by Joe Derkacht
He shook his head, and drew deeply from his cigarette, before saying, “I think the Reverend just wants to talk, have a chat with him Reverend to Reverend, so to speak.”
She frowned, pretty even in disappointment, the dark pools of her eyes brightening, as the sound of a scuffle reached them from deep within the interior of the house. Privately, he felt alarm as a series of thumps reached his ears, as if someone or something had been thrown repeatedly against a wall. Privately, too, he grinned to himself, as Erwin’s wife raised one hand to her mouth to conceal a smile.
He wondered if Erwin had a clue as to what kind of woman he had married. “Is he abusive?” He asked.
“Physically?” She glanced at Chance in surprise and shook her head in denial. “You know him well enough, Captain Odoms, he does all his dirty work with that malicious tongue of his. Besides, he knows if he ever did lay a hand on me, one of my brothers would be callin’ on him right after.”
Eaten up with curiosity, Chance figured he may as well go all the way. “Why do you stay?” He might more reasonably have been expected to ask why she had married him in the first place, but it was a question he didn’t like, when Anna Lee had heard the same through nearly thirty years of marriage.
She seemed to instinctively grasp the deeper currents behind his question. Untroubled, hand to her mouth as if to hide another grin, she said, “Oh, God’s working on him.”
The religious answer, Chance winced. He wondered how many times Anna Lee had answered her family and friends in the same way, though she wasn’t nearly as religious as a minister’s wife would be.
“I think God’s working on him right now,” she added, shrinking a little at Cedric’s muffled but rumbling voice.
Chance had a feeling Erwin was the kind that would keep God busy for a very long time. It would be interesting to see, in twenty years, if his wife had stuck it out with him. Would she be so willing, if she knew he was the one who had burned down Alliance Baptist?
Buttoning his suit coat with forced nonchalance, Cedric suddenly reappeared with a familiar manila envelope tucked under one arm. The minister apologized to Sharese for the necessity of interrupting her evening, and left the house. Chance, giving him the once over, was relieved to see no sign of blood on his hands or white shirt.
If he’d worn a hat he would have tipped it to Sharese before following the minister out; her bearing and personal composure might almost command it of a man.
“It was a pleasure to chat with you, ma’am.”
“I know you don’t believe it, Captain, but he does have his good qualities.”
He didn’t argue the point. Besides, Cedric had reached his car. Odoms took one last puff of his cigarette, and dropped the butt on the driveway. Behind him, the door to her house still open, Sharese fanned the air with her apron in a vain attempt to dissipate the acrid smell of tobacco.
Perhaps accusingly, the envelope awaited him on the passenger seat. But Cedric said nothing, as Chance set it on his knees for the ride home. For the next few minutes the silence between them was understandably thick, neither man anxious to pierce it with conversation.
The Cadillac turned onto Flowers Avenue. In a few more seconds, Cedric would let him off at his house.
Tentatively, Chance said, “Well?”
“Interesting choice of who to send the pictures to.”
“It was either that or arrest him. And since it seemed I couldn’t arrest him, I thought he should know somebody was watching him.”
“Some might call that blackmail.”
“Think of it more as a kind of lever,” Chance said, brushing aside the implied threat. “Question is, do y’all have an understanding?”
Chance’s house loomed ahead. Cedric nodded grimly and stopped the car, double parking in the street. Fat raindrops plopped on the windshield and bounced from the hood. High clouds had been pushing in from the Gulf since early in the afternoon.
“Great,” Chance complained, one hand on the door handle. “April showers in June.”
“The rain falls on the just as well as the unjust,” Cedric quipped in return.
“Well, thank God I’m not made of sugar,” Chance replied. One look told him the rain did not exactly displease the minister.
“Vinegar, maybe,” Cedric interjected.
“Snails and puppy dog tails, anyhow,” he said, and pushed open the car door. As much as he had hoped Cedric would spill the beans about his chat with Erwin, the conversation was definitely over, when one started quoting Bible verses and nursery rhymes.
