bergmann free of his jacket and his movement was seen. The first bullets hit him in the shoulder and chest and knocked him back into the depot. The rest of the fusillade hit the German woman as she tried to rise and escape. The force of the lead hitting her body drove her slumping back against the wall. She quivered a moment and lay still.

“Stop! Goddamn it!” shouted Sergeant Williams again as he tried to intercede.

“He’s behind you, Tony!” one of McGraw’s men yelled and fired at Williams. The bullets passed over Williams’s head as he dove for the snow.

The man who had shot at Sergeant Williams was killed when a bullet tore through his throat. The crack of Professor’s Springfield sounded regularly as he strafed McGraw’s men. They all ran for cover. Another man was killed before he could hide behind a handcar.

McHenry shouted, “Cease fire! Cease fire! These are friendlies!”

“We got two dead soldiers here! Get back where you belong, nigger lover!” a voice growled at him from behind a handcar.

Sergeant Williams rolled to his feet and sprinted for cover, but he was cut down by a hail of bullets from McGraw’s men.

The lieutenant shouted again, “We’re all Americans here! Cease fire! Cease fire! We’re killing our own!”

A voice answered, “If you want the shooting to stop, send the niggers out!”

LeRoi had been working his way behind McGraw’s squad. They were lying behind the handcars and firing between the wheels. As he passed behind the buildings and slipped into the trees, he saw several of the weathered faces of the local militia. He swung the Lewis in their direction, but they merely shook their heads, indicating that it was not their fight. He continued on until he was directly behind McGraw’s men.

Someone shouted, “Send the niggers out and it’ll be over!”

LeRoi opened fire with the Lewis and felt the powerful recoil of the gun as he expended the forty-seven-round magazine on the exposed backs of the men. As the rhythm of the recoil shuddered through him, he saw the countless faces and bodies of colored soldiers who had died in the trenches beside him. Anger and hatred welled up within him and overwhelmed any concern for his own physical safety. He was finally killing the true enemy and he didn’t care if he died in the act. He dropped the empty Lewis and drew both his Colt pistols. The fusillade of bullets from the Lewis had killed nearly every man in McGraw’s squad. A cold fury drove LeRoi onward as he moved carefully through the bodies, killing those who were not dead, until he reached McGraw himself.

Sergeant McGraw’s right arm was shattered and hung useless at his side. With his left hand he pushed away his M1917 automatic rifle and managed a smile. “I guess you won this round, nigger. But when I get back, they’re going to hang your black ass!”

“What makes you think you gon’ get back?” LeRoi asked as he picked up a coil of rope from the handcar.

McGraw pushed his red hair out of his eyes. “I’m a sergeant in the U.S. Army. You ain’t going to shoot me while I’m unarmed!”

“What makes you think I’m gon’ shoot you?” LeRoi asked as he quickly made a noose on one end of the rope.

Sergeant McGraw made a grab at the rifle he had pushed away, but LeRoi savagely kicked his shattered arm. McGraw screamed in agony, nearly passing out from the pain.

There was a metal lamppost with a horizontal arm that held the lamp. LeRoi walked over and threw the noose around the horizontal arm. He went back and pulled McGraw roughly to his feet. He wrestled and shoved McGraw to the lamppost.

When LeRoi slipped the noose around his neck, McGraw began to scream for help. LeRoi head-butted him across the bridge of his nose and his screams stopped midsyllable. McGraw fell backward into the snow. LeRoi grabbed the rope tightly and began to walk away from McGraw’s supine form. With each step, he pulled the sergeant further erect. He didn’t have sufficient traction in the wet snow to pull McGraw all the way off the ground, so LeRoi crossed the tracks and positioned himself on the other side of a handcar. He braced one foot against a wheel and hauled the thrashing body of McGraw aloft.

“Let go of that rope! Or I swear to God that I’ll shoot!”

LeRoi twisted his torso with an effort and saw that it was Lieutenant McHenry, pointing a pistol at him. He let go of the rope and McGraw fell against the lamppost with a thud. LeRoi turned slowly toward McHenry. He had a smirk on his face as he watched the pale, trembling face of the lieutenant.

“I saved your life and you just gon’ shoot me? I ain’t got no right to defend myself? Yet, you stood by when they was killin’ us, didn’t you? It was alright when it’s peckerwoods killin’ coloreds, but don’t let coloreds pick up a gun and fight back! I got yo’ number! Ain’t no use in wastin’ time.” LeRoi threw open his jacket and exposed his pistols. “I’m ready to die right now and I’m gon’ take you with me!”

“I order you to drop your weapons! One false move and I’ll shoot,” McHenry answered, unable to stop his trembling. “All I want to do is stop the killing.”

“Sergeant Williams is dead!” Professor shouted as he stood over the body of the fallen sergeant. He aimed his rifle at the lieutenant. “You stood by and watched them kill him! They are murderers and deserve to die! When you pull that trigger, it’ll be the last thing you do!”

“Morris, what are you doing?” exclaimed McHenry. “Put down that gun!”

“If he don’t shoot you, we will.” Three Negro soldiers crossed the tracks with their rifles trained on the lieutenant. The soldier who had spoken first continued. “We ain’t letting no more colored soldiers get killed! We done watched enough of our own get it. Now we full up with it!”

“Tell him, Smitty,” one of his companions urged.

The lieutenant let his gun hand fall to his side and turned. “This is mutiny under fire! You will all be court-martialed.”

“But you’ll be dead!” Professor countered.

McHenry looked around at the brown faces surrounding him and holstered his gun. “Okay, what now?” His voice was filled with bravado, but everyone could see he was still trembling. No one moved as the soldiers waited to see if one among them would kill the lieutenant.

