The Black Mass of Brother Springer (6 page)

       "How did these bastards get off?" I thought. I examined the menu, and with an accountant's accuracy I checked the items on their table with the prices on the right side of the card. Dinner for the pair, including the wine, came to $28.32, including tax. A tip of five dollars would bring the cost up to $33.32! "Fantastic!" I had thought, "How could two priests, who were supposed to be under the strictest vows of poverty, pay such a sum for an evening meal?"

       I didn't resent the food they ate—everybody is entitled to eat—but why eat in such an expensive restaurant? The money they were spending on this rich food was being paid for by poor, low-wage earners who could ill-afford to give money to the Roman Catholic church! What right did they have to spend so much money on food?

       At the time, I was looking at the situation with the eyes of a non-Roman Catholic, and I was highly prejudiced against those two bloated characters in black suits. It wasn't right. Now that I was wearing a black suit and a backward collar, how was I supposed to feel? My attitude had not changed: I still didn't believe it was right for a minister to gorge at the expense of others. I would eat simply, I decided, and with refined restraint. I had that responsibility to the world as well as to my yet unknown parishioners. Within a few minutes I had an opportunity to test my resolution.

       The Greyhound stopped at a filling station in the middle of nowhere and a large perspiring woman of forty or so mounted the steps with some difficulty. She wore a billowing housedress and carried a large hamper under her arm. There were several empty seats but she chose to sit beside me.

       "Do you mind if I sit here, Father?" she asked pleasantly in a sweet high voice.

       "Of course not, Madame," I replied, "please do."

       Although I did not want anybody to sit next to me while I was planning my future actions I couldn't very well tell her so—not in my new black uniform. After she was settled—and the driver hadn't even changed to high gear—she opened the hamper and unwrapped a whole baked chicken. As she unpeeled the Reynold's Wrap from the chicken a maddening aroma filled my nostrils. The outside of the chicken was a beautiful color—the shade of a two-day bruise on the tender side of a woman's thigh—and I was forced to look away and fix my eyes on the plains. There was a gentle tug at my sleeve. I turned. With a smile on her round face, the woman held out a paper plate piled high with three pieces of chicken and a giant mound of potato salad, moist with mayonnaise. And next to a gleaming piece of chicken breast there were three white puffed biscuits.

       "Could you eat something, Father," the woman said kindly, "I have plenty."

       "I'll take a biscuit," I half-whispered.

       "Oh, no!" She shook her head. "Take the plate. I'll fix another for myself. I have plenty!"

       "No," I said hoarsely. "Just a biscuit."

       She did not press me, and I nibbled on a fluffy tender biscuit, chewing slowly and pondering the wisdom of my refusal to take an ample share of the proffered bounty. My throat was dry, but I came to the conclusion that my decision was sound. Somehow, without even trying, I had made up for the two greedy priests and their feast in Miami's Green Lobster. I examined my travelling companion. She was too fat, at least fifty or sixty pounds too fat. Her short brown hair was tightly curled from a new permanent. Her buttocks and legs were so fat that a goodly portion of her rear end flowed beneath the arm rest and reached well onto my seat. She gobbled away at the potato salad with a small red plastic spoon, stripped long chunks of meat away from various chicken portions with sharp white teeth, and popped whole biscuits into her mouth.

       "You are too fat," I said unpleasantly.

       Her pale blue eyes popped slightly, and she stopped chewing and stared at me.

       "I said you are too fat," I repeated. "What are you doing about it?"

       "I'm trying to cut down, Father," she managed to get out.

       "It doesn't look that way to me."

       "I know I eat too much, Father, but I'm hungry all of the time. The doctor gave me a prescription for Dexedrine, but they made me nervous and I couldn't sleep." She looked at the remainder of the food on her paper plate for a moment, and then covered the plate with a napkin and returned the uneaten food to the wicker hamper.

       "Have you ever tried prayer?" I asked, looking boldly into her eyes. "Are you unhappy? Does your husband admire your obesity? Do you like the way you look?"

       "No, I'm not unhappy, Father, I don't think. My husband kids me about being fat, but he's very kind otherwise. I wish I could lose weight; I really do."

