Second Sunday (29 page)

“Can I help you, Pastor?” Sheba asked in what he always called her you-don’t-know-who-you-messin’-with voice.

She was shocked to see George at her house—he’d never come by at night like this. But she would have rather snatched Mr. Louis
Loomis’s brown leather belt out of his hand than let George know how stunned—and pleased—she was to see him.

“You could let me in,” he said, trying his best to stay in charge of the situation. Because he felt so out of control, about
the only thing he could do was be bossy and not let Sheba get to him.

“Why?” Sheba demanded, a hand on her hip.

“We need to talk to each other.”

“Do we?”

George came closer. “Girl, let me in this house,” he said gruffly, trying to hide his anxiety. “You know we need to talk.”

Sheba stepped aside and waved him in, with a little attitude in her demeanor.

“Hurry up, I’m sleepy,” she snapped.

Ignoring her tone, George walked into the house like he felt he was welcome. He sat down on Sheba’s white couch, wondering
how she kept it so clean with no plastic on it and all those kids.

Sheba claimed a position in the doorway leading to the living room.

“Come here, Sheba,” he ordered. “I can’t talk to you right with you all the way over there.”

She walked over to him real slow, dragging her feet and pouting, reminding George of the way her baby girl, La Sheba, acted.
He patted the sofa and said, “You need to sit your surly self down. I always wondered where Miss La Sheba got her little ways
from. Now I know—her mama.”

Sheba rolled her eyes at George as if to say, “Boy, you ain’t gone worry my soul.” She did sit down, but all the way on the
other side of the couch.

If the situation wasn’t so serious, George would have laughed. “Baby—,” he began.

“I ain’t your baby.”

George slid over to Sheba and took her hand in his. Looking into her eyes, he said, “Girl, quit trying to shut me out. ’Cause
you know that is not what you really want.”

“You
got
some nerve, Rev. George Robert Wilson. It’s you, not me, who all up in the open-shut-case business.”

“Yeah, baby. I do have some nerve,” he whispered, and scooted closer to her. “But if I didn’t have some nerve, I would not
be sitting here, trying to get next to you. Look, I know how I have hurt you. At first, I was put off knowing you once dated
my worst adversary, Cleavon Johnson. Maybe that was wrong—”

Sheba had started softening at his words, but then bristled when she heard him say “maybe.” She started to jump up, but George
grabbed her wrist.

“You sit right down.”

Sheba was scared, glad that he was there, and mad all at the same time. Just the sheer frustration of the situation filled
her eyes with tears. And when one crept down her cheek, George wiped it away with his fingertip.

“Sheba, baby, I also think I pushed you away because I have been so scared at the thought of falling in love with you.”

“George,” Sheba said with some impatience in her voice. “You are already in love, just too stupid to accept it. Why else would
you need to run from something, unless it already existed?”

George chose to ignore her and continued, “Baby, last time I fell in love, it happened too fast and it was a disaster. I was
devastated by Glodean.”

“Look, George Wilson,” Sheba said with exasperation. ”We all make mistakes like that. But unlike
you,
most of us don’t waste our time being scared and second-guessing ourselves when love finds us again. We thank the Lord for
a second chance.

“Now,” she said, starting to get up, “I want to go to sleep, so you gone have to go.”

But George snatched Sheba back down and drew her close to him. As she tried to pull away, he held on tight.

“Sheba,” he said, “don’t leave. You know, it’s been rough settling into this church, dealing with Cleavon and everything else.
Falling in love on top of that just seemed like too much pressure. It’s been hard for me to stay away from you, but it has
also been hard on me to cope with what I feel for you.”

Sheba sniffled and then said, “George, if you think it makes sense to run from love, then I think you ain’t
never
truly had it hard enough.”

He pulled back and looked at her, surprised. He opened his mouth to reply, but she held up her hand and kept talking. “Oh,
for sure you have had heartache, disappointment, and struggle. But anybody who has really had a hard time of it—and especially
a hard time they couldn’t easily overcome—doesn’t stare a blessing in the face. Even if it comes in an unusual package, like
me with all of these babies and baby daddies, they just grab at it and be thankful the Lord thought enough of them to send
it in the first place. Don’t matter what that blessing looks like. A person who has had it hard knows that if the Lord sees
fit to send a blessing their way, then He will just see fit to make it all work out alright.”

