“For the library?” I asked.
“It wasn’t the real library, the one downtown,” she said. “Illium, he was like your uncle. He wanted to do good by folks, so he got this bus… or what do they call them now?”
“Van?” I asked.
“That’s it,” she said. “He had him a van fixed up with his own books, and he went around and loaned books here in the East Side, like a library. I never did take none of ’em, ten year ago I quit reading anything ’sides the good book since I couldn’t get around good enough to go to church. I figured God would let me slide on that, I kept knowledge of His word. But I thought Illium was a good man. Sometimes your uncle helped him out, rode around with him.”
“Can you tell us where this church is where Illium works?” Leonard asked.
“I can,” MeMaw said. “But first, Lenny, you go over there and open that cabinet.”
Leonard went over to the cabinet she was indicating with a cadaverous finger and opened it. There was a snapshot camera inside.
“Bring me that camera,” she said.
Leonard did.
MeMaw looked at me, said, “What’s your name now, son?”
“Hap Collins,” I said.
“Hap, you and Lenny sit together at the table.”
We sat and pulled our chairs close and leaned our heads together.
“Ya’ll’d make good salt and pepper shakers,” she said, raised the camera to her face, grinned, said, “Now, boys, say cheese.”
15.
“Do you remember seeing Illium at the funeral?” I asked.
“No,” Leonard said, “but I wasn’t looking for him. He could have been there.”
“I don’t think so, and if he and your uncle were as close as MeMaw claims, he oughta been, don’t you think?”
I shifted gears on my old Dodge pickup and we climbed a hill full of potholes and crumbling slabs of weather-heaved blacktop. The sun was near midsky, and it shone on the faded gray hood of my truck and made me squint, and the hot wind blowing through the open windows made me sweat as if I were in a sauna. I reminded myself that in another couple of hours it would really be hot.
I had brought my truck back with me when we returned to Uncle Chester’s house from our three days in the country, and I was glad to have it, old and uncomfortable as it was. When I first moved in with Leonard, he had picked me up and brought me here and left my truck back home because it was giving me trouble. Turned out the trouble was burned-out rings and cheap gas and no money to fix it.
But on our return to Uncle Chester’s, Leonard needed a way to haul lumber, so he paid for me to get a ring job and real gas. Now, I was no longer polluting half of East Texas, and felt better about that, and without my telltale cloud of black smoke following me I was less embarrassed to be seen driving it.
We were following MeMaw’s directions, looking for the First Primitive Baptist Church, and along the way I got a good look at the East Section, saw parts of it I had never seen before, realized just how truly isolated I was from the way of life here. Along with decent houses, there were houses next to them without electric wires, houses broke down and sagging, their sides actually held up with posts, and out back were outdoor toilets and rusted-out appliances in which garbage had been burned and not collected because the garbage trucks didn’t always come down here.
Black children with blacker eyes wearing dirty clothes sat in yards of sun-bleached sand and struggling grass burrs and looked at us without enthusiasm as we drove past.
It was near midday and grown men of working ages were wandering the streets like dogs looking for bones, and some congregated at storefronts and looked lonesome and hopeless and watched with the same lack of enthusiasm as the children as we drove past.
“Man, I hate seeing that,” Leonard said. “You’d think some of these sonofabitches would want to work.”
“You got to have jobs to work,” I said.
“You got to want jobs too,” Leonard said.
“You saying they don’t?”
“I’m saying too many of them don’t. Whitey still has them on his farm, only they ain’t doing nothing there and they’re getting tidbits tossed to them like dogs, and they take it and keep on keeping on and wanting Whitey to do more.”
“Maybe Whitey owes them.”
“Maybe he does, but you can be a cur or you get up off your ass and start seeing yourself as a person instead of an underdog that’s got to take those scraps. I’ve always worked, Hap. Be it in the rose fields or as a handyman laborer or raising hunting dogs, and you ain’t never known me to take handout checks because I’m black, and my uncle didn’t either.”
“Most of the people taking handout checks are white, Leonard.”
