When he woke up, the Lord led him straight to the telephone to call Sheba Cochran. As soon as she answered the phone, he said, “Why do you keep coming to church three months before you s’posed to, and without your children? You ain’t got no bad news on your health or your job lately, has you, babygirl?”
“No, sir,” Sheba answered politely, and then laughed softly into the telephone.
Mr. Louis Loomis listened to her laugh. He had seen Sheba in church over the years. But he didn’t ever remember seeing her smile or hearing her laugh. He liked that old sassy laugh. It was the laugh of a woman who knew how to take care of a man right. Shame the girl was always alone whenever he saw her. She would make some man a good wife, if the man had sense enough to see her for the jewel she was.
“Well, Miss Sheba, you haven’t answered my question. Used up two words to put my mind at rest about your health and your job. But I want to know why you been all up in Gethsemane acting like you a full-fledged member.”
Sheba didn’t know what to say. Mr. Louis Loomis was, after all, a member of the very committee the women were fighting against, and the last thing Sheba wanted to do was cause problems for her friends. She sighed heavily into the telephone.
“Babygirl?” Mr. Louis Loomis asked.
Sheba weighed her options. She could put Mr. Louis Loomis off with some vague excuse, but that might just make him nosier. If he started sniffing around, he might discover what the women were plotting, and even which women were the ringleaders. Then, if he tipped off their husbands on the search committee, the entire plan could backfire. Maybe the safest course would be to make him her ally, especially since her heart was telling her she could trust him. She took a deep breath, silently praying that whatever was leading her to talk was pushing her to say the right thing.
“Mr. Louis Loomis, some women in the church are not happy that they have been shut out of helping to hire a new pastor. A few think these men need to be checked out a bit more than your committee is doing right now. From what I’ve seen so far, it don’t seem to me like you all are doing your math on the men you’ve interviewed. It adds up pretty quickly if you look at them right.”
“I see,” he said, wondering when this revolt began. He figured that it had to be sometime after the search committee practically ran Nettie Green out of the conference room, right after Pastor Forbes died.
“And to be honest, something tells me Rev. Clemson ain’t right. I think I know how to flush him out, but I can’t do it by myself. I need some help.”
“Can’t some of those churchwomen help you?” Mr. Louis Loomis asked, wanting badly to question Sheba on what he already knew in his gut—just who these busy women were.
“Not for this, Mr. Louis Loomis,” Sheba answered him. “I need a man’s help for what I’ve been studying on doing.”
“Well, you show right. I know that Rev. Clemson got some of those jokers on the committee so bamboozled they want to hire him. So, I’d sure love to see you pull that wolf out of his sheep’s clothing. Whatever you need from me, babygirl, you got it,” Mr. Louis Loomis promised, a bit excited about this adventure Sheba was cooking up.
Rev. Clemson preached on a Sunday, and by Thursday Sheba had called Nettie to ask her to schedule a meeting so that she could give the women her report. Nettie suggested that this time they meet away from their men, because Bert kept asking her why Sheba had been at church two times, when it was barely October. They met for lunch at the White Castle on the corner of Kings-highway Boulevard and Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue, piling up in Sylvia’s Buick station wagon, after ordering and picking up their food, to get the lowdown on the man.
Sheba got comfortable in the front seat of the car, took a long sip of her Coke, and then said, “Viola, let me get a couple of your cheese fries before I get to talking. I knew I should have ordered me some of those things.”
Viola passed the box of cheese fries over to Sheba. “Girl, take as many as you want. Sylvia got a whole extra box in her bag.”
Sheba picked out some fries with the most cheese on them. “White Castle show do make the best fries.”
Katie Mae got herself a couple of fries and said, “They make good orange soda, too.”
Nettie said, “Girl, hurry up with those fries. I been on pins and needles ever since you called me, dying to find out what’s up with Rev. Clemson.”
“Yeah,” Sylvia agreed. “I been wondering myself if he all he saying he is. Melvin Sr. liked his sermon a lot, but I’m kind of up in the air about him myself.”
