by Doug Worgul
And that was that.
LaVerne called every other team in the majors trying to “shop himself around.” He emphasized his speed and his high on base percentage. A couple of teams told him they’d be happy to maybe take a look at him next year when his shoulder had healed. None expressed any more interest than that.
When the team doctor, down in Winter Haven, explained how seriously LaVerne’s shoulder was hurt and the long-term implications of the injury, LaVerne got on a Greyhound to Kansas City. He wanted the doctors at City General or maybe even St. Luke’s to take a look.
They all said the same thing.
*
LaVerne hung around the apartment for a few days, but he couldn’t do much. His arm was in a sling and it hurt. He couldn’t help Angela and he couldn’t hold the baby. The slightest wrong move made him yelp and grit his teeth. He got headaches from clenching his jaw against the pain. He used his good arm primarily to drink beer, which frequently ended with him falling asleep in the recliner while watching TV, but more often resulted in him yelling at Angela for some minor or imagined infraction. When Angela had enough of this she called down to Plum Grove and arranged for Rose and Delbert to ask LaVerne to come for a visit.
The Sunday after her call, LaVerne stayed in bed while Angela took Raymond to church. That afternoon, Angela drove LaVerne to the bus station and put him on a Greyhound for Texas.
“Maybe the time down there will help clear your head, and put your heart at peace,” she told him. “I love you, LaVerne. And I need you. I don’t need you to be a ball player. I need you to be my husband. And I need you to be Raymond’s father. You’ve got a lot more to offer this world than baseball. So go home. Relax. When you come back, we’ll figure this out.”
Angela held Raymond in her right arm and leaned in to give LaVerne a hug with her left, careful not to hurt his shoulder. LaVerne sobbed into Angela’s neck and she cried, too. When Raymond joined in, LaVerne kissed them both and boarded the bus.
He slept all the way to Joplin where he had to change buses. It was about 7:30 in the evening and the bus to Fort Smith wasn’t leaving for another hour. LaVerne thought about walking down the block to buy some beer at a liquor store he’d seen on the way in, but he couldn’t work up the energy. He went in and had coffee at the lunch counter in the bus station.
There were a few other passengers in the diner. A pregnant girl with her toddler son. She looked to be about eighteen. A soldier and a sailor in their uniforms. They sat together on the steps outside, talking and smoking cigarettes. A young man who might have been a college student reading a book. And a middle-aged Mexican couple. The woman rested her head on the man’s shoulder and occasionally dabbed her eyes and nose with a handkerchief.
Through the night, down Highway 71 to Fort Smith, then on to DeQueen and Texarkana, LaVerne stared out into the dark, trying to empty his head. By the time the bus pulled in at Shreveport, he realized his efforts had had the opposite effect. All he could think about was how he hated his life and how cruel and wrong everything was.
He got off the bus, went to the men’s room, then got his transfer at the ticket window. He wished he’d bought beer back in Joplin. He stepped outside and looked down the street in both directions, but there weren’t any liquor stores he could see.
He slept the rest of the way to Beaumont.
*
Delbert and Rose were waiting for him at the bus station.
On the drive to Plum Grove, it became clear that Rose had decided ahead of time that her strategy to distract LaVerne from his sadness would be to provide him with detailed updates on the lives of each of the 38 members of the Plum Grove Second Baptist Church. After about an hour of this, Delbert said, “That’s maybe all the church news LaVerne needs for now, Rose.” At which point Rose transitioned to news about the second shift at Raylon Rice and Milling.
When they arrived in Plum Grove, Delbert asked LaVerne what he wanted to do.
“Well, I’ve had enough sleep and being by myself,” he said. “How about if we go up to the store and put some briskets and sausage in the smoker?”
“I thought you might say that,” said Delbert. “Hartholz is up there already. He put some meat in this morning. Let’s go see if he did it right.”
