Marching to Zion (19 page)

Magnus Bailey told him most of this with his head turned away, as if he were ashamed to face his gaze. When he finished, he looked him straight in the eye, so that Dr. Willie could see plain and simple that the man was the most desperate wretch alive in Memphis, Tennessee, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and thirty-four.

Praise Jesus, Dr. Willie thought, Bailey is stuck on the queen of whores at whose house I have watched him moon in a darkened doorway on many a night! I thought it might be one of the lesser lights of that palace of sin, but no, it is the Jezebel herself that he longs to clasp to his thumpin’ chest! Praise Jesus! for mine enemy has given me all the weapons I need to destroy him!

Aloud he said, I’ll surely do my best, son. But you know, these Jews are hard to win. They are more stubborn than any whore might be to the Word of God. It would appear you have charged me with the double whammy. This could take some time.

Bailey got up and walked around while he talked. Now, now, he said, I’ve pondered that part some. If I asked you to try for the daddy, well, then surely it’d be a fool’s errand I’m sendin’ you on. But this is the daughter. She got the habit but not the belief, so far’s I can see. How could she believe and live like she does? Ain’t nothin’ in the Bible but condemnation of her kind. And her daddy, why, he might not like her takin’ to Jesus at first, but when he sees her leavin’ her old life behind, and behavin’ in a wholesome way, like Sister Pearl, I think he might warm up. Of course, I realize this all could take a great deal of time. Please, then, start immediately.

Bailey took some bills out of his pocket and pressed them in Dr. Willie’s hand.

I realize this will take you away from your usual pursuits, he said. This is for the church. With my gratitude.

The Rev. Dr. Willie Smalls waited until Bailey quit the room before he counted his take. Three sawbucks. Thirty dollars. When Sister Pearl found him, he grinned ear to ear, and as they were alone, he swept her in his arms and hummed a snippet of a tune while waltzing her around the room. Oh, ain’t it just a great day? he said, and the former whore took his mood as she found it, without question for once, and agreed.

Now here he was, a week later with yet a new weapon in his arsenal against his enemy. There was a child. A l’il chocolate child, he chuckled to himself, imagining the day he’d oh so reluctantly relay the news to Aurora Mae Stanton that her man had a child with the whitest dirty whore in Memphis. But first he had to get to L’il Red. No need to rush on the root woman’s account. Oh, she’d fall in his trap alright, no need to hurry there. But L’il Red. She’s the one he had to take care of to twist Bailey on a spit. There was no doubt more money to quarry there than thirty dollars.

Such was his happy mood, he took Sister Pearl to a restaurant in Orange Mound, a hole in the wall that served up greens, biscuits, and stew for those without a proper family to visit for Sunday supper. It might have been the Ritz for the pride it brought her. She sat up straight, crooked her little finger as she utilized her spoon, and beamed meltingly at the five diners and chef who waited on them as if she were the lady of an old plantation. Watching her, Dr. Willie considered that it would be to his benefit to keep Pearl in a grand state of mind if he were to make the best use of her in a conversion of the likes of L’il Red. Who better to inform him of the madam’s wiles and weaknesses? Who better to draw her out from the doors of her establishment to face him?

While he walked Sister Pearl back to Aurora Mae’s, he plotted a campaign against Babylon. A dozen schemes played out inside his mind, each successively more elegant than the last. Always, his fancies ended in victory, with the weeping Jewess begging him for absolution of her uncountable, noxious sins. Ah, to have the paramour of his enemy kneeling at his feet where he would crush her also beneath his heel! Such sweet delight, he thought, such sweet delight!

When they reached The Lenaka, they found a note from Aurora Mae scrawled on a paper bag and tacked on the ice chest. Emergency with sick child, it read. Like to be gone all night.

Now, here’s a piece of luck, Pearl purred at him, grabbing his lapels and leading him to her room.

Dr. Willie reprimanded her.

You would profit from a child’s pain? he said while following her without protest.

Come on, my dear reverend. What’s the worst could happen? That Aurora Mae could come back early and find us?

