Four Spirits (53 page)

ON TWENTIETH STREET, IN THE SKIMPY SHADE OF A LOAD-
ING ZONE
sign, little Edmund Powers plunked his shoeshine kit down across the street from the Tutwiler Hotel. It was Saturday morning. Might be some businessman would want his shoes shined before lunch. Edmund knew they could get their shoes shined inside the hotel, but might be they'd want their shoes bright by the time they walked in the door. Not much business happening for a Saturday morning.

Edmund spied Mr. No-Legs swinging down the street, dressed in his good, solid blue suit.
Can't shine his shoes,
Edmund thought. When the man passed, Edmund said politely, “Howdy-do,” and Mr. No-Legs answered him in kind, not breaking the rhythmic placing of hand mallets before him on the sidewalk and swinging his body through. Edmund had heard Mr. No-Legs had lost his legs in Korea, shot off by a bazooka.

More white women out shopping than any white men doing business, but sometimes men had Saturday meetings; sometimes a group would go laughing into Joy Young's.
Egg Foo Young,
Eddie read on the restaurant's window. Well, he knew what eggs tasted like, anyway.

Oh, no, here came a madman. A sidewalk preacher. His mama had said, “Now, you want to testify at revival, or in church—that's fine. But folks that preach on the street corner—they got a screw loose, and I don't want you acting anything but normal when you out in public.” She said it was dangerous to be a standout.

But Edmund could feel the pull of it—just standing on the street corner,
opening your mouth, and proclaiming the Lord. He might be able to save every soul in the city, he himself. Folks just needed to hear. It wasn't the people in church; it was the people out of church who needed to hear the Word. Over in Five Points, there was a statue of Brother Bryan, kneeling. He wasn't in Bible clothes. He had on an overcoat, and in one hand he held a hat with a crease in the crown. He was all white, even his clothes and his hat. The strangest thing about him was that he was praying looking up. Edmund had always been told to bow his head in prayer. It seemed disrespectful to look right up into the face of God.

If Edmund's mama would let him preach on the street corners, and he saved every soul in the city—who knew? Maybe right beside Brother Bryan, they'd make a statue of a little colored boy in all-white marble, kneeling, with his head respectfully bowed.

Here came the madman, wearing a sandwich board, written on with Scripture. The word
Blood
was printed extra big and in red. Full of curiosity, Edmund moved his shoe kit closer. Close by, another man with a sling sack of newspapers was getting ready to call out. Maybe some Mr. Big would buy a newspaper and read the headlines while Edmund shined his shoes. The man would hitch up his pant leg and then rest his shoe sole on the box handle, which doubled as a foot platform. Mr. Big would rest an elbow on his cocked knee and open the newspaper he'd just bought. When Edmund was finished with one foot, the man would step down with that foot, and change sides.

Edmund was proud of his little box kit. Years ago, his big brother Charles had made it in Manual Training class, sawed the boards to the pattern, nailed it together, sanded it, and varnished it with shellac. It had taken all semester. Edmund wanted to work with his hands, and that would be a hobby, when he was a preacher like his beloved Reverend Shuttlesworth. It was a good hobby for a minister; Jesus had been a carpenter.

To look busy, Edmund took out his strips of flannel; he had a black one and a brown one, and an oxblood one. He'd shake them out and fold them more neatly, be industrious. The sunshine was hot on his head and shoulders. If he pretended he'd just had a job and now he was straightening up his office, he might get just the right amount of attention.

In a loud voice, the preacher asked, not of anyone in particular: “Which are you? The wheat or the tares?” He stopped to let his question sink in. He spoke to the empty air, or maybe the blue sky above. He was a big man, poorly dressed in wrinkled tan clothes. “There's a grrrrrreat winnowing coming. The
chaff will be blown away by the breeze.” He pulled his unbuttoned shirt together across his T-shirt, as though he could feel a wind. “A breeze is coming to Birmingham. Watch out, brother! Watch out, sister! Are you washed in the
Blood
of the Lamb?”

The newspaper vendor—a small weasel man in comparison to the hulking evangelist—turned his back to the evangelist and called out just as loudly: “Extra, extra! Read all about it. King arrested in St. Augustine.” The little vendor wore a flimsy cap with a bill, like a painter's cap.

“I say unto ye,” the evangelist shouted, but there was nobody there but Edmund. “There will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.” He pointed toward the sky. “There's a fiery furnace where God makes steel. He will cast down all pagan gods. Vulcan will tumble from the mountaintop, and Red Mountain will open and gush blood and rust.”

Edmund couldn't help but look south to see if Vulcan was being uprooted, but Vulcan stood serene and shiny, holding up his arm, his head in the clouds.

