Deacon King Kong(51)

“If you gonna come at me hanking about what happened at Soup’s party today, don’t bother,” he said.

She chortled bitterly. “I don’t care what you done,” she said. “Fact is, when you walk about being spit on, it don’t much matter what else you think you done.”

“Who spit on me? Nobody spit on me.”

“You spit on yourself.”

“Get gone with that foolishness. I’m going to work.”

“Well git on then.”

“If it pleases me to stop for a bracer while I ruminates on getting my baseball game going again, that’s my business.”

“That game don’t mean nothing to these children around here,” she said soberly.

“How would you know? You didn’t see a game I umped in ten years.”

“You didn’t invite me in ten years,” she said.

That stumped him. Like most things he did most of his adult life, he couldn’t remember exactly what happened, largely because he was drunk at the time, so he said, “I was the best umpire the Cause Houses ever seen. I gived joy to everyone.”

“Except your own wife.”

“Oh hush.”

“I was lonely in my marriage,” she said.

“Stop complaining, woman! Food on the table. Roof over our heads. What else you want? Where’s the damn church money, by the way? I’m in a heap of trouble on account of it!”

He lifted the Kong to his lips and gulped down a long swallow. She watched him silently, then after a moment said, “Some of it’s not your fault.”

“Sure ain’t. You the one hid that money.”

“I ain’t talking about that,” she said, almost pensively. “I’m talking about the old days when you was a child. Everything ever said to you or done to you back then was at the expense of your own dignity. You never complained. I loved that about you.”

“Oh, woman, leave my people out of it. They long dead.”

She watched him thoughtfully. “And now here you are,” she said sadly, “an old man funning around a ball field, making folks laugh. Even the boys don’t follow you no more.”

“They’ll follow me plenty when I get ’em back on the field. But I got to get off the hook ’bout them Christmas Club chips first. You kept the money in a little green box, I remember that. Where’s the box?”

“The church got plenty money.”

“You mean the box in the church?”

“No, honey. It’s in God’s hands. In the palm of His hand, actually.”

“Where’s it at, woman?!”

“You ought to trade your ears in for some bananas,” she said, irritated now.

“Stop talking in circles, dammit! Pastor declares the church got three thousand dollars in claims for that money. We got liars falling out of the trees now. There’s more folks at Five Ends on Sunday mornings hankering about that money than you’d see in a month of Easter Sundays. Every one of ’em’s got eyes for that box. Digs Weatherspoon says he got four hundred dollars in there, and that fool ain’t had two nickels to rub together since Methuselah got married. What I’mma do about that?”

She sighed. “When you love somebody, their words oughta be important enough for you to listen.”

“Stop lumping on about nothing!”

“I’m telling you what you wanna hear, fool.”

Then she was gone.

He sat in a huff for several minutes. There was no money in the church. He and Hot Sausage had searched the small building a dozen times. He felt thirsty and turned the bottle of Kong, only to discover it was dry. But there were other joy juice hiding places in that basement. He rose, dropped to one knee, and ran his hand under a nearby cupboard, finding it bare, then heard, over his shoulder, the sound of the door opening and saw the back of Hot Sausage’s head as Sausage walked in and strode out of sight behind a large generator on the other side of the room. He said, “Sausage?”

There was no answer. He could hear Sausage grunt and the clattering of tools being moved around. So he said, “You ain’t got to hide from me. There was three bottles of Kong down here to my recollection.”

As if in answer, there was a sparking sound and the huge generator fired up with a roar, the sound filling the room. Sportcoat rose and shuffled around to the side of the generator to find Hot Sausage nearly prone on the floor, stretched out with his head inside the motor of the same model of ancient roaring electric generator that befuddled Rufus in the Watch Houses boiler room. Sausage stretched out on his hip sideways, offered a quick sullen glance, then turned his attention back to the generator, which sputtered unhappily.

Sportcoat grabbed a crate and slid next to him. Sausage had removed his porkpie hat. His blue Housing Authority uniform was ragged and grease stained. He glanced at Sportcoat again, then back to the roaring engine. He didn’t say a word.

Sportcoat yelled over the din. “I’m sorry, Sausage. I’ll go to the police myself to straighten it out. I’ll explain it all and ask ’em to tell me how long I have to leave town.”

Sausage, peering into the roaring engine, chuckled. “You a doggone fool.”

“I didn’t mean in no way, shape, or form to get you mixed up in no nonsense, Sausage.”