The Bastard Hand Page 2

  So. “In the beginning . . .” Again.

  Someone in front of me said, “Ah, it does my heart good to see a young man studying his Bible with such interest. You a Christian, then?”

  I looked up, and laid eyes for the first time on the Right Reverend Phineas Childe. The man who would serve me up my destiny on a silver platter.

  He wore black clothes and a white collar and the whole nine yards. You didn’t think freak when you looked at him. You thought preacher. Naturally. I put him at somewhere around 6’3” with long arms and legs and shoulders like two triangles on either side of his head. His pale face—one of the few white ones in the place—was all angles and crevices, made sharp by steely gray eyes and a big white smile. He smelled good, sort of a manly comfortable smell.

  I didn’t answer him right away, so he said again, “You a Christian, son?”

  I said, “Sure,” then stuck my nose back in the Bible.

  The preacher said, “Fine. That’s just fine.” His voice dripped slow and dark. “Where do you worship, son?”

  I shrugged. “Nowhere. I’m . . . just passing through town.”

  He nodded. “I gotcha. Well, the church is really just a convenience anyway, ain’t it? We can worship Our Lord anywhere, I reckon. Even here in the laundromat.”

  I had a horrible feeling he was going to ask me to get down on my knees right there, but he didn’t. He said, “Although the church certainly helps bring us closer to God. There’s nothing more invigorating to the Christian spirit than a good sermon, or a rousing gospel chorus.”

  I nodded in agreement, smiling, then patted my Bible. “Well. Back to the ol’ Word,” I said.

  In the beginning, I read to myself, trying hard to pretend the preacher wasn’t there. In the beginning, God created . . . but it was no use. He stood there in front of me, his black clothes like a car wreck that I had to look at.

  I glanced back up at him, and he took that opportunity to say, “Young man, do you mind if I sit down?” He indicated the empty seat next to me, the one the Bible had occupied until a moment before.

  Well what the hell, I thought. You’re stuck, Charlie old boy. I said, “Sure, Reverend. Have a seat.”

  His grin took up half his face as he sat down next to me. The chair could barely contain him, and his knees jutted up like two poles stuck at odd angles. He stuck out one long-fingered hand, said, “I’m Reverend Phineas Childe.”

  He shook my hand vigorously, like we were best friends who hadn’t seen each other in years. Something about his manner made me forget about the antagonism I’d been storing up, and suddenly I really didn’t mind his company. I said, “Nice to know you, Reverend,” and told him my name.

  “A pleasure, Mr. Wesley.”

  “Charlie.”

  He beamed. “Charlie. You say you’re just passing through town? Where ’bouts you from?”

  I thought on that for a second, decided it couldn’t hurt to tell some of the truth. “Washington State, Preacher. On my way to Florida.”

  “Ah, Washington! I know it well, been there a few times. Mostly stopping through on my way up to Vancouver. You ever been there? Vancouver?”

  I told him once or twice, and he laughed, “Well, ain’t that something? Who’d have thought we’d have something in common, other than being Christians! Sittin’ here in a laundromat in the middle of Memphis, Tennessee, and what do you know!”

  I said, “You have a church here in the city, Reverend Childe?”

  “No, no. Like you, I’m just passing through.”

  A woman walked by us, pulling a toddler and pushing middle age. She looked pretty good in a ragged housewife sort of way, and I saw the Reverend glance up at her. She threw him a coy look, said, “Hello, Reverend.”

  He nodded, grinning that big grin. “Ma’am,” he said. She walked on toward the Coke machine, dragging the kid, and I’ll be damned if she didn’t put an extra wiggle in it for his benefit.

  Steepling his fingers together, he shined his teeth back at me. “And they say Memphis ain’t a friendly city.” Then, “No, Charlie old son, I don’t have a church here in town, or anywhere for that matter. Not yet. I’m on my way south to look into that, though.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Only another hour or so away from here by car. Little town in north Mississippi called Cuba Landing. Ever hear of it?”

