He looked at his uncle again, then noticed the old sock dangling out of his pocket. Two months of savings down the drain. And what was he saving up for? A horse, of course. His very own. A horse that he could name and feed. A horse that would come when he called. A horse that wouldn’t throw him off or rear up on him. A horse that could take him away. A horse that he could love and be loved back by.
The blue jay continued to sing but Coon had stopped his chorus because it’s hard to whistle when you’re crying. But the blue jay continued, hoping to end Coon’s need for solace, to comfort him in the shade of the big pecan tree. Yet that beautiful melody was interrupted by his uncle’s phlegm-lined snoring. Intrusive. Vulgar. Drunk snore. An affront. A teasing. Coon looked at the bottle and the hat, then his dirty hands.
There are moments in life, incidents, that define who we are for the remainder of the roller-coaster ride. Some call them “epiphanies,” but epiphanies have a tendency not to be singular but rather a series of realizations. No, it’s that other moment where one discovers one’s personal truth. A tao of one’s self. The part in life where you actually get a peek at your personalized and monogrammed user manual. For Coon, his moment had arrived at the age of twelve.
He carefully removed the gray Stetson from his uncle’s head and tried it on. A little big, but he figured his head would grow into it. He took the bottle of white lightning and emptied it over his uncle’s chest and legs, then threw the Chesterfield in the drunkard’s lap. The blue jay changed its tune and flew away. Coon waved at the bird and sauntered away just as his aunt burst through the screen door screaming.
Days later, Coon sat proudly in the colored section of the Argonaut as it pushed along the tracks loaded with rural folks headed west to Los Angeles. He kept the brim of the gray Stetson low over his eyes and pulled slowly on a Chesterfield like the white guys in the detective movies. He was ecstatic even though it was stifling on the train and the fried chicken Catiche had packed for him was starting to smell. Jubilee. Bodies sitting together, moving in segregated steel to the next chapter, the next reality. There’s gold up in dem hills. There’s gold.
Coon didn’t smile until he crossed the state line into Texas, although he had to remind himself that he wasn’t nervous, just fidgety.
There was still daylight when they reached Houston. A long stop. Noisy. Barbeque. Somebody brought a lot of barbeque. And rotgut wine. Smelled like Saturday nights at Mouton’s nightclub in Mallet. They poured into Coon’s colored car, loud and overdressed—the Texas Negroes.
“You’se hungry, young man?” asked a dark doddery doughboy in pressed uniform, carrying a basket of barbeque sandwiches wrapped in wax paper, nickel bottles of RC cola, and memories of the front where nigger blood was just as red as European—mixed on the muddy floors of the trenches, it could easily be mistaken for barbeque sauce.
“No, suh,” Coon answered.
The old veteran continued on. Coon had eighty-three cents nestled in a handkerchief he stole from his father’s body while it lay in state during the wake. Coon was supposed to be praying, but he stood on the kneeler at the casket so he could see his father one last time. He poked Paul’s pale cheek. Nothing. He poked it again. Still nothing. A yellow silk handkerchief with burgundy stitching was professionally tucked in the gray suit pocket. Nobody was looking so Coon swiped it, which didn’t bother Coon the least bit, particularly after he learned that his older brother Pa-June got the fiddle.
The yellow handkerchief with burgundy stitching was the only thing he had of his father. And now, eight years later, it held all of the money that Coon had in the world—eighty-three cents—tucked away next to three pieces of fried chicken and two slices of homemade bread, all secreted in an empty half-gallon Steen’s pure cane syrup tin.
The wooden benches were packed. Many stood in the aisles holding the rail, some sleeping, others chatting with tales of home, tales of racism and violence. Tales of love left behind. Tales of Momma’s cookin’ and Poppa’s belt. All told in the extreme past tense as though it had happened lifetimes ago yet they hadn’t been on the train for twenty-four hours.
