Louisiana Hotshot

by Julie Smith

  So she packed up some stuff of her own and drove on over, surprised she could still find the place after her long absence.

  She made her manners and her donation and started asking around, getting all the wrong answers: “Why, no, I don’t b’lieve I do recall a Clarence Scruggs.”

  “Brother Scruggs? Why, he’s been gone a long time. Must be ten, twelve years.”

  “I haven’t thought about that old man in a month of Sundays— I wonder whatever did become of him?”

  “You might ask Lura Blanchard. She said she’d pass by later on.”

  Anybody might pass by later on— maybe even Clarence Scruggs himself. But Talba was a woman on a mission; if she lost her momentum, she’d go back in her shell. She started wandering.

  It was amazing how things came back to her. She knew exactly where to find the downstairs powder room, the social hall, the Sunday school rooms, and that indispensable repository of records— the church office. Mailing lists and tithes were probably computerized now, but they hadn’t always been. Talba was hoping for some old-fashioned file cabinets. Unfortunately, the office door was locked.

  Could she unlock it with a credit card? Getting caught would be ugly, but what the hell.

  She gave it a shot, but couldn’t make it work.

  There was always the window. She could heave a rock through it.

  She heard footsteps. Quickly, she knocked, to give the appearance of innocence. An old woman came into view, a woman who looked at least ninety. She was wispy, thin like old people get, and the kind of short that has once been tall. Her skin was light and her wiry white hair was cut in an ear-length bob and parted on the side. She walked with a cane, but that didn’t stop her from wearing two-inch heels. She looked elegant with her white hair, navy dress, and spiffy shoes. She was the sort of old lady who’d probably bury all her friends and die with her funeral perfectly planned, right down to the hymns.

  “Hello, Sandra Wallis,” she said. “I heard you were looking for me.”

  Talba was speechless. She’d never seen the woman before in her life. Maybe she was the church ghost.

  “I know ya,” the apparition said. “Been knowin’ ya all ya life.” She waved an encompassing arm. “All those sisters out there— they know ya. This a Christian church, girl. Once you in it, ya in it forever.”

  That wasn’t Talba’s understanding of the way the thing worked, but she understood that that was a technicality— Miz Clara had raised her in this church, and no matter what kind of heathen she’d since become, they were always ready to take her back— even if she didn’t remember them.

  She gave her new pal a great big granddaughterly smile. “I know your face— I just can’t recall the name.”

  “Lura Blanchard, dollin’ You axed for me, didn’t ya?”

  Talba put out her hand to shake, but to her surprise, the woman gathered her up in a hug. “Welcome back, child.”

  “Why thank you, Miz Blanchard. I was just wondering if anybody’s in the office.”

  “Well, I used to be— every day of my life.”

  The same face, much plumper and smoother, appeared on Talba’s mental screen. “You were the church secretary.”

  “Tha’s right, dollin’. For thirty-odd years. See, ya do remember.”

  Talba was starting to worry about the old lady. She looked around wildly, hoping for a couple of armchairs. “Is there anyplace we can go to sit down?”

  “Sho’ honey. Got my key right here.” Lura Blanchard reached in her elegant dress and pulled a key from her bosom. “Never gave this up for just that reason. Every now and then, I like a quiet place to sit down.”

  Without an apparent second thought, she broke into the church office. Talba must have been showing her amazement. Lura Blanchard said, “It’s all right, dollin’. What belongs to the church belongs to all of us.”

  Sure enough, there were a pair of good chairs in there. Each of them took one. “I understand you looking for Reverend Scruggs.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I wonder if you know where I can find him?” Talba hoped she didn’t sound too phony. The effort of behaving genteelly was getting to her.

  “You want him or ya mama?”

  It was a tough one. Talba didn’t know which was the preferred answer. She decided she’d better not lie. The whole thing was going to get back to Miz Clara, if it hadn’t already. She had no idea these people kept such close tabs on one another. “It’s for me,” she said. “I need to ask him about a bit of church history.”