  I confessed that I hadn’t. “Anyhow,” he shrugged. “I’m on my way down there to see about a position at the Cuba Landing Free Will Baptist Church. Understand they may be in need of a preacher. The one they had took off on ’em.”

  The buzzer on my washer went off. I said, “Well, I’d best tend to my clothes. Good luck to you, Reverend.”

  He stood up with me, said, “Thankee, Charlie. I do appreciate that. You don’t have to run off straight away, do you?”

  I hem-hawed for a second.

  He said, “It’s just so nice to find a like-minded person in a strange and unfamiliar place. I reckon I got to talking and enjoying myself.”

  His grin faltered just a little, then came back full-force and he said, “Aw, heck. I’m sorry. You probably got things to do and here I am talking your ear off.” He stuck out his hand again. “You take care of yourself now, Charlie, you hear? And God bless ya.”

  He started away from me. I struggled against my better judgment, then, before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Hold up there, Reverend. I never said I was running off somewhere, did I? Just let me get my clothes in the dryer and we’ll have a Coke or something. Sound good?”

  His eyes joined his mouth in its grinning and he stuck his big hands in his pockets like a school kid. “Very kind of you, Charlie. Very kind indeed.”

  Half an hour later we were on our second Coca-Cola each. We were just about the best goddamn friends in the world.

  He came from Holly Springs, Mississippi, he told me, but left that place almost twenty years ago to seek adventure across the country. A drinker, a “rounder”—as he called it—and an all-around heathen.

  “Bad news travels like wild fire,” he said, “and good news travels slow. They all called me wild fire, ’cause everywhere I go—”

  “You were bad news,” I said. “I know that song.”

  He laughed, slapped me on the shoulder. “Yeah, that was me, I reckon. That old song coulda been my anthem. I had more women, drank more whiskey, and seen the insides of more jail cells than any man ever walked God’s green earth. I was a lost soul, drowning in the Kingdom of Satan, just floundering along and not even knowing it. And then Jesus threw me a line, praise Lord.”

  Five years ago, he’d been in Chicago, drunk, broke, starving to death. After years of running wild, slowly spiraling downward, he’d finally reached the bottom. A state of being that all sinners eventually reach, he said. The stage where you know you have to give your life to Jesus, or die.

  “I was lying there in the gutter, sick with booze, rolling ’round in my own filth. You understand that, Charlie? You understand just how low I’d sunk? I’d lost all my human dignity. All the grace that the Lord had bestowed upon us as the very creatures made in His divine image. I’d pissed it all away. And then I heard it, Charlie.”

  “Heard what?”

  “I heard the singing. The most beautiful, sweet, heartbreaking sound I’d ever heard.”

  A church just up the street, and a choir singing “Shall We Gather By The River”. The sound of angels harmonizing the praises of God. Just in time to save his soul from eternal damnation. He told me about how he’d crawled up out of the gutter and stumbled into the church and the Reverend saw him and said, “Praise God that you have found us here tonight, my son. You are lost, aren’t you? You need Jesus in your life, don’t you?” And Phinneas Childe had broken into sobs and cried out, “Yes! Yes! I want to give myself to God!” and the church had exploded with joyous Hallelujahs and Praise Hims and the poor drunken wretch crawled to the altar and, tears streaming, took Christ into his heart.

  “S
ince that night, I’ve devoted myself to spreading His word wherever I go. Over the last five years I’ve traveled this great land of ours, preaching in churches when I can, preaching on street corners if all else fails. God has given meaning to my life. My greatest joy now is serving Him.”

  Not knowing what else to say, I mumbled, “That’s a story, all right.” Then, “So now you’re heading down to Cuba Landing. You plan on settling down there?”

  He shrugged. “Only the Lord knows. He’s brought me this far, and it looks like I may be fixing to come full-circle. I don’t know. Maybe, Charlie. Maybe. All I can do is obey God’s will. I feel like you may be right, though. I feel like a great closure is on its way, and Cuba Landing may be where the knot gets tied.”

