The Obstacle Course

by JF Freedman

  We cut around the side, out of sight from people on the sidewalk. The weeds were almost over our heads and full of trash: the locals used this lot for a dump.

  “You smell what I smell?” I asked. We were parked under an open window—the evening breeze was carrying the commingling smells of the food out of the church, right by our twitching nostrils.

  “Yeah, I smell it, so what?”

  “That’s our dinner you’re smelling is what.”

  That stopped Burt cold in his tracks. “Oh no. Not me.”

  “Ain’t you hungry?”

  “Not hungry enough to try and steal food off a nigger church. Never in a million years.”

  “I’ll do it myself then,” I informed him. “Give me a boost.”

  Burt looked around furtively, like he was expecting some heavy black hand to come down on his shoulder any second and carry him away to depths unknown.

  “Come on,” I snapped my fingers, “time’s awasting.”

  He made a stirrup with his hands. I stepped in, and he hiked me up. Real carefully, I lifted my head up over the sill to eyeball height and looked in the window.

  Several long tables were stretched out right near the window, groaning under the weight of the food laid out on them. It was so appetizing it brought drool to my mouth. I tried leaning in to snatch one of the dishes, but they were tantalizingly out of reach—so near and yet so far.

  I dropped to the ground, licking my chops.

  “Take a look,” I said.

  “Roy …”

  “Come on, you can look at least.”

  “Fuck. All right,” saying it like I was pointing a gun at his head and commanding him to pull the trigger.

  I cupped my hands together. Burt stepped on and I lifted him up.

  “Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed as soon as he looked in.

  “Keep it down,” I instructed him, giving him another second to whet his appetite before dropping him to the ground beside me.

  “That’s more good-looking grub than I’ve ever seen in my life,” he whispered, the saliva drooling out of his mouth like mine had, his hunger beginning to overcome his fear.

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “What if we get caught?” he asked, still scared. He didn’t know whether he was more scared or hungry, but he was willing for me to talk him into being more hungry.

  I had a plan. “We’ll wait out here till their service starts, then sneak a couple plates out the back door. They’ll never notice a couple less plates with all that food.”

  He nodded—the hunger had won out over the fear. We hunched down in the weeds, waiting to hear voices in prayer, our own silent prayers already repeating in our heads.

  It seemed like an eternity before the congregation started their service but in truth it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes; it just felt like it was taking so long because we were famished out of our gourds. I didn’t know what exactly was going on in there, but it sounded like they were having a good old time with their worshiping.

  None of these happy sounds were doing anything for Burt. He was a hungry and scared white boy who wanted to fill his belly and get the fuck out of here.

  “Come on, man,” he implored me, “let’s do it and bail.”

  “Don’t get your bowels in an uproar,” I soothed him. I was starving as bad as him, but I was enjoying listening to the singing too much to get the deed over and done with lickety-split. “Couple more minutes,” I cautioned, “so we’re sure it’s safe.”

  He muttered some pissed-off lament and slumped against the side of the church.

  There was a momentary break in the service; then the singing started up again, and I knew we couldn’t postpone making our move any longer. I counted backwards from a hundred, then from fifty, then from twenty.

  “Let’s went,” I whispered, nudging Burt out of his stupor.

  Real quietly, like two Indian scouts, we crept around to the front of the church, checking up and down the street to make sure nobody was watching us suspiciously. Satisfied that the coast was clear, we each took a deep breath, I cracked the door, and we snuck inside.

  The church was packed to the rafters. From the looks of it every colored person from this part of town was present and accounted for, singing and clapping and shouting hallelujah to the Lord. Even some of the old drunks who had been loitering out on the sidewalk earlier, drinking Country Club malt liquor and Thunderbird wine, were here now, praising Jesus and testifying.

  I double-checked the situation one last time, to make sure the coast was clear. Everyone’s back was to us. Tiptoeing as quietly as we could, we approached the table that was groaning under the weight of the food.

