As much as Curtis liked Dave Whitmore, he didn’t want to hear his mini-sermons on prayer and basketball. If Curtis hadn’t known better, he would have sworn that Dave was sneaking over to Gran Gran’s house to meet with her prayer group. And he became particularly suspicious when Dave said, “What y’all don’t understand is that I answer to a higher authority than you brothers, the university I work for, SNAC, SNAC students, parents, alumni, and the NCAA. There is no way I want to be standing in front of the Lord trying to come up with an explanation as to why I did one of God’s little babies wrong. You all are not my motivation, Jesus is.”
Nobody messed with Dave Whitmore, on or off court. Because as Maurice once put it, “Who in their right mind would have the nerve to mess with a white boy running around talkin’ ’bout he got the Holy Ghost—not the Holy Spirit but the Holy Ghost. Y’all, that’s a dangerous white boy. ’Cause the Devil can’t bamboozle him with some craziness about the merits of being able to claim that your people came over here from Europe on some ships wearing brocade, velvet, leather, suede, and wool in ninety-degree weather.”
But just as the SNAC coaches understood and respected the decision to put Dave Whitmore in one of those coveted Southeastern Negro Athletic Conference head coaching spots, not a one could figure out why Sonny Todd was at Bouclair College. Rumor had it that Sonny Todd had something on Bouclair’s president. The gossip mill alleged that the president had been caught drunk, with a skank in his lap going through his pockets at one of those “boob and booty shacks” off Interstate 95 South going toward the South Carolina border by none other than Sonny Todd Kilpatrick.
If the story was true—and something in Curtis told him that it was—Sonny Todd stopped the attempted robbery, threw the president (who was a small and slender man) over his shoulder, took him back to his hotel, and figured out a good lie to tell the man’s wife. After that, there wasn’t anything Bouclair’s president couldn’t do for Sonny Todd, including hiring him as the new head coach for the basketball team.
There were several glaring problems accompanying this decision, however. First, Bouclair’s Athletic Department had just come up with a short list of three very good candidates for the job. Second, Sonny Todd had been fired without any warning from two previous coaching positions. One of those positions was at a tiny, conservative, all-white college that had never recruited more than six black players in its thirty-year history of having a basketball team.
Those white folk at that school could not stand Sonny Todd Kilpatrick—which was irony at its best, since Sonny Todd shared all the political, social, and cultural likes and dislikes of his colleagues on that campus. As the athletic director wrote in what was supposed to have been a letter of recommendation:
I have never come across an individual who for all practical purposes should have been a perfect fit at our esteemed institution of higher education. A problem that we have experienced on a consistent basis is the ability to recruit and retain faculty willing to live in our town, which is far from everything, except of course the local Wal-Mart. Furthermore, it has been a nightmare trying to find employees we believe would find themselves quite happy here.
Coach Kilpatrick did not experience any of these problems. We, however, were ridden with the problem of hiring a man that no one could stand to lay eyes on. In fact, our oldest staff member, seventy-six-year-old part-time secretary, Mary Elizabeth Tremonte, once confessed that she wished for the days when she still had cataracts so that she did not have to have a clear view of “that man.” Nobody liked this man. He was a mean, hateful, controlling, dishonest, lying, cheating scumbag.
I regret that I have had to put my professionalism on the shelf while writing this letter. But honestly, there isn’t anything other than what you are reading that I can say about this chap. Oh, yes, there is something else I can say—don’t hire him. I mean it. Do not hire this man. Because if you do hire him, you are a weak and spineless ninny who deserves everything he will do to you, your faculty and staff, and your players.
Unfortunately for Sonny Todd, Curtis knew that this letter was not a rumor or an urban myth concocted for the purposes of creating a chain e-mail to distribute among the man’s many enemies. Neither was this letter fabricated by a vicious and bitter ex-colleague. Curtis had received a copy of the letter from one of his old girlfriends and read it for himself shortly after its introduction to the search committee. He knew the athletic director of that school. While the man was on the tight side, he had integrity and wouldn’t have ever written such a thing unless he had had a horrible experience with Sonny Todd and didn’t want another athletic program to bear the burden of working with this man.
