South Street (33 page)

“Well, you could look in the Bible to see if—”

“You mean like somebody had the same problem before?”

“That’s right,” Brother Fletcher said.

“Well,” Jake said, “you know of any cases where somebody had the shit on a real high-yaller sonofabitch?”

Brother Fletcher sucked thoughtfully at his lower lip. “Not exactly. But God said, ‘Vengeance is mine,’ and Jesus said, ‘If a man smite thee on thy right cheek, turn unto him thy left cheek also.’”

“Humm,” Jake said. “That vengeance business is easy to understand, only I ain’t after no vengeance, I just wanna get rid a the bastard. What happens if that fella hits you on the left cheek?”

“Turn the other one,” Brother Fletcher said automatically.

“He done already hit that one,” Jake reminded him. Brother Fletcher sighed. “Well,” Jake continued, “never mind, Rev. I guess you fellas never did have a whole hell of a lot a luck dealin’ with real live sonsabitches. I got along all these years without astin’ God what to do. Only I figured …” His voice trailed off.

“Figured what?”

“Well, nothin’. Only, well, a man’s gettin’ up there, he starts to thinkin’, you know. Now I don’t figure God’s gonna be too upset about a little wine an’ whatever I done way back when, but I figure what a man does toward the end, that must be pretty important.” Jake looked at Brother Fletcher very earnestly. “I don’t want to go to no Hell, Rev. I been livin’ seventy-four years, an’ I don’t want to be endin’ up in Hell.”

“I don’t think—” Brother Fletcher began. He stopped. “You’ve got a lot of time left,” he said lamely.

“Oh yeah,” Jake said, “I know that. I ain’t in no hurry. Just the same, if a man’s got somethin’ important to do after he’s gettin’ up there, he wants to make sure it’s right, you know what I mean? That’s why I ast you.”

“But I don’t really know anything about—”

“You know what’s right, don’t you?” Jake said.

Brother Fletcher hung his head. “No,” he said, “no, I don’t really know what’s right.”

Jake stared at him in disbelief. “But
you
gotta know. You’re a damn
preacher
!”

“I guess I’m not really much of a preacher,” Brother Fletcher said sadly.

“Well, damn,” Jake said. He drained his glass. Brother Fletcher looked intently at his beer. Jake regarded him sourly, picked up his glass, and shuffled up to Leo. A commercial was on, and Leo was temporarily among the living. He uncorked the wine bottle as Jake approached.

“Havin’ a nice talk with the Reverend?” Leo inquired.

“Damn!” Jake said.

Leo nodded understandingly. “He’s been there all day, just sittin’ an’ drinkin’ beer an’ starin’ at the wall.”

“Say what?”

“I said he’s been there all day,” Leo repeated.

“You don’t have to shout,” Jake snapped.

“I wouldn’t if you ever cleaned your damn ears. I bet you got half a Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address stuck in there.”

“Screw your ass,” Jake said, but the commercial had ended and Leo was plunged back into the midst of soap powder and domestic crisis. Jake watched Leo watching the TV for a while, then he turned away with a snort and went back down to Brother Fletcher. “That Leo,” Jake said, “he ain’t no good no more. That damn TV done turned his brain to oatmeal. I tell you, Rev, the worse thing they ever done was to invent color TV. Useta be when you looked at TV you knowed it was TV on account of it was black an’ white. Now they got it all lookin’ like for real, an’ who the hell can tell the damn difference?” Jake sipped his wine and snorted in disgust.

“Jake,” Brother Fletcher said suddenly, “you do believe in God, don’t you?”

“Hell, yes, I ain’t no communist. Only communists an’ white folks don’t believe in God, an’ I sure as hell ain’t white.”

“But you drink wine.”

“What the hell has that got to do with it? If you don’t mind me sayin’ so, Rev, you been actin’ a little—”

“This,” said Brother Fletcher, “is His blood, which was shed for you and for many for the remission of sins. As oft as you take it, do it in remembrance of His death and Passion, until His coming again, and may it preserve your soul unto everlasting life.” Brother Fletcher raised his glass.

“Huh?” Jake said.

“Drink,” ordered Brother Fletcher. Jake stared, shrugged, raised his glass, and drank. “Amen,” Brother Fletcher said.

Jake nodded, sat mystified. “You okay now, Rev?”

“No,” Brother Fletcher said. “I am not okay. My soul is sick. For one month I will be the minister of The Word of Life Church. I think I would rather serve communion in a bar.”

“Yeah?” Jake said. “How come only for a month?”

“The Reverend Mr. Sloan is going off on a junket. He’ll be back in a month.”

“What if he was to stay away?” Jake asked. “You’d just keep on bein’—”

“Don’t talk about it,” said Brother Fletcher.

