The Black Mass of Brother Springer

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by Charles Willeford


  "No. Not really." I didn't lie to Dover. His flat blue eyes with their frank and piercing stare demanded the truth and nothing else.

  "I found that out when I read your novel. A clever little book. Why not? You're a well-read man, and the characters said brittle and clever things, the surface brilliance of a thousand books you've read, and not an original idea of your own on a single page. Cute situations, complications in the right places, and the inevitable straight romantic plot with the obvious ending. You don't know a damned thing about people, and even less about yourself."

  "I think you're being a little hard on my book, Abbott. It's only a first novel, and I had to start somewhere."

  "Right. It was your escape novel and it provides escape reading. Fifty paperbacks a week are published just like it, and probably for the same reason. But I'm not concerned with the novel's literary merits. Reading the book was an insight into your character. You had me fooled on the surface, and I made a mistake when I ordained you as a minister."

  Again, Abbott Dover took the Brown Mule plug out of his pocket. "I think I'll have a small chew, and then afterwards I can rinse my mouth out with a little water, and nobody'll know the difference." He bit off a good third of the plug, and chewed reflectively before he continued.

  "I'm the efficient type, Springer. But in your case I was in too much of a hurry. I should have waited and ordained one of the church members here instead of you. I'll tell you why. Religion is a funny thing. You can be too religious, and make your life miserable. A man who follows the Bible too closely begins to look on everything he does as a sin, and he's soon in a miserable state. At the other end, an atheist is too damned happy. In either case, the person gets along all right. But you're in that category which is the worst of all. You are groping, and so you pretend indifference. An indifferent minister is a sorry son-of-a-bitch. Not only is he unhappy; he makes everybody else unhappy."

  "Did your twenty years in the Army as an enlisted man qualify you as a cheap psychoanalyst?" I asked scornfully.

  "I apologize, Springer," Dover said sincerely. "I came here to thank you, and I start out by raking your personality over the coals."

  "Thank me? For what?"

  "For providing me with something I've never known. Love!" The Abbott's red face beamed, and he smiled broadly.

  "Love? Perhaps I'm clever, as you say, but—"

  "Never mind," Dover said,, "just sit there and drink your iced coffee. I'll explain. I like to talk. Perhaps you haven't noticed it, but I really like to talk."

  "I've noticed," I said.

  "What a man hasn't had he doesn't miss, and that goes for love too. Not that my years of professional soldiering were continent years. Continence is for the very very young and the very very old. But I never knew love, and I didn't allow myself to associate with the type of women I could fall in love with. I was afraid of love and didn't know it, both with my mind and body. My body grew this paunch of mine." Dover patted his round hard stomach fondly. "For more than ten years I've kept my head and eyebrows shaved. In order to love a man who looks like me a woman would have to work two shifts. My nose is too large, and my personality is overbearing. I know myself, Springer.

  "I ought to boot myself in the ass for not seeing it sooner!" He shook his shiny head and pursed his lips. "A man is nothing but a complex defense mechanism. As a substitute for love—I realize now that I had substitutes—I collected things. Things that couldn't love me in return. I started out with a rock collection. I could love the rocks, but they couldn't love me. I've got a footlocker in storage in Washington containing more than one hundred three-act plays with the first act ripped out and destroyed. Did you ever hear of a play collection like that?"

  "No, sir. Not like that."

  "Nobody else ever did either. A psychiatrist would love to get ahold of that one. He could write a paper on it. What I was doing, you see, was reading the plays by starting at the second act. If I refused to read the first act, I'd never know how a love affair started! A brilliant defense I devised in my subconscious. I've never seen the start of a movie either. I've always entered in the middle, and left before it began again. Once I kept a rattlesnake in a cardboard box as a pet. Kept the snake for over a year in my wall locker right in the barracks. I loved that snake, Springer, and I called him Mary Lou. But Mary Lou didn't love me."

  "This is all very interesting, Abbott, but what has it got to do with me?"

  "Because I met you, and because I sent you to Jax," Dover laughed, "I got your wife. Virginia and I have been shacked up for two days now, in my little cell in Orangeville!"