Everybody knew that you didn’t write bad things about people like Sonny Todd. Because he belonged to that group of folk who were mean and vindictive and loved to keep up some mess. But write the letter this gentleman did. And he got away with it, too. Sonny Todd never blinked an eye when confronted by Bouclair’s search committee over the content of the “recommendation.” He did, however, request a private meeting with the president in the presence of every member of that committee. The athletic director for Bouclair College described the committee meeting this way.
“I knew it was the beginning of the end for the basketball team. That trailer-park scum practically commanded the president to meet with him. And what did the president do? That negro upped and followed him like he was a crack ho going to get a hit.”
A few members of the search committee had tried to reason with the president when he came back from his meeting with Sonny Todd, dusted off an ancient bylaw that should have long since been stricken from the books, and announced that they were hiring the man as head coach of the basketball team. The folks in that meeting got hot, somebody jumped up and threatened to kick the president’s narrow behind, and a few threatened to resign. What began as a business meeting deteriorated into a hot ghetto mess with some trailer-park intrigue thrown in for good measure. But nothing mattered. Sonny Todd got the job and that was that.
When interviewed at a televised press conference about this unprecedented and controversial decision, all the president would say was that he wanted to win the conference title and get a shot at a place at the dance during the NCAA tournament. When asked if money was a factor, the president looked at his watch and announced that he was late for another meeting.
And now, thanks to an ill-advised administrative decision, SNAC had a white head coach who openly claimed that minimum wage was too high, accusations of racial profiling had been fabricated by blacks in gangs who were stopped by the police in the midst of committing a crime, the NBA needed to start checking SAT scores before signing on new players, Kobe and Shaq made too much money, and he was sick and tired of the jersey number 23.
Curtis pushed the playbook and the Bible aside. He needed to quit wasting his time, get up, get dressed, and head on over to the campus. If he got in early enough, he might be able to find enough of a peaceful moment to think on a strategy for beating Sonny Todd at his own game.
Regina rolled back over to face him. It was clear that she was now fully rested and game for anything he wanted to put on her. She sat up, making sure that both straps had fallen down around her shoulders.
Curtis paused for a moment and then changed his mind. He didn’t need that this morning—not from this woman. What he needed was to quit wasting his time, get up, get dressed, and go to work.
Regina smiled at him and then gave into a big, wide-mouth yawn. Curtis blinked back the tears from his now-watering eyes. It had been over a month since the girl had extended him an “invite.” But that yawn was as good a wake-up call as ever. He got up, hopped in the shower, dressed, and backed out of his garage without so much as a nod in Regina’s direction.
TEN
Curtis was glad he had gotten up and made it to his office before folks started arriving for the meeting. If he had not taken advantage of those few moments of peace and quiet, his day would have been shot. Because as soon as Curtis emerged
from his office and walked down the hall to the Athletic Center’s conference room, it was on.
Some of his colleagues acted just like the bratty players who had been the doo-doo on their high school teams, and who had to be checked and put in their place for the good of the whole team when they got to college. And a few of the brothers who had done a stint in the NBA, warming those pro benches and watching all the action from the sidelines, were the worst. This cohort forgot that as good as they had been in college they were not Iverson, Kobe, Shaq, Magic, Dr. J, Kareem, Jordan, Rodman, Latrell, Ben, the Mailman, and the baby boy LeBron James. Sometimes, the most arrogant ones acted like they had been solely responsible for schooling Michael Jordan on how to be like Mike.
And if that Sonny Todd Kilpatrick wasn’t a pain in the butt, Curtis didn’t know who was. Sonny Todd was bold, brazen, and derisive toward his colleagues until Maurice whispered, “Does he have some kind of brain malfunction going on here and doesn’t realize that this is 2009 and not 1809? He’s like, say, two centuries off.”
