South Street (5 page)

The Word of Life Church had been founded in a storefront some fifteen years earlier. When the Reverend Mr. Sloan had taken it over it had been a minor eyesore in the denominational district, boasting, or rather, admitting to, some thirty-even members, a rickety piano, and a perennial deficit. Now The Word of Life utilized the original storefront as a mission and for Sunday School classes, the actual sanctuary having moved next door to the abandoned Laconia Cinema building, which Reverend Sloan had, as he was fond of saying, picked up for a spiritual. The rolls had swelled to some five hundred members, an improvement due mainly to what Reverend Sloan termed his “Enlightened Reformation,” which involved trading in the rickety piano for a new one, adding an organ, two trombones, a saxophone, amplified bass and guitar, a set of drums and a few tambourines, offering cut-rate subscriptions to professional sports events and charter bus trips to members of the flock, and substituting good grain punch for the watered-down Welch’s previously served at communion. The deficit had been erased thanks to Mr. Sloan’s highly lucrative, rather complicated, and slightly illegal fund-raising activities. These reforms had resulted in the loss of the church’s denominational affiliation, a side effect neither unwelcome to nor uncalculated by the Reverend J. Peter Sloan, who had found the regulations, doctrines, and discipline of the denomination uncongenial to his
modus operandi
.

On this particular Sunday morning the Reverend Mr. Sloan found that he was particularly alert. The street swam before his benevolent eye as he reflected contentedly on the recently compiled statistics which showed offerings, gifts, attendance, and the Dow-Jones Industrial Averages up sharply, while backsliding was at an all-time low of three and one-half souls per hundred. There had been some problems with the church’s liquidity, and for a while it had seemed as though Mr. Sloan’s long-prophesied fact-finding tour to the West Indies would have to be postponed indefinitely, but Mr. Sloan had, with an accustomed stroke of brilliant chicanery, found a solution; the one item of business on his schedule this Sunday morning would produce sufficient cold cash to insure that the people walking in the darkness of the Caribbean would not be deprived of the opportunity of seeing the Reverend Mr. Sloan flashing before them like a neon pillar.

From time to time Mr. Sloan paused in his reverie to greet a matron with her brood of scrubbed, uncomfortable-looking children in tow—little brown-skinned boys with scraped knees and black eyes, little girls in pigtails and pastel frocks. The Reverend Mr. Sloan was careful to pat each child on the head and to kiss each babe in arms and to give each of the ladies a wink of a size in direct proportion to her age and homeliness. Sister Lavernia Thompson rated a large smile and three separate winks because she had been known, at the age of twenty, as the ugliest female north of hell, and her looks had not improved in the forty-nine intervening years. After Sister Lavernia had passed, Mr. Sloan joyously embraced the duty of greeting Sister Fundidia Larson, a twenty-three-year-old bombshell with the bombs clearly visible. The fervor of Mr. Sloan’s embraces varied inversely as the magnitude of his winks; in the case of Sister Fundidia, he grasped her by the shoulders and drew her to him with fatherly firmness, lowered his face to hers with godlike benevolence, pressed his lips against hers with saintly candor, and explored her mouth with his tongue with a tremendous amount of Christian zeal. Having ascertained that all of Sister Fundidia’s teeth were firmly rooted, the Reverend Mr. Sloan released her. “Mornin’, Reverend,” said Sister Fundidia with a sigh, her eyes misting slightly at the giving of the gift of tongue.

“How do you do, Sister?” said the Reverend Mr. Sloan. “No,” he went on, raising a restraining hand, “don’t answer. I can see you’re just fine.”

“Yes,” said Sister Fundidia dreamily, “God has been good to me this week.”

“God was good to you from the very beginning,” murmured the Reverend Mr. Sloan, pondering the bust of Sister Fundidia.

“Yes,” said Sister Fundidia, clasping her hands over her cleavage and rolling her eyes heavenward, “but this week he has been extra good. I met the most marvelous man!”

The Reverend Mr. Sloan snapped to like a recruit at boot camp. “Sister,” he said sternly, shaking his head in fatherly disapproval, “we must beware of yielding up to the pleasures of the flesh.”

Sister Fundidia turned slightly darker. “Oh, Reverend,” she cried, laying cool fingertips on his arm, “it’s nothing like
that
. I met him at the hospital when I was doing the visiting. I’ve been back to visit him several times. He’s just the most
peaceful
person I’ve ever known!”