The newspaper vendor yelled again in a high-pitched voice that demonstrators had been jailed in St. Augustine. He took off his paper cap to smooth his hair straight back from his forehead and temples, which were large and shiny.
Receding hairline,
Edmund thought. He felt knowledgeable.

A few people walked by on the other side of the street. Two men went inside the Tutwiler, and three white girls went in the Tutwiler Drugstore. A brown man in a matching suit with a felt hat shuffled by.

“King jailed in Florida,” the weasel vendor screamed. Edmund had promised Reverend Shuttlesworth that he would go to jail, but he never did quite get the chance.

“Ten cents, only a dime. Read all about it.”

Edmund had a dime, but he knew the vendor wouldn't like it if he bought a newspaper.

“Repent of your wickedness,” the evangelist exhorted. Edmund thought,
But I ain't done nothing.
“Sin is a woman with jade in her navel! Sin is mixing of the races! Sin is eating blood and meat!”

The evangelist began to back up toward the vendor while the vendor backed up toward the evangelist. Edmund hoped there would be a collision.

“Good news! Good news!” the evangelist shouted. “Jesus is the
good
news!” A businessman in a suit walked right past all of them, the evangelist, the vendor, and Edmund, but the hulking evangelist said to Mr. Big in an
ordinary voice, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” He actually held out his hand. Edmund knew what Brother Bryan would do. Once he'd given a beggar the overcoat off his back. “Brother, can you help?” When he wasn't fired up, the big old evangelist sounded old.

Mr. Big just kept walking. Edmund wondered if
he
should give the evangelist a dime, but before he could decide, the evangelist turned around and said to the vendor, “Brother, can
you
help?”

To Edmund's surprise, the vendor dug into his pocket. “I reckon so,” he said. “What's the news from heaven?”

“It don't look good for this city.” The evangelist shook his head sadly. “It's Sodom and Gomorrah. Can a hundred righteous be found? Can fifty righteous be found? Brother, can ten righteous be found?”

The vendor didn't answer.

“Well,” the evangelist went on in an ordinary voice, “what's the news from earth?”

It was as though they were in church doing a responsive reading, or singing a duet. Edmund just crouched quietly beside his shoeshine box, listening.

The newspaper vendor said, “Seems like you got the bad news, and I got the good. They got that big nigger troublemaker in jail.”

“That right?” the evangelist said.

“Wanna buy a paper?” the vendor asked. “Read about it?”

“Yeah,” the evangelist said, and he gave the vendor back his dime.

Edmund wanted to laugh. Then both men turned their backs to each other and hollered out at the same time: “Extra, extra!” and “Repent! Repent ye today!” Edmund did laugh, but he tucked his head down, so nobody would see him laughing at two white men. They yelled their lungs out for a few minutes, and then they both stopped.

The vendor said, “People can't hear the headlines what with you shouting out.”

The evangelist answered, “This is my corner.”

Trouble,
Edmund thought. He got ready to move quick, if he needed to.
Don't ever be caught in a cross fire,
his mama had taught him.

“Your corner?” the newsman asked. “Your corner is across the street.”

But the evangelist stood his ground. “God changed it to over here. This morning. He said there was more business over here at the White Palace Grill.”

“He's right,” the vendor said. “That's why it's my corner.”

They were both crazy. Edmund stood up slowly, not to attract their attention.

The evangelist slapped his sandwich board with his hand. “You eat meat?”

“Of course I eat meat. I eat right here at the White Palace Grill.”

“That's not what they serve,” the evangelist said.

“You gonna get yourself sued.”

“I don't care. What they got is ground-up cardboard soaked in goat's blood.”

The vendor took off his cap and smoothed his head again. “They have a place for people like you.”

“In the Palace?”

“No. In the loony bin. Tuscaloosa.”

“It's my work,” the evangelist said. He sounded whiny. “You try to make a living peddling words.”

“I do.” The vendor held up a copy of the
Birmingham News
.

“Let's swap around. You stand over there across the street where I used to be, and I'll stay here. Gimme the papers. You can wear my sign.” He began to struggle to pull the sandwich board up over his head.

“You gotta be crazy,” the vendor said.

The evangelist got the boards off. He rolled his chest around as though it were good not to be confined, but his face contracted with meanness. Edmund could see it. The man was losing his mind in a new way.

“You're tired of your life, ain't you?” the evangelist said to the vendor.

He Klan,
Edmund thought.
Not no preacher. He Klan. Watch out!

The evangelist went on, “I can see it writ on your face.”

The vendor wouldn't back down, but he spoke slowly and carefully, as though he'd considered the matter. “No, I'm not tired of my life.” He took off his paper painter's cap, smoothed his hair, and put it back on. “I don't believe anybody's tired of their life. Unless you are.”