  We were silent for a moment. The laundromat had cleared out while Reverend Childe talked. Only a handful of folks still, reading magazines or gazing hypnotized at clothes in the dryers. I stretched, lit up my first smoke of the day. The Reverend watched the flame on my lighter, then said, “Say, Charlie, you spare one of those?”

  I offered him my half-empty pack. He put one between his thin lips and bent down to light it off my flame.

  He inhaled deeply, leaned back in his chair. “Thankee. That’s the first smoke I’ve had in hours. Been meaning to run over the gas station and buy some but damned if I didn’t forget all about it until you lit up.”

  “You’re about the oddest preacher I’ve seen, you know that?”

  He cocked his head at me. “Well, I can’t say as I know what you mean.”

  “I mean you’re pretty damn unconventional for a reverend. You smoke, you swear. And I saw you checking out that woman earlier. If preachers can do that stuff these days, maybe it’s about time I started looking into joining a church.”

  He laughed. “Folks labor under all sorts of wrong notions, son. Nowhere in the Good Book does it say anything against strong language. It says, ‘Thou shalt not use the Lord God’s name in vain’, that’s all. That’s one thing you’ll never hear me doing. As for smoking, well . . . folks been smoking since the beginning of time. Tobacco is something God put on this earth for the enjoyment and betterment of Mankind. You may as well say that we ain’t supposed to eat rice or wheat if you’re gonna say we shouldn’t smoke tobacco.”

  He emphasized the point by taking a hearty drag. I said, “Okay. But what about that woman? That wasn’t just a friendly howdy, was it?”

  “Ain’t nothing wrong with a healthy carnal interest in the opposite sex, is there?”

  “Well, no. I don’t think so anyway. But doesn’t the Bible say . . . uh, I don’t know, something about coveting thy neighbor’s wife or something?”

  He peered at me through cigarette smoke, one eye half-closed. “Now, Charlie. Did you suppose that woman was my neighbor?”

  I laughed and he said, “I surely do hope I haven’t offended you, Charlie.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Good. I don’t consider my ideas revolutionary, not one bit. I just believe in a personal interpretation, is all. The biggest danger of Christianity today is folks believing everything they hear, just because some Bible-thumper who don’t know any more than they do tells ’em. People gotta be more than sheep.”

  I said, “I bet your sermons really raise the roof. No offense. I’d be willing to bet some folks don’t like to hear that kind of talk.”

  He shook his head. “You’re right about that. And if that was what I actually said, why, my preaching days would’ve been over long ago.” He finished his cigarette with a mighty pull, tossed the butt on the floor, ground it out with his shoe. “I don’t say none of that stuff when I’m preaching. When folks come to hear a sermon, they come because they’re scared of this world, and they want promises of a better one. And they want to know that, in order to reach that better world, they have to work for it. They have to suffer and be obedient and do what someone tells them. If they don’t hear all that, they ain’t satisfied. So. I give those good folks what they want. And they go away feeling better.”

  “Don’t you consider that a bit . . . I don’t know . . . dishonest?”

  “Not a bit, Charlie. Is there something dishonest about bringing a little hope into someone’s troubled life?”

  “And you say you aren’t revolutionary.”

  “Ain’t nothing revolutionary about it. Faith has always been strongest in the hardest times, Charlie, and the people who make those times so hard have always profited from it. Back in the Dark Ages, those . . . what do you call them? . . . feudal barons or whatever. Why, they made slaves out of the common folk, and encouraged religion amongst them. Why? Because if those common folks believed that all that suffering would lead them to Heaven, then they wouldn’t bother revolting or upsetting the balance. Even the slaves that used to work the cotton fields down in the Delta had them some religion, and them slave-owners made sure all the blacks had Sunday morning off to go on to church. And now, these days, people work hard and they sweat and they cry, and they wonder what it’s all about. What’s the point to all this turmoil?”

  “And preachers give it to them.”

  “That’s right. Now tell me, Charlie. What’s wrong about that?”

  Sighing, I put out my cigarette in a little tin ashtray next to my chair. The Reverend looked at me, smiling. I said, “I’m gonna have to hear one of your sermons sometime.”

