Second Sunday Read online

  Sylvia had to stop herself from quoting one of Mr. Louis Loomis’s observations about Cleavon’s “strict Bible ways” mess. “That boy always pontificating about a woman being beneath a man ’cause his tail always so intent on being on top of one.”

  “Well, it don’t matter what Cleavon believe,” Nettie said. “The fact is, he used church money to get the Reverend out of trouble. But it ain’t just the money that makes me so mad—it’s our men using they man pride and they man rules to pick our preachers, acting like I committed a sin just by asking them a question. Look at us down here in this hot kitchen, fixing food and washing dishes, while they upstairs eating, talking, laughing, and acting like they the Apostles. This is our church too. It just ain’t right. And I ain’t gone stand for it no more.”

  “But what you propose to do?” Viola asked. “We not on any of those boards. So I don’t see how we gone select a preacher.”

  “That’s right,” Katie Mae said. “You doing all this big bad talk and you don’t even know how to go from A to B.”

  Nettie took off her apron and closed her eyes, praying for direction. When the inspiration came, she snapped her fingers.

  “Viola, Sylvia, Katie Mae—here’s what we’ll do. Our mens thought they could put me in my place. So what we gone use is our women’s place to make them do right. We’re gone get us a woman’s secret weapon.”

  “And what in the world would that be?” Sylvia asked.

  “Who is more like it,” Nettie stated. “We need someone who’s an expert when it comes to sniffing out a man. Someone who can tell us which one of those preachers on they list is decent. And I know just the secret-weapon girl who can help us. My neighbor, Sheba Cochran.”

  “Sheba Cochran?” Katie Mae snapped, incensed that Nettie would even form her mouth to utter Sheba’s name in her presence. “The heifer with all them baby daddies? Why that party-hearty club girl used to be one of Cleavon’s women!”

  For a moment, none of them breathed. Ever since high school, Cleavon had believed he was “fine as wine and every woman’s kind,” and even though he was staring forty in the behind, he was still running around and chasing tail like his life depended on it. And no matter what Cleavon did, Katie Mae defended him. It infuriated her friends, but if Katie Mae pretended he acted right, they felt obliged to hold their peace.

  Now the truth was out.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Nettie said softly. “And you have a right to be angry.”

  “Why would you or any other married woman even want to cut your eyes at that thang?”

  “Katie Mae, there’s something you should know. Cleavon lied to Sheba.”

  Katie Mae opened her mouth, but Nettie went on before she could speak. “Cleavon met Sheba over in East St. Louis at the Mothership Club. He claimed to be legally separated from you, and she honestly believed his marriage was over. So did I, until I learned he was still spending some nights with you. When I told Sheba, she broke it off. Remember Cleavon’s black eye?”

  Katie Mae nodded.

  “Sheba did that, while she was cussing him out. I’ve known Sheba since we were kids, Katie Mae. She’s never purposefully gone with a married man.”

  Tears streamed down Katie Mae’s face. She was hurt, angry, and convicted in her heart all at the same time. She knew how Cleavon operated. And her grandmother constantly told her: “Baby, just a ’cause you let Cleavon run you, don’t mean nobody else will. You better understand that there more folks than not who want to set his tail straight.”

  Sylvia handed Katie Mae a paper napkin and then gave Nettie the eye, hoping she could think of something to soften the blow she had just delivered. Nettie got the message and went to Katie Mae, taking both of her hands in her own. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  When Katie Mae regained her composure, Nettie added, “Please trust me about Sheba. Cleavon picked Clydell Forbes, and he ain’t picking our new pastor. But the fact is, none of these men—including Bert, Wendell, and Melvin Sr.—have the sense to find a man who can lead the church, bring us together for the anniversary, and do right by the women. It’s got to be up to us.”

  Katie Mae sighed heavily. Nettie was right.

  “And for that we need Sheba,” Sylvia said.

  “Yes,” Viola chimed in. “That Sheba knows men like I know my name. If one of these preachers on they list is bad, she’ll find him out.”

  “And if one is a good man?” Katie Mae asked.