“See,” the evangelist said, and now his voice was all pleading, not a bit cruel. Suddenly Edmund knew what he was seeing—
multiple personalities.
He'd heard a sermon about it—how we have different people inside us, fighting one another. That was what was wrong with the evangelist. “See,” the evangelist said, “I'm dying for a hamburger, but I can't go in, see. God's watching me. But if I took your place, then God would think it was you going in.”

“God knows the difference between you and me.” The vendor seemed shocked.

“He's taking a nap.”

“What?” The newspaper vendor couldn't believe his ears, Edmund could tell. Neither could he.

“He's just dozed off,” the evangelist explained. “God don't see good with his eyes closed.”

“How do you know that?”

“It's the only way to account for the holy carnage that's about to happen here,” the big evangelist said, and suddenly he spoke in the tongue of an educated man. “God's asleep. That's the only way it could happen. Undercover F.B.I., brother.” He flashed his badge. “Give me your papers, and you get your ass across the street. You, too, sonny,” he said to Edmund. “Take this goddamned sign.”

WHEN LEE WOKE UP SATURDAY MORNING, THE FIRST
thing she did was to touch her poor mutilated shoulder. It hurt so bad she sleepily swung her legs over the side of the bed and shuffled her way to the good light in the bathroom to inspect her injury. When she saw in the mirror her whole shoulder was swollen and red, she woke up. Around each of the four curved lines, the flesh seemed infected. Then she glanced at her face. Her cheeks and forehead, even her neck, were red with fury. Her sleeveless nightgown was pink, but the flush on her face wasn't reflection. In wonder she stared at her face and saw she was still turning; she'd never seen herself so close to beet red. Then she realized her bottom was throbbing. It was shame that had really awakened her. Not the shoulder.

She hurt so badly she was afraid to go to the toilet.

She stalked back into the bedroom.

Yes, he was in bed. He had his elbow crooked back behind his head, and he was using it for a pillow. The real pillow was pushed aside. When he came in the night before, he had not wakened her. Though it was painful to walk, she hobbled over to the bed. No need to bend over to sniff him. Over his body hung the rank aroma of klavern beer, and Ryder had a smug little upturn to his lips.

Before she knew it, she had the broom in her hand. She had been to the kitchen and back. She wanted to bash him. She wanted to smack his nose into his head. While she tightened her grip on the broom handle, she realized she didn't have the right weapon. The straw end was too soft, and the handle end
was too light. Quickly she used the broom to sweep away the cloud of beer vapors hovering over him. She felt witch-crazy—sweeping the air over him. If she bashed his upturned face with all her might, before she could come close to getting even, he'd just wake up. Leaning the broom against the wall, she glided noiselessly into the children's room.

Though she was aware of their three little shapes under the summer sheets, she didn't even glance at the children. She knew Bobby and Tommy were curled into the double bed; Shirley had her own little single bed. Her three little bears. Their beds almost filled the bedroom. Solemn as a judge, Bobby's baseball bat stood in the corner. His fielder's glove had slid halfway down the shaft. Lee bent over and started working the glove up the bat when Bobby said, “Mom?”

His voice was so pleased and fresh, she felt washed with guilt. She could feel all the blood draining out of her head while she stood up.

“Did I wake you up, son?”

“No, ma'am. I was already awake,” he said softly, respectful of his sleeping brother and sister. “Just lying here thinking.” He sat up.

He was wearing a Superman T-shirt to sleep in, and he was so adorable, she wanted to gather him in her arms and kiss him all over. She knew he was too old for that, and she blushed even to have thought of it.

“Mom,” he said, concerned, “what happened to your shoulder.”

She wanted terribly to tell him. She looked at him again, his brown hair down on his forehead. Really, she liked his hair better that way than when it was all combed with water for church. The dangling shock of hair made him look more like a little boy. No matter how much she wanted to complain about Ryder, she knew Bobby was too little to tell him about his father. Maybe when he was sixteen.

“Well,” she answered slowly, “I don't know. Must of been mosquito bites I scratched in my sleep.” But Bobby wasn't looking at her shoulder now;he was looking at her breasts, through the rayon nightgown. While she knew it was just childish curiosity, for just a second Bobby had looked like Ryder. “I got to go to the bathroom,” she said.

By the time she stepped back up to the sink, she was wondering if she would go through with it—if she would ever get even with Ryder, and more. Though she dreaded it, she knew she had to sit on the toilet.

It hurt so bad to go, the tears came to her eyes and overflowed. She wished
Ryder could be locked up in jail for what he'd done to her. Well, at least she'd found the Miles College phone number in the telephone book—something he was too uneducated to do—and called in the warning. Even if the bomb had gone off, it would only have killed a few. Lee didn't want to kill those people, any of them. They hadn't done anything to her. She remembered her satisfaction when even the crippled girl had rolled out the door onto the porch and someone had turned her around and bumped the big wheels of her chair down the step.

