“I see.”
“But mostly, truth be told, it’s women that runs most of your colored churches out here. Like my late wife, and Sister Gee and Bum-Bum.”
“Are they nuns?”
“No, I reckon not. They’re just sisters.”
“Real sisters?”
“No.”
Elefante’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Why call them sisters?”
“’Cause we all brothers and sisters in Christ, mister. Come visit our church sometime. Bring your momma. You’ll see. We likes visitors at Five Ends.”
“I might.”
“Well, I’ll leave you,” Sportcoat said. “And until we meet again, I hope God holds you in the palm of His hand.”
Elefante, who was about to head into the house, froze.
“Say that again,” he said.
“Oh, that’s a blessing my Hettie used to say to everybody she met. We say that in our church all the time to visitors. In fact, if you come visit us, you’ll hear it yourself. It’s our church motto, since before I come, and that’s been twenty years. In fact, there’s a picture of Jesus with that motto right over the top of his head outside on the back wall of the church. They got them words painted over his head in fancy gold letters. You can’t miss it.”
Elefante stared at him oddly, with a surprised expression that Sportcoat read as innocence, and it made Sportcoat feel right proud. He’d given the white man something to think about. And a gangster too! Maybe he was converting this feller to the word. Wouldn’t that be something! Your first convert! An honest-to-goodness gangster! Feeling the moment, he said it again: “May God hold you in the palm of His hand. It’s a pretty picture in your mind.”
“Where’s the picture?”
“The one in your mind?”
“No. The one in the church.”
“Oh, that old thing? It’s a big old circle with Jesus in the middle and them words over top of his head. Right out back behind the church.”
“How long has it been there?”
“Lord . . . it’s been there, oh, I don’t know how long. Don’t nobody quite know who drawed that thing. My Hettie said a man drawed it up there when they first built the church. She said, ‘I don’t know how those fools paid him, for our treasury ain’t never had more than fifty-four dollars in it. They didn’t use my Christmas Club money to pay him, that’s for sure!’” Sportcoat chuckled, then added, “My Hettie kept the Christmas Club money, too, see. Kept it in a box . . . someplace.”
“I see . . . you say the painting’s . . . along the back wall outside?”
“Why yes it is. Big ol’ pretty picture of Jesus in a circle with his hands just about touching the edge of that circle. Painted right on the cinder block. Folks used to come from miles to see that picture. It got covered over some, but if you stand back in the weeds you can still see the circle and the whole thing as it was. I heard tell once that there was something special about that picture.”
“Is it a picture or a painting? Covered over? Is the picture covered over?”
Elefante stared at him so thoughtfully, curiosity etched in his face, yet for some reason Sportcoat felt, at that moment, that the spiritual part of his message was slipping. “No, it’s not covered over. Well, the church kinda painted over it a little over the years, fixed it up. Colored it up some. But you can still see him, plain as day. It’s not the words so much that’s wrote there that’s important, though,” he added, going back to making his spiritual pitch. “It’s the spirit of what Jesus wants, see. To hold you in the palm of His hand.”
“Can you see his hands too?”
“Surely can.”
Sportcoat carefully neglected to mention, “He was once white till we made him colored.” Unbeknownst to Sportcoat, the church’s version was actually a local artist’s rendering of Jesus as depicted in the centerpiece of Italian artist Giotto di Bondone’s Last Judgment, the original of which lived in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, which portrayed Jesus as a white man in a beard. Someone in the congregation some years back had insisted that Jesus be colored black, and Pastor Gee, anxious to please the congregation as always, had cheerfully hired Sister Bibb’s son Zeke, a housepainter, to brown up Jesus some. With the help of Hot Sausage and Sportcoat, the three did just that, coloring Jesus’s face and hands with dark brown house paint. The result was horrible, of course, with the facial features, so carefully detailed by the original copyist, so badly distorted and the hands so badly mangled, the face and hands looked like near blobs. But Jesus, Pastor Gee noted cheerfully at the time, had emerged a Negro, and a great spirit as always, and that was the point.
