Standing at the Scratch Line (60 page)

“But Mr. Little, Elmo Thomas is out of town and Marshal Bass gon’ be back tomorrow. How am I s’posed to run ’em out if’en they don’t do somethin’ else? I don’t even know if I can go up against this man alone.”

“Ozzy, Bass is retiring in two months. You want to be the next marshal, don’t you? Well, the new circuit judge and Sheriff Lynch are going to be influenced by what I have to say, particularly if I’m the next mayor. The railroad’s coming through here, there’s a lot of money to be made, and the next town marshal stands to make a substantial piece of that. If you don’t get this man and his wife out of town soon, you won’t be my first choice. You follow? You best get a few men and arrest him tonight.”

Simpson nervously rubbed the good-luck amulet around his neck between his fingers and wondered how he would accomplish the task set before him.

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“So how long do you plan to stay in town, Mrs. Tremain?” Marshal Bass asked as he took a loud slurp from his coffee mug. The single light over his desk cast clearly defined shadows that did nothing to improve the decor of his sparsely furnished office. The wind whistled through the outside eaves, reminding the occupants that winter had returned.

Serena took her time in answering. She was not fooled by the country ways of the town marshal. She realized intuitively that there was design behind his seemingly innocent questions. “We’re just stopping here for a brief rest. We’re on our way to San Francisco.” She took a sip of coffee and frowned at its brackish taste. “Do you have any milk?”

Bass smoothed the edges of his graying handlebar mustache and chuckled. “The old pot do got a taste to it, but I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t keep such fineries in here.” He stood up and went over the potbellied stove and threw a couple more pieces of wood in its interior; the flames roared appreciatively. Bass turned to Serena once more. “I hope you’ll pardon me, but most days it’s just me and the old kettle. Now, you say you’re stopping here for a rest? You folks look mighty young to need a rest.”

The wind buffeted the wooden structure of the marshal’s office and the wind keened with a high and lonely note, mimicking the call of the wolf. King leaned forward in his chair. “What you aimin’ at, Marshal? You got questions goin’ every which way, but I don’t see no point. Why did you ask us to come here?”

Marshal Bass looked at the hard eyes in the youthful face in front of him and saw a killer. His thirty years in law enforcement had taught him the signs. He smiled. “I’ve got no point, son. I just like to find out a little about the new folks who come to Bodie Wells, that’s all. It ain’t official business. If you want, you can get up and leave anytime.”

King laughed. “You’s a crafty old dude. Let’s talk. We ain’t got nothin’ to hide. But let’s shortcut this whole fishin’ trip so we can get on with our day. We’s from New Orleans, where I had to leave suddenlike ’cause some whites wanted to regulate me. I didn’t see no reason to stay around and it didn’t have nothin’ to do with obeyin’ the law. Me and my wife got married legal befo’ we left. We gon’ leave here as soon as we see our families is gon’ make it. I ain’t lookin’ to start no trouble in yo’ town and I ain’t lookin’ fo’ excitement.”

Bass smiled despite himself: the youngster was clever. By volunteering so much information, it would make further questions suspicious. “So, you’re newlyweds, huh? Well, congratulations,” Bass acknowledged with a friendly smile. “I guess you folks are honeymooning here in Bodie Wells, huh?”

“No disrespect meant, Marshal, but this ain’t much of a town to honeymoon in. We plans to do our honeymoon in San Francisco. We came here because we wanted to be somewheres where the colored folks was in charge in a town that had electricity. Bodie Wells was the only town we found. That’s the reason we chose it.”

Bass stared at the two young faces. “Don’t expect too much. There ain’t a place in this man’s United States where whites ain’t runnin’ the show. Sometimes they’re just behind the people you think is in charge, people who look colored, but in their hearts want to be something lighter. Anyways, far as I can tell, colored folks is just white folks without money, education, sunburns, cowlicks, and opry music.”

“You’s the second person I’ve heard say that,” King said with a laugh. “We ain’t got polka either, but I was thinkin’ it was things you can’t see that made us different, like our fightin’ spirit and our singin’ and dancin’.”

“A man is a man, a woman is a woman; after that seems like it just depends on which end of the hate you’s on, son. If you’s on the bottom end, you’s like us: singin’ the blues and findin’ the land of milk and honey through religion. If you’s at the top, you’s like the whites: living good and rewriting other people’s history. Like the history of this town is being written eight miles away in Clairborne.”

“Clairborne?” Serena asked. “That’s the town where they have the signs, ‘Nigger don’t let the sun set on you here’?”

