by Gerald Duff
But you do it. You do it, and you do it because Wednesday night prayer meeting at one point in a life long dead to you used to work. You felt something, you were moved, you thought there was something outside you magical called God, and you could get in touch with it. You didn’t have to be stuck in East Texas in a three room house with a busted down floor and a well outside for water all by yourself forever.
But you learned there was no magic. You couldn’t get in touch with it, and you didn’t, and it was a rotting tooth not to be healed, but at least you could make the sucker crank up and roar. You couldn’t get away from the pain, but you could make that pain come along with you at your command. You exercised your option.
That was something that Don Condon probably didn’t appreciate personally, probably couldn’t. Hell, he had most likely even visited a dentist while he was still a kid and therefore couldn’t comprehend the rotten tooth analogy. That disadvantage aside, Don was proving to have a nose for promotion and money. He knew what folks would notice and how to sniff out where the money was in a given location, though he was a tad hairpie fixated, Jimbo pondered as he looked out over the cathedral space before him. The boy did have a weakness for the private parts of the female, and he would root around as patient and dedicated as a hog at a swill bucket looking for access to them. Look at him now, back by the entrance doors, his head thrown back so as if to allow maximal nasal access to any whiff of something that might be coming into season.
But give the PR man credit, Jimbo Reynolds remarked to himself, and due recognition. A man’s strength is directly connected to his weakness, and what builds him up is exactly what can tear him down. If Don Condon wasn’t so hard-wired to hunt pussy down to wherever it was hiding, high or low, here or yonder, he wouldn’t be such a hound on persuading folks to belly up to the bar of this ministry and lay their money down, every last dime of it. Don Condon will have the bottom coin and the widow’s mite, and he will not cull any woman walking around with that hairy surprise tucked up underneath her step-ins. He wants it all, and he is not to be satisfied with one penny or one hump less.
Thank you, Lord, thank you, Master, for the rich variety of motivations among the creatures you have put on this earth. I swear I do believe You knew what You were doing. Go after that dollar, Don, and go after that snatch.
They were all about in the building now, the old ladies by themselves, the ones with a grandkid or two along they were raising because of the bonedeep sorriness of their own offspring, a few younger women in the chairs toward the back, victims in one way of the other of no-account abusive weak men, a few others harder to characterize but all losers and misfits and abandoned in their own particular and pitiful way. It was the midweek prayer meeting crowd, the army of the lost. Wednesday, the bleakest day of all seven. So much behind you, so much still to come, and no relief in sight. So it was time to crank up the music, lead them in prayer, call for some witnessing, collect what little there’d be dropped in the buckets tonight, and put this week’s prayer meeting out of its misery.
Jimbo Reynolds rose from his lean on the hay bale, took off his Stetson as a signal to the combo to launch into the “Red River Valley” as modified and improved for Big Corral use, and looked out over the crowd before him, standing in the need of prayer.
As he did, the introductory notes from the piano and the guitar beginning to swell through the sound system, Jimbo noticed one last figure step through the door at the rear of the building. It wasn’t an old woman, or a young one, and it wasn’t a member of the largest demographic of the Big Corral – not white, not to put too fine a point on the matter – and the late worshipper was not choosing a seat in the last row, as is traditional with the tardy at any church service, but came directly up the aisle between the rows of mostly empty chairs, and sat down in the front row in the seat closest to where Jimbo Reynolds stood in a hipshot John Wayne pose on the platform on which all worshipful eyes focused. Don Condon, Jimbo noted, trailed a bit behind the stranger and took a chair a row away, looking up at Jimbo on the platform and nodding once.
Should I think what I ought to do if this punk tries something, Jimbo considered briefly, and then pushed the thought aside. No, no negativity, he told himself, expect the best to happen, and lots of times it will. Look for the nugget that might nestle at the core of all the dirt and debris around it. Pluck the flower between the thorns, focus on the gleam of light, not the darkness surrounding it. Be of good cheer.
