Standing at the Scratch Line (76 page)

“Shut up, nigger!” LeGrande commanded in his husky voice, but he was choked off again by the man with the cord.

The woman walked over to him. She now had one of the pistols in her hands. “What did you say?” She pointed the pistol at him.

“I think the mens you wants is downstairs in the basement. I saw some colored mens in chains down there last week!”

“Let’s go!” the man with the freckles said with a triumphant smile. The squat man began making hand signals rapidly.

The woman read his sign and said, “Sampson’s right! We have to clean up here first! The blood has to be cleaned up. We can’t leave any evidence that we’ve been here. Put a gag in LeGrande’s mouth and roll him up in the carpet. We still have to take him with us!”

After Beaumont’s body had been rolled into a carpet, Willis heard the man with freckles complain, “Serena, I can’t get up this blood without soap and water!”

“Go and get a pan of water from the service station!”

The man objected. “I don’t know where that is and I can’t ask nobody!”

“Red, take Willis. If he does anything stupid, kill him!”

Willis was hauled to his feet. The blood was wiped off the side of his head and he was sent out with the freckled-faced man. Willis walked like he was in a dream. He could hardly hear anything above the sound of his pumping heart. Pain and sensation were subordinate to fear. He prayed that no one would notice them and the gods saw fit to answer his prayer. They made it to the service station and returned with towels and soapy water. When they were once again in the conference room, Willis exhaled, happy to be alive. LeGrande was already rolled in his carpet when Willis was set to cleaning up Beaumont’s blood.

Serena went out and brought two service carts into the room and the rolled-up carpets were placed on them. She said, “Dinner is over. The speeches are being given. The waiters are all in the main dining room, waiting to clear the tables. We can use the dumbwaiter to get the carpets downstairs. Nobody should see us.”

Willis could hardly remember the next events. He seemed to be watching everything from a distance. He heard his captors whispering something about dynamite, but he didn’t catch all of it and he knew better than to ask. They made it to the dumbwaiter safely and loaded the bodies onto it, but as they were descending the service stairs, they saw the head porter coming up the stairs carrying more table linen.

Thomas saw Red and Sampson coming down the steps with Serena and Willis and stepped in front of them, pressing his rod into Sampson’s chest. “What the hell you think you doin’?” he demanded. “You Negroes don’t work here! Mr. Weston! Mr. West—” Red knocked Thomas down the stairs.

“Clarence, can’t you take care of anything by yourself? This better be good!” Weston declared as he came out of the linen closet at the top of the stairs. He stopped when he saw Thomas lying in front of him. “What happened, Clarence?” he asked as he stooped over to check the head porter. As Thomas struggled to his knees, Weston warned, “Watch it, goddamn it, Clarence, you’re getting blood on the linen!” Weston turned to Willis and Red, who were coming down the steps toward him, and demanded, “What the hell are you jungle bunnies standing around for? Help him up and pick up that linen carefully! Honestly, you coons are too stupid sometimes.”

Both Red and Sampson looked at Serena for direction and got an unobtrusive nod before they went to help Thomas, who was still on his knees in a daze as blood dripped from his mouth. Serena pushed Willis down the stairs in front of her.

“I don’t recognize you boys,” Weston observed. He had no chance to say anything else. Sampson hit Weston on the point of his chin and knocked him backward, sprawling across the floor.

Willis heard Minnie exclaim, “Oh, Lord, what’s happenin’ now?” Then he saw her come out from behind the counter with a meat cleaver in her hand.

“Don’t do it, Minnie!” Serena warned. “I’ve come for my husband who’s locked down in the basement. I don’t want to hurt anybody else if I don’t have to, but I’ll kill anybody who stands in my way!”

Minnie nodded her head and said, “I knew you was too good to be true. Ain’t nobody like you come to work here befo’! Yo’ name ain’t even Rena, is it?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just go behind the counter and stay there,” Serena advised. She turned to Sampson. “Get those bodies out of the dumbwaiter and drag them down to the basement!” She put the pistol behind Willis’s head and said, “Lead the way to my husband!”

Willis pointed to Thomas. “He got the key. I ain’t got the key for nothin’ down in the basement!”

Serena pushed Willis toward Thomas. “Help him to his feet!”

“You niggers ain’t gon’ get away!” Thomas scoffed as he was helped to his feet. “The whole police force is here tonight! They gon’ come down on you like white on rice!”

