Second Sunday (9 page)

Nettie laid a folded towel on the tub to make a cushion for herself, so she could sit with Bert. She held the Pepsi while
he ate his hogshead cheese, closing his eyes and smacking his lips every time he popped a cracker into his mouth.

“Baby, you sure do know how to treat your man right, don’t you?”

Nettie just gave Bert her special
smile
and said, “Ummm-hmmm.”

He handed her the empty plate, took his Pepsi, sipped it, and said, “Ahhh,” because it was so good and icy cold.

“I tell you, don’t know what I did to have my baby come all up in here looking like she Nancy Wilson or Diana Sands or somebody
like that.”

As he sipped his Pepsi, Bert ran his eyes over Nettie, still sitting on the side of the tub, with her nightgown revealing
a shapely little chocolate brown hip.

“But I don’t think none of those Hollywood women got a thing on you, baby. Just look at you. And
umph,
that show was some good hogshead cheese you fixed up for me, girl.”

Nettie smiled sweetly and said, “Anything for you, Bert, honey.”

Suddenly Bert stopped sipping on his Pepsi and sat up straighter in the tub, narrowing his eyes. Nettie was up to something.
He should have known it as soon as she stepped up in the bathroom in that nightgown. He loved that gown on her, but she always
complained about its being too “exposing” and falling all away from her body. And those shoes—Bert looked down at her feet,
wondering where Nettie had found those pink satin slippers, exposing her pretty feet and pink painted toes. And here she was,
sitting there all smiles, with the gown lying open and those shoes swinging on her feet.

“This got something to do with hiring Rev. Wilson, don’t it, Nettie Green?”

Nettie didn’t say a word, just stared at the bathroom wall like she was seeing it for the very first time.

“I should’ve known,” Bert said, making agitated swirls in the water with his hands.

Nettie coughed and said, “Now Bert, honey, don’t get yourself all flustered and run your pressure up when you just got relaxed.
The evening ain’t over with, you know.”

“You don’t have to point that out to me, woman. I know how to use the sense God gave me.”

Nettie blew air out of her mouth. She’d thought that putting on this old “floozy woman” nightgown would make Bert easier to
talk to. But since he was not acting like King Xerxes did when Esther approached him, she decided to just let him have it.
If Bert K. Green wanted to fight and let this old nightgown go to waste, so be it.

“Bert, ain’t nobody been
up
to anything. We are trying to stop this so-called search committee from making a terrible mistake and losing a wonderful
pastor, by taking too much time to hire him. You know, a pastor and congregation kind of like a husband-and-wife situation.
You can up and marry just about anybody who willing to marry you back. But if you don’t marry the right person, your life
will be nothing but drama and heartache.

“We—and many of the other ladies who are dues-paying and tithing members at our church—are fed up with all of this foolishness
y’all letting Cleavon and his people get away with. We have been through a clown and a nasty-movie star. Now you gone put
us through more torture with an Uncle Tom, when the Lord has laid a blessing right in our laps. And y’all ’bout to stand up
and drop that blessing right on the floor.”

“Baby, half the search committee ready to hire Rev. Wilson, but two members don’t know which way they want to go. And of course,
Cleavon and that idiot Rufus gone try and push us into hiring Rev. Earl Hamilton.”

“Why they want to hire that man?” Nettie asked.

“Baby, for the same reason the Johnson clan ganged up on the church six years ago and forced Pastor Forbes on the church.
I wasn’t the head deacon back then, and I didn’t have enough say-so to fight it. But I do now.

“Nettie, I agreed to let Rev. Hamilton come for an interview, hoping that he’d live up to his reputation and put something
on the minds of the undecided committee members. You know the Johnsons are big supporters of the church. And I don’t want
to create more mess on this committee than there already is, by pulling rank, overriding the vote, and taking it to the congregation
to put Rev. Wilson in the pulpit.”

“So, just to keep the committee together, you gone see the church torn to shreds. ’Cause that is exactly what Cleavon and
his band of no-good, triflin’ fools will do, if y’all sit back and give them the chance. And I don’t care how much money Cleavon’s
stuck-up family gives the church. No amount of money can justify hiring the wrong pastor.”