  “Then she’ll know that, too,” Nettie answered. “She the one always told me to quit worrying about Bert. Said, with a good man, if you take care of him right, he ain’t going nowhere. But with a bad man, ain’t nothing you can do. Whatever he looking to find out in the street ain’t about you. It’s just some of his own mess that he ain’t ready to deal with.”

  Katie Mae sighed again, as if taking Nettie’s words to heart.

  “So, are we agreed?” Viola asked.

  They all clasped hands to seal the bargain.

  “Now how do we plan to get Sheba next to these preachers?” Sylvia said. “Some of them slick as slick oil and liable to slip from a tight spot. And what if our men catch her East St. Louis, love-to-party-self up in church? One of them bound to ask what got Sheba up so early on Sunday morning.”

  “Hmmm,” Nettie said, turning it over in her mind. “I think we’ll have to leave it to Sheba to get to the preachers, and we’ll each have to find a way to handle our men ourselves.”

  “Okay, I can see that part. But, Nettie, will Sheba help us?”

  “I bet she will. She’ll see it as a challenge.”

  “Wait a minute!” said Katie Mae. “What if Sheba decides she wants to lay up with one of those preachers?”

  She paused, and her eyes got big and round. “And, and what if one of those preachers real low-down and try to get some from her, when even she don’t want to give it to him.”

  “Katie Mae, why you all of a sudden so worried about Sheba Cochran? I thought you said she was nothing but a party-hearty hussy.”

  “I did. But I don’t want to have a hand in her sinful ways.”

  “You won’t. If Sheba will help us, it’ll be for her own good reasons. Look, the girl is tough—she’s raised four kids alone. I’ve seen her box down her old men when she needed her child support payments. And do you think preachers are rougher than those men she meets out in the clubs?”

  “Yeah,” Viola said, laughing, “if she do want one of those old men, she can have him. And that’ll be between her, her sheets, that man, and the Lord—and then we’ll know for sure that preacher ain’t worth a poot.”

  “Shoot, I say let the chile have her fun,” Sylvia agreed. “It’ll be worth it to keep some trifling no-good thang out of our pulpit.”

  Katie Mae closed her eyes and clasped her hands to her chest. She hoped that the Lord would understand and forgive their wayward souls.

  Sylvia looked over at Katie Mae agonizing and praying over Sheba Cochran, when what she needed to pray and agonize over was that no-count, trouble-causing man of hers.

  II

  Nettie had good reason to be worried. Two weeks later, the search committee met again, only to discover that Cleavon Johnson had gone behind their backs and invited a Rev. Blue Patterson to interview for the pastorship. Blue Patterson had recently taken over what Cleavon claimed was an up-and-coming church in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and was making quite a name for himself in that community. Bert, Wendell, Melvin Sr., and Mr. Louis Loomis had never even heard of Blue Patterson or his church, which seemed odd, considering his memorable first name.

  “Cleavon,” Melvin Sr. pointed out, after digesting as much of Cleavon’s jibber-jabber as he could stand. “Sylvia’s uncle belongs to one of the largest Church of God in Christ churches in Pine Bluff, and he does all the robes for the preachers and choirs in the area at his cleaners. If this Blue Patterson was that much of a top dog, Sylvia’s uncle would surely know something about the man.”

  “I wasn’t awa
re that your wife’s kinfolks are so much in the mix that they know everything about everybody there is to know in Pine Bluff,” Cleavon said in a nice-nasty voice. “Maybe we need to put Sylvia’s Uncle COGIC on the case to hire a preacher for our church, since he can tell everything about a man just from cleaning his funky clothes.”

  Melvin Sr. started to rise out of his seat, but checked himself when he felt Wendell’s hand on his arm.

  “Well, as for me,” Mr. Louis Loomis said, “I don’t know a soul down in Pine Bluff. But I do know that Blue boy ain’t all you saying he is. I have his application right here in my hand, and he has been at his present church for only six months. Before that he was at a smaller church in Little Rock for four months. And now he want to move again? Cleavon, we need to leave Blue Patterson right where he is—somewhere out there in the blue.”