The Reverend Mr. Sloan adopted a look of Christian concern. “Still waters are Satan’s workshop,” Mr. Sloan said. “Have you spoken to him concerning his soul?”

“No,” said Sister Fundidia unhappily, “that’s the trouble. You see, he’s deaf.”

“I see. Well, have you given him any of our inspirational leaflets? A back issue of
Parables in Sloan
?”

“N-n-no,” said Sister Fundidia, biting her lower lip, “you see, he’s blind, too.”

“Well, you can take him for inspirational walks.”

Sister Fundidia shook her head.

“Paralyzed?” said Mr. Sloan.

“From the neck down,” confirmed Sister Fundidia. “But he’s so
restful
.”

The Reverend Mr. Sloan sighed in relief, perceiving that Sister Fundidia was in no danger of coming to what few senses she possessed. “Is he dumb as well? Never mind. I suggest you get the organist to play a special hymn for him. ‘Oh, for a Thousand Tongues to Sing’ should do nicely, especially the fourth stanza.”

Sister Fundidia’s eyes sparkled with admiration. “Oh, Reverend, I
knew
you’d think of something.” The Reverend Mr. Sloan smiled as he watched Sister Fundidia’s fundament bounce off in search of the organist.

He licked his lips.

He did not sit up quickly; he was much too wise for that. Instead he raised himself from the army cot with great care, pushing with his hands on the wooden frame and avoiding any motion that would use his stomach muscles. When he was sitting up he turned his head slowly from side to side once or twice to get the juices flowing before he opened his eyes. When he did look around, the room was as calm and steady as anyone could have wished. His eyes took in the familiar cases of liquor on their wooden shelves, the empty beer kegs stacked against one wall. He shook his head just once, hard, to see what would happen. The room stayed steady. He tensed his stomach muscles experimentally, and feeling only a little queasiness he shrugged and went ahead and swung his feet to the floor and sat on the edge of the cot for an instant before pushing himself the rest of the way up. He stood beside the cot for a minute, shivering and swaying slowly, before shuffling across the storeroom and out into the bar.

The barroom was empty and silent, ashtrays overflowing, the floor littered with empty cigarette packs and butts, with the dirt from a hundred or so pairs of feet that had stepped across it in search of Saturday-night oblivion. He walked through the litter to the men’s room, pushing open the wooden door and stepping into the pungent interior. He opened his fly and stood before the urinal, waiting for his aged bladder to build up pressure and then staring reflectively at the wall as the medicinal stench from the water-activated deodorant cake rose about him. He shook himself carefully and closed his pants and went to the sink, brushing a few locks of tightly curled hair out of the bowl before running it full of water. He removed his ragged suit coat, sweater, shirt, and undershirt and looked at himself in the cracked mirror, seeing the tight bands of muscle across his shrunken chest, watching his image mist over as the steam rose up and clouded the glass. He dipped his hands into the water, swore softly, and then again, a little louder, and ran in more cold. He jiggled the lever of the soap dispenser and swore again. He left the restroom, retraced his steps back across the barroom and returned, carrying a box of powder from which he refilled the dispenser. He shook soap into his hands, mixed it with water to make a greasy white paste, and began to wash the upper part of his body. He rinsed with a handful of wet paper towels, dried with another handful. He opened his belt and undid his fly and washed the lower part of his body, staring up at the ceiling as he did so. He rinsed and dried in the same manner, wincing as the rough brown paper abraded his tender parts.

When he had completed his toilette, he pulled his stained, smelly clothes back on and returned to the storeroom. From a corner he took a mop and pail and carried them to a heavy porcelain sink attached to the far wall. He poured a large amount of a strong industrial detergent into the pail, then filled it with hot water. Grasping the handle with both hands, clutching the mop handle against his body with one elbow, he hauled the bucket out into the bar and set it in the middle of the floor. As he straightened he felt a twinge in his stomach that rapidly became nausea. His face contorted and he grasped the hard wood of the bar to keep himself from falling. In a few minutes the wave of illness passed. He straightened up gingerly and slowly shuffled back into the storeroom for a handful of rags. He set the rags on a bar stool and caught sight of the bottle of red wine that Leo had left. He smiled grimly, rubbing his stomach. He picked up the mop and dipped it into the steaming bucket, bent his back, and began to swab the floor with long, steady practiced strokes. From time to time he raised his head to gaze longingly at the bottle, but after a moment he would close his eyes and bend back to his work.