  Burt grabbed the nearest platter and turned to run, but after all this time of going without I wanted to make sure we selected the cream of the crop. I started lifting lids off the various covered dishes, checking them out.

  “Come on,” Burt hissed, holding his plate of whatever. He was about to piss his pants with fear and here I was, fussing over the menu.

  “Roy, come on,” he hissed again in a fierce whisper. I could almost hear the tears in his voice.

  “Just a sec,” I whispered back, waving him off. There were so many good dishes in front of me I was having a hard time making up my mind: fried okra, fried catfish, pork chops in country gravy (one of my very personal favorites), scalloped potatoes, slow-cured baked ham: I was getting delirious just being close to all this good food. What I really wanted was to take some of this and some of this and some of this; but this time beggars had to choose. I finally settled on the pork chops and the okra, because I love them both, although I was leaving plenty of dishes I love about as much.

  We turned to go—and we froze. Standing in front of us, square in the middle of the doorway, no more than ten feet away, blocking any chance of escape, was a large, middle-aged colored man, dressed all in black except for his starched white shirt.

  I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. The way Burt was trembling, standing next to me, he was likely to do both.

  Real slowly, I turned and looked behind me. Everybody in the church was staring at us.

  “Whatever you do, boys,” the man told us in this deep, melodious voice that sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a barrel, “don’t be dropping those plates. Those are offerings to the Lord you’re bearing.”

  Reverend Williams—he was the actual preacher, the boss-man himself—assisted us (as he called it; he could’ve called it something else but he was a preacher and must’ve been practicing turning the other cheek) in putting the food back from where we’d taken it. The good reverend stood tall in the pulpit. Really tall, he must’ve gone six-four, two-fifty; he would’ve been a great defensive end for the Redskins, who could use some help. Burt and I stood on either side of him, his heavy arms on our shoulders framing each of our bodies. He was being a shepherd, holding us tight—he was also insuring that we didn’t take off like two bats out of hell, which I have to admit had crossed my mind.

  Burt was scared so bad I wouldn’t have been surprised to see some wet Tootsie Rolls oozing out the bottoms of his pant legs. This was his worst nightmare come true: a captive in a nigger church, waiting to have the voodoo put on him, to be drawn and quartered, his heart torn out and eaten raw, his blood drunk in some kind of sacrificial native ritual.

  I, on the other hand, wasn’t all that scared; I mean I was scared, I’m not going to bullshit and say I wasn’t scared, I was damn scared, but I was scared a lot less than I’d thought I would be, which came as a surprise. I had been scared; my heart had practically jumped out of my throat when I’d seen that big motherfucker preacher. After all, we’d been caught red-handed stealing food from them, not only from them but from their church, stealing from God, the way Reverend Williams had put it. And even though I’d started being around colored people more, up in The Heights that time I’d been chased over the tracks by the junkyard dog, and at the bar with Ruby (not to mention her bed), I
was ignorant of their lives—for all I knew they hated white boys as much as most white boys I knew hated them, that they, meaning the entire congregation, not only the men but the women and children, too, would be more than happy to have an excuse to tear us limb from limb.

  It sure would’ve happened if the situation was reversed. Somebody colored wandering into a church in Ravensburg, any church, would’ve been courting a shitload of pain. Being in God’s house wouldn’t have made one tiny bit of difference, because that was on everybody’s minds—the fear that had been festering for centuries, since before America was founded, probably, but the last couple of years that fear had really flamed up, ever since the schools in D.C. had integrated—that after the schools it would be the churches, and after that it would be one small step to coloreds wanting to marry whites, because everybody knows the one thing colored men want more than anything in the world is white pussy: to a nigger, possessing a white woman is the ultimate, even better than driving a tricked-out Cadillac.

  Everybody knows that. The southern white boys’ catechism.