Hartholz had done it right. The little butcher shop was enveloped in a fragrant veil of thin blue smoke curling out of the big brick pit behind the store. Hartholz was sitting in a rocking chair on the back porch with two split cherry logs on his lap.
“Good morning, LaVerne,” he said. “I apologize for your shoulder. Maybe it will improve.”
LaVerne nodded and took a seat on one side of the old German. Delbert sat down on the other side.
“Good to see you, Fred,” said LaVerne. “I’ve missed you.”
“We miss you, too,” said Hartholz.
That was all anyone said for the rest of the morning.
At about 12:05 in the afternoon Delbert went inside and retrieved a bottle of bourbon and three glasses. He poured drinks for them all, sat down, and took his harmonica out of his overalls’ breast pocket and started in on some blues.
After awhile, the whiskey and the music loosened LaVerne’s hard-packed grief.
“Why, Uncle Delbert? Why did God do this to me?” LaVerne glared off into the distance beyond the smoker.
“He didn’t do this to you, boy,” Delbert said quietly. “He didn’t have nothing to do with it.”
“Then why did he let this happen to me?”
“Because, son, God is a lot like me,” said Delbert. “He doesn’t give a shit if you play baseball. God is a lot more interested in who you are, and not much in what you do. Same with me, LaVerne. I don’t really care if you play baseball or not, except for I know you care. It hurts me to see you so sad about this. That’s ‘cause I love you. And I know how much playing in the big leagues means to you. But you’re still LaVerne if you play or if you don’t play. You’re still who you are. And it’s times like these that can make you better. Or they can ruin you. That’s up to you. That’s your choice. Are you going to be a man? Are you going to stand up to this and not let it take you down? Are you going to find a way to make a life for that pretty wife and that new baby of yours? Those are the questions here.”
LaVerne sighed, drained his glass and poured himself another. Delbert waited in case LaVerne might want to say something, but his nephew just scowled and shook his head.
“Son, listen to me,” Delbert continued. “God will work his way in our lives one way or another. If he wants something out of us, if he wants us to do something for him, it doesn’t really matter what we happen to be doing at the time. He can use us if we’re playing baseball, he can use us if we’re farming. He can use us if we’re butchering steers or working in the mill. It’s all the same to him.”
Those were the things Delbert had planned to say on the subject and he had said them. He poured more whiskey.
“But, why? Why can’t I play baseball?” LaVerne protested. “Why can’t that be God’s way of working in my life?”
“Why can’t I be the king of France?” asked Delbert his voice rising a bit. “Because I can’t, that’s why. Because I was born a Negro in Louisiana, America. And because there ain’t even a king of France no more. But I can be Delbert Douglass Merisier III. And that’s all God wants me to be.”
Hartholz had been listening while he watched the fire. Finally he spoke up.
“You should not always be asking this ‘why’ to yourself, LaVerne. There are mysteries. Some things that only God knows. Why did my Greta and my boy have to die? Why was Delbert’s Madeleine killed? You should maybe ask of yourself, ‘What do you do now?’”
Hartholz got up and went over to the pit. He took one of the cherry splits he’d had on his lap and pushed it into the fire to make more coals. He lifted the corrugated steel cover to check on the status o
f the briskets.
“Close that thing,” Delbert barked. “You’re lettin’ all the smoke out.”
Hartholz returned to his chair. He grimaced a smile at LaVerne and cocked his head in Delbert’s direction. “He always says that to me.”
Hartholz went on. “You can lose many years of life in bitter and sad, LaVerne. I did. And I was very alone. It is lonely when we make our own hearts like stones.”
He replenished his glass. LaVerne didn’t say anything. Delbert looked over at his nephew in time to see a tear spill over onto his cheek. Delbert cleared his throat and went over to the pit to check on the briskets.
Hartholz objected immediately. “I just looked at those,” he snapped. “You’re going to let all the smoke out.”
Delbert returned to his chair. He winked at Laverne. “He always says that to me.”
