Standing at the Scratch Line (7 page)

“What gold?” Professor asked.

“Don’t get greedy, Slick,” Big Ed advised. “There’s plenty for all of us. You can’t leave Professor out. He’s one of us.”

“What gold?” Professor asked again.

“Show him, Slick,” LeRoi said.

Reluctantly, Slick opened the box and Professor climbed in the back to view its contents.

“My God!” Professor exclaimed. “This is a fortune! And because they’re coins and jewelry, it’s probably worth more than just the gold. I can’t even remember the last time a country minted its coins in gold. This is an heirloom!”

“I say we bury it now and get on with our mission,” LeRoi said.

“Nigger, I found it,” Slick declared. “I should be the one who says what happens to it. You the one that walked away from two more boxes just like this!”

“Get out of the truck, Slick. I wants a word with you.”

There was a moment of silence. “Why I got to get out of the truck?”

LeRoi growled. “Get out of the truck!”

Professor looked at LeRoi. “What’s going on, LT?”

“Stay out of it, Professor!” LeRoi warned. “This is between me and Slick!”

“What I do to you, man?” Slick questioned, making no move to get out of the truck.

“I’ve told you befo’ not to call me nigger! I hates that word! Whenever I hears it, don’t matter who’s sayin’ it, I see white skin and white thinkin’! The white man got you callin’ yo’self what he calls you when he don’t want to be polite! That ain’t me. I ain’t never gon’ be a nigger! If you don’t know me well enough to call me by my first name, call me Mister! Now figure out what you want done with the gold. Professor and me are going to scout for a road leading up to the ridge.”

“That’s fine with me,” Slick answered, unable to keep the smile off his face. “Me and Big Ed will take charge of it.”

“Let’s go, Professor,” LeRoi said as he started uphill into the forest. He knew that Slick was not a woodsman. If he hid something the size of the gold’s metal box, its location would be obvious to a practiced observer. Professor picked up his gun and pack and trudged after him.

They were in a heavily wooded area. As they passed through a clearing, a loud explosion echoed through the mountain gorges and a bright flash shimmered and turned into flames along the highway from Saint Die.

“What the hell is that?” Professor whispered, dropping to his knees as a precautionary measure.

“Côte d’Saar,” answered LeRoi, kneeling beside his companion. “It’s a little welcoming present that I left for our German friends. I was gon’ be sure that they couldn’t use none of Slick’s armory.”

Staring across the canyon at the distant flames, which were reflected on the wide, black surface of the meandering Saar, Professor nodded his head. “Looks like you did a pretty good job.”

“Yep,” LeRoi answered as he rose and continued uphill. They kept the winding road to their left as they climbed. The hill they were climbing was but a low branching arm of a curling spine of mountains that reached white fingers into the night sky. Even as LeRoi and Professor breasted the shoulder of the hill, they were still beneath the tree line. Their progress was slowed because the forest was not always able to provide cover. There were great stands where unregulated logging had left acres of snow-covered tree stumps. They skirted these open areas and stayed within the cover of the trees, but each time they would take the precaution to kneel in the underbrush and search their surroundings for movement.

During one such stop, after they had assured themselves that they were alone, Professor turned to LeRoi and said, “Why don’t we take a break here? We must have climbed a couple thousand feet.”

LeRoi nodded and moved deeper under the snow-laden branches of a big pine.

Professor followed suit and shortly they were both seated on their packs with their backs to the tree’s trunk. Professor rubbed some pine needles between his fingers and then smelled the essence. “For a moment back there at the truck I thought you might attack Slick.”

“It was close,” LeRoi admitted.

Professor was surprised. “You would have fought him over a word? Slick’s been with us since Fort Dodge.”

“
Nigger
ain’t just a word! It’s a way of thinkin’. They want you to think that the colored man is weak and lazy, and ain’t got no determination! It ain’t so and I ain’t gon’ play the part. I wants respect and I don’t mind fightin’ to keep it! I don’t plan on livin’ my life in them little cramped billets America has set aside for colored men! Despite all its prejudice the army taught me one good thing—how to fight—and I plan on usin’ everythin’ I learned when I get home!”

“That’s the problem all around: man is much better at killing than he is at understanding, better at killing than at living. History is written in the blood of those made invisible by the victors. As if killing was the measure of man.” Professor shook his head in disgust. He looked at his friend’s calm, undisturbed expression and realized that his words had blown past LeRoi like bits of debris carried on a strong wind, seen but not remembered, just patterns of light and shadow. “Aren’t you afraid of dying?” he asked.

LeRoi responded slowly, but kept his eyes probing the shadows of the surrounding forest. “I ain’t worried about it. Anyways, I figure I got some time befo’ my page gets filled in.”

“What do you mean, ‘Before your page gets filled in’?”

“Oh, just somethin’ a schoolteacher once told me. Don’t remember her exact words, but she said somethin’ like all of us starts life with a blank page and you die when yo’ page is filled up. Way she got it figured, everythin’ you do and everythin’ that happens to you is writ on that page.” LeRoi checked his watch. “Let’s move it.”

They hoisted their packs and backtracked around the outskirts of the logged clearing and followed a streambed down through a small valley. As they were climbing out of the valley, a break in the trees revealed the glint of railroad tracks winding through a distant pass below them. They knew that their destination was close. As they crested another ridge, they saw dark shapes moving in the darkness of the trees above the railroad tracks. A line of men emerged and marched single file down the slope toward the tracks.

