Standing at the Scratch Line (12 page)

“You was sayin’?” King prompted the man who had accused him. The man shook his head in fear and attempted to back behind the others in his group, but they all backed up with him. They continued until Bull’s body once more lay in front of them. Then they stopped.

A Southern voice high up on the crates, belonging to a soldier of the 369th, yelled out, “I came to kill! I came to kill!” Suddenly the chant was taken up by soldiers all around the warehouse until it was hundreds of voices strong. “I came to kill! I came to kill!” The soldiers began to stamp their feet in time to the chant. “I came to kill! I came to kill!” The soldiers were like long-caged animals that had been released. The chant grew louder. No doubt some of the energy derived from the fact that most Negro soldiers were restricted to support functions and only a very small percent saw action as gun-carrying warriors. The irony of the chant was not lost on the men; it was a declaration against the servile brand that had been placed upon them and they took it to their bosom.

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 E B R U A R Y   1 7,   1 9 1 9
   

Big green military transport trucks rumbled back and forth continuously in the bright morning light, carrying soldiers of “Little Harlem” to the site of the victory parade in downtown Manhattan. Platoons of colored soldiers were marching to their embarkation points to stand at parade rest until their transportation arrived. Little Harlem was the common name used for the segregated area of the army base in which the colored soldiers of the 369th Battalion were bivouacked. The name was particularly appropriate because the vast majority of soldiers in the 369th were from the New York National Guard and most of them were citizens of New York City.

There was a shortage of Quonset huts at Groton army base due to the numbers of soldiers of all races demobilizing at the center; therefore, there were never enough for colored soldiers. Once again they were billeted in tents. It was cold, but for some strange reason it wasn’t as cold as France or Germany. They were on home soil. The colored soldiers didn’t spend much time complaining because ample leave was given and most didn’t have to spend a lot of time on the base. After all, New York City was only a two-and-a-half-hour ride by bus. For the most part, the men were impatient to be demobilized and to return to their civilian lives. This day, however, was different. It was the day the City of New York was going to recognize its own and allow the 369th to march through Manhattan into Harlem.

There were three soldiers sitting on a bench beside a large stack of musical equipment cases in front of neat rows upon rows of canvas tents. They were musicians. One was maintaining a complex tapping rhythm with a pair of drumsticks on a wooden bench. His two companions were humming out a ragtime melody through their brass mouthpieces. The trucks continued to roll past with engines growling and the shriek of brakes. The air was also full of the sounds of sergeants barking out step orders to marching platoons of soldiers whose leather boot steps gave meter to the surrounding chaos. The three soldiers continued with their tune. Each man appeared to take his contribution quite seriously. One of the men with a brass mouthpiece found a particularly hip-gyrating melodic air that he repeated until the other musician played a countertempo harmony beneath it. The drummer acknowledged the creativeness of his companions with a percussive combination that changed the emphasis of the beat. The musicians interwove their individual strands of music together into a simple, textured braid that evoked the mood and temper of Harlem on a Saturday night.

They might have continued playing for some time had they not been interrupted. A dark-skinned man, wearing the uniform of the 369th and carrying a snare drum, interrupted them rudely.

“Have you niggers seen Jim?”

“You talkin’ about Lieutenant Europe?” the drummer asked without warmth.

“Yeah, I’m talkin’ about him. Ain’t you got ears, nigger? Who the hell else would I be askin’ for?”

“Jimmy Dobson, Jim Walker,” the drummer answered, not allowing himself to be provoked.

“Then there’s James Hewlit, Jim Witherspoon, Jim Doggett,” volunteered the taller of the men playing the brass mouthpiece.

“He ain’t here yet, Tyrone,” the third man said. There was a look of concern in his eyes. “We’re waitin’ for him.”

“You see that shit,” Tyrone exclaimed. “Only my brother, Maurice, talks straight. That’s why I ain’t got no time for you suckers!”

“It’s mutual,” the taller man answered and began to blow a melody in his mouthpiece. The drummer picked up his cue and began to beat out a counterrhythm.

Tyrone didn’t take the hint. He stood fast and asked his brother, “Mo, did you talk to him about me? I got me a fine little sister ready to come to our first gig. I just got to know when it is.”

“I ain’t had a chance to talk with him,” Maurice explained. “He been staying off base on leave. I’ll ask him about it today when I see him. If’en I was you, I wouldn’t put too much hope in it though, since he already done said no.”

“I ain’t askin’ to be in the travelin’ band,” Tyrone protested. “I just wants to be one of the house drummers when he open his club. Sometimes he got as many as two, three drummers in the house band. I’m as good as any one of them.”

“Hey, Thigpin! Your bus is boardin’. If you’re going to the parade, you better get on now!” A sergeant was walking toward the group. “You hear me, Tyrone?” the sergeant demanded.

“Yeah, yeah, I hear you,” Tyrone answered in a disgruntled tone. “You remember to ask him, Mo!” Tyrone said as he turned and trotted away.

“I will, Ty,” Maurice called after his brother.

Maurice’s two companions stopped their duet as soon as Tyrone departed and watched him climb aboard his bus.

“Mo, why don’t you tell your brother the truth, man? Why don’t you tell him he can’t play?” the other mouthpiece man asked.

“That’s my kid brother, Slim. How am I gon’ tell him that? That’s a hard punch in the stomach and I don’t have the heart to do it. I can’t do it.”

“Slim is right, ol’ son,” the drummer said. “Best you do it, then you can kinda’ go gentle and slow with it. If you leaves it to somebody else, they gon’ land on him with both feets.”