  “He’s coming for an interview whether you or anybody else on this committee likes it or not,” Cleavon snapped, slamming his hand on the table, hoping to make it clear that he wasn’t playin’. “Rev. Patterson has gone through all kinds of trouble to be able to come to St. Louis, and it will make the church look bad if we up and withdraw this invitation ’cause of something you don’t like in his resume.”

  Mr. Louis Loomis snorted. Trouble getting to St. Louis? You could practically walk from Pine Bluff, Arkansas to St. Louis, Missouri. Mr. Louis Loomis was sick and tired of Cleavon Johnson and his whole family. It seemed that every black church had its resident big-shot family who wanted to run everything and got on everybody else’s nerves. And the Johnsons, who owned a string of mom-and-pop convenience stores throughout North St. Louis called The Only Stop, were definitely Gethsemane’s pain-in-the-butt, big-shot family.

  “Cleavon,” Mr. Louis Loomis countered, “that man ain’t what we need for this church, and you doggone well know that. It worries me that you let the funk of your own mess overpower you to the point where you can’t think straight enough to do right by your own church.”

  Cleavon bristled but composed himself enough to say, “There is nothing wrong with you, old man, but mad—mad because you like an old tree that has lost all of its sap. You need to step aside and let a young man do what you ain’t got the stamina for.”

  Mr. Louis Loomis dropped his hand to his belt, moving in on Cleavon as if to say, “Boy, give me a reason to whip your tail.”

  Instead, he told him, very quietly, “Boy, a tree just reaching its prime at one hundred. At seventy-six, I got a ways to go. A short hard stroke ain’t always what it take to get the job done right. But I’m sure you don’t know what I’m talking ’bout, since you spend most of your waking hours wasting time with short, no-count strokes.”

  Cleavon stood up, stuck his chest out, and made a move toward Mr. Louis Loomis. Wendell and Melvin Sr. jumped up to intervene, but held back when they saw that Mr. Louis Loomis was not fazed one bit by Cleavon’s posturing. He didn’t move a muscle, but just said firmly, “You need to watch how you come at me, son, ’cause you know I don’t play that.”

  At that point Bert, who was fed up with all the bickering, decided to exercise his authority as committee chairman and head of the Deacon Board. To show he meant business, he pushed his chair back from the table so hard that it wore through the threadbare gold carpet and scraped the dull wooden floor beneath it. Then he announced, “This meeting is adjourned,” and stormed out of the room, forcing all of the other committee members to follow suit.

  Wendell Cates and Melvin Vicks, Sr., were equally tired of all the dissension, but kept quiet until they all reached their cars. Then Melvin Sr. said, “That poot-butt Cleavon think he’s so slick. I don’t believe that Negro wants Rev. Blue Patterson any more than we do. We don’t need all of this headache from Cleavon. It would solve a whole lot of problems if we could kick him off this committee.”

  “Yeah,” Wendell agreed, “Cleavon keep up more mess than a little bit.”

  “Well, we can’t get rid of him,” Bert said flatly. “Being in charge of the Finance Board, he is entitled to help choose the pastor. I suppose that technically we could remove him from the Finance Board, but think what a ruckus that would raise. We have enough problems to deal with already in this church without going off and usurping church protocol.”

  Melvin Sr. shrugged and sighed heavily in frustration, even though he knew Bert was right. Bert was always on the money when it came to church business—that’s why he was head of the Deacon Board. They were stuck with Cleavon Johnson for the time being.

  “I’m wondering,” Wendell said, “if Cleavon is forcing this interview because he believes that Blue Patterson will make the preacher he really wants at this church look good. Did you see how excited he got when somebody asked a question about Rev. David O. Clemson?”

  “Yeah, I saw that,” Bert answered. “At first I thought it was just me.”

  “Nah. It was me, too,” Melvin Sr. chimed in. “Cleavon could hardly contain himself.”

  “Umm-hmm,” Bert said. “He came close to showing his hand when Rev. Clemson’s name was put on the table.”

  “Cleavon is gone do any and everything that he can to get around us and have his way,” Wendell said. “Let us not forget to stay on our knees, ’cause we really gone need the Lord’s help with this.”

  “Yep,” Bert said with a heavy heart, as they got into their cars. How in the world were they going to find a decent preacher with all this intrigue and mess and with the biggest devil in town, Cleavon O’Rell Johnson, able to cast a crucial vote in the matter?