  “Is that right, now? Well, I might be able to help. I been here longer than anybody but God.”

  “Miz Blanchard, are you a close friend of my mama’s?”

  “Clara Wallis? As fine a Christian woman as I’ve ever met in my life.” That didn’t actually answer the question, but it was rhetorical anyway.

  “I’m asking because I thought she might have told you about my job. I’m doing some confidential investigating for a security company. I’m afraid it involves something I’m permitted to talk about only with those who’re directly involved.” She babbled on, to cover the awkward moment. “I’m awfully sorry— for me, I mean— ’cause I’ll bet anything you do know.”

  Lura Blanchard gave her a wry smile that didn’t tell Talba whether she’d bought the lie or not. She said, “Well, let me see what I can do for ya.” And proceeded to rifle the church files.

  She knew exactly what she was looking for and where to find it. In less than a minute, she had an official-looking card in her hand. “Uh-huh. Here’s an update on his address. We don’t see much of Reverend Scruggs anymore.” Her small, proper mouth assumed another wry little twist. “’Course, some folks think tha’s a good thing.”

  Talba matched her smile for smile. “He was kind of an old terror, wasn’t he?”

  “Wasn’t much joy in him— all hellfire and damnation. I don’t believe tha’s God’s message, but that was Reverend Scruggs’s path, so who am I to criticize?”

  “Surely the church paid him. I’d have thought you’d have some say-so.”

  “Well, we must have needed him— he was what God sent us. And I certainly wouldn’t argue with His plan for us. Would you?”

  Talba sidestepped that one. “Guess you right,” she said, in her one habitual lapse of standard English— she found it smoothed over a multitude of sticky situations. “Shall I copy down Reverend Scruggs’s address and phone number?”

  “Help yaself, child. Help yaself.” The old woman sighed in what might have been resignation. Talba wondered again how good a friend of her mother’s she was. On impulse she said, “Did you know my father?”

  “Ya father? Why no, I didn’t. I don’t b’lieve he was a member here.”

  And yet he had worn that Easter suit.

  Talba helped the old lady back downstairs and thanked her as curtly as she politely could— a process she managed to pare down to twenty minutes or so. She was itching to get to the Reverend Scruggs before her mother found out she’d been trespassing on her turf.

  Chapter 20

  The good reverend had evidently fallen on hard times, or perhaps Baptists simply didn’t pay their ministers much. These days he was living in public housing for seniors.

  She dreaded going to see him. She could remember his flashing, angry eyes, the way he pounded and paced when he really got going. One sermon she particularly remembered, delivered when there had been a lot of gang activity: “The Lord will not tolerate such as this. He will destroy these young people as he destroyed the Canaanites, as he destroyed the Philistines, as he destroyed all the enemies of Israel. Destruction shall rain down upon them and peace shall be restored.”

  So far as she knew, peace hadn’t ever been restored, but within three months, seven or eight young men in the gangs had been destroyed. Talba was young enough to be impressed. When she thought about it, that particular sermon had done more than anything else to make her lose interest in the church.

  Considering the neighborhood she was going
into, she wished she had a steering wheel lock. The kids in the streets looked pretty much like the ones upon whom the Reverend Mr. Scruggs had called down destruction all those years ago. He must have lost his touch.

  Now don’t you worry, she told herself. Crime is down all over the city.

  Still, a woman alone didn’t go places she shouldn’t, and Talba really shouldn’t be here. She wondered if she should get a gun, and almost laughed: I’d probably shoot myself.

  The man who came to the door looked about as old as Lura Blanchard, but he’d fattened up where she’d thinned out. He had quite a watermelon on him, showed off by a wife-beater T-shirt. Chest hair that peeked out of it was as white as the hair on his head. He was barefoot and struggling to get a pair of specs on his face. “Are you the lady from the home health? We weren’t expecting you today.”