Besides, if the little punk tries something disruptive, I’ve got five old boys behind me working away at the “Red River Valley” who’d like nothing better than to swarm off this stage and kick the living hell out of a single little colored kid looking like this one does. He’s probably zoned out on a headful of crack, and he’s wandered in here thinking he’s found a jungle honky-tonk.
The band reached the last few notes of the improved version of “Red River Valley,” closed it out with a final tinkle on the piano keys and a lingering whine from the steel guitar, and a premonitory hush fell in the building as the real business of the prayer meeting cranked up.
“Folks,” Jimbo said in the tone of voice he had worked so hard to develop over time for the initial moment of a worship service – resonant, yet a little gently playful – “it’s been a few days, hadn’t it, since the last time we got together for a palaver with the Boss. Things have happened since then, ain’t they, good things and bad things. Some of the stock has strayed off, broke through a part of the fence we didn’t make strong enough to hold them in, now we got to find a way to round them up again and bring them back home.
“I look out there at you, and I see some cowboys and some of their women folks and young’uns having to deal with what happens when a varmint gets into the herd. Maybe a prairie wolf, maybe it’s a thunderstorm that’s come up, could be a real gulley-washer of rain has set in, maybe drowned a calf or two. Maybe a bolt of lightning has struck where we hadn’t expected and hadn’t wanted, and we’re wondering how in the name of tarnation the Boss let that happen. We’re questioning His judgment, we’re saying, Boss, now if You’d have give us some warning of what was going to happen, we could’ve maybe got ready for it. We could a looked ahead, and fixed that fence. We could a made sure the herd was bedded down, well-fed and watered, and none of this trouble would a plagued us. Them calves would still be grazing on the hill, kicking up their heels, lowing away and praising Your creation.
“Let me ask you range hands, and you ladies, and you young’uns, ain’t that right? Ain’t you sorry now that you didn’t get all your chores done when you ought to’ve done?”
A moan arose from the worshippers, the supplicants, those Memphians in need of prayer and intervention, and it was not loud nor boisterous, but Jimbo could feel that it was real, and that it was working the crowd like a good dose of salts wending its way through the digestive tract of a sick heifer, bloated on an overfeed of green timothy.
“Yessir,” came a cry from a couple of rows back, a woman’s voice lifted over the general groan of acknowledgment and complaint. “I done fell short.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jimbo Reynolds answered, “You did. You did fall short, you left undone that which should have been done. You shirked your duty, you took your eye off the particular thing, and you let matters slide, slide, slide. You did that, you did all that. You did.
“But, ma’am, you know what? And here’s an assurance from the Boss, and I offer it to you as His Holy Range Foreman. And it’s this. We have all fallen short.”
The young colored kid in the front row, Jimbo could observe from his advantaged position on the platform, sat with his eyes closed and his head leaning back, and he swayed from side to side in his chair, clasping his hands together, wringing one palm against the other.
Not going to be any problem with this young doper, Jimbo breathed to himself, not at this prayer meeting. Better than that, not only will he not disrupt the proceedings, he’s going to help me out later on here, he’s going to le
t me get the spirit of generous giving moving in a while, if I handle it right. If that doper boy ain’t under conviction, I’ll ride a hog out of here sidesaddle.
“Folks,” Jimbo said, dropping his voice an octave lower as he spoke more closely into the cordless button microphone attached to the tab of his shirt collar, almost in a croon now, a hint of sweetness blending with the authority of his request, “folks. I’d like to lead you in the Cowboy’s Prayer. Those that know it, I invite you to join me as I offer up what the cowboy might say to the Boss when he’s standing in the need of prayer. Those that don’t know the Cowboy’s Prayer, or haven’t learned it yet, I direct you to look at the back of your program. But, cowpokes and ladies and children, just listen to the ones that do know it. Don’t just read it out loud from what you’ll find there on the paper. You got to have the Cowboy’s Prayer by heart for it to mean like it ought to and can.”
“Amen,” came the cry first from an older woman near the front of the rows of seats, and then scattered from all over the group, the word was repeated. “Amen, Range Foreman, amen and amen.”
