by Rod Davis
Joe Dell looked himself over. A woman had once told him he reminded her of Kevin Costner, “but older.” He wanted to appear sincere and open and trustworthy. And a little fallen, for he was going to present himself as a kind of redeemed sinner, racially speaking. Finnester had said, “Blacks love that kind of stuff. So do the white Bible thumpers, for that matter.” Joe Dell had turned on him angrily, telling him never to talk like that again and hadn’t he learned anything in his damn course other than fifty-dollar words for ten-cent ideas? Finnester had looked at him oddly, as if he couldn’t believe it. But then he did. In context.
“Thank you, thank you,” Joe Dell said into the mirror, practicing raising his palms before him slightly, as if in blessing. “You can’t know how I appreciate being allowed to appear here.” He paused. “And how hard you must be working right now to believe your eyes.” He waited. There would almost certainly be laughter or feedback. Black people liked to do that, especially in church.
“I won’t keep you long. My only point is to tell you that like Matthew himself I have been changed in my thinking. And to no less extent. I—” Joe Dell reflected a moment. What would be the best way to put it? He’d be improvising somewhat, but he had to have at least a game plan for the short speech. “Just as a man who has taken from the people for so long sees through Christ that he must change his ways and start giving back, so I come before you tonight. To change my ways and to give back.”
He stopped and studied his expression, his body language. That was good. That was a good way to put it. Now the only thing is to ask for their support for next year and promise them to be a governor for all the people, all colors, all persuasions. And then sit down and let it sink in. As Finnester had said, the media would take it from there.
“My decision to seek the nomination for governor came to me as no less a revelation,” he resumed. When he was finished he checked the time on the clock over the fireplace. Four minutes. He figured that was about right.
21
The Fairgrounds Race Track spread out before Gus like a Monet. The soft sunlight of the early evening, the broad, verdant expanse of the infield, the brightly hued performance tents and the gaiety of the people were enough to put an impression on any but the most doltish. And the smells—andouille sausage, boudin, boiling crawfish, fried catfish, gumbo, jambalaya, etouffée, shrimp po’ boys, cauldrons of red beans and rice, and the not unpleasant aroma of draft beer displaced the waning humidity left from the brief morning showers.
It wasn’t particularly hot for May, only in the upper eighties, and as Gus escorted the eight girls from Miss Angelique’s in the general direction of the blue and white striped Gospel Tent rising like a medieval pavilion at the far end of the Monet, he felt almost giddy with cosmic satisfaction. This was the way the world could work out, given the right amount of luck and human scheming. It shouldn’t be all that difficult. Tanks? Wherefore is there the need of large fully tracked vehicles full of high explosive ordnance? No need for tanks. No need for human activity that requires tanks. Nor for disease, woe, death, ICBMs, advertising agencies—none of that sort of thing.
Sufficient unto the day is the pleasure thereof, Gus Houston thought, strolling past exhibits and tents and couples stretched out on blankets. Outside the chain link perimeter separating the Fairgrounds from the city lay other days, lay lack of pleasure. But this was now, here. The girls stopped in front of the Dixie Beer Stage, where a Nashville band named “Wichita” was finishing a set. They watched a few minutes, then Charlotte led off toward the other side of the infield to see the Bank of New Orleans Stage. People were already laying claims for spots to see the Nevilles, who weren’t even on until six.
Gus hoped to catch them. Miss Angelique’s was booked for seven, and was to be offstage by 7:20. Jean-Pierre said the schedule had gotten backed up. Art, the Creole (“and proud of it”) stage manager, was threatening everyone that he’d just pull the plug on performers who went too long, because there were a lot of acts for the night. The big names, like the Heavenly Hummingbirds, would get an entire hour, but all the new groups, or the “novelty” ones, which is how The Voices of Angelique was being rationalized, got only twenty minutes. Just enough time for the three numbers, Gus figured. Jean-Pierre still thought they might be asked back for an encore, but when Gus asked how they’d do that and still keep to the time schedule, Jean-Pierre snapped, “You just never know about these things.”
