South Street

by David Bradley

  “Maybe I’m tired all the sudden a lookin’ at this goddamn mess every goddamn time I come home.” Rayburn waved a hand toward the tower of greasy plates rearing up out of the sink, the coating of blackened grease on the stove.

  “Well maybe that’s just too goddamn bad. You so fussy, why don’t you clean it?”

  “I do clean it, an’ you dirties it, an’ maybe I’m just gettin’ sick a all that. Maybe I’m thinkin’ I oughta get the hell out an’ leave you right here with it.” He turned his back on her, fixed his eyes on a brownish stain above the sink where a hapless cockroach had long before met his end. “There’s plenty a women in this city. Plenty.”

  “Then why don’t you go get you one? Huh, baby? Why don’t you go on an’ get you one?”

  “I don’t know,” Rayburn mumbled. “I’ll be damned if I know.”

  “You know. You know all right.”

  “’Cause I’m a damn fool, that’s why.”

  “That ain’t why,” she said, and he had felt her move closer to him, place her hands, cool, against his neck, had felt his blood begin to pound. He fought her. He had moved away, pressed himself tight against the edge of the sink until the hard edge of the white porcelain had cut into his belly. “That ain’t why,” she repeated, pursuing him, insinuating her body against him, pushing, pressing. Rayburn had felt her breasts against the back of his sweat-soggy shirt, feeling, or imagining he felt, the hardening of her nipples. He had tried to keep himself cold, thinking of mountain streams and ice, but he felt her cheek against his shoulder and her hands, one slipping between the buttons of his shirt, the other fumbling at his belt buckle and, finding the edge of the sink a barrier, moving around and down. “That ain’t why.” Rayburn had gritted his teeth, stiffened his spine, had tried to push away, but the hands, slow-moving, gentle hands, had stayed. In spite of himself he moved away from the cover of the sink, and her other hand, swift as a snake, captured his belt, slipped inside his pants, and began to fondle him, squeezing him tightly, too tightly. Slowly, hating himself, he had turned and gathered her to him. She undid his fly, guided him. Rayburn clutched the back of her thighs, raised her, brought her savagely downward, feeling her panties rip and part before him. She moaned and wriggled like a speared fish, hurting him, but he had felt the molten juices flow, near to boiling, near to eruption, and he had held on looking down into the glowing hot darkness, and then he did boil, and burst, and subside, lowering her, gasping. Her feet found the floor. He felt warm peace roll over him while her head lay against his chest, while his eyes gazed unfocused at the water-stained ceiling, while he knew that this time, by God, there was no smile on her face. The sound of honking horns had reached his ears. He felt himself slick from her juices and his own, felt her warmth and weight against him, felt a little bit triumphant, a little smug. And then he had felt the movement, tiny, like a scurrying bug, and had looked down to see her jaws working on the wad of gum. Rayburn put his tools away and left the bank.

  The night was getting cooler. The furnace breath of noon was now a baby’s sneeze, feeling almost cool as it brushed across his sweat-damp skin. He moved quickly, straight down Seventeenth Street and along South, climbing the stairs, turning the key. Leslie was not there. He shucked his clothes, stepped beneath the shower, washing himself roughly, forcing the soap to lather in the cold water. His body felt slimy and weak; he scrubbed it.

  He dried himself with an almost-clean towel that he found only after a considerable search. He dressed in clean underwear, slacks, a brand-new white shirt that someone had given him for Christmas years before. He stepped out on the street.

  He could not bring himself to enter any of his favorite bars; Lightnin’ Ed’s, Dick Bell’s, The Reynold’s Rap, all were full of familiar people who knew him, knew his story. He turned north, toward Center City, moved away from the dim lights and the jukeboxed soul, his footfalls echoing in the redbricked, treelined respectability of Pine Street. He wandered back to the Square, dodged the hippies, dodged the traffic on Walnut Street as he crossed against the light. A taxi driver honked his horn; Rayburn indolently gave him the finger and walked on. In the next side street, nestled between an underground theater and an expensive boutique, he found what he had been looking for.