“Boss,” Jimbo Reynolds said, lifting his voice as though to be heard by a superior some distance off, tending to some other business but present in the moment in every true regard, on call to listen when need arose, “Boss, I sit my mount at the end of day.”
The music of voices from the audience came to Jimbo’s ears, chiming in as the prayer he recited gathered and grew, and a brief huskiness touched his words as he spoke. Something is happening here, Jimbo felt the thought welling up as he spoke, it ain’t all about the money and what it buys a man. I swear it’s not. I feel it right now, just like being with a sexed-up woman. It’s of the body, but something else is happening, too, not just the drive of the gonads and the deep, true thrust of the hips and the belly and the thighs. Praise be, praise be, Glory.
“The sun is sinking in the West, my day is almost done. I let loose the reins, Boss, I slip my feet from the stirrups. You will lead me to that pasture where the grass is lush, green, and belly-high to a tall horse. I know You wait in the corral, Boss, to welcome me home. Your great bunkhouse at the end of day is my reward for all chores completed and all work done. I ache to lie down, Boss, on the great soft pallet on the floor of Your love, and drift off into the final sweet sleep of the cowboy come home.”
As the last word of Jimbo Reynolds’s recitation of the Cowboy’s Prayer reverberated in the steel-sided cathedral of the Big Corral, the true tenor of Chip Overstreet’s voice lifted like a bugle from the Cowboy Combo on the platform, delivering the first line of the “Boss’s Answer to the Weary Cowboy,” a tune written by Chip himself as he was coming down from a week-long drunk he had thrown two years ago in Hazel Green, Alabama.
Damn, that’s good, Jimbo Reynolds thought as he sneaked a look at how the young doper punk in the front row, Don Condon sitting relaxed now behind him, might be responding. I ought to give personal credit to Chip for that rendition, and I would, if it wouldn’t ruin him for a month to hear a compliment like it always does.
“Well done, thou good and faithful cowpoke,” Chip sang, the guitar, drum and piano providing a strong foundation for his voice to rest on and rise from. “You’ve mended all the fence, you’re saved the lost heifer, my love for you’s intense, I’ll never let you suffer.”
At the end of the prayer meeting, a short one, given the small crowd but one which made the collection buckets rustle and ring well beyond what Jimbo had expected, the young black punk kept his seat as the rest of the worshippers shuffled toward the doors and struggled out of the building, some stepping lively, some wandering with deep reluctance back onto the streets of Memphis, all moved to return to the Big Corral to give generously, Jimbo did hope and pray with a heart full to overflowing. Let it come, Lord. Prop me up.
“Son,” he said, looking down from his platform toward the only person other than Don Condon still in a seat, “have you got something working on you? I sense a burden. Do you need to talk to the Range Foreman and get it off your heart?”
“I saw you before,” the black kid said, looking up at Jimbo now, his eyes so dark there seemed to be no distinction between pupil and iris. Their whites were deeply bloodshot, Jimbo noted, telling the old sweet story of the killer weed filtered through a bong bowl. Don’t kids even bother to pour some Visine into their peepers anymore, particularly when talking to their elders in a worship setting?
No, they don’t, he told himself, but it’s not because they don’t know any better. They do it on a purpose. They’re just showing a badge, like a marshal walking into a saloon in Dodge City in the old days. Here I am, it says. Look at me for the dude I am. Ain’t I a consequence? Lord, the arrogance of a young punk, Jimbo Reynolds said within, shaking his head in sorrow as he contemplated the kid before him. If you only knew what an ass-kicking is waiting on down the road for you, you little shit.
“Where’d you see me, son?” Jimbo said. “That picture of me on one of the billboards? Which one was it? On Elvis Presley Boulevard? On Lamar? Or whereabouts did you see it? I’d like to know, me and my partner, Cowpoke Don Condon would, to see how the message of the Big Corral is getting out. Wouldn’t we, partner?”
“Yessir, Range Foreman,” Don Condon said. “We sure would. Do you think I ought to stay here and counsel with you and this young man, or should I go pass along howdy and so longs to our people?”