  This was a startling bit of information, and I couldn't think of a reply. Abbott Dover left the couch, went into the kitchen and got rid of his chew at the garbage can. He rinsed his mouth out with a glass of water at the sink before he returned to his seat.

  "I don't believe you," I said at last.

  "Take a look out the window." Dover shrugged indifferently.

  I slowly got out of the swivel chair and walked the three steps to the window, pulled the sleazy curtain to one side. Parked at the curb was the Abbott's black-and-white convertible Ford. The top was down, and my wife sat placidly in the right-hand seat, the sun glistening in her blonde hair. As I stared across the lot, I thought I saw a muscle move in her cheek. She was chewing gum, I suppose, and she stared straight ahead, patiently waiting. She could sit still for hours on her broad pedestal, and with the patience of Job. She had waited for me like that in Columbus, sitting in our car while I was on errands or shopping, for hours at a time.

  "You have a very voluptuous wife," Abbott Dover said pleasantly.

  "She's fat, if That's what you mean," I replied, returning to my seat in the swivel chair.

  "No, that isn't what I mean. You treated that fine girl mighty shabbily, Springer, but now that things have worked out the way they have, I'm mighty grateful to you. I'll never forget the sight of that chubby, pathetic figure when she climbed out of a truck at the monastery. She didn't have a penny to her name and she had hitchhiked all the way to Orangeville carrying a heavy suitcase, looking for you. That's how love begins, I discovered, with pity. As soon as you can feel sorry for someone other than yourself, you discover love."

  "I wired her a hundred dollars," I said.

  "When?"

  "Yesterday."

  "Too late, thank God!" Abbott Dover crossed himself, and smiled. "She's mine now, unless you want to fight me for her!" He got to his feet and flexed his arms. "And I hope you do. I'll break you in half; you raw-boned, no-good bastard!"

  "Take her," I said, "I don't give a damn! At your age, pity may be your notion of love, but I'm only thirty-two, and my idea of love is still sex."

  "Again you prove to me how little you know about people," the Abbott said grimly. "I've been in bed with a lot of women, Springer, but your wife is the only woman who truly gave herself to me. She has changed my entire life. I'd do anything to make her happy. I've got more than twenty-five thousand dollars saved and a pension coming in at one hundred fifty-six bucks a month for life. I told her this, and gave her a choice of where she wanted to live. She wants to live in Columbus, Ohio, and that's where we're going. If Columbus is only half as good as Virginia says it is, we'll be damned happy there."

  "It's the deadliest, dullest provincial city in the world," I said sincerely.

  "I feel sorry for you, Springer."

  "And I feel sorry for you, Dover."

  "Don't!" He shook his head and glared at me. "Before I met Virginia, you should have been sorry for me. I was all set to enter the Soldier's Home in Washington and rot away. I'm only forty-four, Springer, not an old man by any means. My entire life lies ahead, and now I've got a loving woman to share it with me. Thanks to you, you sorry bastard." Abbott Dover opened the front door, turned to make a final crack. "Look inside thyself."

  "Keep your cheap enlisted man philosophy to yourself!"

  I followed Abbott Dover onto the porch. He started briskly across
the lot and when he was half-way to his car I shouted after him: "Go with God!"

  My farewell shout halted Dover in his tracks. He turned completely around and hesitated for a couple of seconds. "Thanks, Reverend. I've got that coming!" He boomed cryptically.

  The Abbott climbed into the driver's seat, patted Virginia fondly on top of her blonde head, and drove away. Not once, and I watched closely, did Virginia look in my direction. I know she heard me shout at Dover, but she kept her eyes straight ahead, and she didn't even look back over her shoulder...I watched the convertible until it was out of sight.

