South Street (32 page)

He shuffled north along Nineteenth Street, heading for the Mid-City Branch office on Chestnut, which was conveniently located one short block from a State Store. It was a beautiful morning, not yet too hot. The flood of office workers had been sponged up by the office buildings, leaving only a few people on the street. That suited Jake; he had no fondness for office workers, although he viewed them with profound compassion. There, but for the grace of God, went he. He turned west on Chestnut Street, shooting a brief glance at the State Store just past the corner, and momentarily considering speculating some of his wealth on a state lottery ticket, as the sign in the window advised. He might win fifty thousand dollars, and fifty thousand dollars represented an awful lot of wine. But Jake knew that he would never win the fifty thousand dollars. Nobody who needed it ever won the fifty thousand dollars, since if you were unlucky enough to be broke in the first place, it was unlikely you would be lucky enough to win fifty thousand dollars. Besides, there was no bank that would cash a check for fifty thousand dollars presented by a scruffy wino and it was a little too much to expect the state to pay off in cash. All in all, Jake decided, the lottery was great for solid citizens, but for winos it was better to play the numbers. Unfortunately Leroy Briggs ran the numbers on South Street, and Jake refused to have anything to do with anything that had anything to do with Leroy Briggs. As he pushed open the stubborn wooden door of the Mid-City Branch of the United States Post Office, Jake decided that if he ever
did
win fifty thousand dollars, he would be willing to expend a large portion of it getting rid of Leroy Briggs and his other nemesis, the Reverend Mr. J. Peter Sloan.

Under the mistaken impression that his shuffle had become a nonchalant stroll, Jake moved across the Post Office lobby to the bulletin board. He made himself comfortable and began his preliminary inspection, greeting old friends among the gallery of felons—hollow-eyed, hollow-cheeked, hollow-chinned faces that stared glassily out at him or peered listlessly at the margin of the page. Jake noted a few absences—the famed FBI manhunt had cornered a few miscreants—and a few changes. Jake was pleased to note that one of his favorites, Willie Jack Bartrum, had committed two more murders in the course of a bank robbery in El Paso, Texas. Because of this successful exploit, Willie Jack’s price had risen by five thousand dollars. Willie Jack Bartrum had been on the loose for nearly seven years, since his escape from Raiford Prison in Florida, in the course of which he had killed a white guard. The poster hadn’t said that the guard was white, but Willie Jack was wanted hysterically by the FBI—he had the highest price in the book—and Jake was perfectly capable of putting two and two together. The deed assured Willie Jack Bartrum of a special post of affection in Jake’s heart, and every time he saw a new escapade added to Willie Jack’s catalog of extra-legal adventures, Jake felt a surge of racial pride and a warm feeling of brotherhood.

Jake turned away from Willie Jack and began to study the book, refreshing his memory and noting the changes. Jake did not bother to memorize the names and faces of white felons—he had noticed, over the years, that whites had an unfortunate tendency toward chickenshit crime. He turned the pages slowly: a bank robber, two extorters, jury-tampering, bunko, armed robbery, jailbreak, more bunko, a blackman inciting to riot. Then something hit him. His eyes widened, and he flipped back through the book to one of the newly added bunko artists. He looked carefully at the picture, squinted, and looked again. He checked the listing of known aliases. He checked the date on the poster and cursed softly. He chuckled, looked at the face that stared up at him, ran his finger down the list of charges. Jailbreak in California. Embezzlement. Bunko. He whistled softly.

He glanced around, and, finding himself unobserved, he tore the sheet from the book and stuffed it into his pocket.

In the cool dark depths of Lightnin’ Ed’s, the soon-to-be-acting pastor of The Word of Life Church sat in confrontation with his conscience. Settled on a bar stool, hunched behind the slowly dissipating foam on a long cold beer, Brother Fletcher pondered the problem of his ascension. A church of his own again, but this time a big church, with big problems. It would have been a difficult task for a saint, an awesome responsibility for the most sanctified of mortals. For a sinful doubter, as Brother Fletcher believed himself to be, it was a dangerous attempt, almost hubristic. A man who had not only walked in the council of the ungodly, stood in the way of sinners, and sat in the seat of the scornful but who had, while sitting there, drunk spirits and watched a baseball game had, in Brother Fletcher’s humble opinion, no business at all leading anybody anywhere, and what should have been a high point in his career was a millstone about his bony neck. Brother Fletcher sipped his beer and sighed.

