Standing at the Scratch Line by Guy Johnson

Author:Guy Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780375506567
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2001-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

W E D N E S D A Y, O C T O B E R 1 3, 1 9 2 0

King was sitting down to an afternoon game of Kotch with a few of his gambling buddies in one of the side rooms at the Hotel Toussant when Sampson came in and signed that there was some news that he should hear. Sampson asked permission to bring someone into the card room. King nodded affirmatively. He hoped the interruption would change his luck for he had already lost several hundred dollars to Jimmy One-Eye and Billy Love. The fourth man at the table, Tank Purvis, had lost even more than King, but he was a professional gambler and took his losses in stride.

Sampson returned with Jack Little, a trumpeter in the Red Rooster’s ragtime band. Ordinarily, King would have had little to do with Jack because the man refused to call himself colored, but instead referred to himself as a Creole. King had little respect for light-skinned men who refused to recognize their heritage and thought themselves better than their dark brothers due to the lightness of their skin. The army had taught King convincingly that if you had Negro blood, you were going to be treated like a second-class citizen by the white world, no matter how light your skin.

“I need a drink,” Jack said breathlessly. “Storyville is going crazy!”

King gestured to a bottle of Irish whiskey sitting on a side table. Jack went over, quickly poured himself two big shots, and gulped them down. He looked appreciatively at the label on the bottle and said, “This is the real stuff! It sure beats corn liquor!”

“You got somethin’ to tell us?” King urged.

“Yeah, man; it’s terrible what’s happening! Lieutenant Kaiser is down at the Red Rooster right now, breakin’ the place up!”

“Why?” Tank demanded. “Them Moses brothers knows how to run a business. They paid protection, didn’t they?”

“I don’t know about all that, but Kaiser is down there bustin’ heads. I think he killed one of the Moses brothers and damned near killed another one. He’s sayin’ that Sheriff Mack is dead and that he’s the new man in town. He’s saying he’s going to go around to all the establishments where he’s been sassed and teach them a lesson about who’s boss.”

“How long ago did you leave the Rooster?” asked King. The Red Rooster was one of the businesses that King was bootlegging alcohol to and to whom he had promised protection if they bought his product.

“I came here once Lieutenant Kaiser started smackin’ folks. He say he ain’t leavin’ the Red Rooster until it’s completely trashed. He say that they ain’t ever gon’ open up for business again. He even slapped Sister Bornais who was readin’ fortunes in the back.”

“He gettin’ pretty bold to be slappin’ Sister Bornais, or my name ain’t Jimmy One-Eye. She gon’ put a curse on him that’ll follow him to his grave.”

If it was true that Corlis Mack was dead, King realized that he no longer held anything over Kaiser.

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