Street of Angels

by Joe Derkacht

  He began humming a tune easily recognized by the others--Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.

  John grinned first. Cedric couldn’t resist smiling, either.

  “Brother Angel really does live in a different world, doesn’t he?” John remarked.

  Cedric nodded soberly. “Takes the pride right out of you, doesn’t it?” Out of me, he meant.

  “Have you men had breakfast?” Stella asked. “I can whip up something for you, if you want.”

  Both men begged off, and concentrated on their coffee. There was work to be done, and while Cedric seldom ate breakfast, John had grabbed a bite of scrambled eggs before rushing from the house that morning.

  Someone knocked at the front door. John gestured for Stella to stay put. “Probably Kenny,” he said, meaning Flowers Baptist’s newest part-time youth minister. No need to mention the boy, a young college student, was late as usual.

  At the door Kenny greeted him with his most apologetic smile.

  “There’s somebody who wants to talk with Sister Stella or the gardener,” he said almost breathlessly. He turned and pointed to the street. “In that limo. You know who they mean by the honorable gardener, Reverend Johnny?”

  John ran to the kitchen. “They’re back!” He shouted.

  Cedric nearly choked. Stella sloshed coffee across the front of her blouse. Angel’s humming went unabated as he turned the arm over and over in his hands, perhaps finishing the work with the lathe of his imagination. As John and Cedric came down the steps together, leaving Kenny behind, they saw Takesugi and his assistant enter at the gate.

  “What do you think they want?” Cedric asked.

  “I hope they’re not stuck on that business of who’s responsible,” John whispered.

  Stella’s check fluttered in the woman’s hand like it was a hanky. “Mr. Takesugi has changed his mind!” She cried out. Takesugi’s eyes narrowed in disapproval, which was not lost upon his assistant. Seeing her mien appropriately transformed, he beamed sternly at the world.

  Takesugi bowed to both men, who bowed in return, now with smiles.

  “He has decided he wants the statue,” she told them. “As long as the Angel Michael can do something about the other arm.”

  John turned with a wink for Cedric. “I’ll let Angel and Sister Stella know!” He said, before eagerly running up the steps past the waiting Kenny.

  Cedric smiled. Amusement flickered at the corners of the woman’s mouth. Had she purposely called Stella’s son the Angel Michael?

  “There is also another favor Mr. Takesugi would like to ask.”

  “If I can help at all, Miss,” he said, with a courteous bow.

  “The first statue was for himself.”

  “Yes?”

  “He is in the market for two more. Can you tell him anything about these others? It is important to know the story behind each of them.”

  Easy enough, Cedric thought, struggling to keep his heart from leaping out of his chest. He knew every person the statues had been modeled after. The truth was, providing Takesugi with a few biographical sketches would be much easier than keeping himself from shouting hallelujah! and dancing wildly around the yard.

  ****

  Chapter 38

  Like sands in the hourglass of time, the days of November drained away and gave place to December--to January--to February--and finally to March. Beam by beam and board by board, rain or shine, Alliance Baptist grew upon its new foundation, guided by Haggai’s 2,500-year-old prophecy: The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts.

  Cedric repeated the last phrase with varying emphasis, as he paced the length and breadth of the sanctuary, his voice echoing from bare walls and bare floors, sounding hollow yet nonetheless somehow reassuring: “And in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts... and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts... and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts... and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts...”

  People didn’t call Alliance Baptist Reverend Champion’s church without reason; he had taken a handful of people over forty years ago and expanded what was at that time a little chapel into one of the city’s largest churches, black or white. While other preachers had come and gone in Calneh, some simply moving onto greener pastures, some losing vision or focus, some slipping back into the old life, he had continued to nurture the spiritual life of a community and to grow as a result, both personally and in ministry. While delays came over the years and setbacks here and there (like the burning of his church), all frustrating and certainly trying, none had discouraged him for long or put him down for the count. Yes, he had built his faith upon a strong foundation and had seen his trust in God answered too many times to believe that God could fail him now.

  So what if the devil stole $7,000 from him one day back in October? Hadn’t God doubled the money back to him on the same day? Fourteen thousand dollars paid for an awful lot of lumber, and when the newspapers found out about the crippled white boy’s generous gift, money had come pouring in from people all over Calneh to buy enough lumber to finish the work.

  That was why he wasn’t worried now. Merely because donations had petered out and there weren’t the funds to keep the carpenters going was no reason to panic or to cry, “Woe is me.” God would come through. Yes, he knew it--God would come through. Maybe not right away, maybe not this very minute, but He would come through.

  Maybe you shouldn’t have decided on a building plan greater than the former? Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to expand, to add a balcony with all its attendant costs? Maybe you should have been thinking about retirement instead of forging ahead with a mind toward ambitious growth? You are nearly 70. Who do you think you are--Moses?

  Why not? he answered the niggling doubts. Moses was 80 years old when God confronted him on the back side of the desert. Joshua and Caleb were about the same when they led the Israelites into the Promised Land. Seventy was young!

  He proclaimed the words again, speaking them louder than before: “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts.”