Bert started running some more hot water to avoid dealing with Nettie, but she wasn’t through. “Bert, you and Wendell and
Melvin Sr. and even Mr. Louis Loomis, for that matter, can twiddle your thumbs with Cleavon all you want to. But as for me
and my girls, we ain’t playing with that joker.”

Bert stepped out of the tub and Nettie handed him a fluffy blue towel. He began to dry his body vigorously in frustration,
as if that towel could rub out all of his problems at church.

“You gone rub all the skin off yourself,” Nettie told him. “I keep telling you to pat yourself dry and protect your skin.”

He handed her the towel and said, “You do it then, since you the self-proclaimed skin care expert in this house.”

Nettie took the towel and began to pat him dry. Bert stood there a few seconds, lost in the sensation of the warm, soft towel
being pressed gently against his body by his wife.

“Baby?”

“Yeah, Bert, honey.”

“Hang in there with me on this, okay? I believe that when the undecided committee members get a whiff of Rev. Earl Hamilton,
they’ll come around. You know he’ll put on a good show. But in my opinion, he just like boiling water with some onions dropped
down in it. It smells like you cooking meat, but all it is, is onions in boiling water.”

Bert walked into the bedroom, with Nettie right behind him. He put on his favorite boxer shorts and sat down in his favorite
green velvet chair, then pulled on his favorite girl’s hand, urging her to come over to where he was sitting.

“Baby, you sure do smell good.”

“I know, Bert. But if your plan don’t work, what you gone do then? Honey, you know good and well that Cleavon and his crew
not gone give up that easy.”

Bert played around with one of the ribbons on the nightgown.

“Baby, Rev. Hamilton is not going to pastor my church. But we do have to get around those Johnsons.”

“Well, Bert, honey, I hope you do get around those Johnsons. Because Bert, if y’all don’t stop Cleavon, we women gone make
our presence
known,
big time. See, we got it all figured out. First thing, not a one of us putting another dime in the collection plates until
y’all hire Rev. Wilson. Then, we not cooking no more dinners, and we not gone clean up that church, either. I’ll say it again—we
ain’t playin’, Bert.”

“Baby, I know y’all ain’t playin’,” he said, as he pulled the ribbon loose. Nettie’s talking to him about church and fighting,
with a hand on the bare hip peeking through that little nightgown, was getting right up under his skin.

“You feeling better?” he asked, with a sly grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“I’m feeling a little bit better,” Nettie answered, as she gave him her special
smile
and pulled at the other ribbon.

Bert felt her smile travel all the way down into his soft, light blue boxer shorts. He said, “Baby, you sure do know how to
take care of your man right. Don’t you, girl?”

Nettie put her arms around his neck and whispered, “How right you want me to treat you, Bert honey?”

He slipped out of his boxer shorts and said, “You tell me, baby,” in a low husky whisper that sent such warm shivers through
Nettie, the toes on her right foot started to curl.

The next Sunday morning, Cleavon gave the morning prayer and introduced the guest pastor, Rev. Earl Hamilton, with great pride.
MamaLouise leaned over and whispered to Mr. Louis Loomis, “You’d think he was introducing Dr. Andrew Young instead of that
boy.”

After the choir sang, Rev. Hamilton stepped up to the pulpit podium and said, “Good morning, God’s children. Is it not the
most stupendously spectacular wonder that we are all gathered together in this house of worship?”

“Y’all,” Sheba whispered, “
how
did he manage to rub out all the black in his voice?”

“Yeah,” Sylvia whispered back, “he sound like Richard Pryor when he talking ‘white’ in one of his jokes.”

“Please,” Rev. Hamilton continued, “bow your heads, so that we can grace this service with a prayer.”

He then lifted his hands up in a gesture that made Sheba think of one of those back-in-the-Bible-days portraits and said,
“God, our Father, I beseech Thee to shower this congregation with the sparks of understanding, so that they will partake of
the teachings You have given me to translate from You to these sheep.”

Bert closed his eyes tight and massaged the space between his eyebrows like he had a terrible headache.

Nettie placed her hand on his knee. “You alright, Bert honey?”

“Yeah, baby,” he answered, sounding like he was in pain.

“You sure?”

“Yes, Nettie. Just that this joker’s voice is so whiny, I can hardly stand it.”