Most had never left their county or parish, like the young woman from Beaumont who sat across from Coon with ambitions of being the next Lena Horne. A few were fugitives, usually fleeing a vengeful white sheriff or a cuckolded husband, like the sinewy umber-colored man standing next to Coon’s bench with a pistol in his waistband and a pensive frown, still figuring out what to say in case he got picked up at the next stop. And it’s a wonder that Coon noticed any of this because his eyes hadn’t left the window since he jumped on the train in Lafayette.
The train finally jerked, huffed, then slowly stretched its rotund legs against the steel tracks as the sun limped westerly. Coon pressed his face against the glass looking for the sun that seemed to have run away with orange smoke at its back. Outside the window, the buildings passed quickly. No time to wave at fuzzy faces and blurry buildings. There’s gold up in dem hills.
The window went black. Night was official. A few lights shone in the distance, bemoaning their labor, jealous of their celestial cousins who manage a twinkle for all to see. Coon looked at the blank sky littered with stars, big and small. That’s all he could see.
A fat man ate a barbeque sandwich next to him. He smelled like good soap.
“Dey shakin’ dem ivories in da back,” he informed the pistol-packing man, but he wasn’t interested.
Coon looked at his hands. Small, stubborn deposits of Shinola still clung to a few cuticles. He stood up quickly and moved to the aisle, syrup-tin lunch pail under his arm. He nudged the pistol-packing man, offering his seat, thinking, He probably do some better figurin’ starin’ out tha winda’. The man nodded a thank-you and sat as Coon moved toward the rattle of shaking dice.
“Five. I’m bettin’ five.”
Three days later, Coon stepped off the Argonaut on Central Avenue in Los Angeles, California. He arrived with more than he left with, and I’m not talking about the six bucks or so he made with the dice. Twelve-year-old Coon made a startling discovery the night of that dice game, a discovery that would change the rest of his life. Some might call it “luck,” but he knew it was much more than that.
A white porter eyed the young lad emerging from the train.
“You Willie Leders?” he asked.
“No, suh.”
“What’s your name, boy?”
The twelve-year-old looked around. Strange faces. Palm trees. Streetcars. Sunshine.
“John Boudreaux, suh.”
Nobody in the Golden State, save his sister whom he was to live with, would ever know about “Coon.”
* * *
1. A traiteur in Creole and Cajun traditions is a “treater” who practices healing with self-procured medicines found in the environment and/or with prayer.
2. O kwa, o jibile / Ou pa we m’inosan? means “O cross, o jubilee / don’t you see I’m innocent?”—a Haitian vodou invocation for Bawon Samedi, lord of the cemetery and guardian of ancestral knowledge.
3. “Coon! Stop it! Come here!”
4. “Tell me!”
5. “I went all round the land / With my jug on the pommel. / And I asked your father / For eighteen dollars, dear. / He only gave me five dollars.” A stanza from the famed juré song “J’ai Fait Tout le Tour du Pays,” which many consider the source song for the music genre termed zydeco. Zydeco is a unique music created by Creoles of Louisiana, which mixes old French Acadian folk music with African American blues.
6. “Oh mama, give me the beans. / Oh yeah yah, the beans aren’t salty,” chorus to “J’ai Fait Tout le Tour du Pays.”
seven
catechism
Houston, Texas, c. 1981
One autumn morning at St. Philip’s, most of the kids stood under the basketball hoop watching a navy blue Lincoln Continental idle in front of the rectory. The door opened. Otis Redding was playing in the car. Three brothers stepped out of the Lincoln like Shaft, s
urveying the campus with a cool grin. One had a well-manicured afro and lamb chops. They all wore Florsheim ankle boots and dark sunglasses. And the collar. Enter the Vatican’s late response to James Brown—the black Benedictine monks from St. Louis, Missouri. Apparently Father Murdoch didn’t have enough prayers or health insurance for St. Philip’s, so the bishop sent in the soul brothers: Father Jerome, Brother Al, and Brother Barry.
We were floored. Most of us had never seen a black priest before. But here they were, coming out of hiding with a bit of a militant-hustler swagger. Father Jerome had the most presence, standing at six feet, three inches, with the Isaac Hayes haircut and a gold crucifix pinkie ring. The brother was smooth. His sidekicks, a little younger, were Brother Al, an overweight, red dude with the fro and chops, and Brother Barry, a chain-smoking man of the cloth with bad razor bumps who looked like an ex-con from Chicago because he was.
