Standing at the Scratch Line (42 page)

Bradley was one his many informants. But Kaiser hadn’t seen him in a while, so he thought a few questions were in order. Uninvited, he sat down in the booth next to Bradley and stared across at the woman. She was attired in a relatively severe long dress that buttoned around her neck.

“Who’s your whore, Bradley?” Kaiser asked.

“She ain’t no whore, suh. She my sister-in-law, come to tell me about my brother’s troubles.”

“Your brother has troubles? Well, we all got troubles and you’re especially going to have problems if I don’t get some cooperation and information.”

“Whatchoo talkin ’bout, suh?” Bradley protested. “I always cooperates the best I can. Can’t see I gots any information you needs no ways.”

“It’s not what I need, it’s what I want that you have to worry about!” Kaiser said, slapping the back of Bradley’s head. “I want to know who took over from Lester DuMont. Who’s the top monkey in Niggertown?”

“You ain’t got to hit me like that, Lieutenant!” Bradley protested, holding his head.

“Maybe I ought to just go on, Brad, since this don’t concern me at all.” The woman spoke nervously and sidled to the edge of the booth seat. She was a plain-featured woman with widely spaced eyes and a gap between her front teeth.

Kaiser stuck his baton across the table and poked her in her bosom. “No, you stay here until we finish.” Immediately, Kaiser heard a commotion behind him. Soon the booth was surrounded by large, hulking men.

One of the owners stepped forward. “We ain’t gon’ stand around and let you mistreat a colored woman in front of us. You hit her with that stick again and we gon’ commence to fight.”

Kaiser growled. “I am a representative of the law and I’m determining whether I need to make any arrests in this unlicensed institution. You wouldn’t hinder me, would you?”

The same man spoke up again. “You don’t scare us, we paid up! And you ain’t gon’ arrest nobody in here on no okeydoke!”

“You Moses boys talk big,” Kaiser said with a slight smile. “I hope you don’t ever get arrested. I might have to see what you’re really made of.”

“You ain’t invisible either. What goes around comes around,” another man said.

Kaiser shook his head angrily. He couldn’t touch them as long as they paid on time. It was frustrating, but he had Bradley. “I guess we’ll leave now,” he said, looking around at the surrounding men, “but I’m going to remember you boys and I have a long memory. Bradley, you’ll walk along with me. We still have many things to talk about.”

“The girl goes first!” one of the men standing around the booth suggested. His words received a chorus of support and the young lady was escorted out of the Red Rooster.

One of the owners advised Bradley, “You ain’t got to go with him unless you want to.”

Bradley took one look at Kaiser’s face and said, “I’ll go with the lieutenant.”

Kaiser took Bradley back to his car and interrogated him in the backseat. He prompted Bradley with hard, crunching blows of the baton on his arms and legs. At one point, Bradley was doubled over in pain. Kaiser waited. “What do you have for me?”

When Bradley sat up he began babbling. “There’s a rich nigger stayin’ at the Toussant. He don’t work at nothin’ and he got a fine horse and a new car sedan. All his clothes is sto’-bought. Sometimes he wear two pistols in holsters. Everybody say he the one that killed Lester. Maybe he the one you lookin fo’?”

“How do you know so much about this man?” Williams asked from the front seat.

“Cause I is the bell captain at the Toussant. I gets to know everybody who stay there.”

Kaiser hit Bradley across the forearm with a quick, hard stroke and Bradley cried out and began to moan. “You done broke my arm! I done give you all I got. Ain’t nothin’ else!”

“If he was the one, you wouldn’t doubt who he was,” Kaiser said, dismissing Bradley’s contribution.” Kaiser sighed with resignation. “Put him out, boys. We’ll have to keep on looking.”

The car did not even stop as Bradley was pushed out of the moving vehicle. His body rolled into an inert heap on the street. Kaiser and his companion swerved around the corner in the police car and were gone.

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 E P T E M B E R   13,   1 9 2 0
   

“They rode again yesterday mo’nin’!” a man in the front row shouted, waving his dark brown fist in the air.

“On Sabbath!” another brown-skinned man shouted from a couple of rows behind.

A light-skinned woman with reddish hair shouted, “These ain’t God-fearin’ men! Killin’ and burnin’ folks’ homes even on the day peoples is studyin’ the Bible! They’s the devil’s servants!” Her words were greeted with agreement by many of the men and women who had come to participate in the meeting at the Frederick Douglass School. It was a warm, humid evening. There was no cool breeze off the gulf. The air seemed to stand still as a waning moon rose in the night sky. The schoolhouse, which stood alone on a large lot on the edge of the colored section, blazed with electric light. Inside the school, which had all its windows closed for privacy, the atmosphere was hot and muggy as well as tense.

The volume level of general conversation rose as Phillip Duryea stepped up to the podium. His left arm was still in a sling. He was still recovering from the stabbing injury incurred from his fight with the DuMonts. He raised his good arm. “Folks! Folks! We need some order if we’re to get anything done here tonight! We’re here tonight to talk about what we can do to stop the night riders from running off hardworking colored folks from their legally held land.”

“Ain’t we gon’ try to get justice for them that’s been killed?” demanded a woman wearing an orange head-tie. There were some amens and rumblings of support among the audience.

“That’s part of it, but we got to take it a piece at a time,” Phillip answered. “Just to make sure we all know what’s behind all this KKK activity, I’ve asked Mr. Claude Bichet to tell us about the discussions that he’s heard in his gambling establishment.”

