More Church Folk

by Michele Andrea Bowen

  Denzelle couldn’t say a word. Folks always acted as if Jesus were so ethereal, so otherworldly, so Heaven-bound that there was nothing physically appealing about Him. But that just wasn’t the case as far as he could tell. The brother was described as growing to be tall, He was strong enough to run away the money changers in the temple and not get His butt kicked, His disciples respected Him and some of them were some serious gangster types, the women loved Him, and you don’t read anything about a Roman soldier taking Him down before the appointed time of His crucifixion.

  And when that time came, they sent a whole squadron of armed guards to get Him. But they never rolled up on Him man-to-man. Those soldiers always had some backup when they dealt with Jesus. No, Jesus was a man to be reckoned with, even though He was the son of God, the Word made flesh.

  “I thought so,” was all Queen Esther told him before saying, “You need to come and fill us in on whatever transpired during that fancy-phone phone call. I know it has something to do with this conference. Why else would your bosses up at the FBI headquarters be calling you and getting all up in your church business? When has the FBI ever been interested in what black folk were doing at church outside of the civil rights movement?”

  TWENTY

  Took y’all long enough to come back and join the rest of us,” Susie James said as she loosened the hook on her pants to get more comfortable. Like everybody else, she had been greedy and eaten way too much of Queen Esther Green’s delicious food.

  A few more folks had come by—Saphronia James and her husband, Bishop James’s nephew, Precious Powers and her husband Tyrone, along with Obadiah and Lena Quincey, who had just been rehired as an anesthesia nurse over at Duke Hospital. It had been hard on the two of them with Lena commuting back and forth from North Carolina. But that was about to end because Theophilus had worked it out for Obadiah to get a church assignment in Alamance County, North Carolina, which wasn’t too far from Durham. He had tried his best to get him to Chapel Hill but that church assignment fell through at the last minute.

  “I had to take that call,” Denzelle said, locking eyes with his best friend, Obadiah.

  “And I had to follow him to find out what kind of call he was taking on the ‘Batphone,’” Queen Esther said amid hearty laughter.

  “Has anybody called Mrs. Giles to come and get the body?” Lena asked. “The hospital has been trying to get in contact with her all morning.”

  Obadiah looked at his wife. Sometimes, she gave him the willies. Lena always knew stuff before everybody else. He had known that Bishop Giles’s condition was enough of a concern for the feds to dispatch folk to Duke Hospital. But he had thought the bishop was going to pull through whatever had caused him to be rushed to emergency in the first place.

  “What… what you looking at me like that for, Obie? I keep telling you that when you in prayer and praying in tongues, the Lord reveals things to you. Obviously He thought it necessary for me to find out about this. I’m a nurse practitioner and know a whole lot about the body, medical conditions, and disease. It makes sense that God would want me to know—don’t you agree?”

  “Just nod your head in agreement with baby girl,” Theophilus, who had been very quiet this morning, told his young associate pastor. “You are not going to win this one.”

  “Naw… you just need to concede and then let us find out what all the Lord has told Miss Lena,” Murcheson added, making note that all the seasoned men in the room were in total agreement with him.

  It was only the young bloods who were dumb enough to try and trump their woman when it was clear the Lord had revealed some pertinent information to her. He used to try that with Susie and all he got was hurt feelings, a convicted heart, and a serious chastisement from Heaven. Murcheson would never forget the day he was out working on the fresh and tender shoots of collard greens growing in his huge garden, and decided to take a break and question the Lord about that very matter.

  He just knew the Lord was going to give him some brilliant and snappy revelation about how to check Susie when she came out of this bag. Murcheson got a brilliant and snappy revelation all right. In fact, he was stung when God put these words on his heart.

  “She’s your helpmeet, son. I made her that way to help you. What she tells you comes straight from Me. So you better come out of ‘your bag’ and listen to what I place on her heart for your benefit. Then you sit back and watch how blessed, protected, and wise you’ll be.”

  “Lena, do you know what time Larsen Giles died?” Denzelle asked her, glad that somebody had been at the right place at the right time to get information he would have had to flash his badge left and right to the nth degree to obtain.