Jake stared at his wine for a while, then slowly raised his head. “Don’t it say somethin’ somewhere about helpin’ your brother?”

“It says something everywhere about helping your brother,” said Brother Fletcher listlessly.

“Well now,” Jake said. “If you was to do somethin’ wrong, only it was to help somebody else, even if it was still wrong, it wouldn’t be as much wrong, would it?”

“No,” said Brother Fletcher, “I guess not.”

Jake grinned and punched him on the arm. “Don’t worry, Rev. You still got a hotline to Jesus, an’ I’m gonna buy you a drink. Leo!”

“Shup,” Leo said.

Rayburn basked in the dying light that penetrated the boardroom’s browntinted windows, his work shoes, the once-brown leather dulled and discolored by years of foot-sweat and disinfectant, propped audaciously on the polished tabletop, the rubber heels making dull marks on the wood. He leaned back in the big swivel chair. “Fellow board members,” he said. His voice did not carry far or echo—the feeble vibrations were swallowed up by the ranks of leather chairs drawn up along the length of the table, by the heavy, rich curtains, by the thick pile of the carpet. Rayburn frowned at the deadness of the sound, leaned forward, cleared his throat. “Fellow board members,” he said again, more loudly. The echoes still died, sucked up by the ponderous softness of chairs and curtains and carpet. Rayburn sighed, and allowed himself to sink back into the chair.

It was an evening of anniversary. Rayburn Wallace had been working at the bank for precisely fifteen years. Rayburn shrugged himself still deeper in the chair and reflected back on his long career in the towers of finance. His rise, while not exactly meteoric, had at least been steady. He had begun in the nether regions, wiping grease and oil from cement floors, and had risen through the spilled ink of central duplicating, the empty lipstick containers and discarded chewing-gum wrappers of the typing pool, through the reams of obsolete computer print-out in auditing, and finally, to the cigar ash and balled memoranda of the executive suite. He had been given his key to the executive washroom. High above the blaze of street lights, Rayburn had knelt, scrubbing, before the thrones of power. It took him half of his eight-hour shift to clean the rest rooms and the rugs. The rest of the time he spent in promoting himself through the offices of the vice-presidents to the office of the president and now, after fifteen years of faithful service, to the Chair.

“This meeting,” Rayburn intoned, “will now come to order.” The sound of his voice was still not right. It was lacking in the harmonics of authority, the subtle resonances of power. Rayburn frowned, shrugged; it was his first night as chairman; perfection could hardly be expected. The chairman turned in his leather chair and gazed out at the sunset bloodying the sky over West Philadelphia. The sun hurt his eyes, and he squinted. The door opened and Victoria Bender, his secretary who had been at his side throughout his steady rise to the utmost pinnacles of success entered, smiling deferentially. “Mr. Wallace?”

“Yes, Miss Bender.”

“There’s a man here. A Mr. Briggs. He doesn’t have an appointment but I thought—”

“Miss Bender,” Rayburn said sternly, “you should know that the attention of the chairman is not needed every time some silly-ass pimp wants a loan to buy a new Cadillac.”

“Yes, sir,” said Victoria, “but I thought maybe this might be special on account of there’s a lady with him who says she’s Mrs. Wallace.”

“Hell,” Rayburn roared, “that’s no lady, that’s ma slippery-ass wife. Throw the bitch out the window. Maybe fallin’ twenty stories’ll cool down her britches.”

“Are you serious, Mr. Wallace?” Victoria, awed at his tough-mindedness, stared at him.

“Nah,” Rayburn said languidly, “we’d get into trouble. There’s a law against dumpin’ garbage on the street.” He chuckled and sighed. “Send ’em on in.”

“We wants to see the man,” Leroy Briggs protested, “not some damn janitor.”

“That’s Mr. Wallace,” Victoria Bender said coldly. “Now, who are you?”

“I’m Leroy Briggs,” said Leroy Briggs.

“Do you have any identification?”

“Rayburn, honey, I been missin’ you,” Leslie said.

“Ain’t suprisin’,” Rayburn said, buffing his manicured nails against his monogrammed shirt.

“Well, where you been, baby?”

“Oh I comes an’ I goes. That’s why you been missin’ me—all you ever wanted to do was come.”

“Ain’t that enough?” snarled Leroy Briggs.

“What’s the problem, Miss Bender?” Rayburn inquired.

“This gentleman cannot produce three pieces of identification.”

“Why, Miss Bender!” Rayburn said in shocked tones. “Why, don’t you know this here is Mr. Leroy Muthafuckin’ Cocksuckin’ Shiteatin’ Asslickin’ Briggs. Ain’t that right, Leroy?”

