by Doug Worgul
Over the course of the next hour, he also learned about the health benefits of a diet rich in the nutrients present in vegetable and fruit juices produced by the JuiceMaxx 3000. He learned that once you start using Maka Helehelena face creme, made with Hawaiian-grown macadamia nuts, you can say “Aloha!” to those creases and wrinkles around your eyes. And he learned that for all your weeding, hoeing, mulching, aerating, tilling, and cultivating needs, the GardenMaster X-treme 6-in-1 gardening implement is the tool for you. Finally, he learned that the best swords in the world are made by Peter Johnsson, and although the collection of swords being sold by the Interactive Home Shopping channel were not made by Peter Johnsson, they were nevertheless excellent swords, their maker having studied Peter Johnsson’s techniques. The collection of swords featured a pair of samurai swords—one short, one long; Excalibur, the sword of Arthur; Anduril, the sword of Aragorn; a Roman gladiator’s short sword; a Spanish conquistador’s sword; a Civil War saber; and a claymore of the type used by William “Braveheart” Wallace. Two folding knives and a Bowie knife were also included. All “battle ready”. All for $394.
The whiskey having lowered his inhibitions, and because there were only 20 of these one-of-a-kind sword collections remaining, Ferguson called the Interactive Home Shopping toll-free number and bought one. Worried that he might next call and order a JuiceMaxx 3000, he changed the channel, and refilled his glass.
Three clicks of the remote later, Ferguson found the Rev. Joe L. Houston setting forth for his congregation God’s principles of prosperity and fulfillment. To help his flock remember these principles, Pastor Houston had condensed them into six easy steps and had created an acronym as a mnemonic device. To increase one’s wealth and happiness one need only remember the word SPIRIT, which stands for:
Set your sights high
Prepare to succeed
Invest in yourself
Remember your goals
Invest in those who can help you succeed
Tell yourself “you can do it.”
Ferguson watched for awhile, assuming that Rev. Joe would pretty soon clarify how these six steps fit in with the things Jesus had to say in the sixth chapter of Matthew, verses 19-34. But this explanation was not forthcoming. Neither was Jesus ever actually mentioned in the sermon.
It was 2:30. He slumped back into the pillows. He flipped all the way through the channels nine times before deciding to give the Xtaseez channel a try. The on-screen menu presented him with several films from which to choose, including The Girls from Ipanema, Girls Just Want to Have Fun, and My Guard Stood Hard. Ferguson chose Cardinal Sins, set in France in the time of King Louis XIII. The promotional description of the film promised a farcical and ribald romp, telling the tale of a scullery maid who had attracted the attention of the powerful Cardinal Richelieu.
The story reached its climax about ten minutes into the movie, but it failed to stiffen Ferguson’s resolve to come to grips with his restlessness.
He filled his glass then emptied it. By 3:30 he had passed out.
*
Ferguson was awakened at 10:30 by the sounds of a family with several loud young children hauling their luggage down the hotel hallway. His flight to Kansas City had left two hours and ten minutes prior.
He sighed heavily, showered, packed, and went down to get a cab to the airport.
At the American ticket counter, he arranged to fly stand-by on the 2:24, leaving out of Gate H. At the gate, he bought a newspaper, a tall Starbucks, and settled in to wait.
Across the concourse, a man dressed in a black wool suit and a black turtleneck sweater was composing music in a notebook, his head of bushy white hair bent intently over the pages. Seated three seats down, a mother breast fed her infant while her toddler son played on the floor with a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure. Behind him a woman was talking to her mother on a cell phone.
“Yes, mother. I’ll take care of it when I get back this evening,” she said. “The printer said they’ll be ready in the morning.”
There was something distantly familiar in the tone and timbre of her voice. Ferguson turned to look.
She was a small black woman in her mid forties. She wore heavy, oversized, sunglasses with dark lenses, a long tan-colored suede coat and black, knee-high, leather boots.
“No, it went well,” she said. “I think they’ll sign. We offered them a good package. The band’s happy, the label’s happy. I’m happy. Happy. Happy. Happy.”