  “He died an hour after he reached the hospital.”

  “Is that what the call was about?” Joseph asked Denzelle.

  “Yeah… my superiors don’t believe what happened to Larsen was due to a massive stroke and heart attack that occurred without provocation. They suspect foul play.”

  “Which is why you’ve been doing double duty all week,” Percy Jennings announced. “One day you are a preacher, next day you are the feds’ man of the year. It’s time you keyed us in on what is happening. Last thing I want, or this denomination needs, is a swarm of federal agents rolling up on this conference, aiming guns at a bunch of mad, scared, and armed black church people. You know those folks will shoot back if they believe they are being attacked without cause.”

  “The medical examiner doesn’t believe it was simply a massive stroke, either,” Lena interjected. “They’ve sent some blood and tissue samples over to the toxicology lab. The death was caused by something in his system to set it off. I sneaked and talked to the examiner, and he told me that Bishop Giles was so full of some kind of toxin it is a miracle that man’s heart didn’t explode wide open. And he said he’d never seen a body so stiff so early in death. Told me it was not your typical rigor mortis.”

  “Lena, how long before they get the reports back from toxicology?” Eddie asked. He had gotten an eyeful of Larsen in that chair and wanted to know exactly what was wrong with old boy. He knew about WP21, but couldn’t believe that stuff was capable of causing a fatality. Bishop Giles looked like somebody who had been to the neighborhood hoodoo lady to get some kind of mixture to make him better in the bedroom, and got something her blind and crazy aunt had concocted by accident.

  “Usually takes four or five days but they are going to rush it through and get it back in three.”

  “That’s too late,” Theophilus told them. “Election day for the Episcopal seats is day after tomorrow. We need to know what’s up before then.”

  “Yeah, Theo’s right,” Eddie added. “Tomorrow morning we go to the last set of delegates to garner support.”

  “Which districts?” Murcheson asked.

  Theophilus and Eddie sighed at the same time.

  “Mozambique, Ghana, Swaziland, and Nigeria,” Eddie said, and sighed again. Last place he wanted to be in the morning was with a bunch of delegates who sold votes the way Mickey D’s sold burgers.

  “Ghana is one of our strongholds,” Percy said.

  “So you say,” came from Susie. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something was up with Bishop Abeeku. He had a decent enough reputation but hard as she tried, Susie James didn’t like that man.

  Murcheson rolled his eyes, conveniently forgetting the pearls of wisdom he had recently imparted to Obadiah Quincey. He said, “My baby doesn’t like Bobo. She is concerned that he’s on the silent auction block and playing everybody.”

  “Why?” Essie asked, very curious. She had always thought she was all alone concerning her feelings about Bishop Abeeku. Didn’t know what it was about him. On the surface he didn’t do anything remotely close to the craziness pulled off by Bishop Babatunde. Now that was a crazy negro—scary, too. Still, something was up with the bishop.

  “He ain’t right. He good at hiding it but that little African ain’t right,” Susie said and curled up her lips.<
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  “He is definitely not my cup of tea,” Saphronia added.

  “What has he ever done to you, baby?” her husband asked.

  “Touched my behind when he knew nobody was looking.”

  “Mine, too,” Precious said, frowning. She hadn’t told anybody ’cause they were always shouting that little booty-feeling man up and down, and she didn’t want to be the killjoy in the group. But she couldn’t stand Bobo Abeeku.

  “You didn’t tell me that,” Tyrone said, as he stood up, ready to go back to the hotel and wear that little African out.

  “Sit down, Tyrone,” Precious said. “I handled it.”

  “Just what did you do, Precious, baby?” Tyrone inquired. He hoped she hadn’t used that stun gun he had bought her down in north St. Louis from one of his boys from high school. That thing was not readily available at the local hardware store or a Sears appliance and tool section. He had had to go through a lot to get it.

  “I used the pepper spray you gave me. Not the stunner.”

  “Whew,” was all Tyrone could say. Last thing he needed was somebody like Denzelle Flowers all up in his business over that thing.

