All Things Bright and Strange

by James Markert

  He placed his palms to his head and cursed himself. What was he saying? Ellsworth was his pal. Ellsworth was the unspoken leader of this town. Always had been—before the war, anyway. Sheriff Lecroy was a wrong number, and Mayor Bellhaven was basically useless. The town had been started by Bellhavens, and they’d dwindled for a reason. Rumor was they’d been cruel to their slaves, so cruel the slaves sometimes tried to escape to the neighboring plantations at Magnolia and Middleton, where they’d be treated better. And cruelty had a way of finding future generations. Mayor Bellhaven wasn’t cruel, as far as Father Timothy could tell—he was distant kin from the jingle-brained line of Bellhavens—but he was a boob who didn’t know when to give up.

  He stared at the belt in his hand. Maybe self-castigation was not the way to go. Maybe he should take his confusion out on someone else. Just paste someone and see if it made him feel better. Father Timothy had a notion to go right up to Mayor Bellhaven and dry-gulch him in the noodle.

  He hung the belt on the door, walked down the hall to his living room, and sat on the sofa to ponder his options while staring at the cross on the wall. It only took him a minute to decide Mayor Bellhaven shouldn’t be his target. He was too irrelevant.

  He spotted a bucket of red paint and a wide-bristled brush next to the front door. He’d picked up both from the store. The storage shed behind church needed a good painting, and red was his favorite color. That was an idea. Instead of pasting someone, maybe he’d vandalize something instead. Besides, he’d never been in a fight in his life, and wasn’t sure he could go through with it. But spreading paint on something that wasn’t meant to be painted on? That he could do. That would probably shut the door for good on all these thoughts he’d been having about Anna Belle Roper. Then he could get back to the Lord.

  Maybe he’d knock on the door of those Watchtower people and paint their faces before they could open their mouths to protest. That would teach them for trying to witness to the entire town. Or he could paint the front door of Reverend Cane’s First Baptist Church. Or was it Pastor Cane? The Baptists seemed to call him both. He and Ephraim were friends, but it needled him how the man thought he was right about everything—like it was the Baptist way or no way. And the way he was always thumbing his nose at the Holy Father. Besides, it looked downright silly to completely immerse a grown adult in the water.

  What if they can’t swim? Father Timothy laughed to himself. Salvation through faith alone, Scripture alone? Please. They need a good dose of all the sacraments is what they need.

  Then again, the person in town who needled him the most was Reverend Solomon Beaver over at Bellhaven First Methodist. He and his flock were always thumping their Bibles and quoting Scripture and claiming to be servants of the Lord when they didn’t even allow blacks in their church. At least Ephraim Cane at First Baptist allowed them up in the balcony.

  Rumor had it that Reverend Beaver was Klan, and he was in thick with that Methodist minister in Georgia, William Simmons, who’d organized the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan on Stone Mountain. He’d gotten inspired by that moving picture, The Birth of a Nation, and now the Klan numbered in the millions across the South.

  Talk about a hypocrite. I should paint First Methodist red, from the flower beds to the roof shingles.

  But then again, Emma Briscoe was a Methodist, one of Beaver’s original flock, and she was as sweet as Anna Belle’s tea. There I go again. He forced himself up from the couch and headed for the front door.

  There was always Rabbi Blumenthal over at the Bellhaven Temple. He could paint something all over that little stone hut. The Jews didn’t even think Jesus amounted to much. Said he was just a regular man and nothing special. Well, Father Timothy didn’t think Bellhaven Temple amounted to much, and it wasn’t that special, either, not with the funny way they had of talking over there. Bellhaven Temple sounded boring anyway. With all the other Firsts in town, why didn’t Rabbi Blumenthal name it First Bellhaven Temple?

  Ah, but the rabbi wouldn’t hurt a fly, and they bowled together on Saturdays. He’d have to pick another target.

  Father Timothy felt more confused than ever, so he opened the door, grabbed the bucket of paint and the brush, and walked down the dark street in the drizzle.