Several other coaches shared this sentiment, and were still in disbelief that a man like this had a head coaching position at a SNAC school. But these coaches didn’t need to spend any time trying to figure out why Sonny Todd Kilpatrick was at the helm of one of those prized and uncommon black head coaching spots. All they had to do was think green—not environmental green, money green.
Money was the sole reason for hiring Sonny Todd. Money the president of Bouclair College didn’t want to pay for the jams he stayed in. Money the president didn’t want to pay his wife if she got angry enough to bail out and jump ship from what had to have been a bad marriage due to his trips to scuzzy places located off the nearest exit on I-95 South. Money—lots of money—to be earned by Sonny Todd’s highly questionable coaching strategies for the school. Money, money, money, money—money. This was about money, pure and simple.
Sonny Todd had just finished giving a brief status report on his program. The other coaches were glad he was done, and hoped he would hurry up and shut up and sit down. But if Sonny Todd was anything, he was shrewd, crazy, and bold beyond belief. That fool knew his colleagues were sick of him, and he didn’t care that they were. Instead of sitting down, he decided to talk some more and started speaking about what he considered to be his best qualities.
He said, “I know how to win a game. I know how to pick and coach my players to a win. And I know where every single stripper shack is, up and down every North and South Carolina highway there is to know. And I know that if I catch you in one, and you know you’re not supposed to be there, you’ll wake up wishing I didn’t know. Because know this—I go to them all.”
Then he frowned and scratched at his head a moment.
“No, I take that back. I don’t go to them all. I don’t make it a habit of going to Rumpshakers Gentlemen’s Club here in Durham. Because I don’t know what you brothers find so appealing about that club.”
Almost every coach in that room shook his head. What in the world were they going to do with this white boy? With the exception of a handful of the coaches, they had been looking forward to going to Rumpshakers as soon as this meeting was over. In fact, most of the coaches at this meeting had come for the sole purpose of having an excuse to go to that club. Rumpshakers was the best strip club in the entire Triangle, and maybe the best in the state.
“And they charge an arm and a leg for admission,” Sonny Todd was saying, as his voice broke through the reverie of the men seated at that conference table.
“The drinks cost too much, they serve too much Hennessy and Crown and not enough Budweiser; I can count the long and leggy blondes with one finger and they are not even white; and the dancers they do hire have behinds that have too much volume, wiggle, and bounce for my personal taste. Plus, those are some of the snootiest strippers I’ve ever come across. One actually turned up her nose at me and gave me my money back the last time I was there. Now how is that for service?”
Curtis stood up abruptly and said, “I think we’ve covered everything. Anybody have something they need to share before we dismiss?”
“Naw,” several coaches said, and got up, with the rest of their colleagues following suit.
Curtis tried not to sigh with relief but couldn’t help it. One more moment of listening to Sonny Todd and he would have hauled off and pimp-slapped that joker in front of all of the other SNAC coaches.
Maurice and Dave Whitmore went and shook hands with the rest of the visiting coaches, acting as if they didn’t see Sonny Todd, and left to join Reverend Quincey and Reverend Flowers for lunch at the Chop House Restaurant in Cary. The last thing they wanted was to be around a bunch of loud-talking, drunk and tipsy athletes at a boob-and-booty bar.
Maurice and Dave made eye contact—they were going to lift Curtis up in prayer on the way to lunch. He didn’t have any business going to Rumpshakers. Some places, no matter how enticing and popular, were not places folk needed to go to. It reeked of the world. And as much as someone would want Rumpshakers to be good, clean fun with just a taste of naughty thrown in—it was anything but that.
The other coaches followed Curtis out to the parking lot.
Curtis found it curious, when he peeled out of the parking lot in his prized silver Escalade EXT truck, that Sonny Todd was hot on his heels. He checked the rearview mirror and saw Sonny Todd hopping into his white Lexus sedan, starting that car up, and burning some very expensive tire rubber as he broke the campus speed limit to make sure he didn’t get separated from the rest of the coaches.