Several of the militia, with their headman in the lead, crossed the tracks and walked around looking at the bodies of the soldiers. The Negro soldiers were growing more nervous by the minute; they didn’t know whether to open fire on the locals or not.

“They killed by Germans,” André said with a sweep of his hand, indicating the bodies of McGraw’s squad. He was standing on the depot platform. “How you say, it was terrible fight. Many die, but we gain victory. Yes?” He rapidly translated his statement into French for his men who were gathering in front of the depot.

There was a rousing cheer from André’s men and he nodded to the lieutenant. “This is what we will report. I tell you that we too have had problems with this McGraw. He and some of his men raped the wife of one of my fighters. Because we did not know which ones did it, nothing was done. We have not forgotten. So, for this we will say it was Germans. You agree or no?”

McHenry looked around at his subordinates and saw by their eyes that they were still ready to kill him. He swallowed and said hoarsely, “I just wanted to stop the shooting.” His eyes darted from brown face to brown face. Like a fish caught in a tidal pool, he had nowhere to go. He cleared his throat and said, “You men don’t have to worry about anything. My report will be consistent with his.” McHenry walked slowly through the circle of Negro soldiers.

“You checked on Slick?” LeRoi asked Professor, who had walked up to stand beside him.

“No. Everything happened so fast, I just barely got to the sarge.” Professor took off his glasses and began cleaning them absentmindedly. “I’ve seen so much death since we’ve been over here. There must be twenty, thirty bodies around here right now. I’m getting sick to my stomach of it!”

“Better to be standing and sick to your stomach than dead,” LeRoi said, mounting the stairs to the depot. He waved Professor to join him.

“You don’t understand, LT. I’m not like you,” Professor responded. “I’m not a violent man. I only joined the army because I thought it was the right thing to do. I’m not so sure now.”

“This war ain’t gon’ change shit,” LeRoi said. “The rich’ll still be rich and the poor’ll still be poor. And if you’re white, you’re alright and, if you’re black, get back! That ain’t gon’ change.”

“I listened to DuBois and it sounded like he was on to something with his ‘Fight the war now and put the struggle on hold.’ It still seems like the right thing, but I really didn’t think I would be fighting other Americans no matter what their beliefs. I could never write about this. No one would believe it.”

“Believe this: sometimes I don’t know which way to point my rifle. They all the same to me. I was lookin’ at their bodies,” LeRoi indicated McGraw’s squad with a wave of his hand. “The only difference is their uniforms. They look like Germans. Shit, they is Germans!”

They entered the depot and saw André tending to Slick on the floor. By the color of his face and the glassy look in his eyes, they could tell he was dying. Professor laid his rifle down and knelt beside Slick. André continued to work on Slick’s other side, trying to stanch the flow of blood.

“I guess McGraw’s boys must be dead, if you and LT is walkin’ in here, Professor,” Slick whispered.

“Yes, they’re dead, but we paid for it dearly,” Professor answered. “Sarge is dead and you’re hit pretty bad.”

“At least I won’t have to kill him now,” Slick tried to laugh but gurgled instead. He raised his hand to LeRoi. “We still bunk mates, we still friends, ain’t we, LT?”

LeRoi grasped Slick’s hand and said, “Until the end of time, Bubba. Until the end of time.”

“I need you to promise me—” A spasm racked Slick’s body. His voice was noticeably weaker when he continued speaking. “I need you to promise me that you’ll go to Harlem and buy a round of drinks on me at Daddy Sweets’ International Tavern on Lennox Avenue. Let my people know I died fighting crackers.”

“We’ll say ‘Slick Walters sent us,’ ” Professor said, holding on to Slick’s other hand.

“Better say, ‘Eddie Walters,’ ” Slick advised. “Slick is a handle I got since I joined the army. And find my sister and give her my share and see—” He coughed to clear his throat. He looked from LeRoi to Professor and back. There was fear in his eyes. “I’m gon’ die, but I don’t want to die a nigger! I ain’t no nigger! I ain’t no nigger, is I?”

“When you started to fight back, you stopped bein’ a nigger!” LeRoi assured him. “McGraw and his squad ain’t gon’ be botherin’ nobody else. You and Sergeant Williams is part of the struggle and we gon’ remember you that way!”

Slick whispered, “ ’Til the end of time. ’Til—” His voice faltered and stopped.

Professor stood up and grabbed his rifle. He pushed past LeRoi saying, “I’m going to be sick.”

LeRoi looked down at Slick’s lifeless body and shook his head. The sergeant was dead. Evans was dead. LeRoi was too overwhelmed for sadness. The line between life and death seemed to be growing thinner as each day passed. One moment a man was alive, the next moment he was dead. When LeRoi stood up he wondered whether he too was also destined to die on foreign soil in some nameless valley—whether he, like Slick, would be left unburied to rot and draw flies. LeRoi suppressed the question. He was planning on living at least as far as New Orleans.

André closed Slick’s eyes and stood up. “The bridge. We go now to the bridge, yes?”

“No, first I finish with McGraw.”

“
Il est mort.
He is dead. He hit head on lamppost when he fall, much blood. It is finished. We go bridge now, yes?”

“Yes.” LeRoi nodded.

“Your name?” André asked as they walked out of the depot.

“LeRoi Tremain.”

“How you spell?”

LeRoi had to spell it out several times before André understood.

“Ah,
Le Roi,
” André said, giving it the French pronunciation. “
C’est vrai. Vous êtes le Roi du Mort.
You are the King of Death.”

“I like that, ‘The King.’ That shows,” he said with a wink at Professor, “I’m livin’ as a man!”