Deacon King Kong

by James McBride

  Now felt like one of those times.

  “Is that the first or last name?” Marjorie the receptionist asked.

  “Sister Paul? That’s her name.”

  “Isn’t that a man’s name?”

  “It ain’t a he. It’s a she.”

  Marjorie smirked. “A woman named Paul.”

  “Well, that’s all the name I knowed of her in my time.”

  Marjorie quickly flipped through a list of names on a sheet of paper at her desk. “There’s no woman named Paul here.”

  “I’m sure she’s here. Paul. Sister Paul.”

  “First of all, sir, like I said, that’s a man’s name.”

  Sportcoat, sweating, felt irritable and weak. He glanced over his shoulder and noticed the white-haired elderly security guard stationed near the front door. The guard folded his newspaper. For the second time that day, Sportcoat felt an unusual feeling: anger, which was overcome again by fear, and the usual feeling of utter confusion and helplessness. He didn’t like being this far from the Cause Houses. Anything could happen out here in New York.

  He turned back to Marjorie. “Miss, there’s women that do got men’s names in this world.”

  “Do they now,” she said, her smirk widening.

  “I seen a woman with a man’s name throw a pistol on three fellas last Wednesday. Killed one of ’em dead, blessed God. Now, she was a Haroldeen, that one. Evil as any man. Pretty as a peacock, too, with feathers and all. That was a whole evil person altogether, man and woman combined. A name ain’t nuthing.”

  Marjorie looked up to see Mel, the security guard, approach them. “Anything wrong?” he said.

  Sportcoat saw the security guard coming and realized his mistake. Now the white folks was getting ready to start counting fingers and toes. His head was pounding so hard he could only see spots in front of his face. He addressed the security guard. “I’m here for Sister Paul,” he said. “She’s a church lady.”

  “From where?”

  “I don’t know where her home country is.”

  “Home country? She American?”

  “Course she is!”

  “How do you know her?”

  “How do anybody know anybody? They meets ’em someplace. She come from church.”

  “Which church?”

  “Five Ends is the church. I’m a deacon there.”

  “Is that so?”

  Sportcoat grew frustrated. “She sends money in letters every week! Who sends letters every week? Even the electric company don’t send letters every week!”

  The security guard looked at him thoughtfully.

  “How much money?” he asked.

  Sportcoat felt his anger growing new, raw, ice-hard edges, ones he’d never felt before. He spoke to the white man in a manner in which he had never spoken to a white person in his entire life. “Mister, I am seventy-one years old. And unless I am Ray Charles, you is close to my age. Now, this young lady here”—he pointed to the receptionist—“don’t believe nothing I say. She got an excuse, being privileged and young, for young folks believes they has the mojo and say-so, and she has most likely lived her life hearing folks talking up and down and in and out, saying what they think she would like to hear rather than what she ought be hearing. I ain’t against it. If somebody’s hearing a song and don’t know but that one song alone, well, nothing can be done. But you is old like me. And you ought to see clear that a man my age who hasn’t had a drink in a whole day ought to get a little credit for still being able to hear his own heartbeat—and maybe even deserves a lollipop or two—for not speaking in tongues about the whole bit, being that I am so thirsty for some rotgut at the moment I’d milk a camel for a drop of Everclear or even vodka, which I can’t stand. It’s four dollars and thirteen cents, by the way, that she sends to church every week, if you have to know. And I’m not supposed to know, for it is a church. And I’m only a deacon. I ain’t the treasurer.”

  To his surprise, the white security guard nodded sympathetically and said, “How long you been dry?”

  “’Bout a day, more or less.”

  The security guard offered a low whistle. “Her room’s that way,” he said, pointing down a long hallway behind the desk. “Room one fifty-three.”

  Sportcoat started down the hallway, then turned around, irritated, and grunted, “What’s it your business how much she gives to God?”

  The old security guard looked sheepish. “I’m the one who goes to the post office and gets the money order,” he said.

  “Every week?”

  The elderly man shrugged. “Gotta keep moving. If I sit around here too long, they might give me a room.”

  Sportcoat tipped his hat, still grumbling, and made his way past the desk to the hallway, the young receptionist and Mel the security guard watching as he went.

  “What was that all about?” Marjorie asked.

  Mel watched Sportcoat’s back as he tottered down the hallway, stopped, straightened out his clothing, dusted off his sleeves, and plodded farther on.

  “The only difference between me and him,” Mel said, “is two hundred forty-three days.”

  * * *

  Sportcoat, sweating now, feeling delirious, dizzy, and weak, marched into room 153 and found no living human being there. Instead, he encountered a turkey buzzard sitting in the corner, facing the wall, in a wheelchair, holding what appeared to be a bowl of yarn. The bird heard him enter, and with its back to him, spoke.

  “Where’s my cheese?”

  Then the bird spun the wheelchair around to face him.