She then whispered to him in her throatiest the delicious events that might transpire if Aurora Mae could only witness his big, hard sex, which would cause her to fall panting into their outstretched arms, and the Rev. Dr. Willie Smalls found himself lost in reverie for the next eighteen minutes, a reverie of the impossible suddenly within his grasp.

L’il Red woke up
and lolled about entertaining a daydream, one in which she had never chased after Magnus Bailey to find her ruination, because he’d never lied and left her to begin with. She could have kept on conjuring that paradisiacal world forever, but her reverie was disturbed by a commotion going on outside her rooms. She struggled out of bed in a foul mood, threw on a quilted robe, and opened her door to see what was going on. It was before noon, but half-naked gals charged up and down stairs and hallways at high speeds, jeering and cackling like deranged hens. Some carried slop buckets that they took to a landing window and, pushing their sisters out of the way, tossed swill outside. Cheers and claps erupted as whatever filth a whorehouse can find rained down on the street below.

Bailey’s Minnie barked an order, and the wall of whores parted like the Red Sea. She went to the window and looked below. There, right next to whorehouse slops splattered in puddles along the sidewalk, was a line of picketers, maybe twenty strong. Half a dozen carried homemade placards across which was hand-scrawled in bold black letters:
A Whore Shall Be Burned Alive, Lev. 21:9; Her House Is the Way to Hell, Prov. 7:27; Whoremongers and Adulterers the Lord Will Judge, Hebrews 13:4;
and the like. The leader of the picketers was a short, round man in a black suit with a round collar, who directed them in circles, blocking traffic, and more important, L’il Red’s front door. Minerva Fishbein sought out a familiar face among them. She called out her chief enforcer. John! she demanded, wondering where the brute had gone to that he’d let this parade of Bible thumpers invade her territory. John!

He went for your man at the police, one of the whores said.

What for? Why didn’t he just phone?

There’s somethin’ wrong with the line.

Now L’il Red was hopping mad. She stuck her head out the window and yelled to the man on the street she’d wanted John to fetch: Thomas DeGrace! Get in here! I want to talk to you!

The short, round man in a black suit went over to Thomas DeGrace and spoke in his ear. DeGrace handed off his placard to one of the others and stepped up to the front door of L’il Red’s. He hesitated under the iron grate balcony flanked by gas lamps. Then he used the doorknocker.

Idiot! thought the madam as she charged back to her rooms and sat behind her desk. Who knocks at a whorehouse door? Only a weasel, afraid to face her. She smiled a hot, teeth-baring smile. Good, she thought, good. He should be.

One of the whores collected Thomas DeGrace and brought him to her office, where she wasted no time in castigating him. His left foot was barely over the threshold when she started in, reminding him of their long association, of the debt of gratitude he owed her father, and last but not least, the affection they both bore his cousin, Magnus Bailey. What will Magnus say when he hears how you have harassed me? she demanded, much as once long ago Thomas DeGrace had demanded of her what would Magnus say if he knew she solicited men from the back alleys of Beale Street. Her fist banged on top of her desk. Everything that was not under a heavy glass paperweight jumped. Why do you side with some jackleg preacher against your own blood?

Up until that moment, Thomas DeGrace had no idea that Bailey and Minerva Fishbein were united or reunited or whatever it was she meant to indicate to him in her outrage. The revelation flummoxed his tongue. It was all he could do to frame a meager defense of his church and its founder.

The Reverend Dr. Smalls seeks only to bring the peace of Jesus to your heart, Miss Minnie, he said, but his head was down and he could not meet her eyes.

Jesus!

He dared a peek up. Minerva’s features were knotted with the kind of dark emotion that DeGrace recalled sprung out of her whenever she had her temper tantrums back in the time he was old Fishbein’s man.

I’ve been hearin’ enough about Jesus of late! This Dr. Smalls. He the man been botherin’ my papa’s house?

I surely wouldn’t know, Miss Minnie.