       "Then let us pray," I said, steepling my fingers. The woman was more than a little embarrassed and she looked about to see if any of the other passengers had overheard me. I said it louder. "Let us pray!"

       The woman quickly bent her head and crossed herself. She closed her eyes tightly, and her face turned rose-color.

       "Dear God!" I began. "Help this poor helpless woman in Your infinite wisdom and mercy to get rid of all of that excess flesh she is carrying around. Fat that is destroying her beauty in Your eyes, in the eyes of her husband, and in the eyes of the world. I don't believe, O Lord, I've never seen such a fat woman before in all my born days, and she needs help to dissipate her greed. Greed is the deadliest of all sins, dear, sweet Jesus, and although this woman knows that she is greedy she has found that Dexedrine does not help. Feed her instead, O Lord, on Your blood and bone and flesh so that she can enter the kingdom of Heaven a thinner and more beautiful woman. In Jesus' name, I implore you, O Lord!"

       I finished my prayer and looked at the woman. Tears were streaming down her face, and her eyes were tightly closed. Her breathing was labored, and her chest heaved convulsively.

       "Trent!" the bus driver announced as he braked in front of a small cafe on the edge of the tiny village.

       The fat woman opened her eyes, picked up her hamper, and got to her feet heavily. She turned and looked at me for a long moment, and I stared her down. After dropping her eyes she whispered, "God bless you, Father," picked up the hamper and left the bus.

       I shrugged. Evidently the woman had mistaken me for a Roman Catholic priest. However, I was well pleased with my first forage into the land of the true believers, and with new confidence I slept the rest of the way from Trent to Jax.

       Jax, Florida had a population of approximately 200,000 people. Half of these were Negroes, and the remainder was fairly divided between white people from Georgia and white carpetbaggers from the north and elsewhere. There were also a great many sailors; Jax was one of the main Atlantic stopovers for naval stores and the refueling of Navy ships. The city was considered an excellent port; it was well sheltered from the sea some twelve miles away; there was a wide well-dredged channel in the Saint John's River, and ninety or more bustling piers to take care of ocean-going vessels. In addition to shipping, Jax did a fine business in lumber, concrete blocks, cigars, boat-building and the fashioning of orange crates for the rest of Florida.

       It was a busy, growing city, and although the pace of its inhabitants was a lot slower than those of an eastern city of comparable size, there was great interest in the making of money. Steel towers shot high in to the humid air, pneumatic jack-hammers rattled away, and new motels and insurance companies appeared on the skyline almost daily. The influence of Georgia, however, was everywhere—in the snuff-laden drugstore windows, in the faded straw hats, in seersucker trousers and blue workshirts, and in the selection of music on the juke-boxes. This Florida city was the last stronghold of the white traditional southerner—a city where a northern lawyer in an office building would call a Negro client Mister, and where the same Negro would be arrested if he tried to drink out of a drinking-fountain labeled White.

       I couldn't have cared less. The social conditions and the making of money were none of my concern. All I had to do was to preach an honest sermon for my congregation once a week, and in return, the congregation would provide me with a house, some pin money, and the opportunity to write. This thought was uppermost in my mind as I threaded my way through the crowded bus station to the street.

       I reluctantly parted with $2.98 for a straw hat, but I considered the hat a necessary purchase. A minister of the gospel doesn't go around bareheaded, and I settled for a straw floater instead of a heavy dark fedora. Bing Crosby always wore a straw hat when he played the part of a priest in the movies, and a straw hat with a gaily-colored band added a dash of necessary worldliness to my black, ministerial garb. I returned to the bus station and took my small bag out of the locker, then looked up Dr. Fred Jensen's address in the telephone book. Another problem confronted me. As a minister, was I supposed to take a taxicab, or was I supposed to take a bus? I didn't know where Dr. Jensen's office was physically located even though I had the address, and a taxicab offered an easy solution to getting there with the minimum of effort. I didn't know the city transportation system either, and in my black suit I hesitated to ask anyone. Mine was an all-Negro parish, and at that stage of the game, I was apprehensive about letting any white man in on my new job. There was no reason to be embarrassed, but I didn't like the idea of saying to a stranger, "Pardon me, I am a minister looking for a church."