She laughed. “Okay, Mom. They’re boarding now. I gotta go. I’ll see you soon.”
There was a pause, during which the woman smiled knowingly. “Yes, Mom. I am your little bird.”
She put her phone in her purse. Stood and straightened her coat, hoisted her carry-on over her shoulder and made her way tentatively to her gate. She held her left hand out from her side just a few inches, as if guarding against the possibility of bumping into something unseen. At the gate, she pulled her ticket from her purse, gave it to the attendant and boarded a flight to Memphis.
26
Homily
When the Rev. Julius E. Johnson left his position as senior pastor of the New Jerusalem Baptist Church to accept a call to serve as senior pastor of a church in Dearborn, Michigan, he left his former flock without a shepherd for nearly a year. While the search committee regularly reported its progress to meetings of the board of deacons, a parade of mostly mediocre pulpit fillers led the congregation in worship for forty-three straight Sundays, and LaVerne had had enough of it.
One Sunday, the guest speaker was the Rev. Deborah Middlebrook, who labored for forty minutes on the topic of “Women Heroes of the Old Testament,” focusing mainly on Rahab and Jael. Rev. Middlebrook’s delivery was more scholarly than dynamic, and LaVerne left church complaining.
“I never even heard of Rahab and Jael,” he whined to Angela, as they got in the car.
“Well, now you have,” smiled Angela. “It was educational.”
“If I wanted education, I’d go to college.” LaVerne said. “Church isn’t supposed to be school. It’s supposed to inspire people.”
Angela laughed. “I find the lives of Rahab and Jael very inspiring. I think you just don’t like seeing a woman in the pulpit. I think you have a problem with women in authority.”
“Well, you should know better than that,” LaVerne said. “You’re the authority in our house, and I don’t have a problem with you. Unless you start spoutin’ off about Rahab and Jael.”
LaVerne flicked on the car radio. “Where do you want to eat?”
Angela had anticipated this question.
“I thought we might go to the Ethnic and Regional Folk Festival over at Shawnee Mission Park. They’re going to have lots of different kinds of food, and dance, and arts and crafts. It’ll be fun.”
“You want to go to the what, where?” LaVerne asked.
“The Ethnic and Regional Folk Festival at Shawnee Mission Park,” Angela said.
“Shawnee Mission Park?” asked LaVerne. “That’s over in Johnson County, isn’t it?”
Angela nodded. “Mm-hmm.”
LaVerne snorted. “Last time I checked there was no ethnic in that regional.”
Angela’s patience with her husband’s grumpiness was wearing thin.
“Do you want to go or not?” she asked. “If not, let’s just go home. We can have tuna fish sandwiches or something.”
This was sufficient incentive for LaVerne. He decided that since he’d already spent the morning learning about Rahab and Jael, he may as well devote the entire day to furthering his education.
“Fine,” he said. “But I’m not eatin’ any weird shit like sushi or octopus. I’m tellin’ you that right now.”
They listened to the radio. After awhile Angela spoke up.
“A.B. wasn’t in church this morning. That’s not like him.”
/> “Yeah, I noticed that,” LaVerne said. “Maybe he was out with Mother and Pug and the band last night. He probably just slept in.”
“I hope he’s alright,” Angela said.
“I’m sure your boy’s just fine, Mom,” LaVerne said.
Then, because they were both thinking about Raymond, they were quiet until they got to the park.
It was immediately apparent from the aroma in the park that many of the ethnicities and regions represented at the festival used large amounts of garlic and onion in their cooking, elevating LaVerne’s optimism regarding his lunch prospects. This improved his mood, though the sounds of finger cymbals and sitar coming from the India tent made him uneasy, likewise the pennywhistle and fiddle from the Ireland booth.
He and Angela started up and down the rows of exhibits. Angela made them stop and look at all the craft items on display, which as far as LaVerne was concerned, was an unproductive use of time, since he had no intention of buying any such craft items nor of discussing them at length with their creators, which is what Angela apparently wished to do.