Claude Bichet stood up and approached the podium. As usual, he was dressed elegantly. He had on a brown pinstriped suit with spats. The audience waited for him to speak in sullen silence. He wasn’t one of them and this was an ethnic issue. Everyone knew that Creoles all called themselves white.

“You all know me. My family been here for years. I see many people here I know by name. I see Joe Paul Brunzy back there in the back. He work for me at Beau Geste. If you need, he’ll vouch for me. I come here only to tell what I hear. To help.”

“I heard you got some family along part of that stretch,” a male voice called out.

“I do,” Bichet answered. “I have a second cousin who owns a farm out where they been raiding.”

The audience began to warm up to Bichet. People nodded to each other. Bichet, unlike most Creoles, was owning up to his colored blood. It was a well-known fact that there were only colored families farming in that area. Possum Hollow was the worst of the lowlands, nearly swamp farming, broad tracts that had to be drained regularly and were the first to flood in the heavy spring rains.

Bichet continued. “A couple of months ago, during a poker game I overheard some men talking about bringing the Interstate through the lowlands out where the colored families are. Then just last week, I heard two different men speak on the same subject. This time it sounded like the whole thing was signed and delivered, except for the public announcement. So, when I heard from my cousin about people being forced from their land, it all begin to fit together.”

“How come them highway officials don’t contact the legal landowners?” another male voice inquired.

“I don’t know.” Bichet shrugged his shoulders. “I figure the parish assessor must be in on it too. How else they process the papers so quick?”

“All this talk ain’t helpin’ us!” a large, dark-skinned woman yelled from her seat as she fanned herself rapidly. “Most of us figured that the Interstate or some other federal project must be comin’ through. We need to decide what we gon’ do to help our brothers and sisters to hold on to their land!”

“You have a plan, Sister Waters?” Phillip asked as he ascended the podium. He nodded thanks to Bichet, who returned to his seat.

“No, I ain’t got no plan!” Sister Waters snapped, fanning herself even more rapidly. “But I do got chil’ren to bed and a poultice to make for my husband’s horse! There’s still work to be done tonight! So, let’s get to figurin’ what we gon’ do, if we gon’ do anythin’!”

For the next hour the discussion coursed over and around the issue like a hound in pursuit of a hare. The easiest matters to decide related to what churches would take up a collection for the burned-out families, where the homeless would temporarily be housed, and what jobs were available, if any. The questions that could not be answered were, of course, the most important, such as: what steps were needed to be taken to seek justice for the displaced families and what actions could they initiate to prevent other families from being forced from their homes. There were not many constructive approaches offered and there were fewer volunteers to head action committees. The fear of the Klan was strong.

At one point near the end of the discussion, Phillip came back to where King was sitting and asked, “Should I bring up that idea of yours about setting up a corporation to buy the properties?”

“I think it’s about all you got, short of bushwackin’ a couple of night riders. That’s one sure way to make ’em stop! You could try things legal like, but my guess is you ain’t gon’ beat these whites at their own game! And any colored lawyer fool enough to take the case wouldn’t live through the winter. Sho’, go ahead, tell ’em, but I don’t know that these folk is ready for it.”

Phillip returned to the podium and gaveled for attention. “Folks! Folks! Let me have your attention! King Tremain has an idea that might work for us. The only thing is we have got to get together and trust in each other to make it happen. The plan is, we set up an out-of-state business, using a corporation based out of New York to buy the property.”

“You need money for that! What are we going to do for money?” demanded Old Mr. Rambo, the manager of the colored section of the bank that King used.

King stood up and looked around at the assembled brown faces. “I got two thousand in cash.” He held up an envelope. “This here is seed money to buy property. I’s puttin’ it up to show that this ain’t no scam. Everybody who puts money up will get back their investment, maybe even a profit.” An immediate wave of exclamation swept the audience. Most of the people in the room made four hundred to six hundred dollars a year.

“How does this corporation work?” Rambo demanded, affixing his pince-nez on his nose and tilting back his head to stare at King.

King smiled. “My attorney in New York will set up a corporation for us. We’ll buy the property in the name of the corporation for a fair price. That gives folks who want to sell the money to start somewhere else. The corporation will own the property we buy and we’ll own a percentage of the corporation equal to our investment! Nobody’s name will be on the deed! Ain’t no way the Klan can trace the owners!”

Rambo snorted like a horse and his pince-nez fell from their perch. “That ain’t a bad idea!” He shook his finger at King. “Everyday I see white businessmen hide their assets and this is the way they do it! Only one thing, how we know this Yankee attorney gon’ do right with our money?”

“We get a lawyer here to read and approve the incorporation papers!” King replied.

“I’ll put a thousand up!” exclaimed Old Mr. Rambo, his bald head shining brightly under the church lights. “We’ll get Dante Archambeaux to approve the papers! Folks, this is a way we can help our own! This ain’t no fly-by-night scheme. White people do this all the time! I should’ve thought of it myself!”

“Me too, for a thousand!” Bichet called out.

Rambo went up to the podium and signed for one thousand dollars. “Maybe we can use this method for buying other types of property!” he said, rubbing his chin. All eyes in the room were on him. No one was speaking. Only the creaking of the wooden chairs gave evidence that everyone was alert. He looked around and saw all the expectant faces. “We could buy property outside of Desire!” Rambo returned to his seat with an air of importance and began to polish his pince-nez with his handkerchief.