  It took Sportcoat a full minute to realize that the creature he was staring at was a human being who was 104 years old. The woman was almost completely bald. Her face muscles had drooped, giving the impression that a powerful magnetic force was pulling her jaws, lips, and eye sockets toward the earth. Her mouth sagged nearly into her chin and it was turned down at the corners, giving her a look of perpetual frowning. What hair she had looked like scrambled eggs in string form, in wild clumps and in single strands, giving her the appearance of a wired, harried, ancient, terrified professor. The edge of a nightgown could be seen under the blanket covering her, and her bare feet were shoved into a pair of bed slippers two sizes too big. She was so tiny she covered only a third of the wheelchair seat and sat hunched over, curled, in the form of a question mark.

  He had no clear memory of Sister Paul. He had been drunk a lot during the years she was active in the church, before she moved to the nursing home. She left before he got sanctified and saved. As it was, he hadn’t seen her in nearly two decades, and even if he had, he realized she was probably nearly unrecognizable to anyone who didn’t know her well.

  Sportcoat swayed for a moment, feeling dizzy and hoping he wouldn’t pass out. A sudden burst of thirst nearly overwhelmed him. He saw a pitcher of water on the nightstand on the other side of her bed. He pointed at it and said, “Can I?” Without waiting for an answer, he staggered to it, picked it up, and took a short sip straight from the pitcher, then realized he was parched and gulped the whole thing down. When he was finished he slammed it back to the table, panted heavily, then burped loudly. He felt better.

  He glanced at her again, trying not to stare.

  “You is some kind of dish,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Son, you looks like a character witness for a nightmare. You ugly enough to have your face capped.”

  “We can’t all be pretty,” he grumbled.

  “Well, you ain’t no gemstone, son. You got a face for swim trunk ads.”

  “I’m seventy-one, Sister Paul. I’m a spring chicken compared to you. I don’t see no mens doing backflips at the door over you. At least I ain’t got enough wrinkles in my face to hold ten days of rain.”

  She glared at him intently, her dark eyes like coals, and for a moment Sportcoat
had the dreadful thought that the old nag might turn into a witch and throw a mojo at him, a horrible spell. Instead, she threw her head back and laughed, displaying a mouth full of gums and one sole yellow tooth, which stood out like a clump of butter on a plate. Her howls and cackles sounded like the bleating of a goat.

  “No wonder Hettie put up with you!” she guffawed.

  “You knew my Hettie?”

  It took a moment before she regained herself, moving her empty jaws in a chewing motion and chortling, “Course I did, son.”

  “She never told me about you.”

  “Why should she? You was a drunk and not listening no way. You don’t hardly remember nothing. I bet you don’t remember me.”

  “A little . . .”

  “Uh-huh. Men used to ask me to bed in eight languages. Not no more. You drinking now?”

  “Not since I saw . . . no, not right now.”

  “You look like you could use one. I bet you could.”

  “Could indeed. But I’m trying to . . . uh . . . naw. I don’t want one.”

  “Well, you set tight, mister, and I’mma tell you a few things that’ll drive anybody to drink. And after I’m done, you go ahead and do whatever it is you got to do. But first, where’s my cheese?”

  “What?”

  “My cheese.”

  “I ain’t got no cheese.”

  “Then that’s the thing I’ll tell you first,” she said, “for it is all connected. I’ll tell it this once. But don’t darken my doorway again if you ain’t got my cheese.”

  * * *

  Sportcoat sat calmly in a chair near the window, rubbing his jaw, taking deep breaths, after Sister Paul had motioned him to push her closer to the window where they could both see the sunshine. Once he had locked her chair as she requested and pulled a chair up to the window she started in:

  “We all knowed each other,” she said. “Hettie, me, my husband, my daughter Edie, Sister Gee’s parents—they was the aunt and uncle of the Cousins, by the way. Nanette and Sweet Corn. And of course your friend Rufus. We all come up from various parts of the South around ’bout the same time. Hettie and Rufus was the youngest. Me and my husband was the oldest. We come up following Edie, who brung us out the South. Me and my husband started the church in my living room. Then we got the congregation, and after a while we got enough money together to buy us a piece of dirt just outside the Cause Houses. The land was cheap then. That’s the beginning of Five Ends. That’s how it got started.

  “See, the Cause was all Italians in the forties when we come. They built them projects for the Italians to unload the boats at the harbor. That business was dead when we come. The boats left. The docks closed, and them Italians didn’t want us. Fact is, you couldn’t walk down Silver Street to go downtown. You had to take the bus or the subway, or get a ride—nobody had no car—so you’d just run past if you had to. You didn’t walk down Silver Street unless you wanted to lose your teeth, or if it was very late or you didn’t have no bus money.

  “Well, we didn’t mind too much. The South was worse. Myself, I paid them Italians no more mind than I would watching a bird snatch crumbs off the ground.

  “I did day’s work for a white lady lived up in Cobble Hill. One night she had a party and I worked late. Well, it was cold and the buses was running slow, so I walked home. I done that from time to time when it was late. I didn’t walk down Silver Street. I skirted the outside. I come all the way down Van Marl, and when I got to Slag Street, I turned and come that way, skirting along the harbor where the factories were. That’s how the colored walked home late at night.

