“I, ah, hadn’t thought of it quite that way,” Brother Fletcher conceded.
Mr. Sloan smiled. “Of course you hadn’t. A man like you would not think of such things, coming as you do from an, uh, rural area. But I have seen the world, Brother, and I know. It’s my job to keep an eye out for such things. Anyone else would have missed it, but I could see he was concealing his dirty, unholy tendencies. But you needn’t worry about it. I’ll handle Turnbull. I wouldn’t have mentioned it, but it seems that I will be able to make that fact-finding tour after all. I just wanted to tell you that I feel perfectly confident in your abilities and intend to leave you in complete charge. I plan to leave in about two weeks. For the next month you will be in charge.”
Brother Fletcher smiled slightly. “I hope you’ll be pleased when you return.”
“I’m sure I will be,” Mr. Sloan said. “I know you’ve had churches of your own, but those were in, ah, rural areas. I think you’ll find this quite different, but you’ll be able to handle it. For a month. Now, Brother, I know you must prepare yourself, so I won’t hold you.” Brother Fletcher rose and turned toward the door. “Oh, Fletcher,” said Mr. Sloan. “One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“I met Leo on the street this morning. News has reached me that last night, in Leo’s bar, there was some trouble between Leroy Briggs and a young man no one seems to have ever seen before. It seems that the young man forced Leroy Briggs to back down by saying he worked for Gino. The matter requires investigation. This young man could be quite useful. Now I don’t care how you do it, Brother, but I want you to find out about this young man. Infiltrate Lightnin’ Ed’s and interrogate Leo if necessary.”
Brother Fletcher looked shocked. “Infilt—you mean, go inside? But it’s a beer garden.”
Mr. Sloan looked at him with distaste. “If God condescends to come to South Street, he won’t mind a little alcohol. Now get out of here.”
Brother Fletcher looked at Mr. Sloan uncertainly, and wobbled out the door.
When he awoke he was alone in the bed. He lay there for a few minutes pulling himself together and then he threw the sheet off him and rolled out. He stood beside the bed and stretched, then glanced at the clock. It was mid-afternoon. He left the bedroom and went into the kitchen. There was a used juice glass on the counter, a half-empty coffee mug on the table, and a note on the refrigerator, attached with a magnetic clamp in the shape of a ladybug. The note said that she had gone to get a paper and it was nice that they could still do something together. “Bitch,” Brown said, balling the note between his fingers and throwing it toward the garbage can. He missed.
Brown felt the sides of the percolator and found the coffee was still warm. He filled a cup, added milk and four spoons of sugar, and sat down to contemplate his naked navel. The apartment was silent except for the whisper of the air-conditioning. “Shit,” Brown said suddenly. He got up from the table, carried the coffee into the bathroom. He set the cup on the sink, flipped on the shower, climbed in.
Spinning slowly beneath the stream of water, turned on as hard as it would go and as hot as he could stand, Brown let his mind go wandering back to dark alleys, dark nights, dark faces. He picked up the soap and scrubbed in a sudden frenzy. Lather covered him, soap stung his eyes. Brown rinsed himself off. His thoughts turned to Alicia, and he swore softly, soaped himself three times, shampooed twice. When he stepped out of the shower he felt clean and empty. He picked up the coffee cup and drained it, went out into the living room without bothering to dry himself, dripping on the carpet. He shivered in the machined cold, marched to the control, and defiantly cut off the air-conditioning. He threw open the sliding door and breathed in the hot polluted air. Finally he closed the door, went back to the bathroom and got a towel, and proceeded to dry himself off, then he went into the kitchen, took ice and a bottle of scotch from the refrigerator, and constructed himself a drink. He went back into the living room, sank down on the sofa, and slurped it. When the ice melted, despite the chilled whiskey, Brown got up and strengthened the drink from a second bottle sitting on the bar in the corner of the living room. On the way back to the sofa he picked up a yellow legal pad and a pen.
Feet propped up on the lacquered coffee table, drink in one hand and pen in the other, Brown scribbled busily, writing words, scratching them out, tearing leaves from the pad, looking at them, cursing, balling them up. He managed eventually to fill a whole sheet. He sighed, rose, and went to refill his glass. He did a few deep-knee bends. He cleared his throat. He walked around the room three times. Then he went back and looked at the pad. A sour expression crossed his face. He picked up a red pencil, made a few languid marks, sighed, dropped the pencil, balled up the final sheet of paper and threw it, like the others, across the room at the trash can. The paper teetered for an instant on the edge, then tottered and fell outside, joining all the other yellow balls in a tidy heap. Brown got up and went to the bar. He brought the bottle back with him.