“Well, I thought his sermon was so much more sophisticated than what we’ve been hearing,” Katie Mae said. “But I didn’t like Mrs. Clemson all that much. She wasn’t friendly and barely said two words when I tried to talk to her after service.”
“I didn’t care for him at all,” Viola said. “And neither did Wendell. He said that Clemson was too much of a pretty boy for him. Nettie, what about Bert? Did he like Rev. Clemson?”
“He thought he looked good on paper, but he ain’t all that excited about hiring him as a pastor.”
“Cleavon can’t wait to hire him,” Katie Mae said brightly.
“Humph,” Sheba said. “Ladies, that Rev. Clemson even farther from what he pretending to be than you can imagine.”
She bit into her hamburger, drank some Coke, and then closed her eyes and sucked on her teeth. They all sat up, because they didn’t want to miss a word of what she had to say.
“That man is a nasty, no-good, sneaky thang if I’ve met one, and I have certainly met my fair share of no-good men. But I have to tell you that the men I run into over at the Mothership Club ain’t got nothin’ on Rev. David O. Clemson, III. At least they honest about being hound dogs, but Clemson is as slick and oily as the grease on my head.”
“Well,” Viola said, looking kind of confused, “we figured you got some good dirt on him, but when did you even get with the man? The only time I saw you near him was after prayer meeting on Tuesday, and all you did was shake his hand—though he did seem to hang on to it a little longer than normal.”
“Viola, the reason he held my hand that long was because his self was slipping me a note to meet him at a friend’s house over on Kossuth Avenue.”
“He from Chicago,” Katie Mae pointed out. “How he find a house to go to over on Kossuth Avenue? And what did he do with his wife? Wouldn’t she think that something funny was going on if he left her to go off somewhere like that?”
Nettie looked hard at Katie Mae and said, “Mrs. Clemson was wherever Rev. Clemson told her she could be,” all the while thinking, “Just like you are wherever Cleavon tells you to be when the church goes on a big trip and he ups and goes off to who-knows-where.”
Katie Mae backed down, not wanting anyone to bring up Cleavon, and said, “So, how did he do all of this? Explain it to me, Sheba Cochran, since you the expert on no-good men.”
Sheba chose to ignore the remark. She felt sorry for Katie Mae, having to deal with Cleavon’s ways and all. But Sheba was not going to be her whipping post, either. She had now let Katie Mae get away with cuts on two occasions. But the very next time she struck, Sheba was getting the woman straight. She gave Katie Mae an I’ve-just-about-had-enough-of-you look and said, “Didn’t I just tell you the Negro was slick? And he slick enough to get rid of his wife long enough to make a play on me.”
“You didn’t ‘play’ with that man, did you, Sheba?” Sylvia demanded.
“Girl, please, I got standards. Okay? And don’t you or anybody else in this car go off on me like that again,” Sheba snapped, staring right at Katie Mae. “Don’t forget that I am helping you'all out. Y’all asked me to do all of this stuff, not the other way around.”
The car was silent. Because all four of them knew good and well that Sheba had been minding her own business until they asked her to get mixed up in their mess.
“Let me put it to you all this way,” Sheba said, breaking the silence. “When I got to that house on Kossuth Avenue, Rev. Clems
on had the drapes all closed up, blue bulbs in all the lamps, and he was playing some Muddy Waters ‘I’m a Mahn’ on the hi-fi. He was also wearing a fancy robe, and I know he didn’t have on a stitch of clothes underneath. It made me nervous that I might accidentally see something I did not want to see.”
“Oooh,” Viola said with her mouth turned down. “That is downright raunchy—wearing your robe in front of somebody you don’t even know, and naked underneath.”
“Humph,” Sheba said with her lips turned down, rolling her neck around and waving her hand in the air. “That ain’t even the half of it.”
David Clemson stared Sheba down from head to toe when she walked into the house. He licked his lips and pointed to the couch.
“Don’t you want to sit down?”
“Naw, Rev. Clemson. I’m more comfortable standing.”
“Oh, you like it on your feet, huh, girl?” he said with a soft laugh that didn’t have a hint of warmth in it.