“Do the so longs, partner,” Jimbo said. “Me and this young wrangler is going to want to palaver for a spell.” Then to the young doper as Don Condon walked quickly down the aisle toward the exit, Jimbo thinking he’s smelled some he’s fixing to check out, “I bet it was on Lamar, right, son?”
“No sir, it wasn’t a picture. I saw you in person and heard you talk.”
In person, Jimbo noted the phrase, that’s a good thing to hear. In person. Reckon who he believes I am? A rap star?
“It was at Memphis Central High when you talked to us this week. In the auditorium at assembly. To the summer school program kids.”
“I saw you, too, son,” Jimbo said. “I picked you out of the crowd where you were sitting. And I talked directly to you, son, there in that room full of all those fine young people.”
“How did you know to do that? How did you see me? How could you tell I needed to hear what you said?”
I be damned, Jimbo thought. This little doper here believes what I’m telling him. Ain’t that a sight and a kick in the ass?
“I didn’t pick you out all by myself,” Jimbo said. “The Boss told me to look for you, said I’d know you by your eyes, told me I’d know you when I saw you. And He was right. That’s why He’s the Boss. He don’t shoot no blanks.”
“Do you know my name?”
“No, I don’t know what handle your mama and daddy slapped on you at birth, son. Names don’t matter. Labels ain’t a consideration to the Boss. The Boss is got everybody’s name in his logbook already. I know you because you got all the signs of a man working under a strong conviction, and let me tell you something, son, in all humility but with all assurance. There ain’t no way for a cowboy to hide when he’s under conviction. He forevermore stands out from the herd.”
“Sir,” the young doper said, standing now in front of his chair and moving toward the platform where Jimbo Reynolds stood, both hands outstretched in Jimbo’s direction as though he was feeling his way in the dark in an unfamiliar room, “my name is Randall Eugene McNeill, and I got to ask you something, please.”
“Don’t call me sir, son. The handle is Range Foreman, and Randy McNeill, that’s a good name for a cowboy. I like it.”
“That’s what I want to ask you about. Was there ever a cowboy like me?”
“Like you how?”
“African-Americans. Was there ever a black cowboy, a colored one?”
“Lord, son,” Jimbo said. “Was there ever any colored cowboys? You mean to tell me you never heard of Black Ned Callahan? Or Rufus Smiles? Or Texas Jack Youngfield, trailbos
s for Charles Goodnight out of Pecos? What have you been studying in school there at Central? What they been telling you?”
“Nothing,” Randall Eugene McNeill said. “Nothing I can remember that’ll do me any good now. It’s just been one thing and then one thing and then one thing.”
“Here’s what’ll do you good, Randy,” Jimbo said. “Let’s get down on our knees together on this dirty old floor in this old steel-sided building, and let’s see if the Boss is home. I expect He’s going to be. He don’t never wander off.”
“Thank you, Range Foreman,” Randall Eugene said, collapsing to the floor as though a razor-sharp knife had just severed both hamstrings. “Thank you, thank you.”
Can I spot it when a man’s under conviction, Jimbo asked himself as he hopped off the platform, no matter what color the sinner happens to be? I ask you now, have I still got it? Huh? Tell me the truth.
Here’s some of that variety I honor in this world. My PR director out hot on the trail of some quiff and me here getting my pant knees all dirty praying with a doped up brother. I don’t care which one of us is doing righteous work. I know who’s having the most fun with it, though, and it ain’t no lasting satisfaction where Don’s got his nose.
FOURTEEN
J.W. and Nova
The micro-waveable lunch packets Major Dalbey included in his regimen of weight reduction left a lingering odor in his office which lasted at times for up to two hours. This fact was especially true of the Italian supreme selection from the medley of quick meals Major Dalbey enjoyed, and that was also his favorite.
“Which one did he cook up today?” J.W. said to Tyrone Walker, who was on the phone and waved him off, turning his chair to the side to look away from where J.W. was leaning across the desk toward him.