Brown roused as the door opened, coming off the couch as if someone had stuck him with a pin, taking the coffee table with him onto the floor as he hit the carpet in a low dive, sending a splash of diluted whiskey and half-melted ice against the wall. The glass and ice were scattered all over the floor. Brown ended up on his feet, poised in a crouch against the far wall.
“Adlai?”
Brown relaxed, straightened. “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Brown said. He came back across the room, pausing to retrieve the bottle, glass, and what was left of the ice cubes. He did not look up.
“Do what? What are you doing?” She stared at him. “Oh,” she said, drawing her lips tight, “I should have known.”
Brown straightened up and looked at her. “Should have known what?”
She laid her purse on a low table, put the paper on top of it. She removed her sunglasses and laid them on top the paper. “Should have known that when I got home I’d find you wrapped around a bottle like an alcoholic boa constrictor.”
“Hmmm,” Brown said. “‘Alcoholic boa constrictor.’ Not bad. Mind if I use it sometime? You know any words that rhyme with constrictor?”
“For you to use it, it couldn’t have more than four letters.”
Brown sighed and dropped onto the sofa. “You know, it’s getting so there’s only two things we do together any more, and they both start with f.”
“Fight and what else?” she said, and walked through to the bedroom.
“Ouch,” Brown said. He got up and went to stand in the bedroom doorway.
She stepped out of her panties and raised her head. “If you’re thinking that now is a good time to take issue with that slur on your heavy-hung black male virility, forget it.”
“God forbid,” Brown said. “God forbid I should touch your million-dollar Westchester County black middle-class ass, and that even rhymes, and do we have to do this?”
“Do you have to account for half the annual revenue of the local State Store?”
“It sounds,” Brown said carefully, “like you are informing me, in your oh-so-subtle Ebony Magazine’s Most Eligible Female way, that I drink too fucking much. I know I drink too fucking much.”
“And you say ‘fuck’ too much.”
“All right,” Brown said. “I say fuck too fucking much. Anything else?”
“You’re insensitive.”
Brown opened his mouth, closed it. “Jesus,” he muttered softly. “Jesus muthafuckin’ Christ.”
“Don’t you know any other words?” she demanded.
“How ’bout ‘cunt’?” She glared at him. “Sorry, missy,” Brown said. “Us darkies has got a limited vocabulary.”
“Don’t you start that,” she said. “I’m just as black as you are.”
“That,” Brown said, “is what frightens me.” He spun on his heel and went back into the living room.
She followed, wrapping a robe around her. “Are you clean?”
“What?” Brown said.
“Clean. Did you have
a shower afterwards?”
“After what?” Brown said, smiling maliciously.
“After that ritual self-torture you put yourself, through every morning,” she said.
“It ain’t every morning,” Brown said. “Lately it’s been about once a month. Or did you mean the running?”
“I meant the running.”
“Oh,” Brown said. “Yeah, I took a shower after that.” He smiled. “Answer your question?”
“Maybe you’d better take another one,” she suggested.
“Why?”
“You’ll smell.”
“If I smell I got the smell from you. And Jesus knows you don’t smell. Hell, you got more damn sprays than the Agriculture Department.” Brown whirled and stalked back into the bathroom, jerked open the medicine cabinet. “Fuck, will you look at this shit. Perfume. Powder. Cream sachet. Underarm spray, foot spray, nose spray, ear spray, pussy spray, and douche. Strawberry flavored. Bet that would taste fine, ’cept anybody that tried to eat that oversprayed pussy a yours would probly die from DDT poisonin’ or somethin’. …”
“Do you have—”
“‘Do you have to talk that way?’” Brown mimicked. “No, I don’t have to talk that way. I know how to talk like nice people. Nice white people that wouldn’t be caught dead callin’ a spade a spade, ’less it happened to be a nigger.”
“Negro.”