  Like the messages in his sermons, he figured the right path would come to him.

  He’d know it when he knew it.

  Reverend Beaver usually counted sheep when he couldn’t sleep.

  Tonight, though, he imagined shooting them one by one with his rifle and watching them pile up like an Egyptian pyramid. He gave up on slumber and swung his legs from the bed. Normally the drizzle on the roof would prove soporific, but tonight it was a nuisance, although not as much as his wife snoring like a bear.

  He looked down at her before leaving the bedroom and thought about what he would do if she were dead. Maybe then he wouldn’t have to keep his secret anymore. That he didn’t love her. Never really did. She was nice and all, but he’d never felt that spark. And now that he’d been doing some serious soul searching in that chapel, he’d come to realize that maybe it was women in general he didn’t like, and maybe that was the root of all his anger and hate and pulpit chastising.

  Lately, and maybe it had been festering for a while, he’d found himself looking at the men in his church in ways a man shouldn’t.

  Lord, please tell me I’m not bent. Strike me down now if it’s true.

  He waited. Nothing happened.

  He’d kicked a man from his church just two years prior for admitting to being one of those homosexuals. He’d preached from his pulpit about the evil of all the sodomites. What was that man’s name, the one he’d verbally terrorized in front of his flock? Middle-aged man with thin red hair combed and parted on the left side. Green eyes and freckles on his cheeks, looked kind of like a squashed tomato.

  Holy Moses, Solomon Beaver, get hold of yourself. You know his name was Frank Jessups. And you called him out in front of everyone. Sent him on the path to fire and damnation, and all because you felt guilty about your own thoughts.

  He filled a glass of water and chugged it in the kitchen. I’m not that way. It’s just funny thoughts coming into my head of late.

  Then why did he find himself always looking down the street toward where Frank Jessups lived in that small blue house with the wraparound porch? Why did his heart jump like an excited puppy in a cage when he thought of knocking on that man’s door to apologize?

  He finished his water and slammed the glass down so hard on the counter it shattered.

  His hand was bleeding, right on the index finger knuckle where one of the shards must have nicked him. He wrapped it in a dish towel until it stopped, and thought that at one point in his life he’d carried a torch for Anna Belle Roper. All those curves on the back end.

  What is wrong with me?

  Nothing’s wrong with you.

  Things is what they is, massa. Yes’m, things is what they is.

  Who is that? Who’s there?

  Just a voice in my head. Same voice I heard inside that chapel. America Ma, I think she called herself.

  Reverend Beaver took a deep breath to compose himself and opened his eyes with cold fury in his heart. Amazing how focusing on what he hated calmed the confusion.

  He hated how the people of Bellhaven had always been so willing to mix races inside that town hall, singing and dancing in the same space as the blacks. That’s where the town had made a wrong turn, establishing that strange reputation of being so tolerant. It wasn’t natural, not the way things were meant to be. And what about those Jim Crow laws that had been instituted? Those brilliant Jim Crow laws that would keep things the way they were supposed to be—separate. In Bellhaven at least, those laws had basically been ignored.

  He dropped the bloody towel on the counter. His finger had stopped bleeding. He was glad the Klan had come that night and burned the town hall. He’d been sad to see Sheriff Pomeroy tarred and feathered, and he never expected the man to be kill
ed. But some kind of message needed to be sent. Never should have been a black sheriff in a mostly white Southern town anyhow. And now that weird green-eyed black boy was out walking the streets like he belonged—living with a white woman, no less. The very idea made him grind his teeth. It was just . . . wrong. Wrong like the notions the town had about his part in the tragedy that night. He had some sympathy for the Klan, thought some of what they were doing was needful, but he wasn’t one of them. And he sure hadn’t called them.

  Solomon taxed his brain for something to do, something to relieve the pressure.

  First person to pop into his head was Moses Yarney, the pastor of the black Methodist church down the road. But not really Methodist. It was one of those AME churches that had been sprouting up like weeds. African Methodist Episcopal? How dare those blacks call themselves Methodist anyway, when they’d gone and made up their own church?