  Bare of carpet, bare of acoustical tile, without pews and without people, the building seemed almost like some barren, lonely canyon, if he should lose focus on the words of Haggai. The place was cold, too. A chill went down his spine.

  Doesn’t matter, he told himself, fighting back. It’s just a feeling.

  A window rattled at the rumbling of his voice, as he repeated the verse. “Better get used to it, windows,” he said. “The glory of this house will be greater than the glory of the former.”

  He went out through the front doors and double checked to make sure they were locked. Consulting his watch, he decided he could afford to sit for a few minutes on the landing, to watch the traffic and to wave at people passing by in their automobiles. The honking of horns in return and people waving their hands in encouragement from open windows were like a tonic to his soul. The memory of building the first Alliance Baptist came flooding back, of sitting on the original, smaller landing to wave at passing traffic. The cars might be newer--most of them--but the feeling was the same. Joy. Of good things about to happen. Of God establishing something now that they had a real building instead of a tiny chapel.

  His black Cadillac sat at the curb. Out of the corner of his left eye, he saw a yellow Checker cab coming down the street. It slowed to a crawl as it approached Sister Ioletta’s house. When it reached the church, its driver parked behind his Caddy. The rear window rolled down.

  “Reverend!”

  He stood and walked down the steps. He saw the green Army uniform first, the mahogany-colored, smiling face under the matching dress cap second.

  “Lamarr, son!” He exclaimed.

  “I’
ll get out here,” Lamarr told the driver, a white man wearing blue polyester slacks and a navy blue jacket. Both men came out of the cab, the driver going to the trunk, while Lamarr reached out to greet Cedric with a handshake.

  “None of that, son,” Cedric said, brushing the hand aside to give him a bear hug. He stood back and eyed Lamarr’s uniform. “Look at you, you’re a captain now?”

  “At your service, sir,” he said, with a smart salute.

  “And the medals and ribbons? What are those for? How did you earn a bronze star?”

  “Well,” he said, his eyes crinkling. “Now I can’t tell you that, can I? You’d tell my mother, and I’d never hear the end of it.”

  They laughed. The cab driver closed the trunk and set Lamarr’s cases on the sidewalk, laying his suit bag over them. As Lamarr took out his wallet, the man held up his hand in a gesture of refusal.

  “Remember, I told you I was in Korea myself,” he said, grinning. “Besides, I know your mother, and your money’s no good with me.”

  “You sure?” Lamarr said in surprise.

  “I’m sure, brother.”

  Lamarr stared, as the driver winked at Cedric and then turned and walked around the front of the cab. He waved at them as he pulled away from the curb.

  “Brother...” Lamarr muttered. He stared at Cedric. “Wow, things are different around here.”

  “That’s one of Reverend John’s people,” Cedric told him.

  “Like I said, things are different around here...” He looked up suddenly, his voice trailing off as he appraised the church. “Give me the nickel tour?”

  Cedric checked his watch and clicked his tongue in regret. “I have a counseling appointment at Flowers Baptist in about sixty seconds.” Seeing Lamarr’s disappointed expression, he said, “Oh, I guess I can be late for once in my life. How about if I let you in and you just make sure you close the door behind you when you leave?”

  “That’ll work,” Lamarr said, grabbing his suitcases and vaulting several steps at a time.

  “Whoa, you move too fast for an old man like me, son,” Cedric said, climbing the steps one by one.

  Lamarr smiled innocently. “So what was Moses really like, sir?”

  Cedric laughed, and opened the door. Outside the sky was cloudless and bright, and at one o’clock with natural daylight pouring in through the windows, plugging in the temporary work lights was unnecessary. The walls of the foyer were framed in but unfinished, allowing an unobstructed view of the interior.

  Lamarr set his cases by the door, removed his cap, and walked down the center of the sanctuary. “It’s bigger,” he commented.

  Cedric nodded. “You can look around for yourself, check out the balcony.”

  Lamarr eyed lumber and particle board and drywall stacked across the full width of the stage. Rolls of tar paper stood like sentinels against the far wall. “Where is everyone, sir--lunch should be over, shouldn’t it?”

  “You can hear all about it tonight, if you feel up to it. I guess you know we meet Thursday nights at Flowers, don’t you?”

  Lamarr nodded. His mother wrote to him every week, whether he answered her letters or not.

  Cedric moved toward the door. “You’ll remember to close up?”

  “Yessir.”

  Cedric went out, and the door clicked shut behind him. Lamarr took a deep breath, savoring the smell of freshly sawn lumber. It was good to be home. Things sure were different on Flowers, though, if the cab driver was any indicator. The man’s gesture almost made up for the curses he’d been greeted with at SFO during one of his layovers from Korea, compliments of two long-haired white girls in buckskin jackets, flashing their peace signs and shrilly chanting, “Baby killer! Baby killer! Baby killer!” The usual names he’d heard over the years from racists were less jarring.

