by Joe Derkacht
Driven by a sense of renewed purpose, Cedric leapt up the steps to Flowers Avenue Baptist Church and pounded on its steel doors. He glanced at his watch, saw it was only 10 a.m., and pounded again. Of course Rev. Willimon, or Johnny, as he said he liked to be called, might be anywhere, but he had hoped he would be at the church. Once the thought of sharing facilities with Flowers Baptist had popped into his brain, he hated to delay acting on it, especially since each second lost was a second closer to Sunday.
“Reverend Champion?”
Startled, Cedric swung around, instantly smiling about his mistake. He’d glimpsed a man in blue jeans and chambray shirt, pruning shears in hand, trimming shrubbery at the back corner of the building, and assumed it was the church gardener. Instead, it was Rev. Willimon.
“Johnny!” He exclaimed. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize that was you.”
The white minister glanced apologetically at his shears. “Oh, you know,” he said. “It’s good therapy.”
“Looked to me like you was killin’ snakes,” he said, grinning and thickening his accent. “Problems with yo’ deacons, brother?”
Johnny stared for a moment, started to say something, and thought better of it. Frowning, he pulled a ring of keys from his back pocket.
“That would be funny, if it wasn’t so,” he said. “Let’s go to my office.”
Quickly sobered by the remark, Cedric followed Rev. Willimon inside. They took a hallway off the foyer and were soon ensconced in the white minister’s sparsely furnished, bleak office. Willimon followed Cedric’s gaze about the cold, uninviting room.
“It’s nothing like your office, l-like your office w-was,” he stammered. “I can’t even study here. I usually work on my sermons at the parsonage.”
Cedric stared morosely in response, and Willimon plunged awkwardly on:
“I’m sorry I didn’t call. Didn’t call after the fire, I mean,” he said, neglecting to mention a year had passed since his visit to Cedric’s office, a year in which he had not once telephoned him.
“I wasn’t surprised,” the black minister said, without rancor. “It’s always been that way in this city.”
“I wanted to help...” his voice trailed off. “But I just didn’t know what to do, what to say.”
“What would you do if one of your people had his house burn down?” Cedric asked pointedly.
“It’s not the same,” Willimon answered. He swallowed hard, searched for the right words. “I-It’s more like, what if somebody from my family was the one who started the fire? What could you say then?”
Cedric stared. Things were never necessarily as easy to explain as one might think, or as complicated, either. But the reason for the man’s awkwardness, his reticence, made more sense, now.
“John,” he said quietly, dispensing with the childish-sounding Johnny, “it was arson, but I’m sure it wasn’t anybody from your church who burned us out, even if some of your people might be old Klan members.”
“A few of my people wanted us to do something,” Willimon said.
“Your Stella McIlhenny offered us the use of her property, but that wouldn’t put us indoors.”
“The deacons--” muttered the white minister, seemingly in conversation with himself. He spread his hands in defeat and looked miserable.
“The deacons? Who’s the shepherd over this church, John?”
“Shepherd? Why, I am, or I’m supposed to be.”
“Well, from one shepherd to another, my flock needs your help. We need a building, and your church is the closest, most convenient there is.”
“You want to buy Flowers Avenue Baptist?” Willimon asked, lurching forward, elbows on his desk.
“Not buy,” Cedric said. “Share.”
It was easy to see the thought hadn’t occurred to John Willimon. He slumped back in his chair and brought his hand to his lips, his eyes darting back and forth, as if ideas danced in his brain like water on hot grease.
“The deacons--” he muttered.
Who’s the shepherd here, John? Cedric wanted to say again, but held his tongue. He had boldly thrown his request on the table and knew well enough to simply pray as the man considered his options. He glanced around the room again, and waited. The office felt less cold as the seconds went by. He wondered how a handful of his salvaged books would look on the empty wall shelves. Lonely, he guessed.
“The deacons, it’ll have to be passed by the deacons,” Willimon said at last. “There are church bylaws, you know.”