  Rayburn stepped into the bar. His eyes, adjusting slowly to the darkness, saw forms and faces arrayed along an oval bar, seated at small tables beyond a wall of greenery. The forms were indistinct. The faces were white, every single one of them, and Rayburn felt a beautiful feeling of alienness steal over him, filling him with a sudden sense of power. He swaggered over to the bar and took a stool, pleased at the slightly increased volume in the hum of conversation that he imagined had followed his entrance. The bartender, short, swarthy, came over and asked Rayburn what he wanted, betraying a reluctance that made Rayburn feel even stronger. They didn’t want him here, and that made him feel comfortable. They were a little afraid of him, and that made him feel powerful. They didn’t know his name or his face or his friends or his life, and they never would. He was alone and free.

  “Scotch,” Rayburn said. “On the rocks.”

  “What brand?” said the bartender.

  Rayburn shrugged expansively. The bartender gave him a professional smile and poured him a generous slug of the cheap stuff. Rayburn laid a dollar bill on the bar. The bartender took it away. Rayburn waited for his change, then he looked up and saw the $1.00 showing in the window of the cash register. He forced himself to shrug, sip the drink, look around. A flat-faced man at the bar looked at him with an expression of disgust and indignation on his face. He got up and moved. Rayburn sniffed and finished his scotch. He laid a five on the bar and waited patiently until the bartender filled his glass again. Four ones replaced the five. Looking at the bills lying ungathered on the bar, Rayburn began to feel rich and important. He leaned back in the padded bar chair and surveyed the place as if he owned it.

  In the dining area on the other side of the jungly divider, a plump, dark-haired waitress scurried back and forth. The side of her face was heavily made-up, almost, but not quite, enough to conceal a set of dark bruises. Rayburn wondered what they could be from. He thought of Leslie. He drained his drink. The bartender refilled his glass and took a bill away. A paunchy man with thinning black hair greased and sticking to the top of his head emerged from the dining room and came toward Rayburn. Rayburn watched him, his eyes small and tight.

  “Howya doin’?”

  “Just fine,” said Rayburn.

  “Ain’t seen you in here before.”

  “Ain’t never been here before,” Rayburn said.

  “Hey, that’s fine. You come back. Glad ta see ya.” He patted Rayburn on the arm. “I always like to get to know my customers. I’m Frankie.”

  “Rayburn,” Rayburn said.

  “Okay, Rayburn. Everything okay?”

  “Sure is,” Rayburn said. “An’ gettin’ better.” ‘Better’ was three miniskirted girls. Frankie smiled mirthlessly and faded away. Rayburn looked at the girls. One of them saw him, smiled. She looked old. Rayburn looked away.

  The flat-faced man leaned over. “Crow bait,” he said.

  “No shit,” said Rayburn. He drank in silence. There were two bills in front of him.

  He drank too quickly. He put up another five, watched it explode to four ones before shrinking—four, three, two. Time dragged, and Rayburn floated, wafted back and forth by the sound of voices with white overtones, laved by the alien rhythms of Sinatra and Bacharach and Martin that flowed from the jukebox. He realized that he was drunk, smiled, and drank on, pausing only for brief guttural comments to the flat-faced man and sojourns in the men’s room that became longer and longer. People came and went, drifting through his sight in a parade of pale ghost-faces. All his feeling lodged in his arm and his lips and his throat and his bladder; the rest of him was numb and paralyzed. And then one face floating by stopped and held, rose out of the fog toward him, but not all the way; Rayburn dropped lower, to meet it in th
e middle ground of murkiness.

  “Hi,” she said. White face. Tight curls, blond, from a bottle. Body plump, breasts huge, tight red pants on surprisingly thin hips. Buttocks sagging from lack of muscle tone. “Can I buy you a drink?” Rayburn nodded drunkenly, raised his glass.

  He stood before the jukebox, staring down at the titles glowing in the darkness. His eyes did not want to focus. No James Brown. No Smokey. No Mayfield. No Hayes. Al Martino and Dinah Shore. “Les dance,” Rayburn mumbled, “les dance to goddamn muthafuckin’ Dinah bitch Shore.” She wouldn’t dance—no one danced there—but she bought him another drink and told him he was beautiful. “Shit,” Rayburn said, thinking what a fine piece of ass it was. Then he looked at her, in a moment of relative clarity, realized it was not a fine piece of ass. Not at all. But it would do. He raised his glass. She smiled and drank imported beer, watching him with flat gray eyes. Rayburn rose and stumbled to the men’s room, inserted a quarter in the vending machine, chuckling to himself. He slipped the prophylactic into his pocket. In a flash of confidence he bought two more. It was his last quarter. When he got back she took his arm and led him gently out the door.