Unsettled by his steady gaze, Sheba tried to calm her nerves. He reminded Sheba of a wolf. Sheba was not afraid of many things, and on most occasions she could handle herself with a man trying to hit on her. But this man was out of her league. She had sensed a cruelty in him before, and now that she was alone with him behind closed doors, her instincts warned that he might be violent.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he asked, stroking his chin. “Hmmm, let me see. How about some Mad Dog 20/20 or some Rosie O’Grady?”
“You got some nerve, Negro,” Sheba thought, “offering me wino wine like I was standing on a street corner.” But she managed to say, “Please don’t put yourself to any trouble, Rev. Clemson, because I don’t drink.”
“Oh really?” he answered. “That’s awfully surprising, girl. You look like you could put the Rosie in the O’Grady.”
“Well, contrary to how it looks, I can’t,” Sheba snapped, and then caught herself when his face hardened. “Reverend, I am a churchgirl. I don’t think it’s right for me to be drinking wine, and especially not in front of a preacher.”
“Baby,” he said, toying around with the belt on his robe, “drinking wine is all throughout the Bible. And some of those Bible-days folks could really chug it down.”
“Jive-time punk,” Sheba thought, “trying to use the Bible to get a woman drunk.” She wished she knew the Scriptures better, so that she could quote an actual passage to rebuke this man, but ventured, “Rev. Clemson, weren’t most of the drinking people in the Bible in the Old Testament under the Old Covenant?”
Rev. Clemson busted out laughing. “Baby, what Bible do you read? Jesus turned water into wine at that big party he was at in the New Testament, not the old one.”
Sheba was confused. She remembered Jesus changing water into wine at a wedding, not at a party. But she tried again.
“Rev. Clemson, isn’t there something in the New Testament saying church leaders shouldn’t be heavy drinkers and neither should the people in their families? So you shouldn’t even have anything like Mad Dog 20/20 or Rosie O’Grady, because that’s heavy-drinker, drunk-people liquor.”
David Clemson frowned. The tramp had some nerve, up in here arguing the Bible’s teaching with a preacher.
“You are becoming very annoying with all of this so-called Bible talk,” he snapped, and walked over to a wooden tripod with a black silk cloth thrown over it. “Sheba, whether you drink or not, you are so fine, I could get a buzz just standing here looking at you. And if you would indulge me a bit, I’d like to capture your fine self on film.” Then he removed the cloth slowly, like he was undressing someone, to reveal a movie camera.
Sheba’s mouth dropped wide open. She knew this fool was nasty, but she had no idea that she was dealing with a freaky-deaky man. “Why do you need that thing?” she asked carefully.
“Like I said, ’cause you such a sexy little thing,” he said, looking through the camera and fussing with the lens, as Sheba slipped off the couch and tried to edge toward the door.
“Going somewhere, Miss Lady?” Rev. Clemson asked, jumping out from behind the camera. He yanked at Sheba’s arm and started to drag her roughly back to the couch.
“Let go of me, you nasty, freaky, two-timing mangy dog.”
“What did you say to me, tramp?” he growled, and tried to push her back on the couch.
“I said . . . ,” Sheba began, but couldn’t hear her own words for the ringing in her ears from that slap he now gave her upside the head.
“One more word from you, and I am going beat you like I’m Massa and you the slave. Now get undressed and quit playin’. You know what you wanted when you came up in here.”
“Help me, Lord,” Sheba cried out.
Clemson slapped the air as Sheba dodged his hand while grabbing the lamp on the end table. Snatching it up, she swung it at his head.
Clemson ducked and lost his balance, but then quickly recovered his feet when he heard a loud banging on the door. “Open up,” a menacing voice hollered. “If my wife in there, she better come on out, or I’m gone tear this house down to the ground.”
“You’re married?” Clemson asked Sheba, fear creeping into his voice.
“Open the dag-blasted door!”
Sheba moved to open it. “Hold it,” Clemson told her. “You can’t open the door on me dressed like this, with your husband out there.”
“Uhh, Rev. Clemson, I have to open the door,” Sheba said, “because my man kind of crazy.”