George kept silent, his heart convicted by her words, but waiting to hear the rest.

“And you know something, George? I don’t think that you have good sense. All those excuses you are using to keep me at bay
are nothing but smoke screens from the devil. He doesn’t want you to see past your fears and your heartaches long enough to
recognize the blessings God has placed right in your lap. And you letting the devil
keep
you blind.”

“Are you through?” he snapped at her.

“As a matter of fact I am,” she answered him calmly.

“Now
you’re
the one with the open-shut case. You won’t even try to understand. I try to apologize and you throw it back in my face. You
know, a man has his pride, Sheba—”

“All I need to know is one thing,” Sheba broke in. “Are you gone stay blind, George?”

George jumped up with fury in his eyes and his mouth all tight. He glared at Sheba, threw his shoulders back, and then, with
long deliberate steps, started for the door.

On any other day, Sheba would have fallen apart if George tried to walk out on her. But tonight, the Lord held her hand and
wouldn’t let her succumb to being upset over his mess. Staring holes in his back, she said, “George, it ain’t my fault that
the good Lord saw fit to make me the woman for you, even if you are too stupid to accept it. So I rebuke you in the name of
Jesus. God ought to reach down and slap you clear across this room.”

George was about to storm out and slam the door on Sheba for good. But when he turned around and saw her standing there, all
prissy in white pajamas with that fancy purple rag on her head, with her hands on her hips and trying to be “Big Mama,” his
heart just melted. She was right—the Lord did make her just for him. Who else but Sheba Loretta Cochran could have stood up
to him like that, working his nerves to the bone, if nerves had bones. The girl had guts, not to mention faith like Job.

George walked over to Sheba, grabbed her wrist, and snatched her up into his embrace. When she tried to pull away, he held
on, saying, “If you made just for me, you better keep still, girl, so I can see how well you fit into my arms.”

“Stop holding on me like that, boy.”

“Okay,” he answered. “I won’t hold you like that ’cause here’s how I really want to hold you.” George grabbed the back of
Sheba’s head with one hand, tightened his grip on her waist with the other, and kissed her deeply and passionately.

“Was that stupid and stubborn enough for you, baby?” he whispered, while planting soft hot kisses on her nose and forehead,
then at the nape of her neck. “Mmmmm. You show is right, ’cause God definitely had me in mind when he made your sweet, fine
self.”

Sheba was having trouble reconciling his words with the fact that her children might be awake and stirring. Nothing like being
soft-eyed and mushy over a man to make your kids feel the need to wake up and check things out.

“They are sound asleep,” George whispered, mischief lighting up his eyes.

“How you know?” Sheba asked.

“Been keeping an eye out since I’ve been here.”

“Oh?” she said, lowering her eyes.

“You see,” George said, “I’m practicing keeping an eye out for the Brady Bunch when I want to get busy with they little grown
mama.”

“Is that so?” Sheba said, feeling a little bolder.

“Yeah, baby,” he murmured through another kiss, then ran his hands up and down the length of her back.

“Uhh, George, we . . .”

“For a lifetime, Sheba.”

“Huh?”

George laughed. He was loving this. Even if he was asking the girl to be his wife, he was still controlling it. It was hard
enough to ask.

“You gone marry me, little sweet, saved grown girl?”

Sheba was in shock. She had been praying for this very thing for months on end, wearing God’s ears out with her tearful pleas
to bring her husband into her life. But this prayer had been answered so unexpectedly, she didn’t know what to make of it.

“Baby, when God sends you a blessing, you better seize it. Or is it that you haven’t had it hard enough,” he teased.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Sheba said, trying to act bad with that big man all over her.

“Oh, yes I do,” he whispered. “You call Precious Powers and Essie Simmons and get your wedding stuff fixed up. And do it fast.
I’m not a patient man, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep my hands off you.

“Now, I’m going home,” George announced, as he kissed Sheba’s hand and left before he forgot that he was a preacher and that
the woman he loved was saved and doing her best to be a dedicated woman of God.