Jake came shuffling through the door at the far end of the bar, blinking his eyes in the darkness. “Howdy, Reverend. Leo,” Jake said.

“Afternoon,” said Brother Fletcher, feeling guilty because he welcomed Jake as an interruption in his train of thought.

“Uh,” grunted Leo, without turning his attention away from the TV set. In the afternoons, when there were few baseball games and even fewer customers in Lightnin’ Ed’s, Leo indulged his passion for soap operas. Leo had been watching the soap operas for fifteen years, and there was no bored housewife anywhere in America who was any more obsessed with them. Every afternoon, after serving the lunchtime crowd, Leo would switch on the set and adjust the brightness and the color controls to darken the actor’s flesh tones so that they looked more like normal people and, drawing himself a beer, would settle back to watch the tragic antics as a
Search for Tomorrow
discovered that
As the World Turns
there is
Another World
across the river from
Somerset
which, due to a
Love of Life
and despite a
Secret Storm
, managed somehow to
Return to Peyton Place
. The soap operas had changed Leo’s life, making him a far more thoughtful and aware individual. Leo had never given much consideration to issues such as abortion, divorce, mercy killing, probate, or contraception, but the soap operas were full of these things, and Leo’s mind was duly expanded. Leo’s spiritual awareness had been expanded as well; although he had never considered reincarnation, the actors and actresses kept dying off in one series and reappearing in another with only minor alterations in appearance, and Leo had thus become convinced that there was, although he did not know the actual term, transmigration of souls. Perhaps most important, Leo found the soap operas tremendously uplifting, for against the background of whores and winos and dead-end downers who frequented Lightnin’ Ed’s and inhabited the limbo between the Schuylkill and the Delaware, Leo’s afternoon TV projected the images of doctors and nurses and lawyers and judges and businessmen and their neat, middle-class homes and families, who, while they had problems, also had the money to go with them; who, when rushing off to deathbeds, accident sites, and clandestine trysts, went in cars or cabs or airplanes. On South Street people rarely went far, and when they did go they flew Greyhound.

Jake was used to Leo’s afternoon passion. He dropped a dime on the bar and waited patiently. Leo’s eyes never left the screen while he reached out, grasped a glass in one hand and a bottle of muscatel in the other, and poured Jake a drink. Jake ran his fingers along the top of the bar where Leo had spilled a few drops. “What’s happening Leo?” he inquired with a glint in his eye. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and sucked on them contentedly.

“Shup,” Leo said.

Jake listened to the dialogue for a few minutes. “Shit,” he commented, “that lyin’ bastard ain’t never gonna marry her. He’s just after some nooky.”

“Shup, y’old fool,” Leo snapped. “Can’t you see I’m tryin’ to listen at somethin’ here?”

Jake looked down at Brother Fletcher and winked. “Hey, Leo, did you hear? They’re passin’ a law says all bartenders got to weigh less than a hundred an’ ninety.”

“Um,” said Leo, biting his thumb out of concern for the tense scene being portrayed in living color on the TV screen.

“Know what else? They gonna raise the liquor tax.”

“Um,” Leo said. “Dammit, girl, can’t you see he’s after the money? … Umph.”

“What’s more—”

“Will you shut the fuck up an’ drink your goddamn wine?” Leo snarled. “You’re more commotion than a flock a fuckin’ pigeons.”

“Male or female?” Jake demanded.

“Both, obviously,” offered Brother Fletcher.

Jake gave him a look of startled approval. Brother Fletcher felt his face grow warm. “Maybe,” Jake said, “they’re queer pigeons.”

“I’ma queer your damn pigeon,” Leo threatened, an’ shove it right up your skinny ass if you don’t drink your damn wine an’ shut your damn mouth an’ let me watch ma damn TV.”

“Sorry, Leo,” Jake said meekly.

“Humph,” said Leo, and turned back to the set just to be told for the six thousandth time that Ivory Snow not only gets your baby’s diapers softer, but whiter, too. “Shit,” Leo said.

Jake chuckled. Leo glared. Jake picked up his wine and carried it down the bar. He perched on the stool beside Brother Fletcher. “How many souls you save today, Rev?”

Brother Fletcher smiled sourly. “I think I’m losing one.”

“Well,” Jake said, “don’t worry. It’s early yet.”

“That’s what worries me,” Brother Fletcher said. “At the rate I’m going Satan will own South Street by midnight.”