  And now Reverend Moses Yarney was getting all uppity and preaching about ministering to all people. What was their motto? “God our Father, Christ our Redeemer, Man our Brother?” No one of them will ever be my brother. Open to people of all ethnicities, nationalities, and color? What could be more dangerous?

  More unnatural.

  He slipped on his field boots and grabbed his fedora from the coatrack. He had something in the shed that good ol’ Reverend Yarney needed to see. Something all those folks at Bellhaven First African Methodist Episcopal Church needed to see. That was a mouthful. No church should take that long to say. It was as bad as that Jew synagogue in Charleston. What was that place? Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim Synagogue. Christ the Lord Almighty. We speak American in America.

  He opened the door, stepped out into the drizzle, and slammed it shut, part of him hoping he’d waken up Alethea and the kids. Given them a little startle.

  He had a plan for Bellhaven African Methodist Episcopal. A partial plan, at least, and it had to do with his cherished collection of slave memorabilia he kept in the tool shed, the stuff he’d found ten years ago in a moth-eaten satchel in slave house number five.

  Moses Yarney sat in the dark and prayed for forgiveness.

  Not so much for something he’d done, but for what he was about to do, although the “about to do” had no definite shape yet. He only knew that his thoughts were dark like storm clouds, the kind of thoughts in need of future forgiveness. So he sat alone in his church, Bellhaven African Methodist Episcopal. The church he’d founded and built with his own hands three decades prior, back when his posture wasn’t stooped and his hair was black instead of white.

  He knelt in the pew and closed his eyes, squinting until he’d felt the connection, the one he’d sometimes get when Jesus felt close enough for a handshake. Usually they were in total agreement, but this time they weren’t. Moses had a swelling ball of fury in his gut, and he couldn’t sleep. The solace he’d hoped to find inside his church had only made matters worse. He’d need to act on it or burst.

  His folded hands shook atop the pew. He prayed for good thoughts, but his mind kept coming back to the one that made him smile—the one in which his big knuckled hands clenched Reverend Beaver’s throat and squeezed until his eyes popped.

  What would it feel like to kill a white man? To kill any man, for that matter. It was something he’d never imagined doing until now. But if any white man had it coming, it was Solomon Beaver, the man he and others around Bellhaven knew was secret Klan.

  That fury ball in Moses’ gut burned hotter. Moses was descended from the Bellhaven slaves, and his parents, like Omar Blackman’s, had been just stubborn enough to stay as hired hands after emancipation. This was his town as much as any white man’s, if not more so. It was the blood of his ancestors that had kept this town running when the cotton fields were pregnant and full.

  Slavery had finally been made illegal after the war, and then here came Jim Crow and all that forced segregation. Different bathrooms, back of the bus, Jim Crow cars on trains when you hit that Mason-Dixon Line. Moses was tired of it all. Yes, ma’am. No, sir. Smiling when you wanted to slap someone. Mayhap you no longer called them master, but they still acted as if they soared higher. Take off a hat when addressing a white man. Callin’ us boys when they know darn well we’re grown men.

  Moses stood from the pew, already feeling his thumbs press into Reverend Beaver’s neck and crushing that crooked Adam’s apple. But then he winced at the pain in his lower back and hunched over as he walked down the aisle. Some of that arthritis Dr. Philpot spoke of.

  Now there was a nice white man, that Dr. Philpot. That Ellsworth Newberry too. Come to think of it, most of the white folks in Bellhaven were polite and tolerant. Their parties in that town hall had been like no others across the South. That’s why he’d liked it here. That’s why he’d stayed. That sense of camaraderie—the why of it that he’d never been able to put his finger on.

  Besides, as much as he wanted Reverend Beaver under the ground, he’d always preached to his flock that they were better than the hatred of their enemies. Hatred was a sign of weakness in the Lord’s eyes, and they would continue to rise above it all.

