Up at the College (7 page)

“Are you telling me that Delores doesn’t know what her husband is doing? Gilead ain’t got that kinda play in him.”

“You ain’t never lied, dawg,” Maurice said with a smile spreading across his face. “Gilead doesn’t strike me as the type of
brother who can run with boo and then come home and tighten up everything all right and good with wifey.”

“Naah, Maurice. He ain’t coming home doing nothin’ but lyin’. Gilead don’t have that kind of stamina. You’ve seen how the
brother has to walk with those old bad and stiff knees. Give him a few rounds with one of his women, and a blue tablet wouldn’t
even be able to help that negro.”

Maurice shook his head in disgust. He was all man—a guy’s guy if there ever was one. But he never had and never would cheat
on Trina. For one, the loving was just too dang good. And two, he’d better sleep with one eye open, if she found out. Because
she’d do some serious damage to his person, not to mention his body parts.

Thirdly, he wanted to set a good example for his two sons, even if they never ever saw him tipping out. He’d read enough books
on spiritual warfare to know better than to do anything that could give the enemy a reason to attack his home because the
head had gone weak and left a crack in the wall for the Devil to wreak havoc in their lives. Cheating on your wife was just
wrong—there was no excuse for it. The Word made that clear in no uncertain terms. And Maurice wasn’t doing anything that would
interfere with his prayers being answered. 1 Peter 3:7 shot straight from the hip when it stated,
“In the same way, you husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat her with understanding as you live together. She may be
weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God’s gift of new life. If you don’t treat her as you should, your prayers
will not be heard.”

Maurice loved Peter. He was a trip—just as crazy, impetuous, and gangsta as he could be. But Peter loved him some Jesus. And
Maurice did, too. Plus, Maurice wanted to see the team win the conference title. He didn’t have time to be out there laying
up with some trash and not getting his prayers answered. And it wasn’t because he didn’t have any offers. Women threw coochie
offers at him all the time. Maurice Fountain was definitely easy on the eyes—six-five, built like a diesel truck, honey complexion,
and dark, curly mingled gray hair—a welcome sight for the women who admired him from afar on campus.

“And I’m beginning to get concerned that there is another hidden reason, Curtis. But what I keep thinking is just as crazy.”

“Aren’t you the one always telling me that the Devil is just as crazy?”

Maurice smiled and nodded. That was one of his famous Mauriceisms: “The Devil is just as crazy.” He said, “Sam Redmond and
Gilead Jackson want a new coach. And it’s something about this coach that is going to get them a whole lot of money—not money
for the department. This is change they’ll drop right into their pockets.”

“Winning the conference title and playing your way to a seat at the dance during March Madness is a sure way to boost revenues,
and even raise salaries,” Curtis told him.

“I know. But it goes further than that. That’s all I know right now.”

“That’s enough, man. I see why you stay on your knees. If I kept getting info from Jesus like that, I’d be on my knees, too.
That’s scary, man. Something that has better revenues than a straight-up conference win.”

“It is scary, Curtis, if you don’t have the Lord on your side. But with God, none of these weapons formed against us—no matter
how big, sinister, and well-planned—can and will prosper. That’s why you have got to quit playing and get your life straight.
I mean it, man. You are the key.”

Curtis didn’t want to hear that. He knew Maurice was right but was having a hard time receiving that truth to his heart. He
said, “Man, I will work hard, make whatever sacrifices—”

“This is about obedience and submission, not sacrifice, Curtis. God prefers obedience any day over sacrifice.”

Maurice stopped talking and took a deep breath. Why couldn’t this negro just admit that he couldn’t handle this by himself?
Pride—nothing but pride. Curtis wanted to get all of the credit for putting this thing right. But that wasn’t going to happen—not
this time.

Help this boy, Jesus
, Maurice thought. He trusted the Lord. But trusting God while going through struggle was very hard to do—especially when
it involved your mortgage, the light bill, the car note, and everything else where money, a job, and a steady source of income
were the prerequisites to making this all work. And when you added in food to the equation—especially the way his two boys
could plow through a meal—he might as well throw in the towel.

T
rina scooped the last piece of fish out of the deep fryer and began putting all the food on the table. She tapped on the window
for Maurice and Curtis to put out those cigars, gather up the corn, and come in and eat.