Gus let the testiness pass. Performance anxiety made people short-tempered. And there was the SuperBotanica. Since it opened Monday, Jean-Pierre had yelled four or five times at Betsy, who was the most timid of all the girls, and had had strong words with Charlotte over “singing like a robot” or something like that.
It was Corina. Gus had avoided her all week, but he knew Jean-Pierre hadn’t had the luxury. And what a week. The Spanish language radio station, WXTX, ran an hour-long remote from the grand opening of the SuperBotanica. Plenty of other media showed up, too, although Tom Stanford, the anchor on Channel 11, obviously had no idea what a botanica was until he found himself inside one, and scrambled awkwardly to get out of the five o’clock live shot as soon as possible.
After watching Stanford on a Sony in the deserted teacher’s lounge, Gus had picked up the phone to call Corina, but then cradled the receiver. He wasn’t much of a psychic, but he could feel her wrath flashing across the city like a high-voltage spider’s web. The last time he’d actually seen his co-counselor and spiritual advisor, maybe two weeks ago, Gus had gotten zapped himself. “Why don’t you come here more often to help me stop these Cubans?” she’d scolded the minute he walked through the door of her botanica. Busy with choir practice wasn’t a good answer. “Just don’t you forget it was my son got those white girls into the Gospel Tent in the first place, Candy Man.” And so on.
Gus told her he’d try to do better, but of course he didn’t. It wasn’t just being busy, and it wasn’t just that Corina had been in such a funk since March that none of the girls wanted to go see her anymore anyway. It was that Gus had more or less decided to let the referral arrangement die out. With his newly rising star at the Academy he didn’t need any more of what Bonita called his “deliberate potential fuck-ups.” But he didn’t say that. He said he’d try to do better.
A bad feeling—having Corina Youngblood disappointed in you. Gus had a terrifying appreciation of what Jean-Pierre had gone through much of his life. He could see that if Corina was upset over the opening of the SuperBotanica, the people around her would be upset, too. He could understand why one night he had seen his choirmaster hunched over the piano, staring down at the keyboard, his hands clenching into fists. There was one other thing. Gus knew that Jean-Pierre had his own reasons to be distracted and angry with all the attention being showered on the Delgados. For he had done nothing about Paulus.
“Mr. Houston, can we get a Coke?”
“You bet.” They walked up to a concession tent and Gus bought for the whole team. He looked at his watch. Only 5:35.
“You want to wander around until Mr. Youngblood gets here or go on to the tent and get dressed?”
“I want to see that Cajun band.”
“I want to buy something for my mother.”
“I’m starving. Can’t we get something to eat?”
“Is that the bathroom? God, it’s gross.”
And so on until six, through the hundred and forty acres of grassy infield of the fairgrounds and race track site. By 6:10, they were at the rear entrance of the Gospel Tent. Jean-Pierre, carrying several cardboard boxes full of robes, greeted them.
“Our night,” he said. “Y’all all ready, I hope?”
“We forgot the lines,” said Charlotte. Marie and Tina giggled.
“I already carried the other robes and things to the changing tent,” Jean-Pierre said. He was sweating and his face was flushed. “We’ll go in and change in just a minute.”
He took Gus aside. “Mama already here. She’s got Paulus and eight people from the church. They been here since two o’clock, she told me. I was going to pick them up on the way but she called and said Miz Anderson wanted to hear as much music as she could and so they all decided to get in and get good seats. They’re about four aisles from the right, down in the middle. Take this.”
Jean-Pierre unloaded the boxes in his arms into Charlotte’s and Cissy’s. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and turned back to Gus. “Here’s the new schedule.” They quickly reviewed the lineup for the evening. “You seen Hapsenfield?”
Gus said he hadn’t.
“He better be on time. They ain’t gonna wait.”
“What if he gets held up?”
“Then we just start straight in after Reverend Lincoln introduces us.”
“Right. Good. OK.”