Leroy Briggs glared at him impotently.

“You best say somethin’,” Rayburn advised. “If you ain’t who I think you is, we gonna have to get the po-lice up here to make sure you ain’t up to nothin’ suspicious.”

“I’m Leroy Briggs.”

“Miss Bender, get that man’s name down on a form ninety-six. Could be a form sixty-nine,” Rayburn explained to Leroy, “but you too damn fat for that.”

“Name, please,” said Victoria crisply, seating herself at the typewriter.

“Leroy Briggs.”

“
Full
name,” snapped Victoria.

“That’s it.”

“Ah, Mr. Wallace, this gentleman says his full name is Leroy Briggs.”

“Don’t forget your middle names, Leroy,” Rayburn advised. “Victoria loves her rules.”

Leroy gritted his teeth.

“Name, please?”

“Leroy …”

“
Name,
please?”

“Leroy Muthafuckin’ Cocksuckin’ Asslickin’ Briggs.”

“Well, you forgot Shiteatin’, but then that’s obvious,” Rayburn said. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“You can’t do shit for a mosquito,” Leroy Briggs said. “I wants to see the president a this bank, an’ that sure as hell ain’t you.”

“That’s right,” Rayburn said. “I’m the chairman of the board.”

“I thought you was a janitor,” Leslie wailed.

“Well, I was,” Rayburn said. “But honesty and hard work will always be rewarded.”

Victoria Bender smiled at Leslie. “I always knowed Mr. Wallace was gonna go far. Why, even when he wasn’t nothin’ but a night-shift janitor he saved his money an’ he was dependable. I just knowed he was gonna go places. An’ speakin’ a goin’ places, you better hurry or you’ll miss your plane.”

“Plane?” said Leslie.

“A little vacation,” Rayburn said. “Mexico. Three months. An’ Victoria?”

“Yes, Mr. Wallace?”

“Rayburn,” Rayburn said.

“Rayburn,” Victoria said reverently.

“If you knowed I was gonna be goin’ far, you musta knowed I was gonna be takin’ the one person in the whole damn world that stayed in ma corner all these years.”

“You mean … me?”

“Well, I sho’ as hell don’t mean her. Now, right here I got the plane tickets for both a us.”

“But I’ve got to pack,” Victoria protested.

“Shit,” Rayburn said. “You got me, baby, an’ I got you. Anything else we get when we need it. All right, baby?”

“All right, darlin’,” Victoria sighed, her eyes shining.

“But what about ma business?” Leroy Briggs said.

“Mind it,” Victoria snapped.

“Now, now,” Rayburn said gently. “Leroy, on account a your, ah, association with ma wife here, I’ma make sure you gets special treatment. Victoria, get me the president. George, I’ma send a man over to you, his name’s Briggs. You find out exactly what he wants. Then you tell him to go fish. Thanks.” Rayburn slammed the phone down. “George handles all ma light work,” he explained. Rising, he offered Victoria his arm.

With a cry of rage Leroy Briggs grabbed Leslie and slung her off the top of the building. “I knowed he was gonna throw her over sooner or later,” Victoria confided.

There was a short wail followed by a meaty thunk. “Damn!” said Leroy, peering over the edge. “The bitch landed right on ma car.”

“You need a car loan, Leroy,” Rayburn said, “you come right here. You just saved me the price of a divorce lawyer.”

“What’s it like in Mexico, baby?” Victoria said.

“It’s all gold and silver, baby, all gold and silver.”

Below, in the street, sirens wailed.

“A
what
?” roared Big Betsy the whore.

“You heard me,” Leo said.

“Well, what the hell is a goddamn preacher doin’ in a goddamn bar?”

“Most likely he’s drinkin’ a little beer an’ watchin’ the ball game an’ not botherin’ nobody with a lot a bullshit, which is a lot moren I can say for some folks.”

“Drinkin’
beer
? Damn, Leo, everybody knows preachers don’t drink beer.”

“Now, how’d you find out so much about preachers? I’d say you been tryin’ to whore your way into heaven, but even preachers don’t got that much charity.”

“I learned ’bout preachers the same way you learned ’bout women,” Big Betsy informed him. “Somebody told me. Damn, Leo, you can’t start havin’ a bunch a preachers hangin’ out in here. The place’ll go to the damn dogs.”

Leo regarded her sourly. “There’s a rumor goin’ round that I’m already runnin’ a kennel, ’cause you spend so much time in here.”

“Kiss ma ass,” Big Betsy said. “You ain’t got no respect for your old customers. You gonna have a bunch a preachers in here eatin’ fried chicken an’ scarin’ the tricks away.”