  “Reverend Scruggs?”

  He smiled at that— he must not hear it much anymore. “Brother Scruggs is fine.”

  “Lura Blanchard told me where to find you.”

  “Why I’ll be darned— Lura Blanchard! Come in, come in.” And he opened the door. “Will you ‘scuse me a moment?” He looked hugely uncomfortable.

  A female voice called from another room: “Clarence? Who’s that?”

  “’Scuse me, will you?” The Reverend Mr. Scruggs hitched up his pants as he departed.

  His hair had been black when Talba knew him, and his manner so fierce even some of the congregation’s adults found him scary. More than his belly seemed to have softened up.

  Talba checked out the room while she waited. It was short on furniture and long on mementoes. In fact, there was really nothing large in it but a couple of bookshelves, a television, a table against a wall, and two chairs with a small table between them. Bookshelves, tables, and walls were loaded, however— with pictures, diplomas, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, awards, certificates of appreciation, everything he could scare up to remind him of the life he used to have. Talba wondered which was better— the remembered or the current one. This one looked meager and hard, but the man seemed more at ease with it.

  He returned wearing a fresh white shirt and a clean pair of trousers. Talba could see that he’d also splashed water on his face and guessed he’d brushed his teeth as well. He extended his hand. “Well, now. Well, now. Whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

  “Talba Wallis, sir. I used to be called Sandra. My mother’s Clara Wallis. Perhaps you remember us from First Bethlehem Baptist.”

  “Wallis? I remember your mama. Yes.”

  The voice called to him again. “Clarence? Who is that with you, Clarence?”

  “Excuse me a moment, will you?” he said, and this time she heard him speaking softly to someone. When he came back, he closed a door somewhere behind him. “My wife,” he said. “She is an invalid, I’m afraid. She had a stroke several years ago, and has never fully recovered. Her memory is very poor.”

  Talba was intrigued. The notion of being what amounted to this man’s prisoner would have horrified her at one time, but he had spoken to his wife as gently as any nurse. She asked if he was her principal caregiver.

  “I am, yes. It pretty well keeps me occupied.”

  “It must be hard on you.”

  “On the contrary. Had it not been for my wife, I might have lost my way entirely. She is my dearest love, and I find it a privilege to care for her.” The words would have been difficult for most people to say— far too intimate to fit into the twenty-first century— and yet he had spoken them simply and sincerely, without the pastoral bombast of previous years.

  “You seem different from the way I remember you.”

  He nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I am different. And I am proud of it too.”

  “What did your wife say to you? I mean, how did she…” Talba felt she’d gone too far, but didn’t know how to extricate herself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s none of my business.”

  “No, it is not, and yet I am quite happy to tell you. It was not what she said, but who she was. We had a child who was stricken with a rare and painful disease. I felt as though the Lord had turned against me. I was devastated and I was angry— after all, I was the fiercest soldier in His army. And then I gradually came to see that the God I had been looking for, the holy spirit itself, dwelt in this woman who took such loving, uncomplaining care of our stricken child, and I vowed to remake myself in her image.”

  Talba wasn’t quite sure what she was hearing. “Are you saying that… uh…”

  “Not that I worshiped my wife. Certainly not. I worshiped her only in the sense that any man worships the woman he loves. I mean only that the holy spirit dwells in all of us and that in her I was able to see it shining through and to understand its shape and its texture, its beauty and its glory, to see for the first time that which had eluded me for so many years. And I felt that I was home.”

  “Well.” Talba hardly knew what to say— the simplicity of his belief, his lack of bombast, was really quite moving. “You still preach a beautiful sermon.”

  “I meant that as no sermon, young woman. Simply as a statement of fact.”

  She smiled at him, beginning to get over her embarrassment “And I thank you for it, sir.” She was starting to talk like him.

  “What can I do for you, Miss Wallis?”