  Maybe he wouldn’t kill Reverend Beaver after all. The man was younger, anyhow, and more agile. Probably had a mean streak and would fight an old man back. Moses shook his head and prayed for answers as he walked down the center aisle toward his pulpit. Moonlight illuminated the colored-glass windows, and Moses looked to it for guidance.

  Maybe he’d go into the woods and visit that chapel. He seemed to think more clearly in there. America Ma always had good advice. He didn’t know exactly who she was, but he knew she was former slave kin, and her voice was downright soothing, like warm maple syrup.

  And then Moses stopped cold, facing the front of church where his choir normally stood.

  Best choir in town, they were, and everybody knew it. Boy, how they’d sing it up inside that town hall. And even now, every Sunday they filled his church with song so angelic that some of his flock wept. He felt the Lord himself through the rhythm and rhyme, the words like omens of good times ahead, full of hope and happiness. If any church in town had a stronghold on music it was this one, the passion for song deeply rooted in those ten slave houses on the back of the hill. For that was one thing those slaves were allowed to do every Sunday—sing and pray to their heart’s content. And sing they would, according to his ancestors.

  Sing loud enough so that the missus and massa could hear.

  An idea then came to Moses Yarney, a plan to extinguish that fireball in his gut. That other something that really stuck in his craw was Bellhaven Lutheran Church across the street, run by that German pastor Josef Hofhamm. It hadn’t really dawned on Moses until now, but the way they carried on with their music really bothered him. Not the way Reverend Beaver bothered him, of course, but the annoyance had been building for far too long.

  At all the town hall gatherings, the Germans always seemed to try to outsing the rest of them or outplay whoever else was holding their instruments. And now every Sunday they had that fancy new pipe organ blaring loud enough to crack windows, like they were the ones with the best music in Bellhaven.

  “Well they ain’t,” whispered Reverend Moses Yarney. “Not by a long shot.”

  That stuffy German music might have a certain presence, but it wasn’t close to the emotion rooted from what the slaves had sung. And if he heard those Lutherans play “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” one more time he’d burst. And lately, now that the war was over and the German internment camps had been shut down, Reverend Hofhamm had gone high-hat and begun preaching in German again. The sand of that man. “Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott”—they’d sung it that way so often now that Moses had memorized the German.

  Well, no more. He didn’t even know why they were even allowed in the US border. They’d lost the war. They should go home to what was left of their country and take that guttural language with them.

  Moses might not be able to send them all back across the ocean, but he would do his part, and that
pipe organ was calling to him. Pipe organs didn’t fight back like Reverend Beaver would have. Moses had a ball-peen hammer in the back that would do the trick. Come to think of it, he had a nice handsaw too.

  He had two hands, so he grabbed them both, then headed out into the moonlit drizzle with a smile.

  He could already feel that fury ball in his gut waning.

  He crossed the street, whistling “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

  Seconds after he entered an unlocked door in the rear of the Lutheran church, Reverend Beaver entered the back of Bellhaven African Methodist Episcopal with a dusty satchel over his shoulder and a plan of his own.

  Fox Bannerman looked forward to future days.

  His flock of Pentecostals, for now, was content with having their revival meetings in Bannerman’s house, but he already had the plans for a brick-and-mortar place of worship etched in his mind. The Lord had sent the plans to him one night in a dream, just as he’d sent the power to heal and speak in tongues. He’d build it on that sliver of land between that building where the Moslems met and Rabbi Blumenthal’s synagogue. Heathens all of them.

  This new place of worship would protect his flock when the end of days came. Or when Jesus came back to town in the promised Second Coming. Either way, his flock would be ready.

  Never had he felt so united with the Holy Spirit than he did now in Bellhaven, and especially after visiting that chapel in the woods.

  Brother Bannerman stretched out on his bed. Moonlight shone through his bedroom window, highlighting his long, lithe body. His two copperheads slithered around his legs—one at the ankles and the other around his left thigh—burrowing in and out of the twisted sheets. He imagined having a harem of fawning women with him, that Anna Belle Roper one of them. He’d love to put his healing hands on her head. That Linda May Dennison too. She was too pretty to be with a man who could no longer see her beauty.