“Yvonne, look down in that cabinet and get out my good paper plates.”

Yvonne smiled. Leave it to Trina to have a section in her cabinet for the “good paper plates.”

Trina opened the door so that the aroma of the food would lure Maurice and Curtis into the house. It worked. Maurice plopped
the corn on a platter and the two of them came back in the house smelling like Fuente Hemingway cigars. Trina inhaled deeply
when Maurice passed by her. She loved the mixture of his Cubans and Eternity for Men cologne. She picked up a paper towel
and tried to convert it into a decent fan.

“Hot flashes,” Trina told Yvonne.

“Yeah … right,” was all Yvonne said.

“I do, too, have hot flashes. You know I’m going through this menopause thing.”

“You having a hot something but it ain’t got a thing to do with a
flash
,” Yvonne said, and took a long sip of the iced tea Trina had just put on the table.

“Go on and tell us what has you flashing heat all over the place,” Maurice said, grinning, delighted that all of this heat
talk had everything to do with him. He knew that Trina always had a “flash” when she smelled his cigar intermingled with the
scent of his cologne. This was definitely turning out to be a good evening. Maurice couldn’t wait for the finale after everybody
went home.

“Boy, please. Nobody thinking about you” was all Trina said.

“Maurice,” Yvonne said, “when is the next game? Trina gave me the schedule but you all made some changes after it was printed
up and the games aren’t posted on the website, either.”

Curtis raised an eyebrow, knowing full well that Maurice was holding on to that new schedule. He said, “Our next game is with
Bouclair College.”

“Well then, that explains it all,” Trina said. “My baby hates it when y’all have to play Bouclair College.”

Maurice shook his head in exasperation at just the thought of having to deal with those thugs in basketball uniforms. Playing
Bouclair College set his teeth on edge. Bouclair was next to impossible to beat. Few teams in the league managed to pull off
a win against that school. Most of the players were thugs, and their head coach, Sonny Todd Kilpatrick, always managed to
buy off a few referees to guarantee a win.

“We win the game or we win the fight—you choose,” Yvonne said.

“Huh?” Curtis said.

“Lawd, ha’ mercy, Curtis Parker,” she told him. “I cannot believe that you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“Then school me, baby. School me good,” Curtis told her with just a taste of
tight
lingering around the edges of his voice.

Oh no he didn’t
, Yvonne thought. She said, “I know you have to know Bouclair College’s off-the-record motto. They’ve had it ever since Coach
Kilpatrick took over as head coach. And they mean every word of that motto because they are nothing but a bunch of criminals
dressed up in some basketball uniforms. “I don’t know how that coach gets away with so much cheating, bullying, and mess.”

“He’s won the conference title ever since becoming the head coach at Bouclair. They never won anything before he took over,
and that alone gives him a lot of leverage. Plus, he’s a crook and knows how to bend the system to his will,” Maurice told
them, trying not to get upset over the mere thought of that man. He’d been studying Sonny Todd Kilpatrick all during the first
semester. He was determined to figure that man out and find a way to kick his little narrow Barney Fife–looking white behind.
It didn’t make sense that this racist white boy had beat out several good coaching candidates—black and white—for that position
at Bouclair College.

“Okay, Cuz,” Yvonne said, “I know your position on Barney Fife. But I asked Coach Parker.”

Curtis couldn’t believe that Yvonne Fountain was clowning on him like that.
What does she know
, he thought. She wasn’t even a real faculty member. She was listed as adjunct faculty. She spent all of her time on campus
in the Department of Design mixing paint colors, painting furniture, sawing on wood, and figuring out what kind of flooring
went where. What did that itty-bitty adjunct construction worker instructor know?

Trina had not missed any of what transpired between Curtis and Yvonne. Pride. There wasn’t anything wrong with that boy but
he was puffed up with pride he didn’t need—especially since that pride wasn’t helping the team win any games. She said, “Yvonne,
you were at that first game with Bouclair College, right?”

Yvonne nodded.

“Did you see the fight?”

“Which one?” Yvonne asked. “The one where one of the players’ gangsta grandmothers pulled out a switchblade and started swinging
at everybody in Eva T.’s black and red? You know there was more than one good fight, right? Danesha kept count, and she said
there were six.”