The minister watched from the shelter of his car as the detective walked up the short pathway to the porch of his house, heedless of the cloudburst breaking over his bare head. Instead of going directly inside, he lit a cigarette and remained under the porch roof, evidently determined to have one final dose of nicotine for the evening.
Chance waved, and Cedric tapped his car horn before pulling away. As he drove home, with windshield wipers beating furiously in the downpour, his “talk” with Erwin played and replayed in his mind like a picture at the drive-in theatre. In King James terminology, Erwin had gnashed his teeth when Cedric appeared on the scene.
The man’s curses, as he rushed to his desk, were somewhat less than Biblical. Fortunately Cedric had seen enough bad movies in his day, even as a Baptist minister, to know Erwin was reaching for a gun. That was the scuffle Sharese had heard. In his younger days Cedric might have taken Erwin by the collar and one-handedly shoved him up against the wall to do his talking. Now, at nearly seventy years of age, it took both hands. Throwing him against the wall two or three times stopped the girlish kicking. Those were the worrisome thumps Chance had heard.
The rumbling voice, which Erwin was not capable of, unless maybe demons took possession of his larynx, had also been Cedric--explaining that the time for turning his cheek was over, that if he ever called him again or set foot in his church or spoke one more caustic word to anyone in the city of Calneh, disgrace and doom would fall on his head. He would make sure of it. He didn’t care what the fallout might be, he would shout from the housetops what he knew of Erwin’s evil deeds. And if that wasn’t enough, he would snap his puny self in half. Did he understand?
Cedric parked his car in its usual spot and locked it, leaving the manila envelope on the seat. He braved the downpour as heedlessly as Chance Odoms had a couple of minutes earlier. The storm drain just above the driveway should do nicely. He reached into his waistband for Erwin’s .38, and dropped it through the iron grate. It had been unnecessary to ask Erwin a second time whether he comprendéd. The fear in his eyes had been answer enough.
His clothes were plastered to his skin by the time he reached the door of his house. Except for the rain he would have brought the pictures in for Theodora to see. There was no real worry anyone would steal them from the car, and if they should be stolen, he had no doubt Chance Odoms had copies, as probably even the ATF and the Fire Marshal’s office did. Chance Odoms might have a reputation as a contrarian, but Cedric knew the old homicide cop and ex-Marine was also a man who believed firmly in the chain-of-command.
To his surprise he found Theodora, Teddy, and Rae Ann seated at the kitchen dinette, the room fragrant with the smell of freshly-brewed coffee. Cedric peeled off his suit coat and eyed an empty serving plate littered with cookie crumbs. Obviously Theodora had dug into her secret stash.
“Oh you’re soaking wet, Cedric!” Theodora cried.
“I’ll have some of that coffee,” he said, waving her back to her seat. Gratefully, she seemed her old self. Headed for the bathroom to change his clothes, he pulled off his tie and started on the buttons of his white dress shirt.
His voice carried to them from the hallway. “I’d like a few of those cookies!”
Theodora’s eyebrows rose in surprise. After a brief hesitation, she took a chocolate cookie hidden in her napkin and returned it to the serving plate. Rae placed one beside it. Teddy
followed, shaking his head in regret.
“If that don’t beat all!” Theodora exclaimed. “Do you believe that?”
Teddy mournfully picked at the crumbs on the serving plate. “If I say I don’t, can I have my cookie back?”
****
Chapter 34
Anyone familiar with the right magazines and a handful of indelible television interviews would have recognized the woman who stood at Flowers Baptist’s front door early one morning near the end of June. The thin overcoat, oversized oval sunglasses, and headscarf were a dead giveaway. After the initial shock, John Willimon recovered quickly. You would have thought he received luminaries at Alliance on a regular basis. It wasn’t until the woman opened her mouth and spoke, that he realized his mistake. Neither the accent nor vocal intonations so recognizable from her TV appearances were in evidence, and if only the disguise were stripped away, he decided, she probably didn’t look anything like Jackie O. What remained was a striking loveliness difficult to hide behind a few clothing items and accessories.
