A Taste of Honey Read online

  “The cop slapped the nightstick into the palm of his hand. ‘You looking for trouble, wino?’

  “‘No sir,’ Curly said. ‘I’m looking for an honest man.’

  “Mortimer shoved Curly in the chest. ‘Keep walking, old coon,’ he said.”

  Policemen had a nickname too, just like the rest of us. Theirs is seldom heard these days, but it was just becoming popular back then. It made some cops mad to hear it; it made others crazy. Curly must have known he was taking a chance.

  “‘Of course,’ Curly said, ‘I guess an honest pig is even harder to find.’”

  Ed went to the window next to the piano and stared outside. He took a deep breath. “Mortimer let loose with his nightstick. Curly seemed to smile, like he knew it was coming and was getting ready to duck. I hoped for a miracle, that Curly would suddenly have sight. But he stayed blind and he almost walked right into it. It was just a glancing blow, but hard enough to topple him. Curly fell and hit the back of his head on the curb. ‘That you, Miss June?’ he said. ‘Well, it’s about time.’”

  Ed turned to my mother. “What do you think he meant?”

  Mom wiped her eyes. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “He’s at peace now. His soul’s at rest.”

  I knew what Curly meant, although I didn’t let on. And I knew what I had to do.

  Since Curly had no family, our neighborhood took up a collection to give him a proper going away. The funeral was for grown folks. While they all sang and mourned in Good Samaritan Methodist Church, I talked Father Time into borrowing the key that Curly had given his grandparents for safekeeping. Father Time stood guard while I let myself in. I climbed onto Curly’s shaky cot and pulled Miss June from the wall. I respectfully looked away while placing her in a bag.

  “Hold on, Crisp,” Father Time said. “Shouldn’t we at least look at those titties?”

  “Shame on you,” I said. “Sneeking a peek at another man’s woman. It ain’t right.”

  I took the Etta James record for myself. Curly had once told me that I was sure to get my heart broken someday. When that time came, he said, it was best to have some Etta on hand to ease my pain.

  Father Time accompanied me to Fairgrounds Park. He watched while I put a stone in the bag with the calendar, sealed it with a rubber band, and tossed it into the lake. “Damn, Beanshots,” he said. “This is crazy.”

  I smiled as the bag disappeared into the lake’s muddy depths.

  “You ain’t got no idea,” I said.

  Something Like God

  outside Curly’s funeral at Good Samaritan Methodist Church, men of purpose gathered. Dark glasses hid their eyes. Their unsmiling mouths were firmly set except when words like brutality and revolution fell from their lips. “Off the pigs” was their heartfelt refrain. Ten men strong, they paraded beneath the watchful gaze of their leader, Gabriel “the Liberator” Patterson.

  Inside Good Samaritan, something wondrous was going on. What had been a home-going for a blind man became another thing entirely, floating on waves of unearthly sound. Pristine Jones rocked in her seat and smiled. She was rocking, yes, but she rocked all the time, didn’t she? If anyone knew how to praise the Lord, it was Pristine. She sneaked a glance at her husband. Even Reuben was tapping his toes in spite of himself. His buddies from Black Swan Sign Shop—Bob Cobb, George West, Lucius Monday, even Talk Much—the bittersweet rhythm shook them all.

  Rev. Miles Washington, hardly a young man, hadn’t aged for years. He was black and burnished. A scar running down the side of his neck and into his collar hurt his beauty not in the least. He was sending Rex Canada home.

  Curly hadn’t answered to Rex since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. He came to town as Curly, simply Curly. Like many black men of his generation, he’d come north hungry and hurried, tight-lipped and lean. Little in his pockets and even less to say about where he had been and what sent him. The Kirkwoods, owners of the dry cleaners and the little hole in the wall where Curly lived and worked, had been the only folks who knew his real name. And they didn’t know much beyond that.

  No matter, for Curly was beyond hearing. His sightless eyes were closed, his shades tucked into his breast pocket. With beard trimmed and wild mane tamed, he was threatening handsome. People who had passed him on the street for decades wouldn’t have recognized him.