“Yep, that’s it. The people there own a lot of the land in this town and a good many of the colored folks here work in Clairborne. Even my authority comes from the circuit judge who’s based in Clairborne.”

“The way you sound, Marshal Bass, you haven’t been too happy with Clairborne’s control over Bodie Wells.”

“Ain’t nothing perfect,” Bass acknowledged. “I’ve managed the best I could and I did right by my lights. That’s all a man can do.”

“Speakin’ of doin’ right,” King interjected, “what am I to do if’en them Thomas boys try to brace me while we’s in town? I ain’t lookin’ for trouble, but I ain’t interested in takin’ no stuff either.”

“Well,” Bass answered, running his hand over his close-cut graying kinky hair, “if I see them, I’ll stop them, because I don’t want any gunplay either. ’Course, nobody has seen them since Monday, so there’s some question about where them boys are. You don’t know anything about that, do you?”

King shook his head. “The last time I saw them, they was down and out. I didn’t even see them leave town.”

After Serena and King had left his office, Marshal Raymond Bass sat for some time thinking about King Tremain. King’s hands were not those of a farmer and he didn’t appear to be a businessman, yet he had money, more money than someone his age could earn legally. Bass had learned through unobtrusive investigation that the Tremains had taken a suite of rooms at the Wildhorse Inn and that his substantial account at the town’s bank had been created by money wires from New York. What was his business, Bass wondered. There was no doubt that King had other men’s blood on his hands. He had the eyes of a man who spilled blood easily. Yet Bass did not get the sense that King killed for money. He concluded, rather, that King placed no value in human life, not even his own.

If he had not planned to retire in two months, Bass would have investigated King Tremain more diligently. The truth was, he was tired of law-enforcement work, tired of risking his life for people who didn’t seem to care. He had hoped fervently that the interim period before his retirement would be uneventful, but this was not to be the case. King had been in town less than two weeks and already three men had disappeared. From the types of injuries the Thomas brothers had received, if they hadn’t made it home by now, in this weather they were dead.

Everyone knew that the Thomas brothers were Booker Little’s henchmen and that they performed his dirty work. And everyone knew that Simpson was also in Booker Little’s pocket. That association had caused Simpson to stretch the letter of the law on more than one occasion, but if Bass was present, Simpson always obeyed his direction. More than once, Bass had considered firing Simpson for letting his ambition and greed direct his enforcement of the law. He had held off because in a town of nearly nine hundred people, he needed deputies and there was no one else of character who wanted the job. Simpson had a little shack on the edge of town and generally arrived at the marshal’s office around eight in the morning. But today he hadn’t been seen at all. Bass opened a drawer of his desk and took out a turquoise amulet that was strung on a leather thong. He had found it in the dirt in front of Ozzy’s cabin. It was Simpson’s good-luck charm. Bass knew that Simpson would never go anywhere without it, if he was conscious. No, it didn’t look like the days prior to his retirement would be calm.

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Mace Edwards stood at the front window of Wrangel House and looked out on the one paved street of Bodie Wells that ran through the center of town. He was a light-skinned, solid chunk of a man, with a pronounced jaw and thick eyebrows. He had a contemplative look on his face as he stared out at the winter weather. Main Street was covered with snow and the wind was bringing more. Big, fluffy snowflakes were rapidly swirling and falling, pushed by the power of forceful blasts off the plains. Traffic along the street was at a minimum, but occasionally he would see someone, bundled up in coats and furs, scurrying on some important mission. When the temperature hit zero, most folks stayed indoors.

Mace turned away from the window when Ma Wrangel brought in a platter of broiled steak and baked potatoes. The smell of the food wafted through the room and made his mouth water. “Smells like you put your whole leg in it this time, Ma,” he said as he walked over to the table where Clara Nesbitt and Cordel Witherspoon were sitting.

“Pshaw, boy, this ain’t nothin’ that required hard cookin’,” Ma Wrangel answered as she set the platter down. “I always been able to broil a piece of meat with my eyes closed.”

Reverend Cornelius walked in from the front hall, rubbing his hands together for warmth, and went over and stood by the cast-iron stove that heated the dining room. “How do, folks?” he asked while spreading his hands above the heat of the stove. “The Lord works in mysterious ways. I see that the food is just being served.”

“That isn’t mysterious,” Mace said with a laugh. “You haven’t ever missed the opportunity for a cooked meal and even when you’re late, you seem to get more than your share.”

Reverend Cornelius smiled good-naturedly at the jibe. “I’m going to pray for you, Mace. I see that the seeds of cynicism are becoming embedded in your heart.” He walked back to a basin and washed his hands.