  “Whew?” Precious said with some attitude. “I know you didn’t whew me, when that nasty little man felt my butt. You better be happy he has a hand and some other apparatuses still intact.”

  “Yeah, you ought to be happy she didn’t cut that sneaky thang,” Queen Esther said. “I’ve been telling Joseph about that man in those little bitty African suits and shoes ever since we had to pick him up from the airport.

  “Now, you and you, and-you-and-you-and-you-and-you,” Queen Esther went on as she pointed at Denzelle, Obadiah, Eddie, Theophilus, Murcheson James, and Percy Jennings. “You preachers need to pay more attention to those ugly vibes folks try to hide from view. Bishop Abeeku is slick. On the surface he seems okay but he’s not. And my question is why? Why is he playing both ends against the middle? That’s a question y’all need answered before you high-tail it off to get Rev. Tate here elected as a bishop.”

  “Bishop Abeeku is not a crook,” Saphronia told them. “He hasn’t stolen any money and he has not been a part of this fiasco we need to get back to. But what he has done is be a nasty little twit who needs the slop slapped out of him. And the reason Bobo can’t be trusted is that he’ll do whatever he has to do to get reassigned to Ghana. So don’t consider him as an ally. He has served his purpose well in giving you all a head start on what’s going on. But that is far as he can go, and don’t forget it.”

  Nobody said a word. Saphronia McComb James never ceased to surprise them. She looked as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and yet she could drop a much-needed 411 in a heartbeat.

  Denzelle’s portable telephone started ringing. He switched it on and was about to go back on the porch, then decided against it when he noticed that just about everybody in the room was prepared to get up and follow him, and then try to sneak in on his conversation.

  “I see,” Denzelle said after listening for a good thirty seconds. “I’ll have to get back to you later in the afternoon. Will you send some backup? And will they let me know who they are?”

  He paused a moment before saying, “Yes, you will definitely need to register and pay. And no, please don’t send any white folk or any stuck-up black people in some white-people clothes.”

  There was a long pause and they all heard Denzelle sigh loudly. He rolled his eyes and switched the large phone to his other ear.

  “Well then, give them some money and let them buy some decent church suits. Yes, some color and some gators would be more than appropriate.”

  Denzelle hung up. He could practically feel the questions twirling around in their heads.

  “Bishop Giles’s lab work came back.”

  “That was awfully fast, even for a rush order,” Lena said. She’d had no idea that Denzelle had it like that. She had known he was FBI but hadn’t thought he had any clout—just a gun and a badge. But Lena had been way off. Denzelle was not just a run-of-the-mill FBI agent, any more than he was a run-of-the-mill preacher.

  “Not if you get it to the right lab and talk to the right people,” Denzelle told her.

  “So, how did he die?” Joseph asked. He had been trying to find out what all of this craziness was about from the moment Rev. Ernest Brown had wheeled that fool into the banquet room looking all stiff and crazy.

  “Allergic reaction to a drug.”

  “A real drug, the kind prescribed by a doctor, or a drug drug,” Essie Simmons asked.

  “Drug drug, Miss Essie.”

  “Then isn’t that an overdose?”

  Denzelle thought about it for a moment and then said, “Technically it’s that. But he was allergic to the drug and it killed him.”

  “What drug? Cocaine, weed, heroin, PCP? What?” Thayline asked. All of this back-and-forth was getting on her nerves.

  “None of the above. It’s a new drug.”

  “A new drug? That crack stuff that has been tearing up homes and neighborhoods at apocalyptic speed?” Lena asked. Her friend Trina Fountain always said that there was a special place in Hell for whoever had come up with a drug as deadly and horrific as crack cocaine.

  “Nope,” Denzelle answered. “This stuff originated in Africa—Mozambique to be more specific. And even worse, it has made its way across the Atlantic Ocean with the blessing and endorsement of one of our own bishops in the Gospel United Church, Rucker Lee Hemphill.