“I’m here to see Reverend Champion,” the woman repeated.
Rev. Willimon blinked two or three times more than necessary. Someone good at reading people would have realized his mind was racing. First, why would a white woman come to Alliance to see Cedric? Second, did she have an appointment? Third, was she trouble? Fourth, was Cedric’s secretary on hand?
“Is he in?” She demanded.
Seeing that she was close to stamping her foot, he opened the door wider and stood aside. “I believe he is,” he answered. “Sorry, I’m a bit preoccupied today, Miss--?”
“Thank you, Reverend Willimon,” she said, brushing aside his clumsy attempt to ascertain her identity. “Would you be so kind as to show me the way?”
Shocked that she could know his identity while he didn’t know hers, he mumbled something in return and managed to close the door. So much for his errands... Both he and Cedric maintained the same policy about receiving or counseling women in the church offices. The door always had to be left open and someone else must either be present or near at hand. Usually a secretary served as much for that purpose as for any regular secretarial duties. Today, Rev. Willimon remembered, Ruby was out with the flu, a fact confirmed by the empty desk outside Cedric’s open door.
Rev. Willimon knocked before entering. “We have a guest, Reverend Champion,” he announced.
Cedric looked up expectantly from poring over a book. His greeting was pleasantly professional, as he stood and came around his desk. John saw instantly that Cedric did not recognize the woman, that he was simply being polite. Welcoming enough, but polite.
“Did you have an appointment, Miss?” Cedric asked.
She extended her hand, and he shook it. A tear rolled from under her sunglasses.
Cedric shot Willimon a glance. “If we may have a little privacy, Brother John?”
So Cedric did know her! John nodded and whipped around, exiting Cedric’s office as quickly as he could, and in the process failed to hear the woman direct her mumbled thanks at him. He stopped abruptly in the hallway. As agreed between them, “a little privacy” did not mean complete privacy. It just meant he should leave the room and remain at a discreet distance--the secretary’s empty chair would do fine.
The tears couldn’t be a good thing, he thought. In his experience tears usually meant trouble of one kind or another. He knew he shouldn’t do it--there was the matter of confidentiality--but he strained to hear the ensuing conversation. For a while it seemed the woman was the one doing all the talking. From Cedric he heard an occasional yes or more correctly an ummh. But in actuality he couldn’t hear more than a snatch or two, husband being the word he heard most often above a general sort of murmur, and baby for another.
Briefly his imagination conjured up the worst possible series of explanations. This woman was here to blackmail Cedric. Or maybe to seduce him--why else the scarf and sunglasses on a blustery morning? What if she wasn’t wearing anything under that raincoat? Or was she there with news that she was pregnant--?
None of which made any sense, he conceded. Cedric hadn’t recognized the woman at first, something he had clearly seen in his eyes. Still, she had to be trouble--women often were. Beautiful women in particular. And hadn’t Paul said women should be silent in the church?
He smiled wryly to himself. He knew more men than women that he wished would shut up once in a while. There were plenty of situations he could think of that would go much better if people of whichever gender just shut up and listened.
He heard a chair scrape the floor. Cedric rising to his feet? Loud sobs reached him in the hall.
“Reverend Willimon?” Cedric called.
John went to the doorway and looked in. The woman cried into one hand, while Cedric bent over her, his hands enfolding her other hand in a paternal gesture.
“Could you find a tissue for our guest?”
John quickly scanned the shelves.
“None in here,” Cedric told him.
“Oh.” John retreated to the hallway and hurriedly checked through Ruby’s desk. In his experience all secretaries kept tissues on hand for emergencies. He discovered a box in the last drawer he opened. It was empty.