  They stepped into a darkened alley that whispered of ancient sin. He clung to the side of a building, and she held him—looking up, she drew his head down, pressed his thick lips against the red lines of lipstick penciled on her face. Rayburn thrust his tongue between her teeth, felt her mouth open and her tongue strike swiftly at him like a frozen needle. He ground his hands into her soft, low-slung breasts.

  Her car was powerful, big, air-conditioned, wired for sound, and she wove it expertly through the sparse traffic: up Walnut Street and across the river, into an underground lot beneath a tall apartment house. She got out. Rayburn got out too and stood beside the car, his back pressed tight against the metal. She stood in front of him, coyly smiling. Rayburn pulled her against him and held her, feeling her soft breasts flattening out against his chest, thinking how far from South Street she was, how far she made him. She giggled, took his hand, and pulled him after her toward an elevator. The machine lifted them upward into the sky. The doors opened. She led him down a carpeted hallway, opened a locked door, pulled him in. She slammed the door, set the night latch, hooked the chain, leaned back against the door, and began to tug unceremoniously at his clothing.

  “My husband is away,” she said. “On business.”

  Brother Fletcher could not sleep. He tossed and turned. He twisted. He kicked the sheet off, and then he forced himself to lie quietly and breathe slowly and evenly, and to listen to Mrs. Fletcher’s hearty, untroubled snores. He closed his eyes and numbered the sheep that, in his mind’s eye, leaped over a section of rail fence. Brother Fletcher wondered why all sheep followed along and jumped over the fence when it would have been far easier to walk around it. Brother Fletcher’s mind drifted off into speculation concerning the psychology of sheep; predictably, he lost count, and one unfortunate sheep vanished in mid-air above the fence as Brother Fletcher gave up and opened his eyes. Sleep was beyond him, he decided, and rather than disturb Mrs. Fletcher with his gyrations he would get out of bed. Slowly and carefully, so as not to make the mattress creak, he swung his feet to the floor. He slipped his robe over his bony shoulders and tiptoed quietly to the door. He grasped the doorknob firmly, clenching his teeth in expectation of the squeak that was sure to come no matter how careful he was. The door slipped open noiselessly. Brother Fletcher took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and stepped soundlessly through. Beyond the door he relaxed, letting the air out of his lungs. All he had to do now was to avoid the squeaky board halfway down the hall. He congratulated himself on his previously unsuspected capacity for stealth and prepared himself for the running of the final gauntlet.

  He took a deep, careful, silent breath.

  “Fletch, what are you doin’ up?”

  “The Devil,” muttered Brother Fletcher. “Nothing.”

  He heard the mattress creak, and an instant later Mrs. Fletcher appeared in the doorway. “What is it?”

  “Nothing, I told you,” snapped Brother Fletcher.

  “All right,” said Mrs. Fletcher. “You been awake an’ tossin’ all night long ’count a nothin’, an’ now you’re sneakin’ around in the middle of the night ’count a nothin’. Fine with me. Only you tiptoe like an elephant.”

  Brother Fletcher sighed. “All right. Something is wrong. But I don’t know what it is.”

  “I do,” said Mrs. Fletcher. “You want some coffee?”

  “It’ll keep me awake,” Brother Fletcher said automatically. Mrs. Fletcher shot him an amused look, and he dropped his eyes and grinned sheepishly. Mrs. Fletcher finished putting on her bathrobe, and Brother Fletcher followed her into the kitchen, sinking down onto a chair and watching while she prepared the coffeepot. “All right,” he said. “What is it?”

  “It’s that Sloan,” said Mrs. Fletcher promptly, making it sound like the name of one of Satan’s chief lieutenants.

  “Oh, Harriette, he’s not that bad.”

  “He’s bad enough to keep you up at night.” Mrs. Fletcher placed the coffeepot on the stove and sat down across from him. “I know what I think of him. And I know what you think of him. Do you?”