“Seven,” Maurice corrected. “There was a fight in our locker room involving two of their players and three of ours.”

“Did we win?” Trina asked, hoping in vain that those three boys whipped some Bouclair College behind.

“Heckee naw,” Maurice said in disgust. “They let those boys beat them like they were some hos on the wrong corner, and the
resident hos had to teach them a lesson about encroaching on the wrong hos’ territory.”

“Well, I don’t know about what was happening behind the scenes during that game,” Trina said, laughing, trying to ignore Maurice
cutting his eyes at her. “But what I do know is that they better be happy that they didn’t have to face off with that octogenarian
gangsta in the electric-blue satin jogging suit. That old lady, with those electric-blue highlights in her shoulder-length
wig, cleared those bleachers out with a simple flick of her wrist.”

“Yeah, she sliced that switchblade through the air right next to President Redmond’s wife, Grace,” Yvonne added.

“You lyin’, Yvonne. That OG didn’t mess with Grace?”

“Naw, I ain’t lyin, Trina. That original gangsta wanted to put something on Grace Redmond’s mind and it worked, too. Because
the second time she took a swing at Grace, slicing off a chunk of that expensive weave, Mrs. Redmond took off faster than
a running back on Super Bowl Sunday, and in a pair of black-and-red Manolo Blahniks, too. I didn’t know that stuck-up heifer
had it in her like that.”

Maurice and Curtis started cracking up. They would have loved to have seen that. Curtis used to kick it with Grace before
she married Sam Redmond back in the early 1990s. She was a lot of fun back then. But she turned into the “stuck-up heifer
from Hell” when Sam was put at the helm of Eva T.

Curtis often wondered how Sam Redmond managed to pull that one off. He never liked Sam Redmond because he didn’t act like
a man with too many scruples. Sam had spent his entire career at Eva T. brown-nosing, serving as some high official’s henchman,
and being rewarded for this behavior by moving from one administrative position to the other—each one a step up the career
ladder. But that kind of behavior must have carried more weight at Eva T. than actual administrative, corporate, academic,
and scholarly capabilities. Come to think of it, their university had more than its fair share of Sam Redmonds
.
And that was most unfortunate for an institution with as much to offer as Evangeline T. Marshall University.

About the only decent thing Curtis could say about Sam Redmond’s administration was that it raised a lot of money. Dr. Redmond
had raised more money during his three-year tenure as the university’s president than his predecessor had done in the entire
ten years he’d been running the school.

Eva T. was established by the second pastor of the original Fayetteville Street Gospel United Church in 1933. It had always
been viewed as the “farm school” or the “rural college” when juxtaposed next to the more urbanely placed North Carolina Central
University, a mere twenty minutes northwest of Eva T. Whereas NCCU was conveniently placed in the heart of Durham’s historically
black community, Eva T. was located in what had once been the country, or the lush farmland right outside the Bull City’s
traditional urban limits.

Eva T. alumni always wondered why Central folk were so hard on them. Because the truth was that Eva T. had top ratings and
had earned the distinction of offering the best education for a reasonable amount of money. Evangeline T. Marshall University
may have started out as a little country college for “farm negroes” but it wasn’t that anymore. And now, with the ever-increasing
growth and development occurring on the Durham side of Chatham County, it was rapidly losing its rural identity to a more
suburban persona.

The school was positioned several miles southeast of where Fayetteville Road intersected with Highway 751, not too far from
Okelly Chapel Road. It was the most scenic campus in the Triangle, once described as the best-kept secret in Durham, North
Carolina. And the university had experienced a growth spurt in the past five years, causing it to return to its glorious heyday
of the mid-twentieth century, when it had attracted the best and the brightest of black high school students from across the
state.

The school’s newest programs were fast-growing and rapidly garnering national recognition. The Building, Construction, and
Interior Design Program, along with the School of Entrepreneurial Studies and the Crime Scene Investigation Training Program,
were innovative twenty-first-century programs. Some of Durham’s most imaginative and financially successful entrepreneurs
had matriculated through one of these programs. Unbeknownst to most Bull City residents, Metro Mitchell, owner of the Yeah
Yeah Hip-Hop Store, was one such graduate. He was in the first class of graduates from the School of Entrepreneurial Studies,
and their valedictorian.