Deacon King Kong(118)

When they was building the garden in back of the church, Sport come to me. He said, “Sausage, there’s something you ought to know about that Jesus picture out yonder in the back of the church. I got to tell somebody.”

I said, “What is it?”

Sport said, “I don’t quite know what to call that thing. And I don’t wanna know. But whatever it was, it belonged to the Elephant. He found it in that wall and paid the church a whole truckload of money to reclaim it—more money than any Christmas box could hold. So you don’t have to worry about Deems no more. Or none of his people. Or the Christmas money. The Elephant done took care of it.”

I said, “What about the policeman?”

“What the Elephant got to do with the police? That’s his business.”

I said, “Sport, I ain’t studying the Elephant. I’m talking about the police. They still looking for you.”

He said, “Let ’em look. I been talking to Hettie.”

I said, “You been drinking?”’Cause he was always mostly drunk when he talked to Hettie. He said, “No. I don’t need to drink to see her, Sausage. I see her clear as day now. We gets along like when we was young. I was a better man back then. I miss drinking. But I like being a man with my wife now. We don’t fight now. We talks like the old days.”

“What y’all talk about now?”

“Mostly Five Ends. She loves that old church, Sausage. She wants it to grow. She wanted me to fix that garden behind the church and grow moonflowers for the longest time. I married a good woman, Sausage. But I made some bad choices.”

“Well, that’s all behind you,” I said. “You done cleaned up.”

“Naw,” he said. “I ain’t cleaned up. The Lord might not give me redemption, Sausage. I can’t stop drinking. I ain’t drunk a drop yet, but I wanna drink again. I’m gonna drink again.”

And here he pulled a bottle of King Kong out his pocket. The good stuff. Rufus’s homemade.

I said, “You don’t wanna do that, Sport.”

“Yes I do. And I’m gonna. But I’mma tell you this, Sausage. Hettie was so happy when I got to do the garden over behind the church. That was something she always dreamed about. Not for herself. She wanted them moonflowers and the big garden with all them plants and things behind the church not for herself—but for me. And when I got the church to agree on it, I told her, ‘Hettie, them moonflowers is coming soon.’

“But instead of being happy, she growed sad and said, ‘I’mma tell you something, darling, that I shouldn’t tell you. When you finish that garden, you won’t see me no more.’

“I said, ‘What you mean?’

“She said, ‘Once it’s done. Once them moonflowers is in, I’m gone to glory.’ Then before I could kick at it, she said, ‘What’s gonna become of Pudgy Fingers?’

“I told her, ‘Well, Hettie, it approaches my mind like this. What is a woman but her labor and her children? God put us all here to work. You was a Christian gal when I married you. And all the forty years I carried on drinking and making a fool of myself, there wasn’t a lazy bone in your body. You raised Pudgy Fingers good. You was strict to yourself and true to me and to Pudgy Fingers, and he will be strong in his life for it.’

“Truth be told, Sausage, Hettie couldn’t bear no children. Pudgy Fingers wasn’t hers. He come to her before I come to New York. I was still back home in South Carolina. She was in New York by herself waiting for me in Building Nine. She opened the apartment door one morning and seen Pudgy Fingers roaming the hallway. He wasn’t but five or six, wandering around, trying to get downstairs to the blind children’s bus. She knocked on the lady’s door where he lived and the lady said, ‘Can you keep him till Monday? I got to go to my brother’s in the Bronx.’ She ain’t seen hide nor hair of that woman since.

“When I come here, Hettie already had herself a child. I never made no bones about it. I loved Pudgy Fingers. I didn’t know how he come. For all I know, Pudgy Fingers could’ve been Hettie’s blood from some other man. But I trusted her, and she knowed my heart. So I said to her, ‘The Cousins is gonna take Pudgy Fingers. I can’t care for him.’

“She said, ‘All right.’

“I said, ‘Is you worried about him? Is that why you hung about?’

“She said, ‘I ain’t worried about him. I’m worried about you. Because I was born again unto the Word, and that gives me strength. Has you got that?’

“I says, ‘I has got it. Been born again to the Word for a whole year and then some. I said I was before, but I wasn’t. But I am now.’

“‘Then I’m finished here. I loves you for God’s sake, Cuffy Lambkin. Not for my sake. Not for your sake. But for God’s sake.’ And then she was gone. And I ain’t seen her since.”

He was still holding that bottle of Kong when he told me this, and here he uncorked it. Didn’t sip it. Just unscrewed the cap and said, “I wanna drink this whole thing down.” Then he said to me, “Walk with me, Sausage.”

He was acting funny, so I went on, and we walked down to Vitali Pier, the same spot where he pulled Deems out the harbor. We walked down to the water, and standing on the sand there, I gived him the news on Deems. I said, “Sport, Deems called me. He’s doing good in triple-A ball. Said he’s gonna make it to the big leagues in about a month or so.”