  “I was walking down Van Marl that night—I reckon maybe it was just three in the morning or so, and I seen two, maybe three blocks coming at me two men running to beat the band. White men. Hauling tail. Coming right at me. One right behind the other.

  “Well, I’m a colored woman and it was dark and I know however that cobweb spins out, I’d likely be blamed for whatever wrong happened. So I hid in a doorway and let ’em come. They run right past me. The first fella zipped past, and right behind him come the second. That second feller was a cop.

  “When they got to the corner of Van Marl and Slag, the first fella running stopped in the intersection and turned around and pulled a pistol on the second feller, the policeman. Caught that cop by surprise. He looked to blow that cop’s head off.

  “And don’t you know, outta nowhere come this truck and boom! Hit that feller standing in the intersection. Cleaned him up good. Deadened ’em right there. Then the truck stopped and it got quiet.

  “The cop ran into the street and checked out the man with the gun. He was deader than yesterday’s spaghetti. Then he went to the driver. I heard the driver say, ‘I never saw him.’ Then the cop said to the driver, ‘Don’t move. I’m going to a call box.’ He ran off to one of them police call boxes to get help. Ran clear around the corner and out of sight.

  “Well, that was my time to go. I come outta the doorway and walked fast down the sidewalk past the truck. As I was scooting past, the feller driving the truck, he hollered, ‘Help me, please.’

  “I wanted to keep walking. I was scared. That wasn’t none of my business. So I kept going a few more steps. But the feller driving the truck begged me. He said please, please, help me, begging me to help him.

  “Well, I reckon the Lord said to me, ‘Go ’head on and help. Maybe he’s hurt or injured.’ So I goes to the driver’s side where he’s setting and I says, ‘Is you hurt?’

  “He was an Italian man. He spoke with such a hard accent it was the devil understanding him. But the gist of it was he said this: ‘I’m in trouble.’

  “I said, ‘You ain’t done nothing wrong. The man jumped in front of you. I seen it.’

  “He says, ‘That ain’t the problem. I got to get this truck home. I’ll give you one hundred dollars to drive this truck.’”

  Here Sister Paul paused and shrugged, as if apologizing for the ridiculous problem she’d stumbled into. Then her age took over and she yawned, then continued.

  “I was just an old country woman. I hadn’t been in the city that long, see. But I knowed trouble. So I said, ‘Drive on, mister. I ain’t gonna meddle in your affairs. I ain’t seen nothing. I’m going home to the Cause Houses, where I live. Goodbye.’

  “Well, I turned to leave and he begged me to stay. He wouldn’t let me go. He popped open the truck door and said, ‘Look at my foot. It’s broken.’

  “I look in there. Seems like he hit the pedal so hard he broke his right foot some kind of way. His right foot was twisted cockeyed. And then he lifted his left leg with his arm and showed me his other foot. His left one, the clutch pedal foot, he had to hold that leg up with his hand. That foot was lame. He said, ‘I had a stroke. I only got one good side. I ain’t got no feet to drive.’

  “I said, ‘I can’t give you my feet to drive, mister. That’s God’s work, giving a man feet.’

  “He said, ‘Please. I got a wife and son. I’ll give you a hundred dollars. Can’t you use a hundred dollars?’

  “‘I surely could,’ I said. ‘But I likes being free out here. Plus I’m old. I can’t drive nothing but a mule, mister. I ain’t never driven a car or truck in my life.’

  “He got to begging and pleading so much, Lord, I didn’t know what to do. He was an Italian man and he seemed sincere, even though I couldn’t hardly understand every word that man was talking. But he kept saying, ‘I’ll give you one hundred dollars. We’ll drive the truck together. Please. I’m gonna go to jail for twenty-five years this time. I got a son. I already messed up on raising him.’

  “Well, my daddy went to jail when I was but a little wee girl. He gone to prison for trying to start a sharecroppers’ union back in my home country in Alabama. I knows the feeling of not having your daddy there when you need him. Still, I didn’t want to do it. I had already put one foot in it an
yway by standing there talking to him at three in the morning. But I turned to God and I heard His voice say, ‘I will hold you in the palm of My hand.’

  “I said, ‘All right, mister. I will help you. But I ain’t taking no money. If I’m going to jail, I’m going for what the Lord told me to do.’

  “Well as God would have it, I moved that truck some kind of way. My husband the Reverend Chicksaw was a truck driver, and I seen him drive a truck many a day back home in Alabama, so I done the pedals and turned the steering this way and that like the man told me to, and he shifted the gears, and we got that thing a-roaring and jerking along for a few blocks, and not too far up the road at Silver Street, he shut off the motor by turning the key and I helped him into his house. There was another Italian man waiting who come out saying, ‘Where you been?’ and runned to the truck, and then a second man ran out the house to the truck and they drove that thing off and I never seen it again. Meanwhile, I helped that cripple get in his house. His good leg was all cockeyed. He was messed up bad.