  Rev. Washington was going on like he liked to do, and Pristine loved him for it. He revealed the wisdom of the word, with Rose Whittier humming underneath it all. As the reverend’s voice rode on Rose’s hypnotic melisma, Pristine realized what folks meant when they said “on the wings of song.” She looked around and saw many strangers, folks who’d come to witness for themselves the latest poor soul sent to glory by Gateway City police. “He might as well have stayed in Mississippi,” Reuben had said that morning. But who knew where Curly was from?

  All that mattered to Rev. Washington was where he was going.

  “Anybody can get there,” he was saying. “You just have to ask and the gates of Zion will be thrown open to you. Are we not all sinners? Yes, we are. My Lord, we have all sinned against thee. But we believe—we know—we can all be saved by your grace.”

  Rose stood in front of the mourners, eyes closed. Her humming rose and fell.

  “Hear me, church? I don’t think you do. Brother Canada had the courage to confront corruption. Brother Canada wasn’t a rich man. He wasn’t particularly large. And yet he stood in the face of wrong and spoke out against it. He paid with his body, but his soul is intact, brothers and sisters. He was faithful that, in the end, justice would roll down like a mighty stream. Let us honor Brother Canada by demonstrating our own faith. It takes courage to have faith. Let us likewise be brave, church. Be brave and believe. Dear Lord, we thank you for your bountiful love and ask safe passage for Brother Rex Canada as he heads to glory, over on that other shore.”

  Rose Whittier threw back her head. The sound seemed to come from everywhere at once. A miracle lived in her mouth.

  I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger

  “Amen,” said Rev. Washington.

  I’m traveling through this world of woe

  “Amen, amen.”

  Outside Good Samaritan, Gabriel listened to one of his men go on and on, spitting mumbo jumbo—power, people, pigs, something. Gabriel silenced him with a wave of the hand.

  “Listen,” Gabriel said. It was not a suggestion.

  But there’s no sickness, toil or danger

  In that bright land to which I go

  The Warriors of Freedom stared at their leader. He paid them no mind.

  I’m going there to see my father

  I’m going there no more to roam

  I’m just a-going over Jordan

  I’m just a-going over home

  Through the walls and windows of the church came a voice so lovely and pure it almost hurt to hear it. If the Liberator had not been careful, his soldiers might have seen him weep.

  He took two steps toward the sound, stopped. He willed himself still. Gabriel made himself content to listen from where he was.

  He had been busy throughout the region, organizing, strategizing, avoiding the eager gaze of the law. Love was not high on his list of priorities. Plenty of women had warmed his bed, but love? Gabriel was willing to die for freedom. To love, however, was to risk a different kind of hurt. It was foolish, almost as foolish as falling in love with just a voice. Get hold of yourself, he told himself. You haven’t even seen her face.

  Inside the church, Rose radiated joy. A slight sheen coated her plump, dimpled cheeks. Her head was still back, her arms open wide. Swaying slowly, she seemed unaware of the mourners, many of whom had never heard her before. Some were crying. A few began to dance in place. Others rose and swayed with her, clutching themselves tightly. Pristine was among the standing, waving a handkerchief above her head. Rose kept her eyes closed, as if opening them would break the spell.

  Half a mile from Good Samaritan, Rose’s husband, Paul Whittier, headed t
o Curly’s funeral. Running late from running around, he really wanted to run away, but where would he go? His mouth was dry and his pockets were empty. Every fat man he saw was looking like Guts Tolliver when an unmarked police car swelled into view and hovered in his rearview mirror. Paul pulled his prized baby blue Electra 225 to the curb. “I’ll be goddamned,” he said.

  I’m going there to see my mother

  I’m going there no more to roam

  Tears filled Pristine’s eyes as she listened. She recalled Ed telling the story of Curly’s dying, his strange smile when he seemed to walk right into the blow. What were those broken eyes seeing just then? Pristine wondered. Ed had said something about a woman named June. Curly’s mother, maybe. She looked at Rose, whose eyes were closed tight. We should hear her in church more often, Pristine decided. Too bad Paul was so jealous of her gifts, she thought. I wonder what Rose sees right now.

  “You want to come on out of the car, son?”

  Paul unwound all of his six feet, one inch from behind the wheel, slowly got out, and stood at the mercy of Detective Ray Mortimer.

  “That’s quite a vehicle you got here, Paul Whittier.”

