I Am Not Sidney Poitier (26 page)

“You mean a wire transfer?”

“Yes.”

“You could do that. That would give us permission to dispense the money, but I’m afraid it wouldn’t create the cash for us to dispense. You see, we don’t have that kind of money.”

“This is a bank?”

“A savings and loan,” she corrected me. “Mr. Poitier, this is Smuteye, Alabama.”

I nodded.

“The only reason I’m not stepping on the alarm under my desk, aside from the fact that it doesn’t work, is that any fool can see that there’s no money here in this godforsaken hamlet.”

All of this was no doubt true, and I felt the requisite amount of pity for her and her community, but all I said was, “So, how would I go about getting my money?”

“I guess you could go over to Eufaula. Troy is closer. The bank in Perote might be able to help you. That’s not far at all.”

“Thank you.” I started to leave, then asked, “Are there any architects around here?”

She pretended to consider my question. “I don’t think so.” I was impressed that she was able to say it without a hint of sarcasm. Neither did she show any interest in why I might need or want so much money in Smuteye.

I nodded.

As I drove those desolate Alabama back roads it became clear to me, through no feat of intellect, that my merely suggesting to someone that I’d like to cash a personal and out-of-state check for such a large amount would do far more than find a raised eyebrow as accompaniment to a resounding
no.
And like the Smuteye Farmers Savings and Loan, the local Western Union offices were not likely to have enough money to accommodate such a hefty wire. So I was left to wonder just how I would deliver the money I had promised to the sisters. I stopped at a truck stop, a lot full of big rigs and Confederate flags, and called Podgy from a pay phone. From where I sat I watched a fat trucker play a video game and watched another walk out of the washroom still brushing his teeth.

“Okay, Podgy, how can I get fifty grand down here to Smuteye, Alabama?” I asked.

“I will wire it to you.”

“They don’t … nobody here has that kind of money. Not even the Western Union office.”

“You must go to a bigger city.”

“Or you can bring it to me.”

“I will not come to a place called Smuteye.”

“Podgy,” I whined.

“No.” Then, away from the phone, he said, “Cool, I will be right there, my good dog.”

“All right, Podgy. Find a bank in—” I looked at my map, “—Montgomery that can or will handle the transfer and let me know where it is. I’ll call you in a few hours so you can tell me. What are you doing?”

“I am running your network.”

“Good,” I said. “Carry on.”

“Awright, dog.”

I hung up and rubbed my chin, found it stubbly. I bought a razor and some shaving cream in the little store and then walked into the giant washroom. There I shaved while truckers in undershirts brushed teeth and washed hairy pits. No matter how they scrubbed they looked nothing like Sidney Poitier, but I looked just like him and so they stared. They stared at Sidney Poitier’s face in the mirror and I stared at it, too. The face was smooth, brown, older than I remembered, handsome. The face in the mirror smiled and I had to smile back.

It was very late afternoon when I arrived in Montgomery, and it was everything I thought it would be and less. It was a sad and depressed place, but it was clear it felt it had some chance of revival. People greeted me, waved, said hello, and were generally quite polite. I grabbed a bite in a diner in which every item on the menu was fried, ate a chicken-fried-steak sandwich and drank a very sweet iced tea. The banks were already closed, and I had yet to call Podgy to find out where I would collect my money. I had come to understand that my skin color and youth were an impediment to my being taken seriously, and so I thought I might overcome a bit of this appearance difficulty by at least dressing in a suit. I stopped at a JCPenney located in a mall on a giant circle of a road and bought one. It was black, the jacket snug fitting in the shoulders, the trousers tapering in the leg and slightly short at the ankle. With the crisp white shirt and the narrow black tie and black leather-soled shoes to replace my sneakers, I could have added dark glasses and been of the Fruit of Islam, but instead I was, I believed, nonthreatening, safe.

I checked myself into a motel, lay back on the too-soft bed, and called Podgy, and he told me the name and address of the bank that would be expecting me. I hung up and stared up at the particularly gross ceiling. I could have questioned my motives for helping the sisters, and the fact that I think it now must mean that somehow I did, but I don’t recall doing so. I watched television and settled on my own network. Music video after music video, a gospel-music special, a stand-up so-called comedy hour, and
Punjabi Profiles.
I drifted in and out of sleep until I was moored in an awake state and looking back and forth at the lightening sky through partially closed blinds and paid programming about a very special mop. I remembered a troubling dream that I’d had. In it my new black dress shoes were far too small and this worried me greatly as I had someplace to be, but when I tried them in the morning they fit perfectly fine, oddly better than they had in the store.