They nodded and mumbled and Jean-Pierre asked Gus again if the tear in Cissy’s gown had gotten mended, and so on, until they had the last-minute details cold. None of the girls paid them any mind, for their eyes and minds were full to brimming with the sights unlayering around them in the golden shadings of early evening.
They beheld figures from fantasy worlds emerging from the main tent and through openings in the thick ropes cordoning off the nearby performers’ parking area. These were the real Gospel singers, and these were their ways. Electric blue tuxes and dazzling white formal gowns; purple robes trimmed in satin; tight green sheath dresses and black sequin jump suits. It was as if Jesus had come back as a rainbow, and in each of the many coats of the many colors of that tribal gathering of God all but the girls of Miss Angelique’s were as African as had ever been transported twelve million strong from the bosoms of their own country and delivered unto these hymnals of the Almighty Jesus. “I told you we’d be the only ones,” whispered Cissy.
“Shut up,” said Charlotte. “Check out the butt on that guy over there.” They all looked. He was one of the young men in the black jump suits. “Who are they?” asked Tina. Marie looked at the program Jean-Pierre had given them. “I think that must be the Abyssinian Baptist Quartet,” she said. “Why do you think that?” said Betsy. “Because there’s four of them, stupid.”
“Let’s go.”
Jean-Pierre led them toward a square white tent behind the main one. Gus could see deepening waves of people outside the surrounding Fairgrounds fence converging on the entry gates. “Look at that. There must be thousands of them.”
“Don’t matter how many of them come in the gate, Gospel Tent’s already packed full,” said Jean-Pierre. “Come on in here.” He pulled back the entry flap. “Let’s get these robes out of the boxes and see how they look.”
The girls filed in shyly and were relieved to find they were alone, that they did not have to reveal themselves among hordes of strange women with bodies that seemed to bulge from the tops of their dresses. Charlotte and Cissy put their boxes next to a stack of others atop a folding table. The girls attacked the pile as though it were Christmas, and within seconds each was holding up a full-length, freshly laundered, robin’s egg blue robe with pale yellow crossing along the bodice.
Gus and Jean-Pierre hurriedly inspected each garment. On presenting them to the girls after practice last Sunday, Elizabeth had said that although the robes had incorporated the Academy colors, “only spruced up a bit,” they were “as beautiful as your own sweet voices.”
“Now y’all go ahead and get dressed and then you can come out if you want ’cause it’s hot in here, but remember not to go into the big tent until I tell you.”
“But we want to see,” said Cissy.
“You can see the act right before ours from the side, and that’s it. Just enough to get you interested and not enough to get you scared.”
The girls laughed. Gus laughed. Then, while the girls dressed, he and Jean-Pierre slipped around the rear of the Gospel Tent for a peek. A men’s group from Atlanta—The Majesties—were finishing their set. Big voices, honey harmonies, choreography from Motown, probably, since all the men looked to be in their forties or fifties.
Watching the faces of the crowd, Gus felt the zing of his original vision all over again. The girls were nervous and chattering and just barely held together by their excitement, but Gus felt as full of certainty and triumph as ever in his life. This was definitely Occupying Space. He and the Shadow Gus were one and the same and they had gone into the valley of the Shadow and they had emerged whole. What was unhinged and random in his life was finding constellation. He had risked much; would gain much. They all would.
This was the truth of the Shadow. In making your mark was no shame. Seeking personal gain was the way of those who triumphed. What did the mercenaries, the captains of industry, say? Who dares, wins. And they said, “Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out.” But Gus was killing no one, except his own aimless being. He was helping everyone, actually. He looked at the rapture on the faces of the audience and knew that he was about to provide them with more, at an entirely new level, and that they would love and reward him for it, for it was the way of people to seek rapture and to encourage those who provided it.
