Deacon King Kong(108)

“And that’s how Five Ends got there.”

Sportcoat listened, his eye squinting in concentration. “You reckon you still remember that fella’s name?” he asked.

Sister Paul drew a shallow breath and leaned her head back in the wheelchair. “I remember his name rightly. One of the finest men I ever knowed. Old Guido Elefante.”

“The Elephant?”

“No. The Elephant’s daddy.”



* * *





Sportcoat felt thirsty again. He rose from his chair at the window, picked up the empty water pitcher, and went to the bathroom, where he filled it up again, drank it down, then returned and sat by the window.

“Honest to my savior, if it wasn’t you telling it, I’d say you was stretching my blanket. That’s the strangest thing I ever heard,” he said.

“It’s the God’s truth. And that ain’t all of it. Not only did old man Guido let us have our lot for six thousand dollars. No bank would loan us nothing. We took out a mortgage with him. We stepped on that lot without spending a penny to nobody’s bank. We gave him four hundred dollars and got to digging: me and my husband done a little, but it was mostly my Edie, Rufus, and Hettie. Sister Gee’s parents, and the Cousins’ parents, they come along later. In the beginning it was mostly us. We didn’t get far. We didn’t have no machines nor money for none. We dug by shovel. We done what we could.

“One afternoon Mr. Guido seen us digging and came by with one of them big tractor things and dug out the entire foundation, including the basement. He done it in three days. Didn’t say a mumbling word. He never did talk much. Never said much to nobody but me, and he didn’t waste too many words on me neither. But we was grateful for him.

“After we started bricking up the walls with cinder block, he stopped by again and pulled me aside and said, ‘I wants to repay you for what you done.’

“I says, ‘You done it. We building a church.’

“He says, ‘You got a mortgage on that church with me. I will give you the land if you let me set a gift inside the church.’

“I said, ‘You don’t have to do nothing. We gonna buy the land over time.’

“He said, ‘You don’t have to. I will give it to you. Take the note and burn it if you want.’

“I said, ‘Well, I don’t know nothing about burning no notes, Mr. Guido. We owes you fifty-six hundred dollars on a straight mortgage to you. We’ll pay you free and clear in a few years.’

“He says, ‘I ain’t got a few years. I will tear the mortgage up right now if you let me put something beautiful on the back wall of the church.’

“I said, ‘Is you saved to Jesus?’

“That tied him up. He said, ‘I can’t lie. I am not. But I got a friend who is. I got to save something for him. I made a promise to him to keep something for him. I plan to keep that promise. I wanna get somebody to draw a picture on the back wall of the church where he can see it, so that when he comes by this church someday, or his children, or his children’s children come by, they’ll look at it and know it’s there on account of me and that I kept my word.’ He said wouldn’t nobody know about it but us—me and him.

“Well, I talked about it with my husband, for he was the pastor of the church. He tried to talk to old Guido hisself, but the old Italian wouldn’t say a word to him. Not a mumbling word did he say to my husband or nobody else at Five Ends. I seen him talk to the building inspector from the city who came around saying you have to do thus and so when we was getting ready to build. I don’t know what was said there, but that inspector needed talking to ’cause you just can’t build nothing in New York by saying it, not even back in them days. You had to go through the city. Well, Mr. Guido talked to him. But not a word did he waste on nobody colored but me, to my knowing. So my husband finally said, ‘If it’s okay by you, it’s okay by me, since you is the only one he talks to.’

“So I went to Mr. Elefante and said, ‘Okay, do what you want.’

“A couple of days later he come by with three of his Italian men and them fellas got to work bricking that cinder block. They knowed their business, so we left them to it and worked the inside. We put down the floor and finished the roof. That’s how it went. They worked the outside. We worked the inside. Colored and white working together.

“After Mr. Elefante’s men built the walls about waist high, he come to me at lunch—” She paused and then corrected herself. “Well, that ain’t right. I came to him at lunch. See, those days when we broke for lunch, the Italians went one way to eat at home and the colored went the other. But I always made Mr. Guido a little something for lunch ’cause he didn’t eat much, and I’d bring it back to him a few minutes early because he hardly didn’t go to lunch. I come back early one afternoon and found him working as usual, bricking up that back wall. When I walked up on him, he says, ‘Is you alone?’

“I said, ‘I just brought you some vittles ’cause I know you don’t eat.’

“He looked around to make sure nobody was about, then said, ‘I got something to show you. It’s a good-luck charm.’

“He brung this little metal box and opened it. He said, ‘This is the thing that bought your church land.’”