LaVerne was therefore relieved when he saw, down the way a bit, a sign announcing the availability of handcrafted Old World sausages. Though LaVerne serves sausage at the restaurant, his taste for it is never quite satisfied.
When he and Angela arrived at the booth, LaVerne immediately recognized cousins Joe and Jack Krizman, of the venerable Krizman sausage enterprise. The Krizman family, arrived in America from Croatian Yugoslavia in the early ‘30s, and has been making sausage at the same location in the old Strawberry Hill neighborhood for almost 70 years. For the last 23 of those, it has been Smoke Meat’s sole sausage supplier.
Joe and Jack greeted LaVerne with friendly handshakes, and LaVerne bought bratwursts for himself and Angela. LaVerne piled his high with grilled onions and sauerkraut. Angela applied a dainty dab of mustard to hers. The three men exchanged inquiries about their respective businesses while Angela wandered off to inspect handwoven wool blankets at the Peru tent.
Halfway down the next row Angela and LaVerne saw a sign advertising “The West Kentucky Barbecue Experience! Taste it for yourself!”
“Let’s go check it out,” chirped Angela. “Your brothers in smoke.”
LaVerne shook his head and frowned. “We went through West Kentucky when I was in the minors, and I had some of their so-called barbecue. It’s mutton, mainly. Sheep. Maybe it’s the Texas in me, but that’s not what I call barbecue. Tastes like roadkill or something, as far as I’m concerned.”
He made a face.
“Have you actually eaten roadkill, LaVerne?” Angela asked as she examined a silver and turquoise necklace at the Navaho exhibit.
LaVerne admitted that, no, he hadn’t.
The West Kentucky Barbecue Experience! booth was staffed by a heavyset man with longish white hair and a white Kenny Rogers-style beard. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt with a Jim Beam Black Label logo on it. As LaVerne and Angela approached, he greeted them with a big smile.
“Y’all like barbecue?”
Angela gave LaVerne’s arm a firm mind-your-manners squeeze.
“A little bit,” said LaVerne. “We own a barbecue place downtown.”
“Do you now?” the man asked cheerfully. “Well, then try some of this good Kentucky barbecue and tell me how it compares.”
LaVerne waved him off. “I just had something to eat, thanks” he said. “I couldn’t handle much more.”
The man persisted. “Well, how about a little sample of our burgoo? It’s like a stew. We serve it alongside our barbecue in Kentucky. It’s an old tradition.”
LaVerne agreed, primarily as a means of abbreviating any further interactions with the friendly Kentuckian, but also because the aroma of onions and garlic was still beckoning. He was handed a small Styrofoam bowl filled with a thick meat-and-vegetable soup, and he took a big spoonful.
“This is really good,” he said, his mouth full. “Really good. What’d you call it?”
“It’s called burgoo. It goes back 200 years.” The jovial Kentuckian grinned and handed a bowl to Angela who thanked him and tried some of the stew.
“Oh, my,” she said. “This is wonderful.”
“I knew you’d like it,” he said. He extended his hand, first to Angela and then to LaVerne. “Merle’s my name. Merle Jackson. You sure you won’t try some barbecue?”
LaVerne shook his head.
“I don’t care much for sheep,” he said. “I’m from Texas and down there barbecue is beef. And that’s all. When I got here to Kansas City, I compromised some and allowed that ribs and pork butt also make pretty good barbecue. But I can’t really accommodate mutton. It’s not barbecue to me. No offense. It’s just my own taste.”
Merle Jackson thought about this a moment, then smiled wider.
“No offense taken, my friend,” he said. “None at all. Truth is that as much as we like mutton where we live, it’s not real popular anywhere else. But, the spirit of it’s the same, isn’t it? You make do with what you got. That’s what barbecue’s all about, right? Whether you’re in Texas, or Kentucky, or Memphis, or Kansas City.”
LaVerne nodded slightly. These were things he himself had thought, from time to time. Merle continued.