“That’s true, and I ain’t got nothing for those sonofabitches either. Unless you can’t walk or you’re in temporary straits, there ain’t no excuse for it.”
“One minute it’s things are bad here because it’s the black section of town, and next time you open your mouth you’re saying it’s the blacks’ fault. You can’t have it both ways.”
“Yes, you can. Ain’t nothing one way, Hap. Everything’s got two sides and sometimes the same problem’s got two different answers. It’s the ambition and pride these folks are missing. They don’t want nothing but to exist. They think God owes ’em a living.”
“And some of them just haven’t got jobs, Leonard, and it’s as simple as that.”
“Some of them,” Leonard said. “Some gonna tell you too they got to sell drugs to survive ’cause things are bad, and I say you can rationalize anything. ‘I got to sell drugs, I got to sell myself, I got to eat shit with flies on it.’ You don’t got to do nothin’ like that. You grew up poor, Hap. You ever want to sell drugs or hire out to get your dick sucked or maybe lay back and take a check?”
“Government could mail me a check, they wanted to. But I’d want someone to go out to the mailbox and bring it to me. Maybe getting my dick sucked wouldn’t be so bad either, especially someone wanted to pay me for it.”
“Bullshit. I know you. You got pride.”
“Not everyone has had the chance to have pride, Captain Know-It-All. You don’t come with it built in. Like new cars, there are some options got to be installed.”
“Yeah, but there’s them that go out and get the options, use their own tools to put them in. Like your dad and my uncle. From what you’ve told me, your dad didn’t have it so easy.”
He hadn’t. His mother had died when he was eight, and his father had put him to work in the cottonfields, and when Dad didn’t pick the same cotton as a grown man, his father had put the horsewhip to him. I remember as a child seeing my father without his shirt, lying on the floor in front of the TV after a hard day’s work at his garage, and there were thin white lines across his back, scars from the whip. My father could neither read nor write. He never missed a day’s work. He never complained. He died with mechanic’s grease on his face and hands. I’m glad I never met my grandfather. I’m glad he was dead before I was born.
“I had advantages still, Leonard. I’m white. Even the worst of the whites, the white trash, have had it better than minorities.”
“Minorities are one thing. Choice is another. Check and see how many Orientals are on the welfare rolls. You ain’t gonna find many.”
“Check and see how many of those Orientals have ancestors were owned by white folks and sold on slave blocks. Frankly, Leonard, I think a Bible quotation is in order here. ‘Judge not least ye be judged.’ That’s close, anyway.”
“Yeah, well, I got one too. ‘Decide to be a fuckup, you’re gonna be a fuckup.’”
“What bible’s that in?”
“Leonard’s Bible.”
I shut my mouth and brooded. There was some truth in what Leonard said, but ultimately, in my mind, there’s no one more obnoxious and self-righteous than the self-made man. And no one more admirable.
Leonard told me to take a right and I did and we rolled off the ravaged b
lacktop and onto a smooth cement street with beautiful sweet gum trees and broad-limbed pecans skirting it on either side. The sunlight made bruise-blue shadows out of the trees and laid them on the street and behind the trees on either side were nice, inexpensive houses with clean side-walks leading up to them.
Leonard looked at the house and said, “See, ain’t everybody down here got to live in the garbage and walk the streets.”
“They got jobs, Leonard.”
“My point exactly.”
“Remind me to kill you in your sleep,” I said.
Soon the street gave up its trees, and there was just the blistering sunlight and on the right a couple acres of land and on it a parking lot and a whitewash church with a plain black-and-white sign out front that read FIRST PRIMITIVE BAPTIST CHURCH. REVEREND HAMIL FITZGERALD OFFICIATING.
Behind the church was a simple blue frame house with a well-tended lawn with a sprinkler spitting on it and onto a number of circular, brick-enclosed flower beds. In the driveway was a recently washed last year’s blue Chevy and parked nearby was a small blue-and-white bus with FIRST PRIMITIVE BAPTIST CHURCH painted on the side. The bus looked fairly old, and a few of the back windows had been replaced with plyboard. I figured if you scratched the blue-and-white paint deep enough, you’d find a yellow school bus underneath – one of those they used to call the short bus, the one the retarded kids rode to school.