At the First National Bank of Alabama, I straightened my tie and walked inside. The bank building was far larger than the one-room savings and loan in Smuteye. It was in fact grand. A uniformed guard stood near the glass and brass front doors, a line of tellers stood behind a grand carved wooden barrier, and an island of the same ornate wood dominated the center of the vast room. Behind the tellers, bank people did bank work and talked bank talk and walked bankly back and forth. I walked to the reception desk, signed the list, and sat in the waiting area.

The bank officer, a Miss Hornsby, who received me did not rise from the seat behind her desk, but said as I sat, “My, but you look just like Sidney Poitier. I mean just like him.”

I nodded. “I’m Not Sidney Poitier.”

“Of course you’re not.” She was a middle-aged woman who had probably grown up on a steady diet of Sidney Poitier. Her graying hair was dyed blond and her makeup did more to reveal cracks than cover them.

“No, what I’m telling you is that I’m Not Sidney Poitier.”

“And I’m telling you I understand that fact.”

I looked at my notes from having talked to Podgy. “Is there a Mr. Scrunchy here?”

She looked offended. “Yes, there is.”

“May I speak to him?”

She was certainly offended. “I’ll get him.”

Extremely tall and bald Mr. Scrunchy answered the intercom call by walking over to Miss Hornsby’s desk. “What seems to be the problem?” he asked.

“This man here, who has informed me that he is not Sidney Poitier, refuses to understand that I don’t believe he is Sidney Poitier.”

“So, you’re Not Sidney Poitier,” Scrunchy said.

“I am,” I said.

“I’ve been expecting you. Why don’t you come over to my desk, Mr. Poitier.” Then to the woman, he said, “I’ll take it from here, Miss Hornsby.”

The stunned Miss Hornsby licked her painted lips and said nothing as I rose and followed Scrunchy to his office. Scrunchy walked with a slight limp, the rhythm of which I found it difficult to not fall into. I followed him into his office. One wall was a window that looked out into the bank. He walked around and sat behind his giant desk, and I sat opposite him in a chair somewhat lower than his.

“Mr. Poitier,” he said.

I nodded. “Mr. Patel has arranged everything?” I said.

“He has, indeed. He wired the money this morning. If I may see some identification?”

I pulled my wallet from my hip pocket and removed my driver’s license, realizing as I was doing so that it was bogus. I had never bothered to get a real one. He took it from me, glanced quickly at it, and returned it.

“I’m satisfied,” he said.

“May I have my money?”

He signaled through the big window and across the room to another man. “Of course you may have your money,” he said. “It’s an awful lot of cash to be carrying around.”

The man came into the office, and he had with him a small green vinyl satchel that he placed on Scrunchy’s desk. He was broad in the shoulders and thick in the belly, with sunken eyes and dark bushy brows punctuating his stern expression. He gave me the once-over and then walked out.

“Cheery.”

Scrunchy pushed the bag across the desk toward me, and as he did I realized that he was frighteningly correct. It was a lot of money to be walking around with. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

“You should count it,” Scrunchy said.

“I trust you,” I lied.

“I’m afraid I have to insist that you count it. Liability and all that. You can do it right here. I should watch of course.”

“Of course,” I said.

And he did watch while I opened the satchel and pulled out ten-thousand-dollar bundle after ten-thousand-dollar bundle.

“It’s all hundreds,” the banker said.

“Of course,” I said.

He watched while I counted to 100 five times, fanning through the bundles, having to stop and start over a couple of times.

“That’s a lot of money,” he said as I finished.

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, if that’s all,” he said and turned his attention to a stack of pages on his desk.

With the money back in the bag, I stood to leave.

“Be careful, Mr. Poitier,” he said without looking up.