Father Jerome looked at us, then waved with “Hey, lil’ brothers and sisters!”
He didn’t sound like a priest but rather a Black Panther or some other revolutionary you might run into at S.H.A.P.E. Community Center in Third Ward. We didn’t know what to think, but we knew the homilies at Mass would probably change.
“Watch, they gonna start hollerin’ and jumpin’ around like them Baptist preachers,” I said to Albert.
“They don’t do that kinda stuff in Catholic church. It’s against the law,” he responded.
“What law?”
“Them laws that the pope makes.”
But if their arrival and demeanor were any indication of what was to come on Sunday, the Benedictines knew damn well how they were coming off. The entire week at school we only saw them in passing, moving their stuff into the rectory and having countless meetings with the principal, Sister Benedict. No special assembly. No altar boy meetings. Nothing.
Every day when I’d return home from school, Mother anxiously awaited reports on the black Benedictines at St. Philip’s, but I had none to share. The rumor mill was red-hot and some of the facts began to leak, not all of them good. Brother Al had an eating and drinking problem. Brother Barry was sent to jail when he was young for killing a man over a dice game. And Father Jerome was a former navy man turned numbers runner turned janitor who found God. But those particulars were not the subjects of the queries among parishioners. Everyone was really interested to see how Father Jerome would conduct Mass. Even the choir director didn’t get any information nor visits from Father Jerome. Everyone was kept in the dark until Sunday.
That Sunday there were more people at St. Philip Neri Catholic Church than there had ever been, even on Easter and at Christmas midnight Mass. In fact, most in attendance didn’t go to St. Philip’s but rather had floated over from St. Francis Xavier’s and St. Mary’s. Everyone in the black Catholic community on the south side of Houston wanted to check these brothers out. And as luck would have it, that Sunday was my day to serve as an altar boy.
Mother and I parked in the almost full lot.
“Do your best today, Ti’ John. Don’t make the new priest look bad,” Mother advised.
“I won’t, Momma,” I returned with a kiss on the cheek.
I got out of the car and dashed for the sacristy, running the litany and ritual through my head. I had only been doing altar service for a few months.
When I reached the door to the holy secret room, I saw Albert Thibodeaux’s momma waiting outside like a groupie. Only altar boys, priests, brothers, and the occasional woman who serviced the robes were allowed in the sacristy.
“Hey, Ti’ John,” she said.
“Hey, Mrs. Thibodeaux.”
Her eyes were dancing.
I opened the door and entered. Albert was dressed and stood against the wall like a statue. Brother Al was shining his shoes, and Brother Barry was in a corner on his knees in prayer. I guess he was on punishment. And Father Jerome methodically adjusted his vestments in the mirror.
“Hey, lil’ brother. What’s your name?” boomed Father Jerome in a smooth, deep voice.
“Aah, John Boudreaux, Junior. They call me Ti’ John,” I answered somewhat timidly.
He turned with a fantastic smile and extended a hand that smelled like cologne.
“Ti’ John. Petit John. Little John, huh?” he asked. “Your people from Louisiana?”
“Yep. Basile and Opelousas.”
“Opelousas. They got that church down there, Holy Ghost with Father McKnight. You ever met Father McKnight?”1
“Nawh, but I heard of him.”
“Well, this is gonna be fun today. Whatcha think?” he asked.
“Fun?”
The Catholic Moors laughed. I had never heard of church being fun. Mother always said that you shouldn’t laugh in church because it was a serious matter, and here was this bald-headed guy talking about fun. But, hey, he was the new boss, so I guessed fun was in order.
The first part of Mass was nothing exceptional. All the normal procedures of the litany, on cue with bells and incense, et cetera. Then the choir began to sing before Father Jerome’s homily and he stopped them. A general hush filled the room because Mass was something of an autopilot experience, efficient, planned out, and hardly any room for improvisation. The Holy See wouldn’t allow jazz interpretations of Catholicism—ask Martin Luther.