  “All right,” he said, “but that’s been bothering me for a long time. Why is it so—bad right now?”

  “Maybe it’s time you left.”

  “And go where? Do what?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes it does,” he said. “I’m a preacher. I can’t preach without a church. And I can’t do anything else besides preach. So if I leave The Word of Life, we starve.”

  “We’ve starved before,” said Mrs. Fletcher shortly.

  Brother Fletcher’s jaw tightened. “Well we’re not going to starve any more. We’re not starving now.”

  “You ain’t sleepin’ now either,” Mrs. Fletcher observed. She got up and took down two cups and poured coffee into them. She added cream and sugar to one cup, skimmed milk to the other, and gave the first cup to Brother Fletcher. He sipped at it.

  “OW!”

  “It’s hot,” said Mrs. Fletcher.

  “Thanks,” said Brother Fletcher drily.

  “Fletch?”

  “Umhum?” said Brother Fletcher, sucking at his scalded tongue.

  “You ever think maybe you oughta start your own church?” Brother Fletcher was silent. “Fletch?”

  “I was just thinking,” Brother Fletcher said slowly. “Yes, I had … no. No, I never thought about it really. I couldn’t have, because I just started thinking about what a church really is. Do you know what I mean?” He looked at Mrs. Fletcher, who nodded wisely, although she didn’t have the slightest idea of what Brother Fletcher was getting at. “I mean,” Brother Fletcher went on, “I always thought about a church as a place where people went and prayed and sang. …”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Well, yes. But is that all?”

  “You want some more coffee?” said Mrs. Fletcher.

  “For God’s sake! Don’t you understand what—no, of course you don’t. I haven’t told you.”

  “Told me what?”

  Brother Fletcher took a deep breath. “Suppose I told you about a place where people could go and just sit and talk to other people, and where everyone was welcome. They didn’t pray and they didn’t preach, and nobody tried to tell anybody else who God was and what He looked like and what He wanted. They just went there and … were there. Suppose I told you about a place like that? Wouldn’t you call that a church?”

  “Either that or a …” Mrs. Fletcher began, but then she caught the seriousness of Brother Fletcher’s expression, stopped, and sighed. “I don’t know nothin’ ’bout what a church is supposed to be, or what it’s supposed to do. But I do know about that Sloan, an’ if he’s workin’ for the Lord I’ma pay the trashman to haul my soul away. An’ if you want to sit in an alley and call it a church, go ahead. It won’t make no difference, because good
’s good an’ bad is bad, an’ that Sloan is bad.”

  “I never had any problems with good and bad,” Brother Fletcher said. “It was right and wrong I never quite figured out.”

  Mrs. Fletcher looked at him closely, decided he was joking. She got up and took the cups over to the stove and poured more coffee. She stirred slowly, then stood still for-a few moments. “Fletch?” she said suddenly, “what about the …” She stopped.

  “What about what?”

  Mrs. Fletcher hesitated. “Well … just sometimes I think maybe you should push that Sloan around a little. I mean, tonight, nobody was interested in his foolishness, they—”

  “They were interested in a circus,” snapped Brother Fletcher.

  “I’m not talkin’ about folks like that simple-minded Fundidia—”

  “Tut, tut, tut,” said Brother Fletcher.

  “Tut, tut, tut, yourself,” snapped Mrs. Fletcher. “Fundidia ain’t got the brains she was born with. I’m talkin’ about people like Lavernia Thompson. That old lady ain’t got nothin’ in the world but that church, an’ that Sloan is fixin’ to run it right out from under her.”

  “But what can I do?” mused Brother Fletcher, half to himself.

  “I know what I’d do,” said Mrs. Fletcher. “I’d hit him upside the head with a fryin’ pan.”

  “The meek shall inherit the earth,” said Brother Fletcher.

  “If there’s anything left,” countered Mrs. Fletcher.

  “Maybe,” said Brother Fletcher. “But I guess I can’t do anything without feeling I’m doing it for someone besides myself. Suppose I could do something about Sloan. If I did it just because of something I wanted, I’d be just the same as Sloan.” Brother Fletcher shook his head. “No, if God wants The Word of Life to change, he’ll have to give me a better reason than my suspicions.”

  “Do it for Lavernia.”