32) Saturday the Eighteenth, 8:00 AM – “Church!”
Twenty minutes earlier,
and a few miles south of One World Mall, General Westmoreland Soames… in sober,
dark suit and tie… had escorted Miz Lottie up the
steps of Mt. Zion Baptist, guiding her into an empty seat as the kids followed;
Earline pushing Trevor in a stroller.
(Uncle Raoul remained notably absent and, if any of his customers
present took notice, and held Westy accountable, the sobriety
of the occasion dictated that they hold their tongues). The inside of the church was as dank as the
early morning sky outside… a closed coffin reposed on the altar as an agitated
Reverend Godwin conferred with numerous equally agitated trespassers and
Earline and Tyesha found friends in the next row.
“See,
we’re not late…” Westy favoured
his auntie with a smile.
Lottie pointed. “That Swee’Pea?”
“No,
Mama… it’s an empty coffin. I told you…
“Po-lice
too?” Miz Lottie snapped.
“Not
sure about that.”
Meanwhile,
Tyesha told Bettie, a classmate in cornrows and gaudy, yellow dress, “I heard thirty-one killed, an’ nine
police…”
“I
heard fifty, don’t know ‘bout any muhfuckin’ po-po…” Betty shot back.
“Shush
up, you,” Miz Lottie leaned over to slap Ty on the
side of her head. “This is the house of
God…
“It’s
Saturday…” Earline protested…
“I
know it’s a Saturday, I’m missin’ Good Morning… well, I s’pose
not,” the matriarch suddenly remembered that other problem, “…but shush up, cause Reverend Godwin’s gonna
testify…”
The
well-wishers and intruders driven from his altar, Ellsworth Godwin approached
the pulpit for what, he knew, would be the most important oration of his life.
“Brothers
and sisters, dearly beloved in Christ… I stand before you, a man humiliated,
ashamed, remorseful to the very marrow of my
soul. Last night, I was responsible… in
part… for leading so many in our community, some of you even here, this
morning… into the valley of the shadow of death…”
A
man still in a bloody suit jacket, an equally soiled rag around his head, stood
up and cried out incoherently… evoking a dissonant response of “Amens” and “Right-ons” but, also,
demands to sit down and shut up…
“It…
it warn’t your fault, Rev’ren,
it w-was them puh…po-lice!”
he stuttered.
Ellsworth Godwin allowed the
din to subside, offering up a silent thanks to God. “Thank you,
sir…” he added, “but I cannot let myself off nearly so easily. I saw injustice but what I really saw was like… like an iceberg of injustice, only the tip
showing of that iceberg, like that ice which drowned all those people on the
ship Titanic…
He paused, and
more of the congregation began shouting out from the pews…
“You didn’t know
that the police had planned to murder all… how many, I heard sixty of us…”
“The
police didn’t know that those damn
gangbangers were usin’ the park to settle their
scores and get innocent people in
the way…”
“What
do that boy in that coffin have to do wit’ the police, or the Nation?”
After Miz
Lottie herself stood up, crying “Praise the Lord!”
Godwin raised his hands for order, and found it. “Alright… alright! First of all, I have to clear up a few of
these here details, with so many wild stories n’ rumors flyin’,
I can’t say for each of us here what the next course of action is to be, only
that let it be based upon God’s truth, and not the Devil’s lies and
rumors. This coffin is empty, by the
way, the… the authorities have not yet chosen to release young Master
Tarleton’s remains to the family, that’s his grandfather, Eb
Tarleton over there…”
Eb was, indeed, the boy’s grandfather
so, dressed in his workman’s clothes and holding his hat,
he stood up, humbly, and declared: “That’s God’s truth…”
“Secondly,” Reverend
Godwin pointed out, “I want to mention that it was only six people, six members
of our community who died last night, not thirty or sixty but six… well, there’s two more critically
wounded, so we’ll see about that. One policeman dead, not twelve…”
And an unseen voice at the
back of the church cried out “Shee-it!”
“There’s still about
thirty folks locked up just for being present… I wasn’t arrested, I might add,
nor Councilman Higgins, who never even got to speak but has been working all
night on getting some accountability for this incident, not even Maryland State
Senator Ray Werbele, who is with us this mornin’…”
Heads swiveled towards the
only white person in the church – out of habit, perhaps, the politician
couldn’t help half-rising out of the far corner of his front-row pew, turning
and giving a freaky little wave…
“I mention this to be
fair, but also… perhaps especially at this time… to impress upon all of us the
importance of fair and accurate communications.
