"Standing at the Scratch Line," by Guy Johnson. Random House. 545 pages. $24.95.
At the midpoint of this bloody epic, I realized that I had loscount of the dead. They had been pierced by arrows, lanced by flying knives, dumped down mine shafts, picked off by sniper fire, hacked to pieces and blasted into oblivion by grenades - all at the hands of one charismatic and lethal man.
LeRoi "King" Tremain strides into the world of fiction armed and dangerous. The anti-hero is the avenger of all wrongs committed against his extended family, his friends and African-American communities throughout history. He believes his means are justified by his goal of building a dynasty in a world that crushes the spirit of black families. He is "bad blood," new novelist Guy Johnson tells us, too often.
Tremain is as disturbed and fascinating as Mouse, the killer sidekick in Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlins novels. That's an achievement, but also a tall order for a first-time novelist. It's hard to sustain the adrenalin throughout the epic, which starts when the hero is 17 and ends when he is a grandfather.
It takes Johnson too long to crystallize the motives and contradictory values of his hero, perhaps because the tale is just too long. A tough edit - especially of excessive dialogue - would have helped this first novel by the son of famed writer Maya Angelou.
What we come away with is Tremain's definition of manhood. He is constantly forced to make decisions "at the scratch line" - the line in the dirt where boxers meet in bare-fisted fights to the death. Survival is Tremain's goal, regardless of the cost or the means - he contemplates killing a child in his own household to improve the family stock. His bloodthirst nearly destroys the family he hopes to build. By the end, he is a middle-aged, middle-class gangster, worrying about his heirs.
Also, by the end, the reader has been treated to some compelling scenes from African-American history. The narrative goes to the front lines in World War I with black soldiers from Harlem. Later, Tremain works as a bouncer for jazz band leader James Reese Europe. Baseball great Josh Gibson makes a cameo appearance. But the history is just the backdrop for all the explosions; the plot is transparently repetitive.
Johnson clearly enjoyed writing Tremain's fantastical triumphs over evil in a kill-or-be-killed world. In the tradition of American gunslingers, the hero never looks back. But a critical reader must: The author allows the hero's code of honor to prescribe his future and that of his progeny. Thus, the novel also can be read as a polemic about the struggle for equality, the distortion of justice, and the limited options for survival available to past generations of African-Americans.
The best aspect of the novel is Johnson's unflinching portrayal of African-American masculinity as physically mighty and psychologically complex. This helps fill a void in the literary marketplace. Publishers at last are aware that there's a hunger for alternatives to the many woman-centered novels depicting black men as withering, unreliable or unfaithful.
Tremain may be troubled, but he's a pillar of strength.
If producers were more willing to take on African-American tales, this episodic novel would work better as a dramatic TV series. That way, we could keep cheering as Tremain vanquishes the Klan, the Germans, the bootleggers, the mafia, the corrupt politicians, on and on, through the reruns and on into syndication.
Jean Thompson is The Sun's assistant managing editor for staff development. She has been a reporter at the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, the Hartford Courant and - for 11 years - The Sun. She collects papers and photographs about African-American history.
Pub Date: 12/27/98