God Ain’t Playin’ with You People

R
ay Lyles paced around his office, biting his bottom lip to contain the expletives that were threatening to spew forth from
his mouth. He had made a promise to himself to never curse in public, but the two men seated before him were making that promise
near to impossible to keep. This had not been a good meeting for Ray. In fact, the meeting had not gone well for any of the
men present—Ray Lyles, Rev. Earl Hamilton, or Cleavon Johnson.

As the meeting had progressed from bad to worse, Cleavon felt less confident with each passing minute that Ray Lyles could
be trusted to follow through with his plan. It was 1976, the country’s Bicentennial for liberation from tyranny and oppression,
and white men
still
hated taking directions from a Brother. And especially guys like Ray Lyles, the ones with a foot in the door of a house in
an all-white and very expensive suburb, while the other foot was dragging off the metal steps of a trailer.

He should have pulled the plug on this thing when Lyles tried to weasel out of the original plan to put Earl Hamilton in Gethsemane’s
pulpit and instead bully his own assistant pastor at the American Worship Center into that spot. When Ray first put that trash
on the table, Cleavon looked at him like he was crazy and said, “This is a
Missionary
Baptist Church, which means it’s black—all black. That Opie Taylor assistant pastor of yours wouldn’t even be able to sneak
in through a side window, let alone walk in through the front door, talking some junk about being the pastor of
my
church. I don’t know why you white people have such a problem understanding that black folks like their pastor just like
their coffee—hot and some shade of black.”

Cleavon studied Earl Hamilton for a moment. He wasn’t so sure about that tight-acting, tight-lipped-talking fool, either.
Every time Cleavon saw Hamilton, he kept seeing a bigger and bigger “Bought and Sold for Massa” sign on him. And to make matters
worse, Hamilton, who supposedly knew better, didn’t so much as open his mouth to yawn when Ray Lyles had the audacity to say
that they would change the church’s name from Gethsemane Missionary Baptist Church to the American Worship Center Auxiliary
Congregation. “What Negro in his right mind,” Cleavon thought, “would even
want
to pastor a no-denomination church like that?”

Cleavon watched Lyles pacing behind his desk and thought that this
Dragnet
-looking, plaid-polyester, light-blue-patent-leather-shoes-wearing, no-preaching white man was bad news. He was beginning
to regret that he had ever struck up a deal with him. It had seemed like a good idea after Pastor Forbes’s death, when Cleavon
had intercepted Lyles’s notice of intent to repossess the church’s land, effective June 1, 1976, just twelve days before the
anniversary. He had told himself back then that he was doing it to help the church—to prevent its demolition and buy time
to find the heir who was supposed to give Gethsemane the land, according to that letter in the safe. To get Lyles to play
ball, Cleavon claimed to have the actual deed, confident that it would really be in his possession when push finally came
to shove. But however the game played out—whether Lyles thought he was getting a satellite American Worship Center, with Cleavon’s
man in the pulpit, or whether Cleavon saved the day by producing that heir, who would run Lyles off—Cleavon would hold the
winning hand.

Except now, his trump card—the letter in the safe on which his whole scheme rested—was lost.

“How could you be so stupid as to let that deed slip right through your fingers? I—” Ray Lyles blew air out of his mouth,
trying to calm down. Blacks! Why had he ever thought he could work with these people? According to his lawyers, his wife’s
document granting Gethsemane the use of the land for a hundred years could be executed as long as the land hadn’t been deeded
to someone else. So having that deed floating around was not good—not good at all.

But Lyles was determined to get what was rightfully his, both that land and control over the church that would be his first
foothold in North St. Louis. And if he had to stomach the likes of Cleavon Johnson and that weak-kneed patsy Earl Hamilton
to get what he wanted, then so be it.

Ray bore his eyes into Earl Hamilton, who flinched. He couldn’t understand why Hamilton couldn’t control Cleavon Johnson.
The man was a black preacher, and anybody with half a brainful of information knew that black preachers had a lot of clout
and power. What Earl stood to gain from this deal should have made him doubly conniving and forceful in getting total control
of this situation at Gethsemane.