LaVerne smiled slightly and nodded.
11
April 1968
In 1968, Ferguson Glen was the rock star of the Episcopal Church. The buzz of adulation within American Anglicanism surrounding his literary achievements and high profile civil rights activism had caught the attention of literary and liberal salons, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who had taken a personal interest in learning as much as possible about “that tall white boy with the girl hair” whose image had been recorded a few years earlier in surveillance photos taken of Freedom Riders and, later, with marchers en route from Selma to Montgomery.
In one of these photographs, Ferguson was seated in the back of a bus with other white college students laughing and smoking cigarettes. In another, he was kneeling in prayer with the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy and other ministers, black and white, on a road outside Montgomery. In a third, he was walking several rows behind Martin Luther King, arms linked with other marchers.
Ferguson Glen was ordained to the priesthood at Washington National Cathedral in September 1966. In November of that year, a series of short stories he wrote in seminary were published in The New Yorker. The stories featured four characters, Jesus, Satan, a white man, and a black man, traveling together on a train across the United States. The stories captured the imagination of Walker Briggs, an enterprising editor at a venerable New York publishing house. Briggs approached Ferguson with the idea of expanding the stories into a novel, a proposal which Ferguson eagerly accepted. In January 1968, the novel, Traverse, was published. That month, Ferguson’s picture appeared on the covers of The New York Times Book Review and Christianity Today.
Ferguson’s youth, good looks, wit, and intellect—all wrapped up in a clerical collar—proved irresistible to newspaper and television reporters who clamored for interviews. They wanted to know what drove this privileged son of an auto industry heiress and a respected Episcopal bishop to challenge, in Ferguson’s words, “the complacency and complicity of American Christianity” by marching against segregation in the South.
Virtually every journalist writing about the young priest and his sudden success felt compelled to make note of his physical resemblance to popular depictions of Christ—shoulder length brown hair, beard, high cheekbones. Ferguson’s usual response to this was to say that he was disappointed by the comparison because he had actually been aiming for more of a John Lennon-look.
The hierarchy of the Episcopal Church was quick to embrace and exploit Ferguson’s popularity. In February the Seminary of the Holy Trinity in Memphis invited him to speak at its prestigious Hammarskjöld Lectures, held annually the first week in April. The Rev. William Slone Coffin was to deliver the keynote. And there were rumors that Dr. King himself might attend and perhaps speak. Ferguson’s address was titled “Caesars, Pharisees, and Samaritans.”
On the first night of the lectures, the seminary hosted a reception for its guest speakers, faculty, and students. Ferguson nibbled hors d’oeuvres, simultaneously deflecting the flirtations of the lone female faculty member while calmly explaining to an agitated professor emeritus why it was no longer a viable strategy for “Negroes” to “work within the system” for change. When eventually his tormentors abandoned their efforts to win him over he excused himself to the chairman of the lectures committee and exited. He needed a drink.
He stood outside the lecture hall considering his next move. He knew there was a bar at his hotel and thought he remembered that the hotel was about four or five blocks to the east. He started walking in that direction. The night was cool and damp.
Ten or twelve blocks later Ferguson realized that he had proved yet again his father’s frequent assertion that his sense of direction was seriously deficient. Though he sometimes suspected that his father was not always referring to the points on a compass.
He reversed course with a sigh, then noticed down a side street a neon sign in the window of a small cinder block building advertising “BBQ & Whisky”.
Like most Michigan natives, Ferguson had a vague knowledge of a thing called barbecue, but had never actually eaten any. He was, however, intimately familiar with whiskey. He decided that this was as good a time as any to sample some of this barbecue and way past time for a glass of whiskey.
As he approached the building he saw over the front door a Coca-Cola sign that had been customized with the name of the restaurant—“General Bar-B-Q Ribs Wet N Dry”.
Inside, the place was yellow and warm and filled with a smoky aroma more wonderful than anything he could remember. There were a few tables and a few booths, maybe twenty seats in all. Ferguson was the only customer.