  But none of that happened—the tearing-limb-from-limb shit or any kind of blood rituals, either. We were strangers in their church; even though we had been caught red-handed stealing from them, we were still two boys who were scared and hungry and needed a helping hand.

  That was the official line, anyway. Reverend Williams’s words.

  Unofficially, we were getting some mighty dirty looks. Everyone was eyeballing us with great intensity, and nobody was smiling—there wasn’t a friendly look out there. Some of the younger men were looking downright unhappy about the whole affair; but at least they weren’t beating our tails from here till next Tuesday, which they had every right to do.

  “We are blessed this night,” Reverend Williams boomed out to the throng, “with two young visitors come all the way from Washington, D.C.”

  There was a chorus of “amens” and “wells” on that; Washington is the promised land to a lot of colored people from the south; many of these folks staring at us would have friends and relatives who had migrated up there.

  “… come all the way from Washington,” he repeated in his rich, heavy voice, “on their way to Texas, who have stopped here at our humble church to share our worship with us. So let us welcome them with open arms and open hearts.”

  “Get rid of ’em!” came a yell from the middle of the room—a man’s voice. “This ain’t no white man’s church!”

  There followed a low undercurrent of mutterings, agreements. This could get ugly fast, I realized. Maybe Burt had been right all along.

  That got me to shaking. I looked over at Burt, behind Reverend Williams’s back. He was flat scared to death. Then I felt the reverend’s hand clutch my shoulder, hard.

  “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” he thundered.

  He glared out at his congregation. The mutterings settled down. It became very quiet, very fast.

  “Is that the best we can do?” Reverend Williams implored his people. “Cast them out into the streets, hungry and alone, because of the injustices others have done unto us?”

  I could hear people’s voices, their low breathing, the uncomfortable shifting in their seats.

  “Because we have been beaten low, must we do the same? Must we stoop to the same depths as the whites who beat us do? Or should we remember that this is the day Our Lord was crucified for our sins, and raise ourselves to His standards?”

  A whole bunch of “amens” answered that.

  I took a deep breath. It wasn’t going to, turn ugly. This man lived what he preached—I could feel the goodness flowing from his touch into me. We had been saved.

  Reverend Williams turned to Burt and me and gave us each a smile. It was a nice, warm smile, a smile that said “it’s okay, boys, you’re safe here now”; but it also said “I know this game, so don’t for a minute think you’ve pulled the wool over my eyes.”

  Watching these folks pray was better than going to the movies. We stood off to the side, staring wide-eyed as the church rocked with singing, praying, and witnessing, people jumping up and yelling how they’d found Jesus, how Jesus had cured them of every ailment under the sun, what a friend they had in Jesus, all that good shit. They had a whole rhythm ’n’ blues band up there along with the choir; not only an organ, but drums, too, played by a young guy who looked like he’d be comfortable sitting on stage with Fats Domino, also a woman wearing a washboard on her chest who played it Cajun-style with a couple of spoons, keeping time with the drummer, plus an electric guitar and bass. I mean it was rocking, if my sister had been here she’d have jumped up and commenced to dancing.

  After awhile Reverend Williams delivered his sermon and it was powerful, about prodigal sons and living by the golden rule and how all men are brothers, which, he reminded the congregation, was especially important to remember during this holiday season when we celebrate that Jesus Christ died for our sins, all of us, he emphasized; I knew he’d thrown those lines in to cover me and Burt being there among them. He just didn’t talk his sermon, either, he sang some of it, he’d be preaching his lungs out and then all of a sudden he’d break out into song for several lines. He had a terrific voice, like that singer from “Ol’ Man River.” It gave me goose bumps listening to him preaching and singing, you almost felt Jesus in the room with us.

  As I said, I’ve never had much truck with religion; it’s one of the few areas where me and my old man are in agreement, that old gloom and doom stuff they cram down your throat. Standing in this colored church, though, listening to the preaching and singing and testifying, I didn’t feel doomed. I felt good, like life wasn’t so bad, not if people like this, who one way or the other got the shit kicked out of them every day of their lives, could be happy, even if for just these moments.