Professor slumped down into the snow. “Holy shit! Are those Germans?”

LeRoi, with his binoculars focused on the distant men, smiled. “No. That’s the Three hundred Fifty-first! I can tell by the walk. Look.” He handed the binoculars to Professor. “Tell me if that ain’t Fat George Cunningham from the Second Platoon waddling his big ass down the hill?”

F
 R I D A Y,  
D
 E C E M B E R   2 8,   1 9 1 7
   

It was 0700 before LeRoi’s team got the big Vickers set up to guard the pass from Kastledorf to Ribeauville. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees since the snow had stopped falling, which made assembling the big gun all the more difficult. If bare skin touched the larger metallic pieces, it immediately adhered to the frozen steel. Even the lubricant was gunky and resistant. LeRoi and Big Ed toiled in GI-issue woolen mittens, which limited their dexterity with the numerous screws and bolts, but the men’s persistence was eventually rewarded. The machine gun sat on a platform made of ammunition boxes in a recess that was dug out of a frozen earthen ridge of the mountain by pick and shovel. The recess was set among the trees and was not visible from the road below. The gun’s firing lanes covered the entrance to the near side of the bridge as well as the highway and adjacent checkpoint structure on the far-western span of Kastledorf Bridge.

The sky was cloudless and blue, and a chill breeze eddied in and through the mountain gorges. Big Ed pushed himself to his feet. The dog bite was beginning to throb again. The medic had stanched the flow of blood and taped him up. Now he had to move around to avoid the paralyzing stiffness that resulted from prolonged sitting in cold weather. He had a makeshift crutch that allowed him to hobble slowly back and forth.

“Remember what the medic said,” advised Professor, who was squatting down, writing in his diary. “You don’t want to walk around too much and start the blood to flowing again.”

“Gotta move, Professor,” Big Ed explained. “I sit too long, the pain just comes roaring up my leg. Man, I wish that white platoon that’s ’sposed to join us would get here. I know their medic’s got something for pain.”

Professor turned a surprised face toward Big Ed. “What? They’re actually sending some white boys to fight alongside of us? This doesn’t sound like the American army I know.”

“Yes siree. That’s straight from the sergeant. You can write that in your book.”

LeRoi emerged from a stand of trees above the recess. “What are you doin’ walkin’ around?” he asked Big Ed.

“My leg was freezin’ up on me. I had to get up and move,” Big Ed answered. “Tell Professor, ain’t it true that Sarge said a white platoon was being sent here?”

“Yes, Sarge said they was coming in support,” LeRoi agreed. “But don’t get it twisted. The way he said it, didn’t sound like they was gon’ fight side by side with us.”

“Same old stuff,” Professor commented with resignation as he closed his diary. He took off his glasses and wiped his forehead. “They’ll wait until the Germans have shot us up before they expend a bullet.”

LeRoi stated with cold emphasis, “I don’t intend to die behind no ‘Okie Doke.’ I told you, Professor, I’s plannin’ on seein’ New Orleans again. And if I do go down, I plans to go down shootin’, takin’ peckerwoods with me. German or American, they all the same to me.”

Sergeant Williams strode out of the trees. “Tremain, your voice carries. You’re a good soldier. It would be a shame to have your military record tarnished because of your mouth.” He leaned his rifle against a nearby tree and saluted.

The men stood and saluted. Even Big Ed clambered to his feet. The sergeant took off his helmet and knelt down. “As you were, men.” Characteristically, he looked neat. “We got a problem. We got a couple of German squads coming up the railroad track by handcar. A scout flashed us a warning with a signal lamp. We’re talking around twenty men. We’re going have to deal with them before they get dug in. They’re sitting on our exit route.”

“You’re not thinking about us leaving by handcar, are you?” Professor asked.

“What’s a handcar?” Big Ed asked.

“One of them flatbed, hand-cranked things you see around railroad construction,” LeRoi answered. “It ain’t got no engine so you got to pump the crank up and down.”

“No, we’re going to meet up with some of the locals who are fighting the Germans. They’re going to help us to escape. They know the best way through the mountains back to our lines.”

“The locals?” Professor questioned. “Sarge, I heard they were wiped out in this area.”

“These people are pretty well organized into a citizen’s militia. They call themselves the Lions of the Mountains and they’re mobilizing to blow up Kastledorf Bridge. Lieutenant McHenry is meeting with their leaders right now. They don’t want the Germans to reinforce their position at Ribeauville any more than we do.

“LT, you and Professor are going to intercept the handcars by the outbuildings that are by that little train depot we passed on the backside of the mountain. The lieutenant, Slick, the rest of your squad along with the local people will attack from the opposite side. Check with the lieutenant. Some of these local militia have some new kind of thing that screws onto the barrel of a pistol and muffles its discharge. They got them off some storm troopers who were caught behind our lines. They may loan you a couple of these modified pistols. I don’t know how we can manage it, but I’d like to take out these squads with as little noise as possible. If we don’t have to alert those men down there,” the sergeant nodded his head in the direction of a small checkpoint shelter that was constructed at the western entrance of the bridge, “it’ll be to our benefit.”

There was a telephone line originating from the checkpoint shelter that was tacked across the underside of the bridge’s solid rock and mortar structure. There was a military transport truck parked off the road next to the shelter and another on the other side of the bridge. There were approximately thirty German soldiers guarding the bridge, many of whom possessed binoculars and were busy studying the terrain both below and around the bridge.