Cedric’s eyebrows rose skeptically.
“We’ll work it out somehow,” John said. “God as my witness.”
“Today?”
“Today?” He echoed him.
“We can’t wait on this, I have to know right away.”
“Right, tomorrow is Sunday,” Willimon said, reaching for his telephone.
“And I have to be at your meetin’, John,” Cedric insisted, pushing himself to his feet. “Say at five? You’ll need moral support.”
“All right, I’ll let you know, Cedric.”
It wasn’t until he reached the front door of the church and let himself out that he realized Willimon had pronounced his name correctly, as Ceed-rick. He smiled as he strode back to his Caddy. Things were looking up. God was good, and he didn’t care if he had to wrestle all the deacons of hell for the use of Flowers Avenue Baptist Church. Demons, he meant, demons of hell.
****
Chapter 21
A white automobile lurched away from the curb opposite the church and did a sharp U-turn, backing and screeching its tires before speeding away, as Cedric returned from Flowers Baptist on foot. Just as he was about to open his car door, he heard a raspy voice call his name.
“Reverend Champion!”
He glanced around, saw no one, and heard his name called again. Still no one he could see. Someone playing a prank, pretending to be the voice of God, perhaps, or maybe a devil? Then he saw a shadowy figure, secreted within the oversized pergola across the street, which served as front entrance to the old Jacob Ayers property, gesturing to him. Chance Odoms, he realized. He waited for a line of cars to pass by, before crossing the street.
There were two plank seats built into the pergola. Odoms brushed dried out leaves from both with his bare hand. Cedric sat, nearly kneecap-to-kneecap with the tall detective, staring questioningly into his eyes. A 35mm camera, Nikon stamped across its body, hung from his neck by a leather strap.
“Any of your minister friends own a white ’69 Monte Carlo?” He asked without preamble.
“Mmmh,” he intoned, thinking hard. “That would be Reverend Erwin--”
“Would he have anything against you?” Chance asked, anticipating his answer.
Cedric closed his mouth, clamped his lips tight. But Chance, always the astute observer, had seen the fleeting confusion in his eyes, the shock and fear, before resolve settled in.
“I can’t say,” the minister said, his voice a deep rumble. Hunched forward with his elbows on his knees and fingers interlaced, he pivoted toward his burned out church. Its concrete steps lined up perfectly with the pergola’s opening.
“Maybe you never heard,” Chance continued, “but it’s extremely common for a criminal, especially an arsonist, to return to the scene of his crime.”
Cedric sadly shook his head.
“To admire his handiwork,” Chance said, rising from the plank bench. “To gloat.”
“I can’t say that would sound like Erwin to me.”
“So you think he was here taking pictures to add to his family photo album?”
Cedric stared numbly at Chance’s belt buckle, suddenly unable to answer.
“You know, from a different angle I would’ve had a great shot of his teeth,” Chance commented, fondly cradling the Nikon in one hand. “He has quite a smile, your friend Erwin.”
“You investigating fires, now?” Cedric asked.
“Nah,” he said,
stepping from under the arch, having decided it was time to end the conversation, dubious he could squeeze any more information from him that was useful. “The criminal mind is amazingly predictable at times, you know, so I thought I would give it a shot, see who would come sniffing around.”
“You’re the one he’s always hated,” Cedric said, as Chance turned away, intending to leave.
“Seems to me he’s maybe become a bit more democratic about his hatred, decided to spread a little in your direction, Rev.,” Chance said, idly kicking a loose stone into the gutter. “Championing himself as the spokesman for any complaint he hears about in my investigations finally got too boring for him.”
“Hatred and unforgiveness are terrible things in a man.”
Chance gave him a tightlipped grin. “You speaking of preachers, or cops?”
The minister stared down at his hands, and sighed. “Oh, Erwin had it long before the call to preach, just like some have the womanizin’ in them or the greed and think the Lord’s blind and won’t notice, or that He don’t care.”