Sportcoat wisely didn’t breathe a word of this, but Elefante stared at him with such an odd look that Sportcoat felt he was pattering on too much, which could, as usual, spell trouble with white folks. “Well alrighty then!” he said, and shuffled down the alley.
Elefante watched as Sportcoat walked down the alley and turned onto the sidewalk and out of sight. He felt slightly dazed, his heart still light with the thought of fresh, new love, the Governor’s mesmerizing daughter, and now this. A Negro from the colored church two hundred yards from his boxcar? Negroes? And his father? He’d never seen his father with a Negro, ever. Was he losing his mind?
He climbed the narrow stairs to the back door, opened it to the kitchen, and stepped inside, feeling dizzy, the words still in his head.
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
17
HAROLD
Two hours later, with his pay from Miss Four Pie in his pocket and two bottles of booze standing atop a cinder block like crowns on a king’s head, Sportcoat and Hot Sausage considered Sportcoat’s encounter with the Elephant.
“Did the Elephant have a gun?” Sausage asked.
“Nar gun!” Sportcoat said triumphantly. The two were lounging in Sausage’s basement lair, seated on overturned crates, sipping from the first bottle Sportcoat cracked open, peppermint bourbon, saving the second, a bottle of King Kong, for dessert later.
“What’s he like?”
“He’s all right, partner! A good man. He was fighting to give me that smooth hundred dollars.”
“You shoulda taken it. But then, why would you do that? That would be the smart thing to do, which you is allergic to.”
“Sausage, his momma already paid me. Plus he helped my Hettie.”
“For all you know, he coulda been the one that throwed her in the harbor.”
“Sausage, if ignorance is bliss, you is happy. A big man like the Elephant wouldn’t bother my Hettie. He liked her. He said he seen her wave all the time as she come and go from church.”
“When you get tired of thinking, Sport, call me. Maybe she seen something he done. Maybe she knew something. Maybe he robbed her!”
“You watch too many movies,” Sportcoat said. “He wasn’t hauling not a bit of trouble at her, not one bit. She was following God’s light is all. And she found it.”
“So you say.”
“She’s in a good place. She’s turned loose, a free angel now, by God. I talks to her most every day.”
“If you don’t watch your points, you’ll get your wings too. Deems is busy these days.”
“I ain’t studying him.”
Sausage considered this. “I see him every day, out there selling that poison hand over fist, the devil keeping score. He knows we’re partners. He ain’t asked a lick about you. Not a mumbling word. That makes me nervous. He got a trick to play, Sport. When you ain’t looking, he’s gonna chop cotton and pull fodder. You got to get outta these projects.”
Sportcoat ignored that. He stood up and stretched, took another sip of peppermint bourbon, then passed the bottle to Sausage. “You don’t never get tired of thinking, do ya? Where’s my umpire costume?”
Sausage nodded at a black plastic bag in the corner.
�
�I’mma take this home tonight. Tomorrow, I’mma go out there and see Deems again. I won’t be drunk this time, for I wants to remember what he says. After I speaks to him, I’mma tell you all about it.”
“Don’t be a drag-behind fool.”
“I’m going right out there and I’mma say, ‘Deems, I’m getting the team together, and I just want you to pitch one game for us. One game. And if you don’t wanna play no more baseball after that, why, you can quit. I won’t bother you never no more. One game only.’ He’ll be begging me to get the team back together again after that.”
Sausage sighed. “Well, I reckon to really understand the world, you got to die at least once.”
“Stop talking crazy,” Sportcoat said. “That boy loves baseball. He got the same ways old Josh Gibson had. You know Josh Gibson? Greatest catcher to ever play the game?”
Sausage rolled his eyes as Sportcoat extolled the virtues of Josh Gibson, the greatest Negro catcher ever, how he met Gibson after the war in 1945, and on he went, until Sausage finally said, “Sport, I don’t know that you seen even half the people you calls out.”
“Seen ’em all,” Sportcoat said proudly. “Even barnstormed a little myself, but I had to make money. That ain’t gonna be Deems’s problem. He’ll make plenty money in the bigs. He got the fire and the talent. You can’t take the love of ball out of a ballplayer, Sausage. Can’t be done. There’s a baseball player in that boy.”