Slim nodded his head in agreement and said, by way of confirmation, “He got the same chops now that he had when we first heard him. He ain’t woodshedded or done nothin’ to improve hisself!”

“I just can’t do it. He’s the reason I’m in the band.”

“There’s Lieutenant Europe,” the drummer said, pointing across the parade grounds at a shiny new car stopping in front of Colonel Hayward’s office.

“What kind of car is that?” Slim asked as he saw four men get out of the vehicle.

“Damned if I know,” Maurice answered as he too watched as Jim Europe entered Hayward’s office alone, leaving his three companions to wait on the porch. “Seems to me everybody got a car now. When I left for the service, there was only a couple of car companies, now there’s seven or eight, maybe more.”

“Who is that young-looking sergeant standing on the porch with Sissle?” Slim asked.

“You don’t know King Tremain?” Maurice asked with surprise. “Sergeant King Tremain?”

“The ‘I came to kill’ Tremain? I thought that was just a made-up story. I didn’t know he was real,” Slim answered.

“It’s a story alright,” confirmed Maurice. He pointed to the drummer. “But ain’t nothin’ made up. Willis was there!”

“I fought on the line with him and I’ll tell you, he’s a killing machine,” Maurice said. “When you were in his platoon, you didn’t have to worry about getting stupid orders more than once. Lieutenants and captains disappeared by the handful. And if the truth be told, he should have been awarded two or three Croix de Guerre medals. He even went back across the lines for Lieutenant Cameron and carried his ass to safety. He is one crazy Negro.” Maurice laughed humorlessly and continued speaking. “He and members of his squad used to sneak across German lines, without orders, just to kill German soldiers for their guns and equipment. I tell you, I was only too happy to hear from my brother and learn that the regimental band needed a trumpet player. I transferred immediately. That King Tremain is scary!”

A company of colored soldiers marched past, led by a white lieutenant. The three men waited until the sound of marching feet diminished before continuing their conversation. There was a squeal of brakes as a troop carrier screeched to a stop when the company marched in front of it.

“Maurice, you hit it, ol’ son,” Willis agreed, continuing the discussion. “He ain’t no regular human. He ain’t twenty-one yet, but you could go a long way before you found somebody as cold-blooded as him.”

“What’s Lieutenant Europe doin’ hangin’ around with a guy like that for?” Slim asked.

“He and that short man that’s with him gon’ be backers in Jim’s new club,” answered Willis.

“So that’s why he was askin’ if I want to stay in New York,” Slim exclaimed. “I thought he was goin’ to do some kinda travelin’ revue. I didn’t know he was openin’ a new club.”

“What do you think Tyrone was goin’ on about?” asked Willis.

“Let’s take that tune from the top,” Maurice suggested, blowing the first few bars through his mouthpiece.

When King Tremain got out of the transport truck on Thirty-fourth Street in downtown Manhattan, he was awed again by the size of the buildings. He had spent two weeks in the city, but the sensation that the sky seemed farther away had not abated. He shouted orders to his platoon to assemble in the tight marching formation utilized by the French army. He quick-marched his unit into position. The sound of his platoon’s precision marching filled him with a sense of power. He liked to hear forty soldiers’ boots hit the pavement simultaneously so that each step taken was taken as if by one man.

After a half hour of standing in formation, the regimental band began to play the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The whole regiment of thirteen hundred men began to quick-march up Thirty-fourth Street in tight formations. Every man was in step as the sea of olive and brown swept like a wave. It was a sight that had never been seen in the United States. The 369th Infantry Colored Regiment home from war, battered and bruised, but triumphant. Denied the chance to participate in the victory parades in Paris by the American War Department, who didn’t want Negro soldiers receiving accolades, the 369th was given a warrior’s welcome by New York City.

Everywhere he looked, King saw smiling faces, and for a brief moment he wondered if things would actually be different. People clogged the sidewalks, waving and shouting. Pieces of paper fell from the sky like oversized snowflakes. It was only the sound of leather boots striking pavement that kept him from being distracted in the pandemonium of a ticker tape parade. He felt an immense pride as well as gratitude that at least this war effort by colored Americans was getting recognized.

The band switched to a rapid-paced marching tune and the 369th trotted onto Fifth Avenue, heading uptown. The onlookers realized that the units parading before them were not ornamental military showpieces but hardened fighting men whose dented helmets and rusted bayonets had been earned in battle. These were real soldiers who had fought for over six months in the trenches in northern France. Their victory was not without price. They had left eight hundred men dead on foreign soil.

The 369th broke into a trot four blocks before the reviewing stand and shouted “Hell Fighters! Hell Fighters!” in cadence to every twelfth step. The people along the route of the parade marveled at the precision of thirteen hundred men, but when the troops broke into a trot and began to shout in cadence, the crowd became frenetic. The echoing voices of thirteen hundred men ricocheting in the cement canyons turned into a flash flood of sound.

King Tremain, marching five steps in front of his platoon, stared at the faces on the reviewing stand and noted that there was not one colored face among them. It was not enough to dampen the exhilaration he felt in his heart, but he realized that the war would not make a difference in the lives of colored folk. King was beginning to perspire in his heavy wool uniform, but he ignored it, focusing instead on watching women out of the corner of his eye. There were many beautiful black and brown women all along the parade route. King felt the compelling need for some genuine female companionship and affection, rather than the purchased professional sexual attention he had had in the past. It was the only worry on his mind.