He would have reminded the detective of his role in the young Erwin’s character formation, but both men fell silent as, arm-in-arm, a teenaged couple walked past on the sidewalk and nodded to them, wistfully looking in. Most any evening, at least while the leaves hung on and especially when the grapes ripened, young lovers could be found sitting together on these same plank seats, holding hands or making out, which was definitely not what Jacob Ayers had in mind when he built his pergola and trained the grape cordons into its framework. After the couple, several young boys screamed by on their banana-seat bicycles, jumping from the sidewalk to the street and crossing to the church. Machine gun noises erupted from their lips in a war game, the boys now strafing the building from the safety of their fighter jets.
Cedric wondered if he would see new flames rise skyward from the rubble.
“Was he anywhere around, when the fire started?” Chance asked.
“I don’t know--” he answered with a resigned shrug. “You’d have to ask someone who was here.”
“Oh, that’s right, you were out of town,” Chance said, eyeing him curiously. “On vacation. If it was anybody else but you, I’d be thinking, ‘How convenient.’”
Cedric chuckled humorlessly. “Is that the closest you can come to a compliment after all these years, Chance?”
The detective grinned, comment enough, it seemed.
“There’ll be no insurance money,” Cedric told him without emotion. He felt, more than saw, Chance’s surprised reaction like some kind of psychic ripple. “If you really want to help, you’ll find where my former church treasurer has disappeared to, along with years of insurance premiums and a young woman who was saved a couple of weeks ago.”
Chance grunted, as though taking a punch. “The plot thickens.” He let out a sharp whistle, and shook his head in disgust. “You know that money’s blown by now, don’t you? He’s probably in some Las Vegas motel at this very moment, wondering how he coulda gone through it so fast and wishing he knew what to do with the girl.”
It was Cedric’s turn to shake his head in disgust. “You won’t let on to anyone, I hope. My congregation doesn’t know yet.”
“All right,” he said quietly, nodding assent. “You should know, bye the bye, sooner or later, the FBI might stick their nose into this--church bombings and arsons being high on their list.”
“For the moment,” Cedric muttered, unimpressed.
“Anyone I could talk to who was here last Wednesday?”
“My brother-in-law, Teddy Exner. He was the one who locked up the church Wednesday night. He might remember something useful. God knows, he needs somebody to talk to him about it.”
Chance nodded, said, “We-ell, could be my bit of digging will turn up more dirt.”
“Dirt? Is that what you call it?”
“Sure, it’s all dirt, when it comes to killing people or burning down churches, isn’t it?”
Cedric watched as Chance walked away, toward his house, gears turning in the man’s head. He sighed, deep gloom settling over him. Except for the ice that seemed to have congealed about his heart, he would have returned immediately to his car. It was close to noon and Theodora expected him home for lunch.
How he wished John Willimon’s suspicions could be right about some unknown white, Klansman or otherwise, having torched his church! But Erwin? The truth was, something deep in his heart feared that Chance Odoms was right about him. It was difficult to forget the younger minister’s reaction to Lamarr’s comments about Chance Odoms:
“That boy’s an impertinent nigger, ain’t he?” Erwin remarked bitterly, as Rev. Champion returned from seeing Lamarr out of the church.
He frowned, holding his temper in check. “Brother, don’t you think we hear enough of that from other people, without calling each other names?”
“You would defend him, you hypocrite!” Erwin sneered. “Just like you would your beloved girlfriend, the almighty Chance Odoms.”
Cedric raised an eyebrow in answer and resumed his seat behind his desk. The other minister’s eyes bulged with rage, the arteries in his neck throbbing.
“Well?” Erwin demanded.
“Hatred will eat away your soul like cancer, brother,” he said, his own temper completely under control. To himself, he acknowledged it must be Holy Ghost restraint that prevented him from snapping the scrawny Erwin in two.