Sirens screeched outside. Both Minerva and Thomas DeGrace went in a rush to a window to watch the police in L’il Red’s employ leap out of their cars and disperse the picketers by cracking a head or two under a nightstick. Thomas DeGrace was relieved to see that Dr. Willie’s skull was not among them. In fact, he did not see Dr. Willie down there at all anymore, which was because the preacher’s seasoned ear heard the sirens ahead of the rest. The reverend knew what was coming and fled in plenty of time, not that any of his congregants noticed, so occupied were they with either hurling Bible verses at the whorehouse windows or keeping their heads down to avoid slipping in puddled slops.

Once the police cleared the streets, they trooped into L’il Red’s for their rewards, pecuniary and otherwise, which gave Thomas DeGrace a chance to steal outside and scurry off. It was in his mind to get over at once to the Miracle Church of God’s People, where he was certain folk would be nursing their wounds while Dr. Willie praised them and Jesus both. Instead, he found himself at Magnus Bailey’s bail bondsman office. When that man was not there, he walked over to The Lenaka to see if Aurora Mae knew his whereabouts.

Why, he’s in the back, takin’ his lunch, the root woman told him as she arranged herbs inside poultice wrappers, which she tied with string and placed neatly in a display case. As Thomas thanked her and hurried through the beaded curtain into the living quarters, she asked his back, What’s gone on? Somethin’ happen? DeGrace did not answer her.

Magnus Bailey sat at the kitchen table with his jacket and tie off, a great napkin tucked into his collar and anchored at the sides by his suspenders. He drank a broth in which pork knuckle swam with split peas and garlic. He gripped a spoon in one hand and a chunk of dark bread in the other.

Cousin, DeGrace said.

Bailey looked up. His visitor was fiercely agitated. He’d never had the habit of stopping by The Lenaka in the middle of the day for a social call. Bailey’s first thought was someone had died. The two no longer had many people alive in common since the flood wiped out Tulips End.

What’s the matter, Thomas? Please tell me it’s not Alice.

Alice was Thomas’s baby sister, who lived near Knoxville. She was the gem of the family and taught school to colored children of a dozen ages in a one-room shack in the woods on the side of a mountain known for its dense fog and windstorms. Magnus Bailey pictured the family pride swept off her perch by a maelstrom of nature and destroyed.

Oh, no, no. It ain’t Alice.

Thank the Lord. But then what?

Thomas sat down at the square table across from Magnus. He gripped the sides with his hands and leaned his torso forward. It was an alarming posture, and alarmed is what Magnus Bailey felt regarding him.

It’d be you.

Me?

Last time Bailey checked, all his limbs and wits were intact. He started to chuckle, but Thomas DeGrace slammed his fist on the table with much the same passion that Minerva Fishbein had slammed her desk with hers. Listen to me! the fist said. You are in peril here!

I heard something today about you from a most curious source, and I must find out for myself if it be true.

Bailey nodded encouragement that his cousin might continue.

I heard, or I discovered, I should say, that you and Miss Minnie are … are … He could not find the word right away, so he looked up to the heavens and found it. That you and Miss Minnie are coupled.

It seemed to take a measure of life out of the man to say the words. He stopped and caught his breath, breathed in and out a few times noisily to recover his equilibrium. He continued.

It may interest you to know my spiritual leader, the Reverend Dr. Willie Smalls, has undertook to close down her establishment in the interest of the public morals. I found myself today demonstratin’ outside her gates when she called me in to plead her case, I supposed. Instead, she invoked your name as her partner and protector, which means, Magnus, that not only are you a whoremonger but also a danged rascal who would pervert the goodwill of Miss Aurora Mae Stanton, a saint of our community, to his own ends. What is surely more, if Miss Minnie were not L’il Red but some common white gal out there lookin’ for adventure, why this taste of yourn to cross the color line could make you quite dead and painfully so. Please, cousin, please tell me all’a that is a misunderstanding of mine and none of it’s true.

