Deacon King Kong(116)

“I don’t know why I have the desire to mind other folks’ business,” she said. “That’s the child in me, I reckon. But then again, life takes ahold of you as soon as you leave your mother. I don’t know what it is. But the older I get, the more I become what I really am. Do you find that, Sausage?” she asked.

Hot Sausage frowned. “Sister Gee, I’m all tuckered out. If you’s in the mood to start chunking away about dirt and the ways of man and things that happened in Chattanooga back in 1929 that you read about in a book someplace, we can go at this tomorrow.”

“The truth will be the same tomorrow,” she said. “It just won’t take as long to tell it.”

Hot Sausage spread his hands. “What’s there to know? The man is dead. He drunk hisself to death.”

“Then the booze got him? It’s really true?” she said.

“It is.”

It was as if an anvil had dropped on her. Her shoulders sagged, and Sausage saw, for the first time that day—after hours of handling the funeral ceremony, playing the puppeteer for her inept husband, arranging the flowers, calming the Cousins, comforting the bereaved, distributing the programs, arranging the manner of service, greeting the people, dealing with the cops, the firemen, the parking, essentially doing her husband’s job in a dying church, a church that, like many around them, was held up more and more by women like her—her deep, heartfelt sorrow. She bowed her head and covered her face with open palms, and as she did so her own pain unsealed his, and he swallowed, clearing his throat.

They sat in silence a long moment, her face covered with her hands. When she took her hands away, he saw that her face was wet where the tears had smudged her makeup.

“I thought he licked it,” she said.

Sausage beat back his own sorrow and considered the situation. He thought it through quickly. His chance for a night frolic with Sister Bibb, he realized, was ruined. He was too tired for some action anyway. Sister Bibb would wear him down to a nub. He might as well tell what he knew. When it came down to it, he saw no harm in it. Sister Gee had done a lot for him. And the church. For all of them. She deserved better. He spoke up.

“Well, it is true,” he said. “And it isn’t.”

Sister Gee looked startled. “What?”

“All of it. And none of it.”

“What are you talking about? Did he drink himself to death or not?”

Sausage scratched his head slowly. “No. He did not.”

“How did he land in the harbor? That’s where somebody said they found him. Did he jump in there?”

“No he did not! I did not see him jump in no harbor!”

Sister Gee demanded, “What the hell happened then?”

Sausage frowned and said, “I can only tell you what happened after I come outta the hospital, for that’s when I seen him in his right mind.”

“Well?”

Sausage continued: “After I got out, I found Sportcoat. He was at his place. He wasn’t arrested. He wasn’t in jail. Cops hadn’t talked to him, not even your friend the sergeant who come to the service today. Sport was walking around free. First thing he told me when I seen him was, ‘Sausage, I quit drinking.’ Well, I didn’t believe him. Then I didn’t see him no more for a few days. That’s when the Elephant come around. Now from there, you know more’n I do, Sister Gee. For you was the one that the Elephant spoke to. You and Sport. I don’t know what you all three talked about, for the building of Five Ends Baptist come before my time. But Sport was talking crazy at the end. I thought it was on account of him stopping drinking.”

“It wasn’t that,” Sister Gee said. “He wanted to rebuild the garden behind the church, make a garden full of moonflowers back there. That’s where the idea to build the garden in the church come from. It wasn’t my idea or Mr. Elefante’s. That came from Sportcoat.”

“Why’s that?”

Sister Gee nodded at the back wall of the church, newly repaired and painted. “Mr. Elefante had something in that wall that belonged to his father. That old painting on the back wall that you all mucked up by trying to make Jesus colored wasn’t just some old painting. It’s a copy of something famous. Mr. Elefante wrote it down on a piece of paper. He showed it to me. It was something called Last Judgment. By an Italian man named Giotto.”

“Giotto? Like Jell-O?”

“I’m serious, Sausage. He’s a famous painter and that’s a famous painting and right there on the back of our church was a copy of it. For twenty-two years.”

“Well, if Mr. Gelato got famous out of it and he’s long dead, I ought to be famous too. Fact is, me and Sport painted that thing nice for your husband some years back, when he wanted to make Jesus colored.”

“I remember that ruination,” Sister Gee said. “There was something inside the painting that Mr. Elefante wanted. It was hidden in the cinder block right behind Jesus’s hand.”

“What was it?”

“I didn’t see it. From what Sister Paul said, it was a fancy box with a bar of soap in it.”

“Wasn’t no gold, or cash, or rocks?” Hot Sausage said.

“Rocks?”

“Jewels.”

“Nope. Well, the box had a doll in it. A little statue. Shaped like a fat lady. The color of brown soap, Sister Paul said. They call her the Venus of something or other.”