  How did I feel? I had known my wife since high school days, and if I knew any person in the world, I knew Virginia. How could Virginia willingly engage in an illicit relationship with a clown like Abbott Dover? A man who resembled a parody of a television wrestler; a man with a nose like a potato, a shaved and shiny head, a big red face, and a round hard paunch...it didn't figure. I felt no poignant sense of loss, no pangs of regret to see her leave with the retired first sergeant. If she thought she would be happy with Dover in Columbus, more power to the old girl. My vanity wasn't hurt; I didn't have any vanity. Whatever had been between Virginia and me had fallen apart years ago, and maybe there had never been anything between us in the first place...I just didn't know. But I did think she could have taken a last look at me, a farewell look, out of curiosity if nothing else. A wave of the hand, maybe.

  I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  And here I was, standing idly on my front porch with the afternoon sun going down, when there were a million things I could be doing at the GHQ of the League For Love! I could draw up a list of demands to present to the Intertransit Omnibus Company. I could write an article on Bessie Langdale, about how she had inspired our boycott, and send it to all of the northern newspapers. I could get on the telephone and contact all of the white ministers in Jax, win them over, talk them into preaching sermons in favor of equality and justice. Certainly I should ask Dr. Heartwell to put me on the evening program; as yet, I hadn't delivered any great and inspiring speech. I would make notes at GHQ, and give a crackerjack pep talk tonight! To gain sympathy among the white people of Jax, I could write a proclamation, dig references out of the Bible to prove how God was in favor of the bus boycott, have the proclamation mimeographed, organize teams of volunteers into leg men and stuff a copy of the proclamation into every mailbox in Jax!

  I went into my bedroom, ripped off the sportshirt, and slipped into my dirty shirt with the backward collar. I donned my heavy, covert cloth coat. There was a great deal of power in this black uniform, and I could make my name ring throughout the United States. Maybe I could make a speech over one of the local television stations? As I marched down the sidewalk toward the Southern Baptists of Saint John Church, I made a mental note to check with Reverend Hutto on the cost of television time.

  At the motor pool I paused for a moment to watch the vehicles as they pulled out into the street and headed for downtown Jax. Most of them were empty, except for the drivers. They were leaving to pick up loads of working people who were through for the day. At the exit a harried dispatcher handed each driver a handwritten list of stops with the names of the passengers he was to pick up. Some of the volunteer drivers were unable to read and write and the dispatcher was practically foaming at the mouth. His voice was hoarse from repeating a thousand impatient instructions. Something else I could do. Work out a better dispatching system.

  As I entered the basement office, Dr. Heartwell called to me excitedly, and I joined him at his desk.

  "I think now," he said, "that we are getting someplace! I had a call a few minutes ago from the Intertransit Company representative. They want to talk." He glanced at a name on a piece of paper. "A Mr. Corwin. I was just about to send for you when you came in."

  "Did he sound serious or belligerent?"

  "Aloof." Dr. Heartwell mused. "Arrogant would describe him better. They won't talk to me or to all of us at once, but he said they'd be willing to discuss terms with you."

  "Have you or any of the other ministers drawn up a list of demands? I've been thinking about it, but That's as far as I got."

  "No. We should get on it right away. Things have been so hectic—"

  "All right, Dr. Heartwell. Is that the 'phone number there, on that slip of paper?"

  "Yes. He said for you to call him immediately."

  "While I call, round up the other members, and we'll meet in your office as soon as I've finished."

  Dr. Heartwell left his desk, beckoned to Reverend Hutto, and the two ministers left the office. I sat down at Heartwell's desk, picked up the telephone and dialed a familiar number.

  "Hello?" a voice answered. It was Eddie Price.

  "Mr. Price, this is Reverend Springer."

  "Oh. Just a minute, Reverend."

  I waited, and Mr. Corwin spoke into the telephone. His voice was smoothly apologetic. "I'm glad you called, Reverend Springer," he said. "And believe me, sir, I wouldn't blame you if you hadn't. That was a damned fool stunt we tried to pull on you, and we're both sorry. Hold the line a second."

  I held the line, and the next voice I heard was the fawning whine of Eddie Price.

  "I want to apologize, Reverend," Eddie said. "I got a lump on the back of my head the size of a turnip, but I had it coming to me, and I don't blame you a bit. You accepted our offer in good faith, and then we tried to pull a stinker on you. Please let bygones be bygones. I'm pretty sure we can work something out. Here's Mr. Corwin."