  Paul said nothing, squinted into the sun. He was beginning to think he might miss Rose singing. Maybe it was for the best.

  “Where I’m from that’s called a compliment.”

  Paul stared in the direction of the church. “Where I’m from,” he said, “it’s called a deuce and a quarter.”

  It was Detective Mortimer’s turn to squint. Every day he seemed to run into a different kind of Negro. What kind was this?

  “You mocking me, son?”

  “No, sir, not at all.” Paul struggled to contain his disgust.

  “What do you do, Paul Whittier?” Each time he read Paul’s name from his driver’s license, as if he couldn’t say it without the help the letters provided.

  “Officer, I don’t mean any disrespect, but I’m expected at church—”

  Church, Mortimer thought. Figures. Now every Tom, Dick, and Leroy thinks he’s Martin Luther King. “You a preacher or something?”

  “No, sir. I’m a singer.”

  “No shit? Me too. I’m a regular Pat Boone. What’s the name of your group?”

  “The Whittier Brothers Quartet.”

  “Doo-wop, I bet. I love that stuff. The Ink Spots, the Four Tops. Crazy about it, if you can imagine.”

  “I sing gospel,” Paul said.

  “Oh,” said Mortimer, taking another admiring look at Paul’s Buick. “Too bad. You make a living doing that?”

  “I work at the Chevy plant too.”

  “No shit? Hey, the old cruiser’s been acting strange all day. Mind takin’ a look?”

  Paul shook his head. “Like I said, I got someplace to be.”

  Mortimer stared a long minute at Paul. Then he cackled, loud and shrill. Paul trembled in spite of himself.

  Good Samaritan wanted to be known as a helping hands church. Its reputation in this regard was capably enhanced by the steadfast humanitarian efforts of members like Pristine, who were constantly involved in various relief and charity campaigns. Still, despite its annual Christmas gala for Annie Malone’s Children’s Home, regular contributions to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and its pastor serving as a volunteer chaplain at the North Side’s only public hospital, it was still referred to by many as “the gangster’s church.”

  Reuben Jones often called it that, but he always made sure that Pristine was far away when he did. His colleagues from Black Swan Sign Shop also called it the gangster’s church, although they, like Reuben, knew that the gangster’s name—Ananias Goode—appeared nowhere on Good Samaritan’s papers. At the same time, they knew better than others that his handiwork was everywhere, in the light-filled reception hall, the mammoth pipe organ, just about any place an eagle-eyed believer turned.

  “The gangster” was one of the North Side’s best-known and most colorful figures and, as might be expected, no stranger to controversy. Although heartily feared and despised by much of Gateway’s colored aristocracy, Goode was admired by many of his less fortunate brethren, as much for his bodacious style as for his obvious sense of comfort. He didn’t behave as if he belonged in the world; he conducted himself as if the world belonged to him. Lately he had wrapped himself even more deeply in the good graces of the poor by way of several timely and enthusiastically publicized acts of generosity. He cut an impressive figure, for instance, in that week’s Gateway Citizen, standing next to the alderman from the fifth ward at the groundbreaking for the new Harry Truman Boys’ Club.

  Jowly and chocolate-skinned, Goode was a loan shark and self-described small business owner, but nothing about him appeared to be undersize. His face was big in an impressive way: a pair of bristly brows sprouting wildly above expansive eyes that seemed to miss nothing; broad African nostrils; thick, proud lips; strong teeth usually holding an expensive-looking cigar in a death clench. The head sat atop an equally stout body, which he kept clad in banker’s pinstripes and custom-made shoes. He’d never set foot in Good Samaritan, but his New Yorker was often seen idling at the curb during the last days of construction. He’d sit in the backseat thumbing the Wall Street Journal or the Racing Form while his chief leg-breaker, Guts Tolliver, sat behind the miniature steering wheel, special-ordered to accommodate his capacious girth.