  “This is great, ain’t it?” I smiled at Burt, nudging him with my elbow, trying to get him to shed that black cloud he was carrying around with him.

  “So niggers got rhythm,” he spat at me in a whisper so no one would hear, not buying into any of this, “big fucking deal.”

  “Jesus, man,” I implored him, “where’s your sense of fun?”

  “You call this fun?” he asked, talking low out the side of his mouth so no one else would hear, not that they could, they were raising the rafters, their singing was so loud. “Being held captive in a nigger church?”

  “Looks like fun to me.”

  “You’ve always been weird, Roy,” he said, glancing at me sideways, making sure he kept his eye on things, in case one of them got it in his head to jump him with a knife or something, like anyone would do that in a church, “but back home it was funny-weird. Now it’s scary-weird.”

  “Hey, fuck you, too,” I told him, moving away slightly.

  “They’re niggers, Roy,” he said, his voice flat.

  “You’re gonna eat their food, ain’t you?”

  “Only ’cause I’m starving and don’t got a choice.”

  I shook my head sadly. He hadn’t gotten it, not at all. Not the train jumping, the adventure of almost getting caught, even the getting caught. We’d been gone a week and I was changed forever; I didn’t know how or why, but it was inside me, moving and growing like something alive.

  All this experience had been for Burt had been six days of fear and homesickness.

  I felt sorry for him. We’d paid a shitload of dues these past six days. You want to get something for your money when you go through that kind of hell, and he hadn’t.

  Show time. They sat us smack in the middle of one of the long tables that had been set up down in the basement, our plates filled with more food than either of us, even me, the kid with the hollow leg, could possibly eat. I was in hog heaven—I’d basically forgotten that I was surrounded by a sea of black faces, because I was digging in with both hands, barely chewing a mouthful before shoveling in the next, dipping my bread in the gravy, forking up huge portions of mashed potatoes, pork chop, chicken-fried steak, catfis
h, two or three other kinds of fish I’d never seen but tasted delicious, vegetables by the dozens, it went on and on.

  Burt sat next to me, of course. He’d have sat on my lap if I’d let him. Despite his feelings, he was eating as hard and fast as I was, matching me forkful for forkful. All around us people were talking, laughing, gossiping, passing plates of food back and forth, having a high time.

  “You ain’t eaten none of my sweet-potato casserole,” a huge lady said, standing behind me with a big bowl of candied yams in her monstrous arms, “I’m famous for this and you’re passing it by,” then immediately, without waiting for me to tell her I just hadn’t gotten around to it yet (because I couldn’t talk with a mouthful of food, it wouldn’t have been polite), dumping a huge portion of the stuff right on top of everything else on my plate.

  “You eat every bite now,” she smiled, showing a whole set of gold false teeth, “it’s guaranteed to grow hair on your chest.” She was laughing her big old head off to beat the band. Everybody around us was laughing with her, people looking at us to see what was so funny. I would’ve laughed, too, except I would have sprayed a mouthful of food all over the room. “You, too,” she commanded Burt, giving him an equal portion.

  The women, in general, were being nicer to us than the men were. I could understand that—they were mothers, they had kids. There were boys here Burt’s and my age. Some of these women probably worked for white families and were around white children.

  Women are nicer than men generally, anyway. I know my mom would’ve treated a colored kid a lot nicer than my old man would.

  “Beats hell out of Ravensburg, don’t it?” I nudged Burt.

  He didn’t answer; just grunted and kept on eating, like it was his last meal on earth. After they stuffed him like a Christmas goose they’d cook him up was the way he was imagining it. I wanted to shake him, to say “goddamn, man, it’s only people,” but that would’ve scared him even more, so I left him alone and let the tide of good feeling carry me along.