As he came up the street Leo could see the Reverend Mr. J. Peter Sloan standing in front of The Word of Life. Leo did not like the Reverend Mr. Sloan, placing him in the same reprehensible category as rats, roaches, taxes, and the last-place finishes of the Philadelphia Phillies. Every Sunday morning, when he went to let Jake out of Lightnin’ Ed’s, Leo came face to face with the Reverend Mr. Sloan. Leo had come to accept this philosophically; he had never known anything good to happen on Sunday anyway. Or anything bad, for that matter, except for funerals and doubleheaders, which, for a Phillies fan, were much the same thing.

The Reverend Mr. Sloan observed Leo’s approach with apprehension and anticipation. Mr. Sloan always anticipated the Sunday encounter, welcoming the chance to put Leo down. The apprehension resulted from the fact that he had never quite managed to do it. But Mr. Sloan was certain that one day he would get Leo, a triumph he considered crucial. Mr. Sloan viewed every situation in terms of “me” and “them”; there were rich people, and then there were poor people. There were the strong and the meek. There were lions and there were Christians. There was the Reverend J. Peter Sloan and there was anybody else on South Street who had a following. Leo, to Mr. Sloan’s mind, had a dangerous following indeed. Some of Mr. Sloan’s best members spent their hard-earned money in Leo’s bar, money they could instead be giving to the church in any of the forty-nine ways Mr. Sloan had painstakingly devised, from buying weekly copies of
Parables in Sloan
to purchasing The Word of Life’s special pecan pies. And so the Reverend Mr. Sloan vigorously attacked Leo and Lightnin’ Ed’s whenever possible, carefully implying that the bar was no better than a whorehouse and that Leo was a principal acolyte of the Prince of Darkness. The matrons of the church took heed and swung their frying pans twice as hard against the skulls of husbands who confessed to drinking in Lightnin’ Ed’s.

“Good morning, Brother Leo,” said the Reverend Mr. Sloan, as Leo came in range.

“Mornin’, Rev,” said Leo.

The Reverend Mr. Sloan bristled at the familiarity but swallowed his pride in the interest of Spreading the Gospel Into All The World. “Hasn’t God given us a fine morning?”

Leo looked up at the sky and considered the proposition. “Sure has. Looks like the ball game ain’t gonna get rained out.”

“Ah, yes,” said the Reverend Mr. Sloan, searching Leo’s diction for a trap. “I assume you are on your way to worship.”

“Go right ahead,” Leo said amiably. “I assumes I’m on ma way to let Jake outa ma bar ’fore he drinks up all the profit, an’ then I assumes I’ma go on home an’ take a nap an’ watch the ball game.”

“Ah, yes,” said the Reverend Mr. Sloan. “The ball game.” He clasped his hands behind his back and rocked back onto his heels. “Ah, Brother Leo, I’ve been meaning to speak with you about, well, spiritual affairs.”

“Yeah,” said Leo, with a sigh.

“Now I know a man like you doesn’t always consider his soul—”

“That’s for sure,” said Leo.

“But,” continued the Reverend, ignoring the interruption, “it is a matter deserving of your greatest attention.” At this point Leo realized that it would be useless to say anything and that the less he interrupted the sooner the ordeal would be over. “Now,” said the Reverend Mr. Sloan, “I know you are a good businessman. And, as a good businessman, you have insurance on your bar so that, in case of fire or theft or vandalism, you are protected from material loss. I’m sure you have life insurance, too. But have you ever paused to think how silly life insurance is? You yourself can never collect. You pay the premiums, but only others can glean the fruit of the vineyard. Now, what I offer you is the kind of life insurance that only you can collect. ‘Lay not up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and dust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourself treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor dust doth corrupt and where thieves do not break through and steal.’ Why, Brother Leo, it is sheer folly for you to neglect to insure your eternal life just as you insure your worldly business.” The Reverend Mr. Sloan assumed a pose of appeal: knees slightly bent so that he could look up into Leo’s eyes, neck stretched, eyes wide, jaw dropped, hands spread with the palms facing upward and slightly outward. He had practiced it for hours.

“I ain’t got no insurance on ma bar,” Leo said softly, trying to sound apologetic.

The Reverend Mr. Sloan stiffened, dropped his hands, and let his mouth go slack. “No insurance?” he croaked disbelievingly.