“You won’t live to see it!” Serena said as she prodded him with the pistol in the direction of the stairs that led to the basement.

“If you gives yo’selves up, maybe I can talk to Captain LeGrande for you,” Thomas offered as he stumbled forward. “I knows him well. Maybe he won’t hang all of you.”

“All I want from you is to open the door to where they’re keeping my husband!” Serena replied, prodding Thomas down the stairs.

“That cut-and-shoot nigger is yo’ husband? They don’t keep nobody down here ’ceptin’ niggers who can’t stay out of trouble. I seen lots of ’em in my day and the only ways they leaves here is to the gallows or feet first.”

After he dragged Weston’s body down the stairs after them, Red demanded angrily, “You mean to tell me you helped these white bastards torture and beat colored men?”

Thomas drew himself up to his full height as he walked down the stairs. “You see it’s niggers like you that gives colored folks a bad name. People like you is better off on the gallows. You don’t know yo’ place and you cause white folks to be suspicious of the rest of us!”

Minnie came to the top of the stairs. “They got guards down there, Rena. You best be quiet.”

Willis watched as Red’s gun coughed softly and Weston’s body shook from the impact of the bullet.

“That’s a white man you killin’!” Thomas said in a horrified voice. Red hit Thomas hard on the back with the butt of his pistol and Thomas fell to the ground with a groan. Red bent over Thomas’s crumpled form, took the keys out of his pocket, and said, “Only reason I don’t kill you now, you Tommin’ no-good dog, is you gon’ open the door for us.” Thomas was hauled roughly to his feet.

Willis was assigned with Sampson to drag the rugs with bodies in them down into the basement corridor. After he completed that task he was shoved to walk down the darkened corridor in front of Serena and Red, shoulder to shoulder with Thomas. It was one of the longest walks Willis ever took. Each step had a separate life. Every movement was accompanied by a sense of slow motion. It seemed to take hours to get to the shadows of the first door. Red handed him the keys and Willis unlocked the door. The door opened with a creak that sounded as if it reverberated down the corridor.

They continued creeping forward until a male voice called out from farther down the corridor, “That somebody comin’?”

Red pressed the barrel of his gun against Thomas’s back, but Thomas kept his mouth closed with a determined frown.

Willis, seeing that Thomas was refusing to speak, said, “It’s just me and Clarence, boss. Cap’n LeGrande sent us down to check to see if’en there’s anythin’ you mens want befo’ the kitchen closes.” The guns behind them prodded him and Thomas to continue forward.

The sound of chuckling greeted them. The guards were still out of view around the corner. “What I tell you, Joe Bob? The cap’n ain’t forgettin’ ’bout us! Maybe he even gon’ send some relief so’s we can go upstairs.”

Another male voice answered. “Maybe you right, Tillman. Maybe you right!”

Joe Bob said impatiently, “Come on! Hurry up, niggers! We gon’ tell you what we want!”

Willis and Thomas rounded the corner and Thomas broke into a run. “Watch out! Watch out!” he cried as he ran toward the two white guards. “There’s some bad nig—” A bullet hit him in the shoulder and knocked Thomas off balance. Not hearing the discharge of a gun, the guards were unprepared for the fusillade of bullets that tore into their unsuspecting flesh. They were driven backward against the wall and crumpled to the ground without ever having the chance to return fire.

Red and Serena pushed Willis into a run, keeping him in front of them. They burst through the door that had been guarded and saw two naked colored men shackled to the wall. The stench of human excrement was overpowering. One man was a mass of sores and scabs while the other appeared to be only bruised. But neither man noticed their entrance. They both seemed to be in a stupor. Red went out to check the guard’s bodies for keys while Serena knelt by her husband and touched his face lovingly.

Willis watched as Red returned with keys jangling in his hands. “I had to shoot Thomas in the hip,” he explained as he tried different keys on King’s lock chains. “He was tryin’ to escape down the corridor.”

Soon both men were released from their chains. Sampson appeared with a container of gasoline and several sticks of dynamite. An older, gray-haired man followed him into the room and ran to the second man, exclaiming, “Oh, my God, Phillip. What have they done to you, my son? My son!” The man started crying as he held his son in his arms.