Erwin sputtered, unable to form words recognizable as speech, except that anyone could sense they dripped with poison.
“Can’t you see the door you open in yourself for the devil to come in?”
“One good sermon--!” Erwin managed to spit out, rushing the desk and pounding it with both fists. “One good sermon you’re famous for and you think you can tell me what to do!”
Cedric reflexively reached out and caught a white bud vase, with its single red rose, from nearly careering off his desk. At the same time, a scripture verse ran through his mind, fortifying his resolve not to retaliate: “A soft answer turns away wrath. A soft answer turns away wrath. A soft answer--”
Erwin could bear it no longer, sight of his mild, compassionate demeanor. Flecks of white foam flew from his lips. His body jerked into motion, carrying him from the office and toward the front doors, where he seemed to catapult himself from the building and onto the sidewalk.
Cedric reached the doors in time to see Erwin’s white Monte Carlo peel away from the curb and speed off down the street. It was months before their paths crossed again, and when they did, Erwin said nothing of what had transpired that day at Alliance Baptist. It was as if an epileptic seizure had come and gone without leaving a ripple on the surface of his memory.
If Chance Odoms was right, he had remembered all too well; the Monte Carlo parked at the church not half an hour ago was the same white car Cedric recalled seeing Erwin drive away in a fit of rage. Fleetingly, he wondered if he should have body slammed Erwin to the floor that day and beat the devil out of him. Maybe he would be at work in his church office right now instead of sitting on a bench in a dilapidated old pergola.
No, he thought to himself, rising and dusting off the seat of his pants. He hustled across the street, barely making it to his car ahead of a cloudburst. As he turned on the windshield wipers, he remembered the sense of peace he’d felt that day, in not striking out at Erwin, and knew it was the Holy Ghost who’d directed his response. Just because the results were not what he would have preferred, given the choice, did not mean he had mistaken God’s leading. He had done what he was supposed to, while Erwin had done what the devil and the flesh had told him to do. The next step was the Lord’s, and as for himself he would follow it; it didn’t matter if anybody else understood or not.
The world would never understand such thinking, and neither would much of the church. In fact he wasn’t sure he would understand it himself, when tomorrow rolled around. But for the moment, he had crystal clear
vision of one thing; God was behind it all, saw all, knew all, understood all, and could be trusted completely, no matter what one saw with one’s eyes. If no one else shared in that vision, he pitied their blindness.
****
Chapter 22
Streaks of rust ran like tears down Flowers Baptist’s front doors. Old mud dauber nests littered the white eaves with splotches of ochre. White eaves? Cedric looked closer to see if his eyes were deceiving him. While the eaves were white, the rest of the exterior was beige with brown trim to match the steel doors. Whoever had painted the building had no sense of pride, evidently figuring it was perfectly fine to do as little as possible, as cheaply as possible. Flowers Baptist seemed to call out to him, begging to be cleaned and painted.
Glancing down at his watch, he wondered to himself how anyone could preach honoring the Lord in everything yet show such a shabby face to the world. Money was the easy answer, which he knew all too well, followed by the fact that a lot of church members wouldn’t tithe, which he also knew all too well.
Five minutes passed, with Cedric knocking intermittently at the door, time enough to determine what improvements should be made to Flowers Baptist to make it an inviting place for worship. Still, at ten minutes after five, there was no sign of Rev. Willimon. Had Johnny and his deacons convened their meeting and were pointedly excluding him? Was that why the man hadn’t answered his phone calls?
Deeply discouraged, Cedric wondered if Calneh’s cloudy skies hid something he really didn’t wish to see--God’s thumb descending from the heavens above. Had he grown proud with success and God was trying to get his attention? Was that what this was all about? Was that why he had lost his church, had it stripped from him by the hand of God, even if gloved by someone’s guilty arson? Now God hammered at his pride, as he, Cedric C. Champion, went hat in hand, begging for help from people who had never so much as given him the time of day?