After the opening prayer, Rev. Hamilton launched into a very dry sermon about the evils of the new black music the children
were listening to, called “funk.” He had even gone so far as to say, “And as this music infiltrates our community, oozing
out of the radio, infecting our ears and beating us down with the depravity of its pulsating rhythms, we find that we cannot
escape it. It comes out the tavern door, shakes the dance floor of blue-light-in-the-basement parties, corrupts our backyard
barbecues, our school marching bands, and even our churches, masquerading as good music in the form of awful songs like ‘Oh
Happy Day.’”

At that point, the church grew so quiet that you could hear the sleeping babies breathing. “Oh Happy Day” was the song the
choir had sung right before the sermon, and it had had everybody, with the sole exception of Rev. Hamilton, on their feet
clapping and swaying and singing along with the choir. Even Cleavon had been out of his seat, swinging and enjoying the song.

Bert leaned over and whispered to Nettie, “Why don’t I go home, get my pistol, and load it up, then give it to that fool,
so he can shoot himself in the foot.”

“I wouldn’t want you to do that, Bert, honey.”

“And why is that, Nettie Green?”

“Because
I
want to be the one who shoots him with your pistol.”

Bert laughed and gave Nettie’s shoulder an affectionate nudge.

But Sheba, who was sitting with Bert and Nettie, couldn’t laugh. She was deeply disturbed by Rev. Hamilton. What he’d said
about the choir was just plain rude, and showed what little regard he had for the people of Gethsemane. She watched him closely
for the rest of the service. When the offering was brought down to the altar to be blessed, she saw him scoop up a handful
of the money and ogle it with pure lust in his eyes.

By the end of the service, Bert’s faction of the search committee was more determined than ever not to hire Earl Hamilton.
Cleavon knew that his candidate hadn’t made a good impression, but he was nowhere close to giving up. His dumb cousin Rufus,
who owed him a bundle of money, would go along with whatever he told him. The two undecided committee members posed more of
a challenge, but then Cleavon thrived on challenge. Finding a way to get them into his corner would be fun.

And Cleavon did just that, managing to pull those other two votes his way and splitting the committee right down the middle—four
in favor of Rev. George Wilson, four in favor of Rev. Earl Hamilton.

“Why don’t we take a recess, then come back and straighten this out,” Bert said, his eyes leveled on Cleavon’s two new converts.

One of the men patted his breast pocket, which held tickets to the upcoming Stevie Wonder concert and an engraved invitation
to a black-tie reception for the artist. Bert Green was right, of course—but right hadn’t gotten the man these tickets.

The other man studied his feet, regretting that he couldn’t afford to vote his conscience, not with Cleavon paying two back
car notes for him so he could keep his new white Lincoln Continental.

When they came back to the table after the break, Bert took one more vote, and the tie remained.

“You have the power to override this vote, Mr. Chairman,” Cleavon stated. “But I have the power to influence the pastor’s
salary and benefits. If you vote for George Wilson, I will keep his salary so low, he won’t be able to afford cheap, imitation
Kool-Aid.”

“And you oughta know how cheap that is,” Mr. Louis Loomis grumbled, “as much as you sell of that nasty stuff at your stores.”

“I’ve had just about enough of you, old man. You say one more thing to me and I’ll—”

“—And you’ll what, Cleavon Johnson?” Mr. Louis Loomis demanded. “I ain’t scared of you, your daddy, your tight-lipped snobby
mama, or your old senile grandpappy, who did all that dirt all of those years and now don’t have to remember a thing.”

“Did you just bring my mother into this?” Cleavon yelled. “You don’t talk about my mama.”

“Well, I just did,” Mr. Louis Loomis replied evenly.

“Sit down, Mr. Louis Loomis,” Bert said. “And Cleavon, you shut up. I’m tired of both of y’all—fussing and arguing all of
the time. Cleavon, you know you not acting right on this. And Mr. Louis Loomis, you know you wasting precious breath on Cleavon—don’t
know why you have such a hard time ignoring him and his craziness.”

“I might be crazy, Bert K. Green. But you’re still not hiring Rev. Wilson.”

Bert started to argue but checked his words as a vision formed in his mind. He remembered what Nettie told him would happen
if the committee didn’t vote to hire George Wilson. He said, “Okay, Cleavon, you win. This Sunday you can tell the church
that the committee is hiring Rev. Earl Hamilton.”