Behind the bar was a young black woman. When she heard Ferguson come in, she turned toward the door. Ferguson saw that she was about his age and that her skin was the deep brown-red color of the sweet cherries he loved back home, and that her eyes were bright and curious and that her smile was open and knowing. He saw that her breasts were small and that under her white T-shirt she must be feeling a bit chilly, even though he was feeling suddenly quite warm.
A door behind the bar opened and in from the kitchen came a child, a girl, maybe eight years old. She carried a stack of white terrycloth hand towels. “Here, Mom,” she said, reaching up to give the towels to her mother.
“Thank you, Miss,” said the woman.
The girl looked at Ferguson. “Who are you?” she demanded.
“I’m Ferguson.”
“Is that your first name or your last name?”
“Mind your manners, you,” said the girl’s mother.
“My first,” said Ferguson. “Glen is my last name. My name is Ferguson Glen.”
“Sounds to me like you got your names mixed up,” said the girl, frowning, hands on her hips.
“Sounds that way to me, too,” said Ferguson. “So, what’s your name?”
“My name’s Wren. Like the bird,” she said. “Wren Brown.”
“Well, I’ve heard of a brown wren. But I’ve never heard of a Wren Brown,” said Ferguson, frowning, hands on his hips.
The woman with the cherry-brown skin and white T-shirt spoke up. “That’s enough, Wren.” She put her hand on her daughter’s head.
She smiled at Ferguson. “I’m Peri,” she said. “Pleased to meet you. And please forgive my daughter, here. Sometimes she expresses herself too freely.”
Ferguson took a seat at the bar. “Perry. Is that your first name or your last?” he asked with a smile.
“First. It’s short for Periwinkle,” she said. “Like the color. Periwinkle Brown. Actually, it’s two colors.”
“That’s quite lovely,” said Ferguson. He repeated the name. “Periwinkle Brown.”
“Thank you,” said Peri. Ferguson thought he detected that she was blushing.
Peri asked Ferguson if he wanted something to eat or drink. He ordered bourbon. Wren went back into the kitchen and Peri poured the whiskey.
“So, are you up there at the seminary?” asked Peri, noticing Ferguson’s collar.
“I am,” he s
aid. “I’m giving a lecture.” He finished his drink and Peri poured him another.
“So,” he asked. “What are wet and dry ribs?”
Peri laughed. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
Now Ferguson blushed. “No, I’m not. Why? Did I say something stupid?”
Peri shook her head. “It’s not wet and dry ribs. It’s wet or dry ribs. In Memphis, folks like them either one way or the other. We serve them both ways to make everybody happy.”
“What’s the difference?” Ferguson asked. “Other than, I guess, one’s wet and the other’s dry.”
“Well,” Peri said, with the exaggerated patience one uses to explain something elementary to a child. “Wet ribs are smoked slow, for about four or five hours, over hickory coals, then, about an hour before they’re done, you start mopping them with your barbecue sauce. And just when you put them on the plate to serve them, you brush some more sauce on, so they’re wet.
“Dry ribs you smoke the same way. Slow, over hickory. But you don’t use sauce. Instead, before you put them in the pit, you rub them down good with your secret recipe of herbs and spices. Then, before you serve them, you give them another hit of those herbs and spices. Here in Memphis, it’s a never-ending battle between wet and dry. So? Which would you like?”
Ferguson shrugged. “Wet, I guess.”
Periwinkle Brown went into the kitchen and came back out a few minutes later with a platter, on which lay a glistening, sticky, slab of ribs. Ferguson paused, unsure as to the initial step of the rib-eating process. Peri reached over and separated one rib from the rest and held it out for him. He took it and bit into the meat clinging to the bone. Peri watched, smiling. From that point, until all that remained of the ribs was a pile of shiny bones, Ferguson said nothing. When he had finished a look of utter confusion came over his face.