“There’s a killer in that boy, Sport.”
“Well, I’ll give him a crack at one or the other.”
“No you won’t! I’ll fetch the police first.”
“Ain’t you forgot that warrant that’s on you?”
“I’ll let Sister Gee fetch ’em then.”
“Sister Gee ain’t studying no police. She’s hard on me about that Christmas Club money. She’ll be wanting that money first, Sausage. Folks is losing faith in me on account of it ’round these parts. Even you. Betting against my life for a cigar with Joaquin.”
Sausage blanched, then took a quick snort of the peppermint. “That wasn’t about you,” he said. “That was about Joaquin. I been playing numbers with him for sixteen years. Only hit once. I think he’s got it out for me. I wanted some of my money back.”
“Sausage, you done found the secret of youth, ’cause you lying like a child.”
“I figured it this way, Sport. Since you didn’t wanna run off and was gonna be ki— gonna go out by Deems’s hand, however the cut come or go, I figured you wouldn’t mind if I made a few chips on account of it. I been a good friend, ain’t I?”
“Very good friend, Sausage. I don’t mind you making a few chips on my account. In fact I’ve got a proposition for you. Help me make peace with Deems. Tell him I wanna see him, and I’ll forget the insult you done to me by betting against my life.”
“You losing your marbles, son. I ain’t going near him.”
“Deems ain’t mad at me. Do you know Deems bought me this very umpire uniform?”
“No.”
“Yes he did. Brung it to me brand-new just after Hettie died. Come right to my house two days after we buried her. Knocked on the door and handed it to me saying, ‘Don’t tell nobody.’ Now, would somebody like that shoot a friend in cold blood?”
Sausage listened in silence, then said, “If it was Deems, yes.”
“Hogwash. I needs you to go out there and tell him I wants to speak privately. I’ll meet him in private and clear this all up.”
“I can’t do it, Sport. I’m too chickenhearted, okay?”
“It’s me he’s pining for, Sausage. You ain’t got to worry about your skin.”
“I do worries about my skin. It covers my body.”
“I’d go to the flagpole myself. But I don’t wanna embarrass him in front of his friends. If I speak to him in private, he won’t be shamed.”
“You shamed him by shooting him. In fact, him giving you that umpire outfit makes things worse,” Sausage said, “being that you shot him for his kindnesses.”
“That boy got plenty goodness left in him,” Sportcoat said, taking the bourbon from Sausage and sipping. “His grandfather Louis was all right, wasn’t he?”
“Get shot on your own, Sport. I think I’ll set here and strangle this bottle of bourbon.”
“A true friend would do it. Otherwise, he would not be no true friend.”
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“I ain’t your friend.”
“I’ll get Rufus then. He’s from my home country. You can count on a South Carolina man. He always said Alabamans gets torn up when they got to stand up for something.”
“Why should I hitch my mule to you, Sport? You the one that got drunk and shot him.”
“You got a can tied to your tail, too, Sausage. Deems knows we is partners. You taught him in Sunday school too. But you go on. I’ll get Rufus to do it.”
Sausage frowned and poked at the ground with his boot, pursing his lips, his nostrils flaring angrily. He rose off the crate, turned away from Sportcoat, and with his back to him, held his arm out parallel to the ground, straight, fingers stretched.
“Bourbon.”
Sportcoat, from behind, placed the bottle in Sausage’s hand. Sausage took a long, deep sip, set the bottle down on the cinder block, and with his back to Sportcoat, stood a long moment, swaying as he got drunker. Finally, he shrugged and turned around. “All right, dammit. I’ll be a fool with you. You don’t give me no goddamned choice anyway. I’ll set it up. I’ll see Deems and ask him to come down here and talk to us—talk to you. I ain’t got no pony in that race.”
“Sausage, you never gets tired of thinking, do you. Why’s he gonna come down here and talk to me? We got to go see him.”
“We ain’t gotta do nothing. It’s you. But I’ll go see him, man to man, and explain that you want to see him in private, in person, and that he got to come by hisself, so you can apologize to him in person and explain everything. That way, if he’s gonna kill you he can do it in privacy someplace so I don’t see it and he don’t go to jail right off. I reckon he won’t air me out for asking him, being that I wasn’t the one who shot him.”