The banging and yelling stopped momentarily. Rev. Clemson sighed in relief, but then the color drained from his face when he heard a click, like the sound of a gun being cocked. The voice threatened, “I’m gonna shoot a bullet right through this door.”
“JESUS! He has a gun!” Rev. Clemson exclaimed, yanking Sheba up in front of him like a shield.
“Don’t you call on Jesus!” the voice bellowed. “Too late to call on Him when you already messin’ with another man’s wife!”
“Help me, Jesus,” Clemson cried out.
The voice on the other side of the door said, “Jesus, if You in there, You better move, ’cause I don’t want to have to answer for shooting through You when I get to heaven.”
Rev. Clemson shoved Sheba to the floor and ran for the back of the house, yelling, “Get out! Get out! Get out!” She picked herself up and, shaking, managed to unlock the dead bolt, then tumbled out the door right into Mr. Louis Loomis’s arms.
“Babygirl, you alright?” he asked. Sheba was trembling uncontrollably. “That boy didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“Mr. Louis Loomis,” Sheba said with tears running down her face, “he was half-naked and had a movie camera. And he wanted me to drink cheap liquor because he thought I was cheap. He hit me and would’ve tried to force me if you hadn’t been there.”
“Why, that low-down scoundrel,” said Mr. Louis Loomis. “That is a sin and a shame, especially for a man calling himself a preacher.”
“Y’all got some jive-time preachers up in that church,” Sheba said, still crying. Mr. Louis Loomis patted her gently on the shoulder, gave her a handkerchief, and took her hand in his. He said softly, “Babygirl, you having such a hard time coming back to church because of devils like that thang in that house, aren’t you?”
Sheba sniffled and nodded.
“I’m gonna give you some advice,” Mr. Louis Loomis said, as he unlocked the car and held the door open for her. “Don’t let the devil run you away from God.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t let the devil run you away from God.”
Sheba stopped talking. The car was so quiet that you could hear every breath. Finally, Viola said, “We know all we need to know. I say we go to our men and tell them what time it is. There ain’t no way on God’s good earth that those men gone push that man off on me.”
“That’s right,” said Nettie, and the other women agreed. They were so mad, they wanted to hurt somebody. Sylvia started up the car.
“What you doing?” Nettie asked.
&n
bsp; “Going over on Melvin Sr.’s job and getting his tail straight before he even has a chance to think about going wrong and voting to hire that devil,” Sylvia answered. She started backing the car out of the parking space so fast that she almost hit the old drunk man who was sitting on a crate in the lot, collecting half-eaten burgers and fries, and a quarter here and there, to get “som’in’ to drank.”
“Wait!” Katie Mae said. “Do you think we need to fight with our men right now? Maybe Rev. Clemson won’t even want the job after all that trouble with Sheba.”
“No,” Nettie said firmly. “We are not waiting on anything. We are going straight to our men about this. They need to know exactly what they have done by inviting that devil into our church home.”
“But Cleavon . . . ,” Katie Mae started to protest. The last thing she wanted to deal with was Cleavon after he found out that Rev. Clemson had been exposed by Sheba Cochran, of all people. The tension in her house would be so awful, she would be afraid to breathe, for fear that he’d hit the roof.
“But Cleavon, nothing,” Sylvia said. She put the car in reverse and started backing out again.
This time the drunk man grabbed his crate and ran to the other side of the lot. When he knew he was in a safe spot, he looked at them, pointed a finger to his head, and twirled it around to signify, “Y’all is crazy.”
IV
Cleavon banged on the conference table, furious that the committee didn’t even want to discuss hiring Rev. David Clemson.
“Man, if you bang on that table just one more time,” Melvin Sr. said, “you will leave this meeting missing a hand.”
He was through with the subject of David Clemson. Sylvia had come down to their catering business and given a performance that could have won her an Academy Award. He was just thankful no customers were around when she jumped up in his face and said, “Melvin Earl Vicks, Sr., if you hire David O. Clemson, III, you got to get out of my house.”
Cleavon pounded the table again to let Melvin Sr. know that he wouldn’t be pushed around. Melvin Sr. got up out of his chair, walked around the conference table, and snatched Cleavon up by his suit collar.
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