The Truth Is the Light (21 page)

Chapter 46

A
ngela decided to go and visit Ransom Perdue at the nursing home and get this behind her once and for all. It had been two weeks since she'd first seen him, and she needed to quit letting her imagination get the best of her.

“Mister Perdue,” she said after he came into the lobby area. The nurses had called him to let him know there was a visitor to see him. She had used her great-grandmother's name to help sway him not to turn her away as someone he didn't know.

“Yes, ma'am, little lady.”

“It's good to see you again. I don't know if you remember me, but we met briefly when you visited Johnnie Mae Landris's house about two weeks ago. I was leaving when you and your grandson were coming in.” She extended her hand to shake his.

He shook her hand. “Yes, I remember that face. What can I do for you?”

She sat back down. He sat down in the chair next to her. “As I told the nurse who called you, I'm Pearl Black's great-granddaughter. I know that you and she were close friends.”

“That we were. Closer than most who were kin. Your great-grandmother was one of a kind. She was one who would stick by you no matter what. And it didn't matter if you were blood or not. She was like Ruth with Naomi. You don't run into folks like Pearl much anymore. She was a gentle woman who could get in your face if she needed to and get you told off without you even realizing you'd been told off until a little while later. I told her once that she could cut you and cure you with the same swipe of a blade. That's the Pearl I knew. She was a beautiful woman, just like you. I hope me saying that ain't out of order or doesn't offend you.”

Angela smiled. “No, Mister Perdue, it isn't and it doesn't.”

“ 'Cause I know folks can be accused of sexual harassment nowadays, just for what they think was a compliment. I don't mean no harm. Although, I will admit that a lot of stuff folks do nowadays and even back in my day goes a little too far. When I was coming up, it was all right to tell a pretty lady she was pretty. Now, you have to be careful. And please call me Gramps. Everybody else does. This Mister Perdue stuff messes with me. Unless, of course, I don't know you; then Mister Perdue is right appropriate.”

“Okay . . . Gramps.” She smiled. “My great-grandmother was the one who raised me,” Angela said, “since I was a little girl. My mother died when I was five, and Great-granny stepped right in and took care of me just like I was her own child.”

“I'm sorry to hear that about your mother. And I know most times, it's the grandmothers that do the stepping in.” He said it as though he was posing a question.

“My grandmother wasn't around. It's sort of a long story.”

“I know about long stories. I just learned a couple of weeks ago that what I believed to be true about my own mother wasn't at all the truth. It's something how folks can take a truth and turn it into a lie.”

“I remember my great-granny talking about you. She told how her mother was the midwife that delivered you. She said you had ‘gifted' hands, that you could take a piece of wood and other material and make the most beautiful things out of them. I told her you were an alchemist. She liked when I used big words that she understood easily. I saw one of the boxes you made.”

“The Wings of Grace box,” Gramps said. “Those boxes I made all them years ago have almost made me into some kind of a legend. Is there anybody who doesn't know about them?” he joked.

“They have become somewhat famous in their own right. Great-granny had the one apparently Sarah Fleming had given to her for safekeeping. That was how we met Johnnie Mae Landris. Great-granny was so excited. She'd never met an author before. She was so impressed that a ‘real live' author had come to visit her at her house.”

“Mrs. Landris is an author?”

“Yes, sir. Except her books still carry the name she used when she first started out being published. I think she does that in order not to lose readers who may think the new books are by a different author other than herself. Her books are published under the name Johnnie Mae Taylor.”

“Well, I'm not
real
big on readin'. But I bought one book and have kept it with me down through the years. A book I got autographed by an Ernest J. Gaines fellow.”

“I bet I know which one it is.
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
.”

“Yep,” he said with a smile. “I came across that book and it rang so true for me. My copy is a little tattered, but I still have it. It's in a trunk here with me now.”

“You were telling me about your mother and how you learned something wasn't true that you believed to be true,” Angela said as she was trying to figure out how to bring up the topic of family with him. “I would love to hear about that. I mean, I heard Great-granny tell the story a few times about how you came to have the name Ransom.”