I pulled up in the lot and parked.
Leonard said, “I see a church and I get to thinking how black folks are mostly taught how to accept their misery through God. It pisses me off.”
I didn’t say anything. We got out of the truck and Leonard looked at the church sign, said, “Never can figure that ‘Primitive’ part out. What’s that mean? Everybody carries spears?”
“Leonard,” I said. “You got a bad attitude. We find the Reverend, maybe I ought to do the talking.”
“A white guy?” Leonard said. “I don’t think so. Trust me, I know how to warm a guy like the Reverend up. I grew up here, remember. I can play the game, I have to.”
We walked alongside the church and on toward the house out back. Back of the church was green grass and a playground that broke into the side yard of the house. The air smelled like mowed grass and floral perfume.
We could hear a sound coming from the back of the church, a thumping sound, so we stopped to listen to it and to the sound of the sprinkler sputtering, and within seconds we both knew what the thumping sound was because we had both made that sound before.
It was the sound of fists striking a speed bag, quick and rhythmic, sweet and sure.
16.
The sound came from an elongated, low-roofed addition to the back of the church, and from where we now stood, we could see the church was much larger than it appeared from the street. We walked toward the sound.
The back door was propped open, and we went in and down the hall, following our ears. We came to a closed door on the right, and the sound came from behind it. I opened the door and looked inside and felt the air-conditioning and liked it.
It was a small but nice gymnasium. The floor was smooth and shiny and there was a basketball goal at one end, and against one wall some pull-out bleachers. In a corner of the gym was a speed-bag prop, and striking the bag was a bare-to-the-waist black man wearing blue jogging pants and black boxing shoes. He was fortyish, about five-ten with thick shoulders and sweaty skin and close-cropped graying hair. He looked strong, if a bit thick in the middle, but the middle was solid as a truck tire, and the muscles in his arms and chest coiled and released as he hit. He moved quickly and expertly and the bag sang to him as he did.
We stood there for a moment, watching him work, admiring it, then he paused for a moment, caught the bag with one hand, blew out some air, turned his head and saw us.
“I do something for you gentlemen?” he asked, and started slipping off the bag gloves.
We walked over to him and he tossed the gloves aside and we shook hands and introduced ourselves. He turned out to be the Reverend Fitzgerald, his own sweet self.
“You look pretty good,” I said.
“Golden Gloves when I was a kid,” he said, but not to me. He was studying Leonard. “I teach some of the neighborhood boys. I know you?” he asked Leonard.
“I don’t think so,” Leonard said.
“Mr. Fitzgerald,” I said. “We’re looking for a man we’ve been told works here. Illium Moon.”
“Illium?” he said. He used his hands to wipe sweat from his chest, then wiped his hands on his pants. “Haven’t seen him in days. Does a bit of handy work around here now and then. He’s retired, so he doesn’t want anything steady. Sort of chooses his own hours. I pay him a little. He helps run some of the children’s programs from time to time. Assistant-coaches volleyball and baseball.”
“Drives a bookmobile too,” I said.
“That’s right,” he said. “But not for the church. That’s his own project. He’s got all manner of projects.”
“When did you see him last?” Leonard asked.
“I don’t know,” Fitzgerald said. “Week or two ago. You men don’t look like cops.”
“Aren’t,” I said. “We just need to find him on a personal matter.”
“Serious?” Fitzgerald asked.
“He was a friend of Leonard’s uncle. We’d just like to talk to him. Know where he lives?”
“Out in the country. Somewhere off Calachase Road. To be honest, I’m not entirely certain. Here, let’s step into my office.”
We followed Fitzgerald out of the gym and down the hallway and into a small paneled room with a desk and the expected religious paintings: Jesus on the cross. Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist. Some guy wrestling with an angel. On his desk Fitzgerald had one of those old clay ash-trays like get made at camp. It was gray-green and cracked and I had an idea about it and thought I’d warm him up. “Your kid make that?” I said.