  #

  To save time, Cedric drove his Cadillac to Flowers Baptist for his appointment. True to form for the average person who receives free counseling, the woman was late, which in reality meant that in spite of his own tardiness he reached his office with five minutes to spare. After answering a spate of phone calls, discussing the Sunday bulletin with Ruby, and holding another hour-long counseling session, he left his office at 5:15 to grab a light supper at home. By 6:45 he was back at Flowers Baptist with Theodora at his side for the Thursday night Bible study and prayer meeting.

  When Ioletta came in and sat near the Wurlitzer organ as usual, Cedric went to greet her.

  “I saw Lamarr,” he told her. “Is he coming tonight, sister?”

  She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “You probably saw him more than I did. He stormed in with all his stuff and barely gave me a chance to look at him. It was like somebody lit a fire under him--he couldn’t get out fast enough.”

  He flashed her a commiserating look and turned quickly away, unable to restrain a grin.

  It was 8:45 before he and Theodora left church. As usual, he drove from the parking lot onto Flowers Avenue and headed toward Alliance. He slowed the Caddy as they approached Ioletta’s house.

  “Cedric!” Theodora cried, first to see the light shining from Alliance’s windows.

  He brought the car to a lurching halt in front of the church and swung open the car door.

  “Cedric, call the police!”

  Sliding from behind the steering wheel, he shook his head and slammed the door. Like Lamarr earlier in the day, he found himself vaulting the steps. Theodora powered down her window. “You could ask Captain Odoms for help!”

  He shook his head in another no. Sometimes there’s no time to run for help or to wait for it. He inserted his key and cautiously pulled open the door. With his heart pounding in his throat, he slipped inside and eased the door shut, and found himself blinking in astonishment. He had expected to see through open framing into the sanctuary; instead, the foyer was covered in drywall. On the floor, particle board had been nailed down over the tongue-and-groove sub-flooring. Suddenly, he realized the hammering that echoed through the building wasn’t his heart.

  Over the din, he heard someone tap lightly at the door. Knowing it would be Theodora, he pushed the door open and let her in. With a finger raised to his lips in warning, he took her by one arm and pulled her toward the nearest archway into the sanctuary. The hammers had fallen silent. Muffled by drywall, voices conferred, one easily identifiable as Lamarr’s. Chance Odoms’ unmistakable, raspy voice answered. There was a grunt from yet a third man somewhere else in the sanctuary. A circular saw screamed to life. Above the noise of the saw, hammering recommenced.

  Cedric and Theodora looked cautiously in. Work lights flooded the sanctuary, revealing large sections of the floor covered in tar paper. Lamarr and Chance were on their knees, hammering down particleboard close to the stage. Roberts Robertson laid down his circular saw, and Lee Jackson Davis helped him to position a freshly cut piece of particleboard over a section of tarpaper.

  Back out in the car, Theodora stared askance at Cedric, who couldn’t seem to stop from chortling over what they had seen. Finally, she punched his arm, which spurred him to further laughter.

  “Now you tell me,” Theodora began, “why those--those boys would want to help us!”

  Cedric knew she had wanted to say crackers and not boys. He went on laughing, now at Theodora’s bewilderment, as they drove away from the church.

  “Do they think God’s going to reward them?” Theodora demanded.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said, momentarily sobering. “God will sort it out one way or another.”

  He suspected the only reason Roberts Robertson and the bantam Lee Jackson Davis would want to help was because they wanted to get his black congregation out of Flowers Baptist once for all. But he didn’t care about their motives. In fact, he hoped God would bless them--regardless of their motives, the church was being rebuilt.

  ****

  Chapter 39

  For two reasons, Ioletta di
dn’t often pay close attention to Angel’s statues, the first being that she felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of them. In fact, it was the same as when she’d once walked into a big city museum and come down with a splitting headache because of too many paintings, too many sculptures, too many geniuses in the world. Stella’s front yard was just like that for her.

  If she didn’t pay much attention to Angel’s individual statues because of the headache angle, though, simply walking past them sufficed, rather, to somehow elevate her, to give her a warm and fuzzy feeling. And besides that, if she should admit it to herself, at the same time she felt just a bit of pride over Angel. How many people in the world could claim to know a blind cripple boy who knocked out statues as pretty as any of those dead, fancy-pants Italians from past centuries?

  The second reason for her not paying particularly close attention to Angel’s statues might seem like plain old narcissism; the truth was that none of them was of her, which meant that looking at them was a bit like looking at family photographs and not finding her own face among them. Surrounded by statues bearing the likenesses of many of her neighbors and not finding one of herself was disappointing. Undoubtedly, most people would feel the same.

  She consoled herself with the fact that Angel had yet to produce a likeness of his mother in stone, either. Stella Jo claimed it was infinitely more difficult to capture those he loved and respected the most than it was their everyday neighbors or people from the church. Ioletta viewed things more pragmatically; he simply did not possess a stone sufficiently large to reproduce a life-sized likeness of either one of them. Which was just as well; when it came down to it, she didn’t relish the idea of seeing the chunk of stone it would require. Just because she was over 400 pounds didn’t mean she either saw herself or wanted herself immortalized that way.