       After consulting a street map at a nearby filling station, I walked. And I walked for two hours before I found Dr. Jensen's office. His office address was 71714 N. Tremaine Street, and the other three-quarters of the building was a grocery store. The time was 4:42 p.m., and I asked a Negro boy polishing squash if Dr. Jensen was upstairs.

       "I didn't see him leave, Reverend," the boy said, and I climbed the narrow stairway to the dentist's office.

       I have always been more than a little leery of dentists. There is something peculiar about any man who deliberately plans to spend eight hours a day with his fingers in somebody else's mouth. I concede that dentists are necessary, but all the same, there is an area of suspicion about dentists that cannot be ignored. Dr. Fred Jensen, although he was as black as a modern picture frame, resembled other dentists I had known. He maintained an anonymous dignity, a serious countenance, and he had strong, capable hands. As I entered his office—or workshop—he was seated in his dentist's chair, smoking a filtertip cigarette, and gazing pensively out the window.

       "Dr. Jensen?" I inquired.

       The dentist wheeled the chair about with a practiced whipping motion and smiled as he got up to greet me.

       "You caught me napping, Reverend. Yes sir, you sure did!" He laughed pleasantly, deep in his throat, and extended a hand for me to shake.

       "I am the Right Reverend Deuteronomy Springer," I said calmly, surprising myself with the ease of my claim, "and I'm the new pastor of the First Church of God's Flock here in Jax. Abbott Dover told me to contact you upon my arrival, and here I am."

       "That's wonderful!" Jensen said. "Wonderful! We have needed a pastor sorely for many months, ever since the Reverend Wannop passed on to meet his maker, God rest his soul." Jensen rolled his eyes upward.

       "And I am happy to be here," I replied. "Abbott Dover said that I had lived too long in my hermitage, and it was time to preach God's word to those who need it. Is Jax a wicked city, Dr. Jensen?"

       "Yes, sir, it sure is, Reverend. It is just about as wicked a city as anyone could find in a month of Sundays, and you are sorely needed. Now, have you had your supper?"

       "No, I just arrived on the bus from Orangeville, and I walked from the bus station directly to your office."

       "You walked all the way over here?"

       "Of course."

       "I wish you hadn't done that, Reverend. If you had called me on the telephone I would have come over and picked you up in my Buick automobile. But now you're here, and I know you're hungry. Do you like ribs?"

       "I am quite fond of ribs." I admitted.

       "Then we'll go right now over to Jackie's Bar-B-Cue and have some. Jackie Linsey is one of our trustees, and I know he'll want to meet you right away, and I'll call on Mr. Clyde Caldwell to join us. He's the third trustee of our church, and a fine Christian and an excellent barber he is too."

       Dr. Jensen made his telephone call, and twenty minutes later I was sitting in a back booth inside Jackie's Bar-B-Cue Palace with a pile of hickory-smoked spareribs in front of me, and a huge plateful of french fries on the side. Accompanying the meal was a deep dish of cole slaw, well soaked in mayonnaise, a pitcher of iced tea, and the friendly rumble of Dr. Jensen's voice as he plied me with polite questions. Jackie Linsey, a short bald man with a thick middle and narrow shoulders, had pulled a chair up to the table instead of sitting in the booth, and he nursed a cup of black coffee while Jensen and I stripped greasy meat away from the ribs with our teeth.

       Slightly nervous, I was grateful to be eating during the questioning. If I wanted time to answer, I had the perfect excuse of a full mouth to allow an adequate pause to think of a reply.

       My replies to the polite, interested queries were cautious because everything I said was an out-and-out falsehood. It is very easy to lie, but the liar who cannot remember his lies is a liar who gets caught. Dr. Jensen was not an ignorant Negro; I had spotted his degree of dental surgery on the wall in his office. Jackie Linsey had a thriving business in his Bar-B-Cue Palace. In addition to a lively drive-in trade the inside section of the cafe contained seven booths and a dozen tables, most of the seats filled with hungry rib and chicken eaters. Although I was the only white man eating inside, many of the drive-in customers I could see in automobiles through the windows were white men ordering ribs and barbecued chickens to go.