He rose and walked toward the choir director and took the mic.
“When I was a boy in Philadelphia, I used to live across the street from this Baptist church. And I remember a song they used to sing, talkin’ ’bout ‘Take Me Back.’ No matter where I’m at, if I hear that song then I feel like I’m home,” he confessed.
He glanced at the choir director, then the choir. “You know that song?” he asked.
The choir director started playing the famed gospel song on the organ, leaving the choir clueless since they’d never heard blue notes from that organ. But Father Jerome was back home in Philly, eyes closed and body swaying like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. And when his momma walked in the icy vestibule in tears and told him Poppa wasn’t coming home, he began to sing.
Take me back, take me back, dear Lord,
To the place where I first received you.
His voice was aged and seasoned. Sorrow. Tragedy. Reaffirmation. All of those things you hear from blues singers, their entire lives on audio display, wrapped in a melodic mea culpa, testifying to realizations. That’s what gospel and blues had in common. Truth. Testaments to the human spirit and personal realizations. Epiphanies. My woman don’t want me. God works in mysterious ways. I got a no-good woman but I’m a no-good man. Ain’t no love like sweet Jesus. The thangs that I used ta do, Lord, I don’t do them anymo’. We come this far by faith. I got a sweet little angel, I love the way she spreads her wings. All of this, professed as truth, sung with conviction and certainty, felt like divine power preordained. Adelai Green missed out.
This was the place that Father Jerome decided to go on his inaugural Mass. And his rendition of “Take Me Back” was nothing short of a full confessional to a congregation of strangers. He sang the first stanza solo with heart and soul. The choir took the cue and joined in. They had never sung like that at St. Philip Neri before, and everyone in the congregation knew that things were about to change at church.
Needless to say, his homily was more aligned with the black Baptist traditions, sans telling the congregation to turn to certain pages in the Bible. Shouting, jumping, call and response, the whole package. Some in the congregation didn’t know what to make of it. Others felt released and freed from the constraints of past Catholic Mass behavior. And after Mass, sides were being chosen—those who liked the direction that Father Jerome was heading and those who felt that it conflicted with the standards and practices of Catholic Mass. Bottom line: it was too black, too common. Father Jerome even mentioned that in his homily but said that how we worship should not call into question our sincerity and belief in the Holy Trinity.
The next Sunday, some parishioners left, vowing not to return
until the tall, bald black heretic was sent packing. But a lot more new members joined quickly. Father Jerome was a hit.
Later that day, Mother came to my bedroom door and told me that I had visitors. She was pissed. The visitors were two of my new friends, Booger and Raymond Earl.
“You can’t bring them in the house or the backyard. Play in the front so Momma can see you, and don’t bring out your new toys,” she instructed as I grabbed a Crown Royal bag full of plastic army men. She was serious and definitely pissed that I had found some playmates from the neighborhood.
This marked the beginning of my rebellion, my personal cause du jour into the risky unknowns of South Park. As I passed her in the hallway, I knew Mother was angry and frustrated. I had taken a stand. Gotdamn Ricky Street, she must have thought as I cheerfully bounced past her for the front door.
We sat on the curb and lined up the army men. Three nations. Each a general and king of his troops. I had enough of the plastic men to give each a fair war. The kneeling guy with the M16. The kneeling guy with the bazooka. The standing guy with the M16. And my favorite, the guy sprawled out on his stomach with his rifle. The least favorite, of course, was the communications guy carrying the radio with the antenna. He didn’t even have a gun in his hand. Nobody wanted that guy. But I bet dollars to doughnut holes he was happy as hell to be the communications specialist, avoiding M16 gunfire, bazooka rounds, and grenades. You always kept the communications guy off the line, snuggled behind the Jeep or behind a log. Fuck him. He’s a pussy, which is exactly why I kept his scary ass in the Crown Royal bag. Who wanted that dude?
“Your momma don’t want us in yawl house?” Booger asked.
“She cleaning the floor right now,” I lied, sparing his little snotty-nose heart. Raymond Earl watched me when I answered. He knew I was lying.
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