“Black. Afro-American. Jungle bunny. Bullshit.” Brown slammed the medicine cabinet shut. “Missy, ah sho’ is sorry if ah smells a little musky. But that’s life. Now y’all up there to the big house wid Massa …”
“You had your share of the big house,” she snapped. “You’re still having it.”
“Wrong, baby,” Brown snapped. “I had more than’ my share. I had my fill.”
She looked at him speculatively. Brown stood rigidly against the sink, his jaw set. “Well,” she said calmly. “Anyway. You’d better get ready.”
“Ready for what?” Brown snapped.
“Earl’s party,” she said.
Brown looked at her.
“Massa’s gonna be there,” she said. “An’ he runs a poetry magazine. Were you drunk when I told you, or did you just forget?”
“I tried,” Brown said. He relaxed, sank down on the edge of the tub, buried his face in his hands for a minute, looked up at her. “I hate this,” Brown said. “Why do we do this?”
“Why do you do it?”
“Oh, fuck,” Brown said, and took cover in the shower.
Brother Fletcher stood on the stage of The Word of Life Church, looking out over the rows of empty theater seats. It had been a long Sunday, but now it was well into Monday morning, and Brother Fletcher longed for home, his wife, a glass of iced tea. Everyone else had gone to his home happy, renewed, his sins freshly forgiven, the soil prepared for a new crop. Brother Fletcher had stayed behind, tired, happy, and strangely confused. His thoughts were scattered. He had a slight headache. The Word of Life was to be his church, even if only temporarily. Someone had told him that the Phillies had lost both games of their doubleheader. He felt sorry for Brother Turnbull, who would soon be banished from The Word of Life. Brother Fletcher did not like that. He did not like the Reverend Mr. Sloan either. That wasn’t really a problem—the problem lay in keeping his mouth shut about it. Brother Turnbull was not a homosexual, and Brother Fletcher knew that. He wondered why he had not called Mr. Sloan a liar and marched out of The Word of Life himself. He didn’t know why he hadn’t done that, but he knew that he hadn’t, and he felt slightly dirty. And yet the church was before him, empty, quiet, peaceful, and Brother Fletcher, looking at it, felt equally quiet, equally peaceful.
Brother Fletcher closed the hymnbooks on the rostrum, picked up a program that had fallen to the floor. He stepped off the platform and walked slowly down the aisle, looking at the littered floor, the chewing gum stuck to the underside of seats that had flipped up when the occupants had departed. He leaned over to pick up a tiny pink glove that some little girl had forgotten.
At the rear of the church Brother Fletcher paused and turned around, gazing back along the aisle, across the backs of the vacant seats to the vacant pulpit. In the dimly lit recess behind the pulpit a large bronze cross gleamed dully. Brother Fletcher reached out his hand and extinguished the lights. The sanctuary sank into darkness except for one stream of light that shone down from the balcony onto the cross. In his mind Brother Fletcher heard again the shouts of Amen, amen, and Preach on, boy, preach on, that had been superimposed on his sermon. He thought of Sister Lavernia Thompson’s ugly face seeming almost beautiful as he had laid his hands on her shoulders and prayed for her health. Slowly he raised his arms, stretching them out toward the front of the sanctuary. “May …” he said softly. He stopped, began again. “May the Lord bless you and keep you,” he intoned, and his deep voice rolled across the empty seats and echoed back from the walls. “May the Lord lift the light of his countenance upon you, and give you peace. Amen.”
Brother Fletcher held his arms up for a moment longer, then let them drop to his sides. He turned quickly and pushed through the swinging doors into the lobby. The custodian, whose job it was to lock up, was standing in the front doorway, kicking at something. “G’wan, get ’way fum here.”
“What is it?” said Brother Fletcher.
“Oh, Bro’ Fletcher,” said the custodian, “it’s just some shifless wino on da steps.”
“Let him stay,” said Brother Fletcher.
“All right,” said the custodian doubtfully, “but Reverend Sloan tole me—”
“Reverend Sloan is not here,” Brother Fletcher said. “Let the man stay. Where is he?” Brother Fletcher moved over to the door and looked down at the old man huddled in the corner of the vestibule. “Are you cold?” said Brother Fletcher. The old man just looked at him, his eyes glassy. The night was warm, but the old man had his arms wrapped around himself. He was shivering. “Let him inside,” said Brother Fletcher.
“What?” said the custodian.