“Don’t you ever tire of bringing that up? I told you I don’t recall not one bit of it.”
“That’s funny. ’Cause Deems damn well do remember it.”
Sportcoat thought a moment, then said, “You go fetch him. You watch. I ain’t gonna have to beg that youngster for nothing. I’d just as soon put him over my knee and paddle him for wasting what God gave him.”
“I don’t know that you could lift his hand, Sport. You seen him with his shirt off?”
“Seen more than that. I warmed his two little toasters in Sunday school many a day.”
“That was ten years ago.”
“Same difference,” Sportcoat said. “You get to know a man after you seen his straight and narrow.”
* * *
It was nearly dark when Deems and Phyllis, the new fly girl in the neighborhood, had settled onto the edge of Vitali Pier. They dangled their feet over the water, staring at Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty in the distance.
“Can you swim?” Deems asked, pretending to shove her from behind, as if pushing her off the dock.
“Stop it, boy,” she said. She elbowed him playfully.
He’d seen her the very first day she came to the flagpole as a customer, then a couple of days later when she came for a second go-round. She’d bought two bags of smack, then another bag two days later. She was a light user, he guessed, and a hottie, a redbone, a killer looker: a light-skinned black girl with long limbs and a gaunt, tight jaw and high cheekbones. He noted she wore long sleeves on hot days like junkies did, to cover her arm tracks, but her skin was smooth and her hair was long. She seemed awfully nervous, but that didn’t bother him. They all were when they were fu
cking up. He’d noticed her the first day she came out. He watched her disappear into Building 34 and sent Beanie into the building to find out who she was. He reported her name was Phyllis. A visitor. From Atlanta, niece of Fuller Richardson, a regular dope fiend who’d gotten busted and whose apartment was full of his wife, his cousins, his kids, and everybody he owed money to, which apparently included this girl’s mother, who was his sister. “She says he owes her mom a bunch of dough, so she can stay in his bedroom till he gets back,” Beanie reported. “She might be around awhile.”
Deems wasn’t taking any chances. He decided to move in quick before someone else popped game. He took a close look at Phyllis the second time she came through, just to make sure she was worth it, before he made a move. He happily concluded she had too much weight to be a full-blown junkie. She still owned a purse. Her shoes, coat, and clothing were clean. And she had some kind of temp job. She wasn’t a dopehead yet. Just another light-skinned chick on her way to skankdom who maybe got herself skinned by some bad motherfucker in Georgia probably. Come to New York to ease her broken heart and play big. Telling all her friends in Georgia she was dating the Temptations or some shit, no doubt. But Phyllis was fly, and she was new. And he had money. And it was all good.
The third time she showed, he let Beanie and Dome handle sales, posted Stick, his main lookout, on the roof above with three other kids on roofs nearby, and broke from his bench to follow her back toward 34 as she left. Business was slow that day anyway.
She saw him coming. “Why you following me?”
“You want an extra bag of Big H?”
She looked at him and smirked.
“I don’t need no extra,” she said. “I’m doing too much now.”
Deems liked that. He thought later, much later, that this very first exchange told him more than it should have. It was the body language more than anything. She didn’t seem nervous when she copped her dope. Up close there was a directness, a tautness to her that was unusual. She was tight, almost stiff, and alert. He attributed that to an attempt to hide her nervousness, being a small-town girl from the South who confessed to him the very first day he’d asked her to meet him at the dock that she was, that she had once been, and still was, a church girl. He liked that. That meant she was a wild girl inside, all bunched up like him. He had a few church regulars, working junkies. He’d been a church boy himself. He knew that bunched-up feeling. He needed someone all coiled up like him. Everybody in the Cause knew him now. His rep had grown since he’d been shot by Sportcoat. He was bigger and better than ever. Everybody knew he was gonna rock old Sportcoat. Deems knew it too. It was just a matter of time. Why hurry? He was in no hurry. Hurry got you busted. He would deal with Sportcoat at the right time. Sportcoat wasn’t a problem. But Earl? Now that was a problem.
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