I felt like an idiot walking out of the bank with the money. More, I felt like a sitting duck, a dead duck, a chump, easy pickings, a babe in the woods, dead meat, a victim waiting to happen, a complete and utter fool. In the bright sunlight I was immediately concerned with what or who was behind me, beside me, waiting for me. I hoped Podgy had not babbled anything to Scrunchy about Smuteye, so at least no one would know where I was going. I could hear him saying in his singsong way, “I must wire the money because I cannot bring myself to go to a place called Smuteye. What kind of name is that anyway?”

I suppose there is no need to mention how terrified I was as I fell in behind the wheel of my car. Though I was not savvy or talented enough to spot them, I knew they were there—the watchers, the robbers, the highwaymen, snaggletoothed spawn of aging grand dragons. I drove my shaking and stupid suited self to the edge of town and beyond, into deep Alabama. It was still early in the day. At least I had that going for me and then I imagined it would be going for them as well, as I was fairly easy to spot—my black face behind the wheel of my yellow Skylark. I drove past the suburbs and onto the highway and, when there were no cars in front of me or behind me, I pulled off onto a little dirt lane and from that into a firebreak, out of view from the road, There I sat, for hours, waiting and hoping that I was waiting for nothing. Cars hummed past on the highway, and I didn’t know who they were or where they were going, only that they kept going. I fell asleep.

Night fell and I awoke to find it unwanted and all over me. I once again recalled the song “Stars Fell on Alabama” and again thought that was never true. This night was even darker than the last one. I moved to start my engine and then I heard it—singing or chanting. I reached up and removed the cover from my dome light, then removed the bulb. I opened the door and felt my way about twenty yards to the edge of a clearing. As if waiting for me to arrive, a torch was put to a tall cross, and it lit up darkness some two football fields from me. I watched the hooded heads walk around doing hooded things and making hooded speeches that I could not hear. The only thing that was certain was that I wasn’t going anywhere at that moment. The white-clad idiots hadn’t spotted me, and unless I decided to do something stupid like light a cigarette or shout out to them, they weren’t going to. They prayed and sang and yakked, and then some two hours later they began to clear out in a single-file queue of glowing headlights. I waited until the last pickup was gone, and, not until I thought the cross was cold and only then, did I go back to my car, start it, and leave.

It was just before daybreak when I pulled into the yard of the sisters. There was no one up, not even the chickens. I waited in my car, put my head back, and drifted off to sleep. I dreamed I died. I didn’t know how, but I was dead and yet I was staring down at my dead face on the ground. I awoke to see my face in the outside rearview mirror. I looked dead enough. I glanced over the yard and saw a blue pickup truck that I hadn’t seen in the darkness. The house door opened, and Sister Irenaeus emerged smiling and clapping her hands. She called back for the others, and they came out equally full of glee and good cheer. They must have smelled the cash. They danced around my car chanting some nonsense or other; two of them were lost in tongues. It all made for awful music as I worked my stiff limbs free of the car.

“Do you have our money?” Sister Irenaeus asked.

I didn’t like the way she said
our
money, but I responded, “Yes.”

Just then a man walked out of their quarters. A short, wide-shouldered man with a matching broad face and a shag of stringy white-blond hair. He had bad skin that somehow looked okay on him.

“This is Thornton Scrunchy,” Sister Irenaeus said.

Well, of course he is, I thought, and nodded hello.

“He is our architect,” she said.

“I didn’t know you had an architect.” There was something different about Sister Irenaeus. The other sisters were still prancing around like loons. But Sister Irenaeus was standing near me, with Thornton Scrunchy. Scrunchy’s blue eyes were piercing, but only because of their color, I thought. In fact, he seemed to have the glassy-eyed look of an alcoholic or at least of someone who was drunk. There was a toothpick sticking out the corner of his mouth.

He shook my hand. “So, you’re Mr. Poitier. Mr. Poitier. Mr. Poitier. The sisters have told me all about you.”

“You’re an architect here in the town of Smuteye?” I asked. “Smuteye, Alabama?”

“Well, that’s a yes and a no,” he said, “Mr. Poitier.” He seemed to like saying my name. “You see, I’m a man of many professions. It’s so kind of you to help the sisters out. They’re such good souls.” He turned to Sister Irenaeus. “We’re going to build us a church, ain’t we, Sister?”

“Praise the lord,” she said.

Scrunchy stared at my face. “You look just like that Sidney Poitier, the Hollywood actor.”

“I know,” I said.

“But you’re not Sidney Poitier.”

“I am.”