Jean-Pierre was beaming, too, the nerves replaced by the zing, the arrival of the moment. Gus saw what a handsome man Corina’s eldest was—Paulus’s prettiness hammered into a rougher texture. Then Gus spotted the source. Tucked among her flock, Corina swayed in her chair to the pounding male rhythm of The Majesties’ praise of Jesus. She was stunning. Her form-fitting jet black dress set off perfectly by a gold crucifix on a double chain. She saw Gus watching her. She smiled at him, and at Jean-Pierre, but quickly looked away to concentrate on the stage.
By coincidence rather than design, the dark green Hapsenfield Mercedes and the dark blue Joe Dell Prince Le Baron arrived in performers’ parking at the same time. The occupants of neither car realized the fluke until they had parked side by side and got out. And then not even Elizabeth did, for Agon had not told her of the special guest he was going to introduce.
“My God, I had no idea there would be such a crowd,” she said.
“I can only say again we are indebted to Mr. Houston,” Agon replied, locking the doors. He looked across the freshly waxed top of the car at his wife. “I just want to say before we go in that I’m glad we could come here together after all.”
She looked at him. Her normal response would have been one of feigned boredom, but the tone in his voice seemed sincere. It troubled her. For the last several weeks Agon had been acting not only differently, but in a way she couldn’t field. Oregon had been more profound than she had initially grasped. She still couldn’t wait to get away from him, but as she looked into his blue eyes, the patrician gray around his temples, she thought, well, he’s not a bad-looking man, in a bean-pole kind of way.
She could see why she was once attracted to him. Whatever he was now or wherever he was in his head maybe it would make the future tasks somewhat easier. She didn’t take New Age Primitivism seriously, but she had to admit it had made her husband light years easier to get along with and on that account she indulged him. Her own tastes had become, in contrast, increasingly vulgar and less spiritual. What an odd transformation. Two years ago, she’d have pegged it entirely the other way. So she smiled at him warmly. “I think we shall have a fine time. It will be good for us.”
“You must be Mr. Hapsenfield.”
It was the man in the blue suit from the other car. As Elizabeth turned her head she was reminded of a movie actor but she couldn’t think just who. She saw Agon extend his hand. “Nice to see you, Senator. I’d like you to meet my wife, Elizabeth.”
The man offered his hand. “Joe Dell Prince. I can’t tell you how much a contribution to the city you’ve made by sending your girls here to take part in this great cultural event.”
Elizabeth smiled automatically and withdrew her hand a fraction of a second prematurely. She looked at Agon.
“Why thank you, Senator,” she said slowly. “I must admit this is the last place I’d expect to find you.”
She did not try to hide her disdain. The senator seemed to enjoy it. “I expect a lot of people might feel the same way as you. But sometimes we can have people judged wrong.” To Agon: “Perhaps we should go inside?”
“After you.”
The trio walked on. Elizabeth looked at Agon, asking with her wifely glance what was going on, but they were inside the backstage part of the big, teeming tent before she could get him away from the senator. By then the music was too loud to hear what Agon said, other than that the senator would be making a brief appearance during the evening and that “some great catalytic convergence of the Pre-Future may be about to take place.”
Looking at it later, Elizabeth wished she had pried a little more, but as Agon never had been a really harmful person, except for his infidelities, she shrugged it off as some kind of goofiness to go with his change in philosophy. In other words she had no idea what kind of catastrophe was about to take place. Not that it would have mattered; on that night in history she was one of the people who are witness to the foibles of humanity rather than controllers of them.
In the back of the tent, Ocho Alvarado found a place along the right aisle. He sat quietly, watching the stage. It was hot, but he wore a cream-colored sport jacket over his white shirt and dark brown cotton trousers. He looked very tropical.
The stage was elevated more than head high, so even those at the farthest end could see. A purple and white banner trimmed in gold tassels hung from the tent frame overhead. It said, “Gospel for Jesus.” Beneath the banner was half-controlled bedlam. Art, the stage manager, fretted among singers, managers, musicians, and one man in a Fire Department uniform who wanted to make sure the various electrical cables snaked under and over the stage were safe, although everyone knew the fireman was only there to see the show for free.