  “I know you ladies are very put out with Bishop Abeeku—and I understand because he knows better. But we wouldn’t have ever gotten our hands on this information without him. In fact, he has been our biggest help in the motherland, putting himself and a few of his pastors at risk when they bumped heads with Bishop Babatunde at one of the African conferences.”

  “You do know that Ottah Babatunde is a sociopath, right?” Eddie Tate asked his young protégé.

  Most folks were either scared of Ottah, couldn’t stand him, or just wished he’d go somewhere and quit taking up good oxygen. But what they hadn’t comprehended was that Ottah was the most amoral man Eddie had run across in a very long time. He was also mean and willing to do whatever it took to get what he wanted—which made him a very dangerous man.

  Eddie didn’t know how Ottah flew low enough under the radar to pass the requirements for becoming a Gospel United Church preacher. Sure there were some corrupt and crazy negroes on this side of the Atlantic. But Ottah was in a category like folks who ran the South American drug cartels—dangerous and lethal. Even the most corrupt preacher in the denomination couldn’t go down that low.

  “Yeah, I know that Bishop Babatunde is crazy,” Denzelle said, shaking his head. “I don’t understand why the denomination keeps him. It’s not right.”

  “But you still haven’t told us any new details about the drug, son,” Theophilus said. “You gave us a pretty good workup months ago. But this thing is much worse than we anticipated. A bishop in the Gospel United Church is dead. This is worse than anything we’ve encountered at a Triennial General Conference—even worse than the ho’ house in Richmond.”

  “WP21, the drug,” Denzelle responded, almost as if to himself. He was having a hard time digesting that some watermelon was causing all of this trouble and grief.

  “What?” Willis asked him chewing on a big, thick piece of bacon.

  “Watermelon Powder 21. That’s the drug Bishop Hemphill discovered on this farm owned by this little old man named Uncle Lee Lee, who is reported to be close to hundred years old. Although he doesn’t look a day over seventy to me.”

  “Watermelon Powder 21,” Murcheson repeated, still just in disbelief over all of this, even though he’d known about this stuff for months. He said, “You know that name is the countriest black people mess I’ve ever heard of. Who…” He stopped talking and just shook his head in disgust.

  If this hadn’t been so serious and deadly to their church community, he would have been doubled over with laughter. Wat
ermelon Powder 21. And Murcheson thought he’d seen it all back in 1963 when those fools came up with the ho’ house they planned on franchising across the denomination’s districts like the booty version of McDonald’s.

  “I think Marcel Brown and Sonny Washington gave it that name when they went over there and Bishop Hemphill gave them some,” Denzelle said evenly. “Word out by one of my informants is that one of them said that stuff made them feel like they were twenty-one all over again.”

  “But that doesn’t explain the watermelon part,” Joseph said.

  “The drug is made from a special blend of watermelon powder, made up through some kind of special process made up by Uncle Lee Lee. He runs this watermelon farm. And I have to tell you, there is every kind of watermelon growing there that you could think of. He even had these exotic black watermelons. I have never tasted watermelons like the ones grown on that farm.

  “But that powder is something else,” Denzelle went on to say. “First it smells terrible and it tastes worse than it smells, if that is possible.”

  “Wait a minute, son,” Joseph asked, a bit worried about one of the denomination’s most valuable pastors-in-training. “You actually took this drug?”

  Denzelle blushed because he was a bit embarrassed by what he knew he needed to share with the group. And the mixed company didn’t help. When Denzelle had confided in Obadiah what all WP21 could and did do, Obadiah fell out on the floor in hysterical laughter, heedless of his friend’s mortification over the drug’s initial effect.

  “I tasted a small amount of it.”

  “Like they do on the cop shows when they find kilos of drugs,” Queen Esther asked, all excited. This was like being on Miami Vice.

  “Yes, ma’am. Only the drug was so strong, that little cop-taste had an effect on me.”

  “Yeeesssss, lawd,” Obadiah said from across the room, struggling not to laugh.

  “Uhhh, just what did this drug do?” Susie James asked, full of curiosity. She’d never seen Denzelle, who was always full of swagger and bravado, this nervous and uncomfortable.