  "Eddie was sincere, Reverend. Both of us are," Mr. Corwin took over again. "I explained the situation to the Company, and they gave me the twelve hundred dollars. All we want to do is avoid trouble, and with the Citizen's Council behind us, volunteering to call on the niggers involved in the boycott, I believe we can end this thing amicably."

  "What do you want me to do, Mr. Corwin?" I asked.

  "Just give us the rosters as we discussed originally, and as soon as I get them you'll be given twelve hundred dollars in cash, and I guarantee you that your name will never be mentioned or connected with it."

  "Let me think about it," I hesitated.

  "Time is running out on this business," Mr. Corwin said seriously. "And really, there isn't too much to think about anyway, is there? You don't want to see anybody hurt, and as we see it, this is about the only way to stop the boycott peacefully."

  "I need a minute or two," I said. "Hold the 'phone till I light a cigarette." Before he could reply I put the telephone down on the desk.

  I lit a cigarette. The office was almost empty, except for a half-dozen men and women. Most of the volunteers were out eating supper. The place was a mess. No real organization. What did I owe these people, anyway? Nothing. Negative. I could stay and work my head off, and if we won, what would be in it for me? Nothing. There was money in the Atlanta Post Office, and it was waiting for me. All I had to do was pick it up. Twelve hundred more would round out the sum very nicely. And there was Merita. She was willing to go anywhere with me. All in all, I had an easy decision to make. I picked up the telephone.

  "Okay, Mr. Corwin," I said. "It's a deal. Where do you want me to meet you?"

  "Price's Garage. Same place. Can you get the rosters by—say eight o'clock?"

  "Easily."

  "We'll be waiting. Goodbye, Reverend." The telephone was racked at the other end. I replaced my receiver and walked down the corridor and up the stairs to Dr. Heart-well's little office.

  With the exception of the Right Reverend McCroy, who was still at home eating supper, the rest of the ministers of the League For Love were present in the office, all of them talking at once. Reverend Hutto had a tablet and pencil, and repeatedly interrupted the other two ministers, asking him to slow down. I listened silently for a moment, and then said: "Let me talk."

  Dr. Heartwell shushed Dr. David, and looked in my direction. "We will all talk, Reverend Springer," he said calmly, "but I certainly think that the issue of allowing our race to enter the
bus by the front door is an important point. Many times a Negro has paid his fare at the front door, stepped out to enter by the rear door, and then watched sadly as the driver pulled away leaving him standing there—"

  "Of course it's important, Dr. Heartwell. But everything about this bus riding business is important. I say, no concessions at all! Complete equality as far as the bus is concerned. Enter by the front entrance and take seats on a first in, first seated basis. The Negro population of Jax makes up to sixty percent of the business for the bus company. Let's not make any concessions at all. Complete equality, or we continue the boycott indefinitely."

  "You mean an unconditional surrender, then?" Dr. David asked in a dry, clipped voice.

  "Exactly."

  "I don't agree," Dr. Heartwell said solemnly. "If these representatives are willing to make bonafide concessions that will improve the service, I think we should consider them."

  "Are you an advocate of gradualism, Dr. Heartwell?" I sneered.

  "I don't favor gradualism, no, but we should bargain, because we aren't going to get everything we want. Even if the bus company is willing to concede to everything, there's a state law, and they can't do anything about that!"

  "They'd better!" I snapped. "In the long run we can win. I say we concede nothing. We have the upper hand. Let's keep it!"

  "He's right, of course, Heartwell," Dr. David said. "Why not try it? If things go badly against us later, then we can talk about concessions."

  "All right," Dr. Heartwell said wearily. "What time do you meet with the bus company representatives?"

  "Eight p.m."

  "It's in your hands then. We can at least find out what they're willing to offer, and tomorrow after a night's sleep, we'll all be able to consider the matter reasonably. We should have had our demands on paper already. But there's too much, too much. And we have the mass meeting tonight—"

  "I won't commit us to a thing," I said. "I'll just listen, and tell them our demand is complete equality. Agreed?"

  The ministers all agreed.

 

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