Bailey didn’t speak right away. First, he liberated the napkin from its restraints and wiped his mouth. He stood up, put on his jacket, and rearranged his bow tie. Taking his bowl and cutlery to the sink, he rinsed them out, laid them to rest in the dishpan with exaggerated care as if they were rare artifacts. He took so deep a breath his shoulders raised and his chest expanded beyond normal size, until his frame was that of a beast, a bear of some kind maybe or a mastiff on its hind legs, which cast a huge, beastly shadow on the wall. Then, without turning around, he admitted everything. With each word, his body came back to itself, almost hissing from its joints with the release of each syllable, collapsing inward bit by bit until he was himself again, only his shoulders were no longer squared but tilted inward toward his heart, perhaps in self-protection.

Yes, he said, it’s true. We are coupled, if that’s what you want to call it. I would say we’ve been truly coupled for more’n two year ’cept that maybe we’ve been coupled from the time the earth was made or before that when the heavens were made and then the briny deep. But I am no whoremonger. I’ve been tryin’ to save her from her own mind as long as I can remember. Dr. Willie’s been tryin’ to close her down?

Thomas DeGrace tried to absorb everything the other man told him, but huge hunks of it battered up against his understanding. Yes was all he said, simply yes and quietly, too.

Magnus Bailey turned ’round to face him, to find out more about what had transpired that day. He was very much surprised that a man of the cloth would take to the streets when there were more peaceable tactics at hand. When he’d hired him on, so to speak, it was to exercise gentle persuasion, a rousing sermon or two of the kind he’d overheard him use while instructing Sister Pearl.

He considered that first Saturday a number of weeks back. Dr. Willie’d come to Minnie’s daddy’s door, and she’d made them hide from his knock rather than answer what was obviously a harmless call to salvation. They argued over her refusal to answer the door ’til Fishbein came home from synagogue, which ended the discussion. Afterward, Bailey assumed the preacher would call again and then again after that, until he wore down her resistance and captured her attention, maybe worked a miracle, the kind his church exclaimed aloud in its very name. He never expected he would gather his forces to ram the gates of perdition over there to L’il Red’s. How had matters escalated? he wondered. When he turned to face his cousin, it was to ask him just that, as if the man might actually know. But instead of facing the distraught Thomas DeGrace, he found himself looking over that man’s head and through a fringe of glass beads, confronting the startled, uncomprehending features of Aurora Mae.

Bailey moved toward her with his arms outstretched. ’Rora Mae, ’Rora Mae, let me explain, he said, but she brushed by him in a rustle of skirt and work apron. He followed her, still calling her name. ’Rora Mae, ’Rora Mae, he called out to the thin air, for she’d disappeared into her bedroom and quietly shut the door. There was no slam, the lock did not turn. He figured he yet had a chance at talking to her face-to-face. He continued to plead sweetly from the hallway.

Let me in, ’Rora Mae, he said outside the door. If you think things over, you’ll see you’re not so surprised as you may feel. I know I was wrong not to tell you, but I’d like you to know my reasons. Let not this be the way two friends end, friends who’ve been as dear as we.

A little time passed. The door creaked open. Magnus Bailey crossed over to meet the consequences of his duplicity and explain both the venalities and virtues of his heart. He closed the door behind him.

Aurora Mae sat on the bed, her head down as she twisted a handkerchief in her hands. When she raised her face to him, it was tear-stained, its expression both hurt and questioning. Why? her round, full eyes asked. Why? her lovely mouth, poised in a trembling O, echoed. What did I do to you?

Magnus Bailey knelt at her feet and held her hands in his, handkerchief and all.

I am a scoundrel and a wretch, he said, who has deceived you and who deserves your anger. I beg your forgiveness. I was lost in a storm of frustration and love for a woman whose sins I am responsible for.

She looked at him then with less pain than surprise. How is that? she asked, and he told her in some detail about young Minerva Fishbein, who’d had a passion for him, and who’d ruined herself chasing after him when he ran away rather than face her fierce affections.

I wronged that woman miserably long ago and have spent all my life since either in penance or tryin’ to redeem her. Do you remember when we first got together? We admitted to each other that we had loved and lost before and that neither one of us would likely love again like that, ever. You remember that, ’Rora Mae? Well, I don’t know who it was branded your heart, and I don’t deserve to have you tell me. But it was my Minnie, the world’s L’il Red, that I meant.