“Inside. They can let him out when they come in the morning to clean.”
“But Mr. Sloan …”
Brother Fletcher glared at the custodian, his jaw set. “I said let him in. Now do it.”
“Yassuh,” said the custodian. The old man looked up uncomprehendingly.
“Come on in,” said Brother Fletcher.
The old man’s face assumed a look of grateful disbelief. Brother Fletcher leaned over and helped him up. He staggered on into the church.
“Mr. Sloan sure would be upset,” said the custodian.
Brother Fletcher watched the old man shuffle on into the sanctuary. He went to the door and looked in while the wino settled himself on one of the rear seats, drooping his head on his chest like a chicken going to roost.
“Reverend Sloan—” began the custodian.
“Damn Reverend Sloan,” snapped Brother Fletcher.
3. The Elysium
“I WANTS TO KNOW who he is,” said Vanessa, slipping her long red-painted fingernail into the corner of her lipsticked mouth. “Yes, indeed, I wants to see him. He must be some kinda man.”
“I spose so,” said Charlene, sipping her Budweiser. The glass, leaving her lips, showed tiny smudges on its rim, and a few flecks of dark make-up floated on the beer’s white foam. “All I knows is what I heard.”
“Tell me again,” said Vanessa. She reached out one graceful arm to the chair beside her and found her purse. With a languid motion of thumb and forefinger she opened the clasp and extracted a cigarette. With her other hand she snapped a small silver lighter; flame appeared as if from her fingertips. She lit the cigarette with a quick pass of her lighter and a well-timed inhalation and exhaled a double column of gray smoke.
“Ain’t much to tell,” said Charlene. “Leroy stops the car an’ goes walkin’ into Ed’s to get us some beer, an’ he comes out a while later swearin’ up an’ down that he’s gone get that muthafucka someday, an’ me an’ Les knowed bettern t
o be astin’ him what was goin’ down. Anyways, Leroy says he wants to fuck, an’ Les says she wants to go up to her place, so they could do it in Rayburn’s bed.” Charlene stopped and looked at Vanessa. “You know that sister a yours is kinda weird sometimes, you know what I mean? Anyways, I went on back down to Ed’s to see if I could maybe find out what was happenin’ an’ on the way I run into that simple nigger Elmo, you know the one’s always hangin’ around here tryin’ to turn some little piece a bullshit into a glass a wine? He was goin’ on about how he’s gonna cut the nigger someday, an’ it looks to me that somebody sure has managed to get a whole shitload a folks pissed off. Anyway, I ast Elmo who he was gonna cut, an’ he says Rayburn, so I got to thinkin’ maybe Rayburn done got drunk an’ said somethin’ to Leroy, you know?”
“Wait a minute,” Vanessa said, “I thought you said—”
“I’ma get to it,” Charlene said, “you gotta give me some space. Anyways, that Elmo, he’s always chimin’ he knows all the shit, so I ast him.”
“Elmo don’t know nothin’,” Vanessa snapped.
“I found that out,” Charlene said. Vanessa glared at her. Charlene sighed and adjusted the straps on her overworked bra. “Anyways, I went on down an’ hung around outside a Ed’s—you know I don’t be goin’ in there no more, ever since Leo made some crack about me goin’ into labor—an’ pretty soon Betsy comes out, so I ast her. She says Leroy come in an’ wants some beer an’ was walkin’ out ’thout payin’ for it like he owned the place; you know how Leroy is. Anyways, the dude stops him an’ tells him to pay for it. Leroy, he says, ‘Yeah, an’ who’s gonna make me pay? YOU?’” Charlene turned her head quickly to the side, presenting her left profile. “So this dude says, ‘I got friends.’” She twisted her head around the other way and put a tough expression on her face. “‘Yeah?’ says Leroy, ‘well I’d just as soon piss on your friends as look at ’em. An’ I’ma kick your ass.’ So the dude smiles at him”—Charlene smiled—“an’ says, ‘Okay, baby, but Gino ain’t gonna like that.’ Well, boys, when Leroy hears that he just turns around an’ hightails it outa here, only before he makes it to the door the dude tells him to pay for the beer. An’ Leroy done it. An’ the dude tells him to leave a tip. An’ Leroy done that, too. An’ that,” Charlene pronounced, “was that.”
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