This morning, we are a community cut off from the world outside… we and
others like us. Twenty million, thirty
million, even more? Fifty? Now I’d be the last person to defend the
content of much of which oozes out of our television sets or did, for some of
us, until last Thursday night but, in what seems an ever-worsening, Godless
world of trash and violence, at least there was a pretense of inclusion. We could learn what was occurring in the
world around us… right over there, in
And somebody else
shouted “No more!”
“Exactly! No more.
Now this didn’t all-of-a-sudden jump up a day or two back, we had warning…
years of warning in fact… but these implications came all wrapped in pretty
ribbons of prophecy, toadstools wrapped in bacon. World be moving faster every year, man who
used to walk riding the horses, then the car, then airplanes, rocketships… the computers getting’ smaller, smaller while
them home televisions getting bigger; we’d be able to count hairs in the
President’s nose – see the dirt and chalk on a football as it was being
snapped, the sweat runnin’ down the faces of
athletes, tears from those as that English person kicked off American
Icon. Hallelujah! Well, that is now, if we happen to have a few
thousand dollars lyin’ ‘round. Or pay the satellite and cable companies
their pound of flesh to see what they want
us to see, not what we want…”
The girl in
cornrows turned towards Tyesha…
“We got a deal with the
H-B-A… well, for sixty days, at least… all that moddy
def TV an’ some of those movie stations too…”
Miz Lottie, choosing to disremember her
own outbursts, raised a fist, and whispered “Din’t yo mamma teach you any manners?”
“Her momma in prison, down
in Flor’da…” Tyesha
defended Bettie… in no small part because she was hoping to cop some invites to
watch those fancy cable stations…
“Don’t matter,” Miz Lottie raised her voice. “Now shush up…”
Reverend Godwin placed his
left hand on the empty coffin. “So it
has come to this. We saw the lie and
called it for the lie it was, but we… I, Ellsworth Godwin, personally… failed
to understand what lengths those people, out there, would go to, just to keep
the lie alive and people in the dark.
That that is what we, as a
society, have fallen to, and I am just as responsible for this empty coffin
here as were the police who fired the shots, the politicians… from President
Rivers on down, and including the Democrats, too… politicians who cut deals
with all those business-men the in places we can’t touch, can’t even see… who ordered this about, made all of
this come into being, years ago and miles away.”
He paused, Mt.
Zion fallen silent…
“So I am not going to let Swee’Pea
Tarleton, nor the other five dead, nor those beaten down or jailed or oppressed
rest in peace. Let there be no respite
for the Devil, nor for the Devil’s own!…”
And the Soames
matriarch stood up, straight, crying “Hallelujah!”
“Thank you, Lottie,” said
Godwin. “Thank you all, for coming out
here on such a gray, miserable morning, on so little notice. Be assured… redemption begins tonight… this
very evening after we have laid this boy to rest and enter Paradise! I know that Councilman Higgins and other fine
gentlemen have been working very hard on this tragic matter, but I must say to
them… too… I will not be
silenced. And if the price of breaking
silence is death, then let God call me to be first to fall into his Heavenly
embrace. I am returning to Nakonset Park tonight… despite the City’s order, despite
the National Guard called out, by the way, by a President in office illegally,
against the Constitution and against God.
Know that, if you join me, there is a chance… a terrible chance… that
you will not see tomorrow’s dawn.” His
voice dropped, ominously. “I could also
say that you might also miss the game, but well, that’s a given, under any
circumstances. I will return, and I will
lead the community in marching through the Valley to that office of the FCC at
sundown tonight and lay my petition at their door…”
And, now, more
parishioners began to praise Jesus and shout…
“We’ll be with you!”
“We’re coming…”
“We’re ready to die…”
And Westy
leaned over to Miz Lottie saying…
“Guess he’s a brave man
after all…”
And Miz
Lottie turned, replying…
“His Paradise is just like
that other burnt-out place in California wit’ the same name, and he’s just
another God-damn fool!”
¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾ ¾
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