“Mutton ain’t leg o’ lamb or lamb chops, that’s for sure. But brisket ain’t no filet mignon, is it? And an ol’ pork butt ain’t no ham. The one thing all barbecue has in common, no matter where you’re from, is that it all starts out with a tough ol’ cut of meat that isn’t much good for anything else and by cooking it a real long time over a nice little fire, you end up with the best food there is. You take what the fancy people don’t want and turn it into something the fancy people will pay a lot of money for.”
LaVerne smiled. “Mr. Jackson, I may not like mutton, but I like the way you think. It’s been nice meeting you. And I’ve got to say, you make good soup.”
He shoveled another spoonful into his mouth.
Merle chuckled.
“You know how we make burgoo, don’t you?” he asked, slyly. “In addition to all them good veggies and chicken and such? Squirrel brains. That’s the secret ingredient.”
Angela’s eyes widened in horror and LaVerne choked. Both quickly deposited the contents of their mouths into their little Styrofoam bowls.
“Just kiddin’,” Merle cackled. “They used to use squirrel brains back in the old days. Especially up in the hills. But after folks kept dyin’ of mad squirrel disease, they quit it. Seriously, I was just funnin’ ya.”
LaVerne and Angela said goodbye and, when they were safely out of sight of the West Kentucky Barbecue Experience!, disposed of their burgoo in a trash barrel.
On their way back to the car LaVerne bought a funnel cake and split it with Angela. A blues band was playing on a stage behind the craft booths, so they meandered over to check it out. It was Mother’s back-up band; Seth Cropper, Jake Green, and Jen Richards, and a substitute lead guitarist filling in for Pug. He had tattoos on the backs of his hands and a long goatee that was braided like a pigtail. Angela and LaVerne listened while they finished their funnel cake, and after the set, they went up and said hello.
“Where’s A.B.?” asked Angela. “Doesn’t he pretty much go wherever you guys go?”
Jen spoke up. “I have no idea where he is. He was going to help us with equipment, but never showed. I called his apartment and nobody answered. I even called the restaurant. There was nobody there either. So your guess is as good as mine.”
Angela scowled. “That doesn’t seem like A.B., does it?”
LaVerne snorted. “That mother of his probably called and wanted him to come over and turn the channels on her TV or get her a beer from the refrigerator. She’s about the most helpless individual I ever heard of.”
*
When LaVerne arrived at the restaurant the next morni
ng, Leon was turning ribs in the smoker.
“A.B. in yet,” LaVerne asked.
Leon nodded. “He’s out front takin’ chairs down.”
LaVerne went out to the dining room. A.B. was there. He glanced up when LaVerne came in, but didn’t say anything.
LaVerne felt that A.B. didn’t look right. “Missed you in church yesterday morning, son.”
A.B. nodded. He took another chair down from atop a table, put it on the floor and sat in it. He stared past LaVerne into the kitchen.
“My mom died last night,” he said. “She had a stroke. She called me in the morning and said she had a headache and would I come over and bring some aspirin since she was out. And when I got there she was passed out on the kitchen floor. I called 9-1-1 and they brought her up to Truman Hospital and she died there a couple hours later.”
LaVerne took a chair down and sat next to A.B.
“I am so sorry. A.B.”
A.B. looked at LaVerne. His eyes were red. He hadn’t shaved.
“My mom didn’t go to church, boss. And I need to make plans for some kind of funeral, I guess. Or to bury her somewhere. But I don’t know where. I don’t know how you find out about that kind of thing. She—her body—is still at the hospital, but they told me I have to have somebody, a funeral home or somebody come get her. Plus, since Pastor Johnson left, there’s not even have a minister to say anything at a funeral. Plus my mom said we were Catholics, except now I’m a Baptist, so I don’t know if that matters or not. So, anyways, do you think Reverend Glen would do that? You know, say something?”
LaVerne put his hand on A.B.’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out, boy.”
While A.B., Leon, and Vicki started the day’s cooking and prep, LaVerne called Angela and told her what had happened. About an hour later, she and Ferguson showed up at the restaurant.
Angela hugged him. Usually A.B. responds with awkward hesitancy to Angela’s hugs. But this time he returned the embrace. She patted his back. A.B. pulled away and rubbed his nose on his sleeve.