“Yeah, I heard that tale when I was younger. How my mother was giving birth to me. How the midwife, Pearl's mother, had put scissors under my mother's mattress to ease the pain. How she'd motioned for them to bring her the Bible, her turning the pages and pointing to a word in the Bible, thinking that any word in the Bible had to be a good word. How she died with her finger on the word
ransom
in Matthew 20:28. Told them that was my name. It was a good story, used to make me proud to carry around the name of Ransom. But I just learned that
that
story couldn't possibly be true.”

“Why not?”

“My mother that supposed to have died during childbirth didn't die. My mother was actually a colored woman named Adele Powell who had passed for white. When she learned she was pregnant, she knew it was her husband's, but she was afraid if she gave birth to me in the white community and I came out even with a tinge of blackness, her husband would think she'd done something with a colored man. So she sought out the black community when she went into labor. She lied about why she was there. The midwife delivered me—”

“In truth, she was my great-great-grandmother,” Angela said when she actually thought about it.

He nodded, agreeing now that he'd thought about it in those terms. “Yeah. Anyway, she did what most colored folks did in cases like that. I guess to keep the lie from totally exploding in anyone's face, she made me up a birth past and found me a home. As a child, who's going to question that? Especially back in those days. Some of the grown folks usually know the whole truth, but there was a time when children weren't told grown folks' business. We could be seen but not heard. And if no one ever told the real story, generations of folks grew up with lies or cover-ups presented as their truths.”

“Yeah.” Angela opened up her purse and slowly pulled out the photo of the man standing by a young version of her great-granny. “I found this in a box that Great-granny specifically left before she died.” She handed the photo to Gramps. “It must have been important or meant something special to her.”

He took it and adjusted his glasses better. He smiled. “That's my old Pearl. She could be a little sassy when she wanted to be. I loved that woman, I truly did. God didn't make many like Pearl, although I've found one woman in here with a little sass at times.”

“I agree,” Angela said. “Do you recognize that man standing beside her? Would that happen to be you?”

He frowned. “I've never seen
this
specific photo before,” he said. “You know Samuel L. Williams and I were the best of friends. Samuel always had my back. Good old Samuel.”

“Great-granny married Samuel Williams.”

“She did? Well, I'll be. Pearl married Samuel? I never suspected
that
would happen.”

“Yeah. Samuel was my great-grandfather. They had four children.”

“Well, I'll be. We all used to hang out together. The three musketeers: Samuel, Pearl, and me. We loved going to this place called Candy Land, hanging out at the Young Men's Institute, especially the library. It was one of those books at the library that gave me the idea of making those wooden carved boxes folks call Wings of Grace. I saw something like it in a book.”

Angela pressed her lips together tightly. She had been mistaken. That was her great-grandfather in the photo. The man Arletha resembled was actually Samuel L. Williams. Well, at least she hadn't mentioned her suspicions to anyone else besides Brent. She at least hadn't tarnished her great-grandmother's name or memory by blabbing her thoughts to the people who knew her great-granny, like her grandmother or Johnnie Mae.

She was thankful that God had kept her from flying off the handle with what she had just now learned was an incorrect conclusion.

Chapter 47

P
astor Landris didn't look at the check or the envelope of money when he got home Sunday night. He'd placed both along with his check from his own church in his top drawer of his nightstand and spent the rest of the night doing things with his family. Mondays were his day off. He got up and ate a nice breakfast with Johnnie Mae and the children before they went to school. Johnnie Mae also took Mondays off, most days not even writing her book, unless of course she was under a heavy deadline and it couldn't be avoided. Pastor Landris enjoyed his alone time with his wife.

That was why their marriage worked so well. They spent time together and didn't allow life to suck everything away from them being able to sow into each other's lives. They had date nights and days, when he would ask her out, then treat her the way he did when he was trying to woo her before they were married. It wasn't a matter of keeping her by doing what he'd done to get her. It was taking it to another level, and doing things with purpose, on purpose. That's what he told those in his congregation who were married. He believed if you preach it, then you should be practicing what you preach.