“Humph,” Jake said. “Satan already owns South Street. It’s you fellas supposed to be tryin’ to get it back.”

“I know,” Brother Fletcher said with a sigh.

“Say, uh, Rev, I was just kiddin’. I didn’t mean no harm. …” Brother Fletcher waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Kiddin’ makes things easier,” Jake said. “But I guess you fellas don’t have a whole lot a time for that stuff. I guess talkin’ to God is pretty serious. Must be hard.”

Brother Fletcher sighed. “I’ve never found it particularly difficult to talk to God. Talking to God is easy. It’s about the easiest thing there is. It’s getting an answer that’s difficult.”

Jake thought for a minute. “Yeah, I see what you mean. I guess it’s like talkin’ to Leo when he’s watchin’ them damn shows.”

“Maybe,” Brother Fletcher said. “Maybe that’s what God’s doing.”

“Say, uh, Rev?” Jake said hesitantly.

“Yes?”

“Ah—sposin’, just sposin’ now, a fella had this problem. Like maybe there was this high-yaller sonofabitch an’ this other fella had the goods on him an’ could do the bastard right in, only he didn’t know whether he ought to do it or not. Could he come an’ talk to you about it?”

“Of course,” Brother Fletcher said promptly.

“An’ what would you tell him?”

“Well, ah, that would depend.”

“Depend? What on?”

“Well, on what he wanted to do to this other man, and what the other man had done to him—”

“He’s a high-yaller sonofabitch,” Jake interjected.

“That doesn’t tell me very much,” Brother Fletcher said.

“Umph,” Jake said, and sipped his wine in silence for a few minutes. “Well, sposin’ somebody did come to you like that, could you give him an answer right off or would you have to talk to God about it?”

Brother Fletcher sipped his beer thoughtfully. “Well,” he said after a long pause, “if it was really difficult and special, I might want to pray about it before I said anything.”

“Uh huh,” Jake said, nodding. “An’ how long does it take to get an answer?”

Brother Fletcher sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said sadly. “When I was younger I used to be able to get an answer”—he snapped his fingers—“just like that. Now, every year it seems to take longer and longer.”

“Hum,” Jake said. “Well, I guess it would. Things always takes longer when you gets older. Now when I was a young fella I could whip it out an’ piss quickern you could say Jack Robinson. I useta piss out a quart a wine so fast they wanted me to join the fire department. Now it takes me longer to piss it out than it does to drink it down. Man, I just stand there and stand there and stand there, an’
nothin’
happens. I guess it’s the same way with you an’ your prayin’. You’re gettin’ on up there is all.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Brother Fletcher said, mouthing the heresy gingerly, “I’ve been thinking that maybe everything isn’t as simple as it used to be and God doesn’t have all the answers ready. Maybe He has to figure them out now, just like anybody else.” Brother Fletcher felt his stomach muscles tighten and his heart beat faster as he waited in primitive fear for the Big Voice thundering or the Bolt of Lightning.

“Could be,” Jake allowed. “Could be God’s gettin’ on up there too, an’ them answers just don’t come quick like they used to. How old you figure He’s gettin’ to be?”

“Huh?” said Brother Fletcher.

“God,” Jake said. “How old you think He is?”

“Well,” said Brother Fletcher, feeling confused. “I don’t think … well, God doesn’t have any age. I mean, He was always here. The beginning of everything.”

“Damn!” Jake said, impressed. “That’s pretty old.” He looked around the empty bar as if expecting to be observed, then leaned close to Brother Fletcher. “You know, Rev, I guess I shouldn’t tell you this, but I never went to church much. While they was havin’ the service, I mean.”

“I never would have guessed,” said Brother Fletcher.

“Nah,” Jake continued. “I never went in too much for this God business. I mean, I never knowed who was runnin’ things, but you ain’t got to be no personal friend a the engineer to know if the train is off the damn track. Way I see it, He’s pretty lucky He don’t have to get elected, ’cause—well, I don’t know about noplace else, but around here the sucker couldn’t get into a crap game, let alone win an election.”

“Well,” said Brother Fletcher slowly, “I don’t think we can judge what God does, we just have to believe that He has His reasons and if we knew them we’d understand that—”

“Yeah, well, maybe,” Jake said. “Now listen, gettin’ back to ma fr’instance. Sposin’ you was to talk to Him about it an’ He didn’t come up with an answer right away, but you needed one quick. What then?”