“Figures,” he muttered. “I’ll be right back,” he said more loudly, suddenly remembering the box of tissues on top of his part-time secretary’s desk. He rushed as fast as he could without actually running.
Hurrying back toward Cedric’s office, he crossed paths with the woman. Tears flying, she dug at her eyes with one hand and held her sunglasses aloft with the other. When she lowered her hand to replace the sunglasses, he realized he wasn’t any closer to discovering her identity than before. He let her out the front door and apologized lamely. If there was anything he could do--?
She neither answered nor looked back, as she fled down the steps. He stared slack-jawed at the street, still wondering what he’d said or if Cedric had offended her, when she drove her white Monte Carlo out of the church parking lot. His hand knotted into a tight fist, crumpling the tissues he’d failed to give her.
I think you owe me an explanation, Cedric, was what he felt like saying. Instead, he heard himself ask, “What was that all about? She went out of here like she was shot!”
Cedric waved him into one of the two folding metal chairs facing the desk. John self-consciously chose the one the woman had not sat in. Cedric watched, chin at rest on his steepled fingers.
“Did you--do something you’ll regret?” John asked.
“Could be,” he answered with a long sigh.
“That woman--” John began tentatively. “Hiding behind--behind the shield of confidentiality--won’t make it any better, you know. These things always come out.”
Cedric chuckled. “You speaking from experience?”
John reddened and shook his head in denial. “What’s spoken in secret will be shouted from the housetops--that sort of thing.”
Cedric’s steepled fingers traveled upward, until they covered the bridge of his nose. Sighing again, he dropped his hands to the desk and leaned back in his chair.
“More and more I see it’s every bit as difficult for you to trust me as it is for me to trust you.”
John shifted uncomfortably in his chair. It wasn’t necessary for Cedric to substitute for you as a white man and for me as a black man. He understood what Cedric meant without the need for explanations. A month or two earlier he would have foolishly argued the point.
“Hard to believe but true,” Cedric added, his voice rumbling. “And I don’t guess I’m any better at confessions than you, either.”
“Brother, it’s not that I don’t trust you,” John said.
Cedric’s frown told John that he sometimes wished he wouldn’t call him brother. Admittedly, sometimes when he used it there was a hollow ring to the word.
“You think it’s an easy row to hoe, John, going against history, culture
, and racism?”
Willimon stiffened, wondering how Cedric so often seemed to have a private view into his inner thoughts. In a flash he thought of those gospel passages where Jesus knew the thoughts of his opponents. Had they felt the same kind of discomfort?
“We have to be careful as ministers of the gospel,” John said, his voice trailing off.
“We also have to be careful about confidentiality.”
John nodded.
“But since it’s me doing the confessin’--” Cedric said. Where to begin, though? Should he straight out tell him that Sharese’s husband was the one who had burned down Alliance Baptist? Or should he begin at the beginning--if beginning it could be called--Erwin’s vendetta against Chance Odoms? Maybe Adam’s sin in the Garden was the real beginning. But that was probably a little too far back.
Finally, he decided to start with the day Chance showed him the incriminating photos in front of the old Ayers place and to fill in the details as John asked questions. Half an hour later, as he wrapped up with Sharese’s visit, his voice was faltering, his throat dry with emotion. Perhaps too startled or astonished that the identity of the arsonist was known and that he was a fellow minister, John had interrupted no more than once or twice. The description of his confrontation weeks beforehand at Erwin’s house brought guffaws and a few other loud, inarticulate exclamations. During the whole time, Cedric barely looked at the man, instead staring at either the ceiling or his desktop. Throughout, his hands remained tightly clenched over his paunch.
“Why don’t you--why doesn’t--what about the--!” John spluttered, unable to find the right combination of words or, as equally as difficult as it had been for Cedric, to know where to begin.
Cedric waited.
“He’s lucky you didn’t kill him--I certainly might have, if it’d been me,” John settled on.
