Standing at the Scratch Line Read Online Free PDF Page A

nineteen-year-old LeRoi. Big Ed continued speaking. “I tell you the only reason I keep on day after day, is thinkin’ about seein’ home again. Sometimes I just think about how rich and dark the dirt is back home and sometimes how you can just drive for miles and not see nothing but the green and gold of corn. We ain’t got much of a farm, but I was starting to make a difference. We had a real good crop the last two years.”
    “So, you want to be a farmer, huh?”
    “It’s what I dream about: standing behind a plow in the afternoon sun, drinking a cold glass of water, sweat drippin’ off’en me, and the rich smell of tilled earth. If I didn’t have that, I’d go crazy. I don’t mind fightin’ for my country but seein’ all these people die is gettin’ to me. Every time I close my eyes, I dream about home.”
    “I don’t dream much,” LeRoi admitted. “Especially about home. As far as fightin’ for my country, I could give a shit! This war ain’t done nothin’ to make me patriotic. All I really care about is getting back home and settlin’ some debts. I owe some folks a seein’ to and I damn sho’ gon’ see that they get it!”
    “Why don’t you knock some officer down and a get stuck in the calaboose? They probably wouldn’t let you out ’til the war was over.”
    “What?” LeRoi barked while pushing a cleaning rod with a bit of cloth through the barrel. He gave his companion a questioning look. “And let these crackers hang me for hitting an officer during military operations? I rather be bit in the ass by a snaggletooth mule and sent to Mississippi to live! I ain’t lettin’ these crackers get anythin’ on me. If I go down, I wants to go down shootin’.”
    There was movement at the doorway as two men pushed through the tarp and entered. LeRoi had his Colt .45 pistol drawn when the men cleared the canvas.
    The smaller man, “Professor” Darwin Morris, saw LeRoi’s gun and said, “I brought you your food, don’t worry.” He was a dark-skinned, wiry man who wore round, wire-rimmed glasses. A college graduate, he was at twenty-six one of the oldest men in the squad. “Of course, once you taste it, you might want to pull your gun again.” Professor was from Brooklyn and had a decidedly New York accent.
    The other man, Slick Walters, who entered with Professor, spoke. “The food ain’t that bad. We definitely got meat in our stew this time, but it cost me a carton of cigs.” Slick was also from New York, but he hailed from Harlem, which was the other side of the world from Brooklyn. He handed Big Ed a metal mess plate with stew in it. “We gon’ have to slip out to the town and pick up some stores.” Slick was the wheeler-dealer and black-market specialist in the group. He stored his black-market goods in a German-occupied town five miles on the other side of the front lines. All the members of the squad had benefited from Slick’s black-market trade, so when sorties were necessary to restock, he had the company of two or three squad members.
    “Before we plan anything,” LeRoi recommended, “we should check with Sarge. We may get sent out again.”
    Slick grimaced. “Not again! We just came back! How am I supposed to do business if I ain’t got no time in camp? These mothers must just want to kill us off! I swear before God, they just want to kill us off!” Slick was a chocolate-colored man who never smiled. Instead, he sneered.
    “We have to prove our patriotism over and over again,” Professor said quietly, looking up from his diary, in which he had been writing. “You have to remember what W. E. B. DuBois wrote in
The Crisis—
”
    “Who gives a damn about him?” Slick declared angrily. “He’s just another high yellow nigger who had the money to buy his way out of the service!”
    LeRoi, who had been eating his lukewarm stew, picked up his rifle and slammed the bolt home, then asked, “High yellow what?”
    There was a moment of silence before Slick