Last September, Lee had felt the blast come up through the floor, just after the congregation had risen to sing. Again, nearly a year later, Lee shuddered with the vibrations of it. Her body had known something awful was happening. Right at that moment, something had happened that she'd always remember.

When she'd seen their photographs in the paper, she had thought,
They're nothing but innocent children,
and she knew the people who wanted to blow them up were crazy; they weren't just bad;they were so crazy with hate it was hard to imagine. And Ryder had almost made her blow up innocent people. It could have been somebody like Ryder or Dynamite Bob who did the first job. But not somebody like herself. After all, she hadn't done it. She hadn't killed anybody at Miles College, but if she had, it would have been Ryder's fault all the same.

Standing before the bathroom mirror, she gulped for breath. She knew when vampires looked in the mirror, they didn't see themselves. All the time she was thinking, she was staring at herself without seeing anything, but she wasn't a vampire. She hated blood. She was breathing hard. If you remembered somebody was as real as yourself, how could you kill anybody? As long as they didn't attack you. But they said the real nonviolent ones wouldn't fight back, no matter what you did to them. She could imagine herself, like the blond girl last night, standing around with them like they were just people. Like when you waited for the bus. Almost, Lee wished she could come to a college like that. It was outside agitators who stirred them up anyway. Coloreds weren't to blame any more than she would be to blame for things Ryder talked her into doing.

She focused in the mirror on her shoulder, on the four nail marks like crescent moons. It was Ryder she wanted to kill. And she knew how to do it. He'd taught her.

Quickly, she leaned over and flushed the toilet. Even though it wasn't her
period, she'd have to wear a pad. But suppose she really did it? Killed him. She could make it look like an accident. Send the kids over to her mother's. His brother LeRoy was on the force;he'd want it covered up. LeRoy belonged to the same klavern as Ryder, but LeRoy wouldn't want his brother associated with bomb making. Not only smarter, LeRoy was a better man than Ryder. LeRoy was proud of himself and his police uniform.

Now why was that?

LeRoy was younger, and he'd grown up after their father had deserted the family. LeRoy had grown up better because he didn't have any bad example hanging around. And Bobby and Tommy would grow up better if Ryder wasn't there.

There was a gentle knocking on the door. “Mom, can I get in the bathroom now, please.”

Bobby was a polite, good child. She asked him to tiptoe into the bedroom and please bring her robe and hand it to her through a crack in the door.

Without any protest, he did as he was told.

“Here, Mom,” he said from the other side of the door. She reached her hand through, put on the robe, checked the toilet to be sure there was nothing shocking in it, and came out. Sweeping his hair aside, she couldn't resist planting a kiss on his forehead. “I'm going to send y'all over to Big Mama's,” she said, “so your daddy can sleep late.”

Didn't she sound like a good wife? Well, she was. But she was an even better mother.

“Want me to get them up?”

“Yes.” She went to the phone and explained quietly to her mother: “Ryder wants the kids out of the house. He's making something. I don't know what. He said he wants to concentrate.”

Concentrate
—that was a word her mother used to use when Lee was a schoolgirl. “Never mind the radio or what all,” her mother would say. “Just concentrate on your lessons.”

Lee went to the cardboard canister of Quaker Oats; deep down in the oats was where they kept the directions for making a bomb. The folded paper was always coated with oatmeal dust when she drew it out. Well, she'd get dressed because once she made the bomb and started the clock, she'd need to get out herself. She'd just check to be sure he was sleeping soundly.

Once the kids were out of the house, she'd start on the wiring. She could
use the dynamite sticks from last night, but she'd start all over with the mechanism. After he hurt her, Ryder had left her lying on her stomach, facedown, while he retrieved the dud bomb. She wasn't going to try the drip method again. She'd go over to the clock method. Not even on grass last night, but her face on the dark dirt, she had cried till her cheek was lying in a little mud puddle. If Ryder woke up while she was working on it at the kitchen table, she'd just smile sweet as pie and tell him she was practicing. If he didn't wake up, she'd put the bomb on the night table right beside his head. Whether he woke up or not would be a sign, whether to kill him or not.

She pictured the cloth on the bedside table. It had a ten-inch drop of crocheted lace that her mother's mother had made. She didn't want to blow that up. When Ryder saw the black mud on one side of her face, he had laughed and said, “Well, I guess you're half nigger.” Before she set the bomb on the table, she'd take up the cloth.

She thought of the expression “Saturday night special” for the cheap guns that the coloreds bought. Well, this would be more special, and she couldn't wait till night. She needed to do it at least by early Saturday afternoon, before Big Mama would be sending the kids back to the house.