Red said, “We got to get to gettin’! We’s been blessed with luck, but don’t let us press it. We need to be gettin’ out’a here! I can carry King, but we gon’ need a stretcher for Phillip.”

Sampson smacked his chest with his hand and pointed to King, indicating he would carry him. He went over and lifted Serena to her feet and then stooped down and lifted King easily in his arms and carried him out the door.

“We’ll use one of those rugs to carry out Phillip,” Red suggested. “I’ll go get one!”

Claude stood up. There were angry sparks in his eyes when he spoke. “We need to leave somebody shackled to the wall, so when this room blows up, there will still be somebody left in the chains. That way, it’ll look like King and Phillip were killed in the explosion.”

“I got just the man for one pair,” Red answered and before he went out the door, he grabbed a hold of Willis and said, “You come with me!”

Willis and Red retrieved the two rugs and dragged them along with their contents into the room. Then Red took him back down the corridor to get Weston. Willis dragged Weston’s body back toward the room. On the way back, Red stopped and got Thomas by his feet and dragged him into the room as well. Red immediately set to shackling Thomas to the wall.

“I needs a priest if’en I gon’ die,” Thomas moaned.

“You ain’t gettin’ shit!” Red spit out. “My daddy was picked up by the police and nobody ever saw him after that. They probably brung him here and you probably the one who served food to the men who killed him! You’s a goddamned traitor to yo’ own people! This is too good for you!”

“I ain’t studyin’ you!” Thomas said weakly. “I’m gon’ go to the Pearly Gates. I’ve lived a good life. I’m an elder in my church!” Thomas stifled a gasp and began to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven—”

“Unroll LeGrande out of that other carpet!” Serena ordered Willis over the sound of Thomas’s praying. “He’s the other one that should be shackled to the wall.”

Willis numbly set to the task assigned as Red and the older man hefted Phillip up in the rug and carried him from the room. Willis wondered if he was to share the same fate as Thomas and LeGrande. He did not want to give the rescue party an excuse to kill him, so he put his shoulder into it and unrolled LeGrande onto the floor.

The captain had regained full consciousness, but his hands were still tied behind him and he had a gag in his mouth. He started kicking and struggling as soon as he was free of the carpet. Serena fired her pistol at the cement floor in front of his face. Chips of cement flew in every direction and LeGrande ceased struggling. Thomas even stopped praying for a moment, but he soon began intoning his prayers again. Sampson returned and Serena directed him and Willis to untie LeGrande and chain him to the wall. Sampson stunned LeGrande with two blows from his fist. The captain was dragged to the shackles and chained against the wall.

Serena then directed Sampson to check and make sure that everything outside was ready. Willis slumped against the wall and waited for further direction. He watched as Serena went over and pulled the gag from LeGrande’s mouth.

“You were going to pass me on to Beaumont, were you?” she asked in a flat, emotionless tone.

LeGrande’s eyes were wide as he struggled against the chains. “You won’t get away. Once my men free me, I’ll track you down and I’ll hang every last one of you!”

Serena went over and tapped the gasoline can. “When your men find you, they’ll think you’re my husband because you’ll be charred to a crisp.”

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” LeGrande demanded in a hoarse voice. “We can work something out here, eh? You don’t have to kill me! I can help you escape! I have money! You can have it all!”

Serena smiled and shook her head. “There’s nothing that you have that I want more than the pleasure of killing you!” Sampson returned and gave Serena the thumbs-up sign. She nodded her head in response and Sampson picked up the gasoline can and began carefully pouring it on LeGrande and Thomas, just enough to soak their clothes.

“Wait a minute!” sputtered LeGrande. “Wait a minute! I know something you want to know!”

Thomas turned to LeGrande. “Why don’t you shut up, white man. Ain’t nothin’ you gon’ say gon’ stop her! Get ready for kingdom come!” It was the first time that he had ever spoken to a white man without being solicitous. It surprised him. It felt pretty good. He closed his eyes and tried to ready himself to meet his maker.

Serena turned to LeGrande as Sampson left the room. “Uncle Tom’s right, white man!”

“Don’t kill me! I know where the baby is! I—”

“Shut up!” Serena ordered as Sampson returned with two long fuses and a lit cigar. He set the cigar down on a table and affixed the fuses to a bundle of dynamite sticks. When he was finished, Serena gestured for him to wait outside. After he left the room, Serena turned to LeGrande. “You were saying?”