He moved the flat toothpick from the left side of his twisted lips to the right side of his twisted lips.

Remembering the Scrunchy from the bank in Montgomery, I asked, “Are there a lot of Scrunchys in Alabama?”

“Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi. There are Scrunchys all over, Mr. Poitier. Whether we’re related, I can’t tell you, but there’s a mess of us. We Scrunchys have been around forever. I heard tell we was on the
Mayweather.
”

“Mayflower,”
I said.

“You have our money,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“Some of it,” I lied.

“How much?” Scrunchy asked.

I looked at him.

“Well, we need to get moving on this thing.”

“So, do you have some plans drawn up?” I asked.

“I do,” he said. “Been working on them all night. They’re right here inside on the big table.”

I followed him to the door. I looked to Sister Irenaeus, but could not read her face. It was no surprise; I didn’t know her well enough to read the most obvious expressions. “Sister, when did you find this guy? Where did you find this guy? Why did you find this guy?”

“You said we needed plans. He has drawn the plans,” she said. “He made the blueprints so that we can build our church.”

Inside the house country music was playing. I looked to the corner and saw a stack of 45s on an old turntable. Patsy Cline was singing. I recognized her voice, but the song I did not know. It was a lament, or so I thought, but with all the dancing and howling in tongues, I couldn’t really hear. On the table was a rolled-up sheet of white paper, about two feet long. Scrunchy unfurled and held it open with his soft-looking and meaty hands.

“Well, here it is,” he said.

I looked. The drawing was just slightly more detailed and skilled than the little piece of paper I had been shown earlier. It was a crude pencil sketch of a rectangular building with a pitched roof and a steeple on one end, and beside it was a floor plan that showed there was nothing to it but four exterior walls. There were no measurements or marks indicating windows or doors or any other architectural symbols. I looked at them in turn.

“These aren’t blueprints,” I said. “They’re not even blue. This is a sketch and a bad one at that.”

“Well, son, this is just a start. I just got hired yesterday. The sisters have been asking me to help all along, but they didn’t have any money.”

“And now we do,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“Not yet,” I said.

“You know how it is,” Scrunchy said. He nodded to me as if I knew what he was talking about. “People are always coming to me and asking for plans, then they look at them and go build it themselves.”

“Do you have a state license?” I asked.

“I’m not a contractor,” he said. “Ain’t that something, the way them gals blather on like that?”

“God has sent you with our money,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“Well, he sent me with some of it,” I said. “He sent me with a thousand dollars to get Mr. Scrunchy here going on the blueprints.”

“That is all?” she asked.

“For right now,” I said. I watched her shoulders sag and observed the disappointment on her face. “I’ll get it.”

The other sisters had caught on that not all was well and had stopped chanting and howling and dancing and merely looked at us from across the room. They stood there with their shoulders waiting to sag.

I left them inside and went to my car. I opened the satchel in the backseat and tore the band from a stack. I took ten hundreds and looked at the forty-nine thousand remaining dollars. It was bad enough that some people driving around believed I had this and worse that in fact I did. I took the thousand dollars back inside.

“This is all?” Sister Irenaeus said.

“For now,” I repeated.

Scrunchy took the bills and fanned them through a count. “This will work for my retainer. You will be able to pay me for the rest of my services?”

“How much will it cost, the rest of your services?”

“I would say about five grand, I mean, a thousand more for a complete set of expertly rendered and delivered blueprints,” he said. He glanced at Sister Irenaeus and smiled.

“I can get that much,” I said.

“You said fifty thousand dollars,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“That’s a lot of money, Sister,” I said. “I couldn’t get it all at once.” In my mind loomed the fact that I had in a matter of twenty-four hours met two people named Scrunchy. If that was not an incredible coincidence, then the pock-faced man in front of me was well aware that I had the balance of the fifty thousand dollars in my possession, stashed somewhere, if not on me. So, I added, trying to sound confident, savvy, like anything but the clueless idiot that I truly was, “I’d be a fool to travel with that much money on me at once.”

“I suppose you would be, son,” Scrunchy said. He turned to Sister Irenaeus. “Well, Sister, I guess I’ll go get to work on those blueprints.” Then again to me, “You take care now.” He walked out, got into his truck, and drove away.

“Do you trust that guy?” I asked Sister Irenaeus.