  Reuben was not a habitual churchgoer, but he knew Good Samaritan almost as well as Pristine did. He and the men of the Black Swan had done all the interior and exterior painting. In addition, Reuben had carved the altarpiece and the bas-relief biblical scenes adorning the chapel doors. The stained-glass portrait of black Jesus behind the pulpit was based on a design by Lucius Monday. (The pastor’s sole decorating contribution was his strange insistence that an arrow, mounted on a plaque like a hunting trophy, be positioned in the central place of honor on the wall behind his desk.) Rev. Washington neither blinked nor faltered when Reuben outlined his plans to him, not even when Reuben told him about the gold leaf needed for the altarpiece. He sent the men of the Black Swan to see Ananias Goode, who in turn quadrupled Reuben’s account at Brod-Dugan Paints and Supplies.

  Reuben’s men were briefly flush, a development that led to a new baby for George West and enabled Lucius to move out of Reuben’s garage and into a room at Mrs. Williams’s boarding-house.

  Goode struck Reuben as the kind of man who could see at least a couple days into the future if not more, who would know the punch line before you began the joke. Occasionally, Reuben was summoned to the big man’s car to provide an update on his crew’s work. Reuben eventually grew comfortable (or at least considerably less apprehensive) during these interviews, typically conducted through Goode’s half-opened window, from which exuded a blend of cigar smoke, horehound drops, and Old Spice.

  A favorite game among North Siders, one not limited to notorious gossips such as Pristine’s mother, involved speculation regarding the connection between Rev. Washington and Ananias Goode. (The guessing game was stimulated by a reliable source’s solemn assertion that an arrow, the very twin of the reverend’s peculiar trophy, was similarly displayed in Goode’s lair.) Most of the talk suggested that Goode owed Washington a debt that could never be paid in full, but neither man divulged a thing. The pastor never hid his fondness for Goode, nor did he refrain from condemning his misdeeds. The chief and most durable rumor was a shadowy tale of death defiance down South, when the two men were just youngsters. Ananias Goode escaped with his life, the story went, and Rev. Washington came away with a scar.

  To Reuben the scar appeared to pulsate as Rev. Washington reacted to Rose’s heavenly voice. The men of the Black Swan were as vulnerable to idle talk as anyone else, and some nights after a case of Stag had been consumed (by all but Lucius, who instead inhaled several cups of White Castle coffee sweetened with cheap Rosie O’Grady wine), one painter or another ventured the opinion that the devout Rev. Washington had once been a gangster too, and might even still be
one.

  Reuben cast such thoughts aside as he glanced at his wife standing and swaying next to him. Rose was winding down, and her voice would soon give way in Pristine’s consciousness to her three boys. Reuben knew Pristine would start to worry about them, despite his earlier reassurances. Ed was working a double shift at SuperMart, stocking groceries and stuffing bags. Shom, in the temporary and admiring custody of Coach Alphin, was at Sherman Park holding down right field for the undefeated Roadrunners. Crisp was at the Kirkwoods’ (who didn’t do funerals), playing with their grandson Brian and—God willing, as Pristine often said—staying out of trouble.

  Rose responded politely to all the well-wishers who praised her after Curly’s funeral. She even squeezed a hand or two and accepted—briefly—some pecks on the cheek, all the while moving toward the exit with deliberate speed. “I appreciate that, but I really have to go,” she said. “I’m looking for my—Oh, thank you, kindly. Have you seen my—Yes, yes, God bless you too.” At last she reached the doorway. Where was Paul?

  Gabriel, as it turned out, was also thinking about a Paul. As Rose stepped onto the porch of the church, dimpled and demure in her modest dress and summer hat, Gabriel felt a sudden and unexpected sympathy for the man who fell off his ass on the way to Damascus. Like that legendary apostle, Gabriel had been slapped silly by a vision.

  He noted a change in his perception, the world whirling differently against his senses. The small talk and hubbub faded to white noise, a dull hissing. Grass, sky, buildings, and people all fell away into empty space and silence, leaving only her, the woman with the voice. Somehow he knew: she was the one.

  “Have mercy,” he said softly.

  He saw inside Rose, past fabric and flesh to the warmth within. There he saw time turning upon time, mysteries and constellations giving shape to children, beautiful children—his children, growing and sprouting in there. Something was bothering him, buzzing at his ears. A mosquito? A bee? He batted at it, never taking his eyes off Rose as she slowly descended the stairs, looking left and right. But it didn’t go away. A wasp? A fly? PeeWee Jefferson, one of his Warriors. With a stack of leaflets in his hand.