“I’m not married,” he said. “Actually, I made that when I was a kid. For my father. Sit down.”
So much for warming him up. There were a couple of leather chairs in front of the desk, and a similar one behind it. Fitzgerald took his position behind the desk, and me and Leonard manned the remaining chairs. Mine had something wrong with the swivel and wouldn’t move, but Leonard’s worked just fine. He was turning slowly left to right. He always got the best stuff.
We sat for a moment listening to the air-conditioning hum. Fitzgerald clasped his hands together. He had a friendly face. The kind of face you’d tell your troubles to. He said, “Just as part of the job, may I ask you boys a question?”
“Sure,” Leonard said, “but would it be OK not to call us boys? It’s not that I’m overly sensitive, but I’m getting a little long in the tooth to visualize myself in short pants.”
Fitzgerald smiled. “All right. It’s a habit. We preachers get so we can’t help calling every one boy, or son, or daughter. But the question was, are you fellas Christians?”
“Well, you’ve put us on the spot,” Leonard said. “And the answer is no. For both of us.”
Fitzgerald looked at me for agreement. I nodded, said, “Yeah. And no offense, Reverend, but we didn’t come here to discuss religion. We just need to find Illium Moon.”
“I’ve told you all I know about where he lives,” Fitzgerald said. “I’ve never been to his place. I just know generally where it is.”
I didn’t believe that. I felt he didn’t trust our motives, and that he wasn’t about to give out Illium’s address to a couple guys he didn’t know, and infidels to boot. I respected that, but I still wanted to know where Illium Moon lived. I was considering an approach when suddenly Fitzgerald waved a finger at Leonard. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I didn’t think I knew the face, but something was bothering me. It’s the name. Pine? You the nephew of Chester Pine?”
Leonard assured him he was.
“I’ve heard about you,” he said.
“Word gets around,” Leona
rd said. “And so do newspapers.”
“Yours is a family with problems,” Fitzgerald said.
“You might say that,” Leonard said. “But not of our own choosing. Actually, far as family goes, taking or leaving – let’s make that leaving – a few not-too-close and boring cousins, I’m all the family I care about. ’Cept Hap here.”
“He appears to be a very distant relation,” Fitzgerald said, and smiled when he said it.
“We couldn’t keep him out of the bleach,” Leonard said.
Fitzgerald looked at me and I grinned, way you do when you’re trying to let a third party know you know the guy with you sees himself as a real card, but you merely tolerate him.
Fitzgerald turned back to Leonard. He said, “Your uncle had a quick mouth too. Like you. I didn’t like him.”
“That’s honest.”
“He came around with Illium from time to time. I had a few unpleasant conversations with him.”
“About what?” Leonard asked.
“About God and religion,” Fitzgerald said. “He had a kind of cavalier attitude about the subjects.”
“That was Uncle Chester, all right,” Leonard said.
“I assure you I wish no one ill,” Fitzgerald said, “but the Lord seems to have made his statement with your uncle.”
“That didn’t have quite the Christian ring I’d have expected,” Leonard said. “You sound a little too goddamned happy.”
“I prefer you not use the Lord’s name in vain,” Fitzgerald said. “Especially in His house.”
“And I’d prefer you not malign my uncle,” Leonard said.
“Sincerely,” Fitzgerald said, “I didn’t mean to put it that bluntly. I apologize.”
Leonard didn’t respond. He just studied the Reverend’s face. I said, “Reverend. We didn’t come here for a fight, and I don’t see how we’ve gotten into one. We got a couple questions to ask. That’s it, and we’ll be out of your hair.”
“You’re not in a fight,” the Reverend said. “I’m suggesting, respectfully, that you don’t use that kind of language here, and I’m apologizing for what I said. I’m overly zealous sometimes. You see the things I see, hear the stories I hear, you get so you want to crusade, do something about the badness out there. Open the world up to God.”
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