“I do,” she said. “Where is the money?”

“It’s coming.”

“We must build the church,” she said.

“I understand that, Sister.” I looked at the faces of the other women. They seemed more confused than disappointed or put out. Now, their shoulders sagged. “I’m going to grab a bite at the diner.”

I walked out to my car. They didn’t follow. I drove away and stopped just beyond the bend in the drive, still hidden from the road. I got out, took the satchel from the floor in the back, and concealed it under some brush at the base of a twisted and memorable tree. I kept a thousand with me. As I fell in again behind the wheel I observed my face in the mirror. I looked so much older, felt so much older, stiff, and beleaguered. If I hadn’t known better I would have said I had a gray hair.

At the diner, I found Diana Frump shaking her ample rump under her white waitress dress to country music on the jukebox. A couple of men were watching her and laughing. She stopped when she saw me.

“And he’s wearing a suit,” Diana said. “Looking sharp there, Mr. Poitier. Who died?”

I’d forgotten I was wearing the suit. I must have been a sight after sleeping in the car in it. “I might think I did,” I said.

“Come on in, Sidney,” she said. “Have a sit-down.”

I sat at the end of the counter. “A party?” I asked.

“Yep,” she said. “A party because work’s coming to Smuteye. I heard tell that them sisters got money to build their church. That means construction, that means construction workers, that means customers for me. A party. What can I get you?” She walked to the other side of the counter.

“A burger,” I said.

“Cheese?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Ain’t got none.” She laughed. “Just foolin’ with you.” She slapped a fist of meat on the griddle. “Yeah, them sisters found somebody to foot the bill. I guess praying ain’t such a bad gig.”

“Some fool,” one of the men said. He was wearing a John Deere cap. “But I’ll take the work.”

“You know somebody named Scrunchy?” I asked Diana.

“Thornton Scrunchy?”

“Yes.”

“Never heard of him,” she said, then laughed again. “Just foolin’ with you. Yeah, he lives around here. Owns some land. I hear a lot of land, over by the river. He had something or other to do with the paper mill way back when.” She studied my face for a second. “Why?”

“Is he an architect?”

“Elroy, is Scrunchy an architect?”

“Thornton Scrunchy is a lot of things,” said the man in the cap. “An architect? I don’t know.”

“He ain’t no architect,” said the other man, a fat man. “I reckon he’s a Baptist jest like the rest of us.”

The screen door opened and slammed shut, and I turned to see a policeman of some kind standing rigid, in dark glasses and a Smokey Bear hat that wore him. He was a skinny, young man with a bad shave. He rested his right hand on his sidearm, a large-caliber revolver, and rested his eyes on me.

“Hey, Horace,” Diana said.

“Diana,” he said.

I looked away from him and at my near-ready burger sizzling on the griddle. Diana watched the man behind me, seemed nervous as she flipped the patty once more. I felt the deputy approach me, hover at my shoulder.

“What’s your name, boy?” the deputy asked.

“This here is Sidney Poitier, Horace,” Diana said.

“Not the Sidney Poitier,” Horace said.

“No,” I said. “Not Sidney Poitier.” I knew it was a bad idea to say that as soon as I opened my mouth.

“Why don’t you step out and put your hands on that counter for me,” the deputy said.

I turned to look back at him. “What did I do?”

“I think you know what you done,” he said.

I supposed that was true of all of us, and in a strange way I found it a reasonable utterance.

“Now, I ain’t gonna ask you again.” He released the leather keep on his holster. “Hands on the counter and spread them legs.”

“What’s this boy done?” asked the man in the tractor cap.

“I think I done caught myself a murderer.” The deputy seemed ready to giggle he was so excited.

“You don’t say,” said the fat man.

I leaned against the counter as instructed, and Horace kicked my feet into a wider stance. He then frisked my torso, under my jacket, and then moved down to the pockets of my trousers. He found the lump of cash in my front pocket.

“What do we have here?” he said. He pulled the wad of bills out, looked at it, and whistled. “Boy, howdy!”

“What is it, Horace?” asked tractor cap.

“A ton of money.” The deputy leaned closer to me. “This here is a lot of money for a nigger to be carrying around.”

I cleared my throat and said, quite without good judgment, “One, I’m not a nigger, and two, that’s not that much money.”