Curtis turned on the radio and hiked up the volume when an old school joint, “Low,” blasted out on 97.5. His favorite hip-hop station DJ, Brian Dawson, was on the air. When in a mellow, old school mood, Curtis favored Cy Young of Foxy 107. And when in need of some good gospel on The Light, who could resist the big voice of Melissa Wade, or her colleague Michael Reese, who made sure that every listener in the Triangle heard “I love you” at least once a day?
That “Apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur” was sounding good as Curtis steered his car through the traffic on Highway 55, heading east. Rumpshakers, and the over-thirty black nightclub, The Place to Be, were both off 55. Whereas you could see The Place to Be from the street, Rumpshakers was nestled in an inconspicuous and very woodsy spot down in the cut, off of a side street that intersected with another street off 55. Rumpshakers was near to impossible to find if you did not have specific directions. Map-Quest couldn’t help you find this place, either. Folks often joked and said that the only way a negro could roll up on Rumpshakers was with Blackquest.
Curtis turned onto the narrow gravel road, and drove a fifth of a mile to reach the Rumpshakers building. He hated having to drive on gravel for that length of time but understood why Charles Robinson left this section of the road unpaved. It was a deterrent to folks who didn’t need to be there. Black folk in Durham (or most folk period, for that matter) were not prone to wandering down a dirt and gravel road out in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere. A lot of folk never made it to Rumpshakers because they got tired of looking for it. And for a few, they found the road but just couldn’t believe that a black establishment was situated in this location.
One brother, who found the club out of sheer stubborn determination, said, “Man, the first time I rolled up on Rumpshakers, I got to wondering if I’d taken the wrong turn to the Deliverance movie people’s house. I kept hearing that banjo music playing ‘do-do-do-dooo-do-do-do, do-do-do-do-dooooo-do’ in my head. Then I kept looking around making sure that a bro wasn’t about to get axed or shot, or shot or axed.”
The one group the dirt and gravel road and obscure location held absolutely no deterring factors for was the wives, fiancées, and girlfriends of some of the patrons. An angry sister, whose man had been lying to and mistreating her, was more dangerous to a brother than CSI could ever be to a criminal. They could find information that an unsuspecting brother just knew was hidden and protected.
Charles d
idn’t know how they did it, but those women would find out that the man was lying and cheating, and then go and find that man at Rumpshakers. About the only thing they hadn’t found to date was how to get past the ultra-tight security system. And those praying sisters were the most dangerous because they had some serious backup from above. Charles always told folk that he didn’t mess with those women. When they showed up, he went and got their man, escorted him out to the parking lot, and left him to her, her mama, her auntie, her sisters, her missionary group, her choir members, and on occasion her first lady and pastor.
Rumpshakers was always a surprise for first-time patrons. The SNAC coaches filing out of those fancy, university-leased cars were no exception. Most first-timers held the expectation that the club would be housed in some kind of 1920s-styled Southern mansion with roses, azalea bushes, and dogwood trees abounding everywhere. Or they thought it would be a restored warehouse with steel beams in the ceilings, old-fashioned plank-style wooden floors, and a few large industrial windows that had been allowed to accumulate dust and soot for privacy and effect.
It was quite natural for folks to presume that a business like Rumpshakers would be housed in a dwelling of that nature. Just about every TV and book brothel and strip club worth its salt was set in such an environment. But Charles wasn’t having any of that nostalgic nonsense creating the ambience for his club. Rumpshakers catered to a sophisticated twenty-first-century clientele. Charles Robinson was way too cosmopolitan and crunked to try and run a hip-hop gentlemen’s club in a setting that was so outdated and cliché.
Rumpshakers was a three-million-dollar, expansive pale yellow brick ranch that was set in the middle of nine acres of scenic, woodsy land. There was not one rose in sight—especially in the midst of the beautiful sunflowers and colorful daisies and foliage. This was the kind of playah’s house that could easily qualify for a spot on an episode of MTV Cribs.
Up at the College Page 12