  Two Sundays later Rev. Blue Patterson came to preach at Gethsemane. Twenty minutes before the service started, Bert Green eased his gold Cadillac Eldorado into the church’s gravel parking lot and searched for a space, all the while wondering what kind of church they would be having this morning. He hadn’t met Rev. Blue Patterson, but in his short phone conversation with the man the night before, Rev. Patterson struck him as pompous and ill-mannered.

  So Bert had been relieved when Nettie had nagged him into changing his suit from the brown three-piece knit he had selected to an outfit complementing the cute blue knit minidress his wife had had the nerve to wear this morning. Nettie had insisted that Bert put on his navy blue leisure suit with his new cream and blue polyester shirt and the gold medallion necklace she’d bought him last Father’s Day. Now they were running late, and mercifully, he’d barely have time to do his duty as head of the Deacon Board and extend their guest an official welcome.

  The rocks crunched and popped under his brand-new whitewall tires as Bert spun the car slowly around in circles, trying to find the perfect parking space—one where nobody could hem him in. He hated having to wait when he was ready to go home from church, especially when there was a good baseball game coming on TV, like today.

  Nettie, sitting quietly beside him, felt glad that their daughter, Bertha, didn’t ride to church with them this morning. Bertha was twenty-seven, with her own business, house, and car, but she still wanted to ride to church with them. A big baby, that’s what she was—a big spoiled baby. And today Nettie needed some private time with Bert, to try to pick his brain about Rev. Blue Patterson without Bertha all up in their business.

  “Honey, do you think this man can preach?” she asked softly, knowing how discouraged Bert had been after talking to Rev. Patterson last night. She had wanted to ask about their phone conversation then but knew better than to press her husband, especially when he was already so upset over Cleavon’s machinations. She also knew that Bert would take interviewing Rev. Patterson seriously. Her husband was a man of integrity, and if he agreed to do something, no matter how much he might have initially opposed it, he was going to do it right. Wisdom and prudence and twenty-eight years of marriage told her that she was going to have to handle Bert with care.

  So Nettie placed her pink-pearl-painted fingertips gently on Bert’s right knee and let them inch their way to that spot, way up on the inside of his thigh.

  Bert grinned, watching Nettie out of th
e corner of his eye, and relaxed his leg a bit when he felt the perfect application of pressure from her hand. He saw her peeping at him from under the floppy brim of the ivory silk hat she was wearing, with that little look on her face that always got under his skin.

  “Baby, why you giving me that yum-yum look of yours and asking about that preacher all in the same breath?”

  Nettie stroked Bert’s leg a few more seconds and then gave him the sweetest smile, while thinking about the trump card up her sleeve—Sheba Cochran. When Nettie had approached her about taking on the mission, Sheba had said, “Yes, I’ll be glad to do it, because I’ve been itching for a way to get Cleavon Johnson back for playing me for a fool.”

  Then, all of a sudden, Sheba got distant and quiet, as if she was thinking about changing her mind.

  “Sheba?” Nettie asked, a bit puzzled by the abrupt shift in her.

  “On second thought, y’all on your own,” Sheba said.

  “But just a moment ago, you were all eager to help us.”

  “Nettie,” Sheba stated matter-of-factly, “you never have and never will be seen by other women as the party-hearty girl. Humph, the women at your church got some nerve. Whole bunch of those biddies don’t even speak to me when I come to church, and now they need me to do what most of y’all can’t do. And you know that Katie Mae Johnson is the worst when it comes to me.”

  “But Sheba, Katie Mae is Clea—”

  “She didn’t speak to me before Cleavon, Nettie.”

  All Nettie could do was sigh. Sheba was right. Some of the women at church acted like they were so much better than Sheba because she liked to go to that hot and jumping disco, the Mothership Club, over in East St. Louis, Illinois. And Katie Mae could be the snootiest of all—not only to Sheba but to any woman who appeared to be the type Cleavon chased in the streets. Nettie was about to tell Sheba to just forget it when she felt a gentle nudge, deep down inside, to give it one more try.