So, while Johnnie Mae was getting dressed for the day, he was getting his bank deposit slip ready, ensuring that he made copies of all checks, regardless of whether he would receive a W-2 or 1099 statement from a group at the end of the year or not. He kept meticulous records of every dollar he was given, no matter how large or small. It drove Stanley, his personal accountant, crazy.

“We don't need to record every single dollar someone gives you,” Stanley said in the beginning when he would get Pastor Landris's weekly tally. Still, he kept on doing it.

Pastor Landris opened the envelope with his salaried check from the church and wrote that amount on the deposit slip. He then opened the check he'd received from preaching at Divine Conquerors Church. His eyebrows rose when he saw the amount. One thousand dollars was more than he was expecting for speaking there.

In fact, he hadn't spoken there for the money at all. He was genuinely trying to meet Reverend Walker halfway so they could move to a better relationship. It didn't bode well when preachers acted like the world, seemingly envious or jealous, unforgiving, and malicious in some of their actions. They were supposed to be an example to their family, to their flock, and to anyone in the world who just might be watching.

Pastor Landris recorded that amount, then opened the envelope full of cash. The first bill was a hundred-dollar bill. The next bill was a hundred, and the next one . . . the exact same thing. With each shedding, there was a hundred-dollar bill beneath it. It was like peeling an onion—each layer, though different, was pretty much the same. When he saw that from start to finish there were nothing but hundreds, he started over, this time actually counting them as though they were ones. When he finished, there were two hundred hundred-dollar bills stuffed inside that one envelope: $20,000.

“What's wrong?” Johnnie Mae asked when she walked into the bedroom fully dressed in a gorgeous black and gold velveteen jogging suit and caught him pacing.

“This,” he said, waving the envelope with the money inside.

“What is it?”

He pulled the money out and handed it to her. She looked and saw one-hundred-dollar bills throughout. “How much is this?” she asked, her hand over her heart to calm it.

“Twenty thousand dollars.”

“Are you sure?” she said, looking at it again. “Of course you're sure.” She handed it back to him. “Where did that come from?”

He put the money back inside the envelope and threw the envelope onto the bed. “Yesterday, after I finished preaching, Reverend Walker gave it to me.”

“Why? Why would he give you that much money? Although I do personally know that some preachers, the mega preachers especially, are making even more than that to speak. But not cash. They're not being paid in cash. At least, I don't believe so.”

“This is a setup, Johnnie Mae. I feel it in my spirit just as sure as I'm standing here. If you're going to pay me that much money to speak, you wouldn't pay it in untraceable cash. The church wrote me a check for a thousand dollars.”

“Maybe Reverend Walker didn't think it was enough,” Johnnie Mae said. “You know, he recognizes you're larger than even
you
realize. Maybe when he saw that it was only a thousand dollars, he-he—” she stammered. “You're right. It doesn't make sense.”

“Well, at least you were trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.” Pastor Landris shook his head. “He's up to something, and it's not good. Well, I'm taking this money and giving it
right
back to him. If it's a legitimate gift from someone, as he claimed it was, then he's going to have to tell me who gave it to him. And I'm going to make certain that person knows I'm reporting every single dollar of this.”

“Okay, Landris. You do what you feel you need to do,” Johnnie Mae said.

“You're not going to be mad at me, are you? For standing you up on our day out.”

“No,” she said with a pleasant tone. She rubbed his arm with her hand. “You take care of your business. I'm with you all the way. We don't need something like this hanging over our heads. If it is on the up-and-up, at least you need to have peace about it. If somebody really is trying to set you up, then slap a little Isaiah 54:17 on them. ‘No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper.' The devil is a lie! He's already defeated, in the name of Jesus.”

Pastor Landris leaned down, caressed her face, then kissed his wife. “I love you so much,” he said. He kissed her again, then went and retrieved the envelope of money off the bed, smiled at her once more, winked, and left.