  He leaned toward me, his eyes wide. “Would you like to, Charlie? Would you really like to?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  He slapped his hands together, rocked on his chair. “Praise God! It just so happens that I have an engagement this very evening. A little Baptist church down on Lamar Avenue. You know where that is?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, I hardly know myself, but the kind folks down there gave me directions. I talked to them last week, told them I was coming through town, and they were just thrilled to death. I can give the directions to you, if you like. I’d be just pleased as punch if you could make it, Charlie. What do you say?”

  I thought it over. I hadn’t been in a church in years, and the thought sent a brief shimmer of anxiety through me. But it wasn’t as if I had anything better to do. Besides, I sort of liked Reverend Childe. He was different, and maybe a little deranged, but I liked him.

  I said, “Okay, Reverend. I’ll be there.”

  He clapped his hands together again, nearly came up out of his seat. He pulled a pencil and paper out of his pocket, scribbled directions, handed the paper to me. He said, “Seven o’clock sharp, Charlie. They’re gonna sing a few hymns, say a few prayers, and then I’m gonna address the congregation. Afterwards, there’s gonna be free eats down in the basement, so bring your appetite!”

  He stood up, pumped my hand a few times, said, “Don’t forget now, Charlie. I’m looking forward to seeing you.”

  “I won’t forget,” I said. “If you’d told me right away there’d be food, I wouldn’t have taken so long to decide.”

  He laughed loud, and the few people in the laundromat glanced at us.

  Reverend Childe turned to wave at everyone. A couple waved back. He turned his huge grin back to me, said, “God be with you in the meantime, Charlie.” Then his long legs carried him out the door and away.

  I sat there staring after him for a few minutes, reeling in his wake. Right on time, the dryer holding my clothes shuddered to a slow stop. I walked over, started pulling my clothes out and shoving them haphazardly into my bag.

  Then something very strange occurred to me. The Reverend had left empty-handed.

  He hadn’t been there to wash clothes at all.

  I spent most of that day kicking around the city, sponging up whatever atmosphere I could find. Lunch was some greasy chicken and baked beans that knocked my savings down to seventy-five dollars and some odd change. I used the change to take the bus up Poplar Avenue. At Overton Park I got off to look around.

  The Brooks Museum of Art and the Memphis Zoo were there among the trees an
d jogging paths and picnic areas, but I didn’t really have the money to expand my cultural horizons. Instead, I made my way to the small man-made lake at one end of the park and sat down to read the Bible I’d swiped from the laundromat.

  By five o’clock, Adam and Eve had pissed off God for the last time, Cain had gotten away with murder, Noah had built an ocean liner and rode out some bad weather, and God had shown his sense of humor by throwing a monkey wrench into the construction of the first skyscraper. Through all of this, millions of people had been killed, the angels had shown themselves to be amazing bastards, and anybody crazy enough to observe that this was an awful damn violent God was, of course, slaughtered mercilessly.

  Not important. What was important was that I finally finished Genesis, and I felt good about it.

  Kyle hadn’t spoken to me all day, and I couldn’t help but think he wanted to leave me alone so that I could get the most out of the Bible. Take solace where you can, I could imagine him saying.

  Thinking of Kyle made me think about the previous night, and the blade in my chest. And the glowing hands.

  Something was happening to me. It was true. Unless I was just having a weird spell, experiencing some crazy residue from the Institution.

  But it didn’t matter. I still didn’t want to think about it. It was time to start worrying about how to get to Reverend Childe’s sermon, anyway.

  It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. A bus on East Parkway, running right by Overton Park, took me all the way to Lamar, then a simple transfer south until the Tennessee-Mississippi state line was only a few minutes away. Just as the Reverend’s directions said, the Haley Baptist Church was right there on Lamar, next door to a run-down auto repair shop.

  It was only six-thirty, so I hung around outside and smoked cigarettes for a while. Groups of black kids and homeless folks drifted by, and every single one of them looked at me, wondering what the hell I was doing in their neighborhood. I began to wonder myself.