  “Ah. Me.” She had actually forgotten about herself for a while. This felt a lot more like being in church than sitting in First Bethlehem ever had— maybe the Lord really did move in mysterious ways. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Kindly old uncle eyes looked out at her from behind the specs. She might as well have been talking to Santa Claus. It occurred to her she could unload on this man— he was a perfect stranger, and he used to be a preacher.

  “Have you got a while?” She asked, “I might need a little pastoral counseling.”

  “Certainly I have. Let me just go see to Ella.”

  While he was gone, she halfway considered bolting, but coming back would be too hard. At the very worst, maybe he’d tell her if she needed a shrink.

  “Would you like some coffee?” he said. “Mine is not very good, but it may pump you up for the ordeal to come.”

  “What ordeal?”

  “You are not looking forward to talking about it, are you?”

  “Listen, let me just dive in while you’re making that coffee.”

  He motioned her to come to the kitchen, and began to move clumsily about it.

  “I made a scene in a restaurant last night. My brother’s probably never going to speak to me again. My boyfriend’s probably given up on me.”

  “If you have come to me, this is not the beginning of your problem.”

  “Everybody’s keeping a secret from me. A big, big deal of a secret.”

  “I see.” He nodded, and held out a cup of coffee. Indeed he looked like a shrink. Maybe it wasn’t going to be too bad.

  Seated at his old kitchen table (which was every bit as disreputable as Miz Clara’s), she poured out the story in little clumps of remembrance— some from childhood, most from the last few days, and some the gray-mist ones of the movie in her head— ending with the scene from the night before, the compulsion that had come over her this morning, even the White Elephant Sale and Lura Blanchard, whom she ratted out for breaking and entering, thinking she and the reverend might have a big old laugh about it. And indeed, they were such pals by that time, that it came, as he might have said, to pass.

  He filled her cup again and looked at her over the top of his glasses. “What are you afraid of, child?”

  She wondered why he hadn’t read as much between the lines as she did. “I think my mother killed him. I think… maybe… there might have been another woman, and it might have even have been…” She had a thought way the hell in the back of her mind. Was it too stupid to say it? Spit it out, girl. Come out of your shell. “My aunt Carrie,” she said at last. “That man? You know, that man I remember? It
could have been my uncle. That’s the only person it really could be— maybe he killed my daddy because, you know, he caught him with his wife…”

  “Slow down. Slow down now. I can’t tell whether you think your uncle killed him or your mama.”

  “I’m afraid it’s my mama. I guess I was just hoping maybe it was the man— because nobody loved me like that that I can remember. My uncle would have been the only one, you see? The man picked me up and hugged me and tried to comfort me… ”

  “Well, your mind can play tricks on you.”

  “I guess it can.” She was deeply disappointed— she wasn’t getting much in the way of wisdom out of Reverend Born-Again.

  “But I want you to rest easy, now. Your mama didn’t kill your daddy.”

  She looked at him curiously, unsure if he was speaking from knowledge or opinion.

  “I remember a lot about the story. No ma’am. Your mama didn’t kill him and your Aunt Carrie didn’t carry on with him. I don’t care what her name is.” He laughed at his own small pun. “That I can promise you. Yes ma’am, I can promise you that. But there was another woman— you’re right about that. And that’s what broke your parents’ marriage up. Your daddy left home when you were just a baby.”

  “Oh. I thought they lied about when he left— I guess I took ‘left’ to mean disappeared or dead or something. I didn’t catch on that he moved out.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember it well. He and your mama were separated. Not divorced, though; don’t believe they ever divorced.”

  “Did he move to another city or what?”

  “He didn’t move to another city— that I remember. Wait a minute, why do I think that?” He closed his eyes for a minute and bent over the old table. He could have been praying, for all Talba knew. “Yes. Yes, I do remember. I saw him in church after that, with you and your brother.”

  Talba couldn’t feature that one, considering the way Miz Clara felt about him to this day. The wound would have been much fresher then, more tender and sore. “You mean, he sat with mama and us?”