Tambourines to Glory (9 page)

S
moldering coals plus quick young sparks produce murky fires beneath the grills of love. Laura had purchased her new nightgowns. But even in her cold old room before they moved, Buddy did not wear pajamas, never. “I sleep too restless,” he said. Meanwhile Laura had changed the lock on her kitchenette door before she moved, and she had stopped giving out keys. Only one to Buddy, and a key to the Cadillac for him when the car was delivered. After all, Buddy had gotten her—and Essie—the apartment to move into as soon as the building would be completed. Oh, happy moving day!

“I’m your stick man,” said Buddy, brown head on white pillow with a white cigarette between his chocolate lips. “I’ve got your extra dice up my sleeve. The Reed Sisters, ha! Some nerve! The
greatest gospel team in the business. Got to give it to you-all! And you’re the slick one—I admire you, kid. But any angles you women don’t know, or can’t work, Laura, leave to Papa Buddy.”

“Chocolate boy with the coconut eyes,” cooed Laura, “kiss me.”

“I just got through kissing you,” said Buddy. “Listen, Marty give me a new idea for you-all the other day.”

“You told me about us maybe doing TV programs with the chorus, and getting our gospel quartet on the air, building them up for a night club act after we get our bigger church.”

“Naw, not that,” said Buddy, offering Laura a puff from his Camel. “Something easier.”

“What?”

“Numbers.”

“What do you mean, numbers?” cried Laura. “We can’t write no numbers in the church.”

“Not write ’em, baby, just pronounce ’em,” drawled Buddy.

“Pronounce them?”

“Give numbers out in services. You know, you-all got a mighty big following here in Harlem, and when you move to that old theatre you’ll have a bigger—”

“Do you think we’re really gonna get that empty old theatre? I hear it’s condemned.”

“Leave it to Marty. With a white man to front for you, baby, you can get anything. Leave it to me and Marty. Marty can get your records played on the air. Marty can get you a lot of recording dates, and he knows a juke box combine. You’ll be interviewed on Doc Wheeler’s Gospel Show, aw, baby you’ll go places. Now, if you’d just eliminate Essie.”

“Buddy, we—”

“O. K., skip it. But I’m going to start working on this record deal soon. The Ward Sisters have sold a million copies of their records. So did Mahalia. With a thousand-seat theatre to fill—”

“Church,” corrected Laura.

“Church to fill—you gonna need a bigger draw than just singing and praying. Let the word get around that you give out lucky digits every Sunday—and it will be full.”

“Buddy, Essie wouldn’t even let me mention numbers in our pulpit.”

“You won’t need to mention numbers. But, anyhow, we gonna have to get rid of Essie—in due time. She’s too straight. In fact, she’s so straight, she’s square. But right now, that’s neither here nor there. You won’t have to mention numbers, not in the gambling sense. You just give out some holy hymns from the pulpit, or Bible texts with three numbers, that’s all, and let the folks write the numbers down. What happens after that is not your business, nor Essie’s. If they play ’em, then they play ’em. See, I’ll get the bartenders and the poolhall boys to spread the word around that one of your figures hit for big money the very next week, whether it did or not. From then on, your church will be packed, believe me, baby.”

“Big-Eyed Buddy, boy, you got an idea,” said Laura kissing him square on the lips as his cigarette in his enormous hand hung over the side of the bed.

“Marty’s idea,” said Buddy. “Him and his syndicate back the biggest numbers bank in Manhattan. But lately business has been slow, particularly in Harlem. High prices and everything, folks are not playing as much as they used to. It needs a shot in the arm—like Marty’s uncle says that minister back in the twenties, who used to give out lucky numbers in his pulpit, gave the
whole setup. Hundreds of Harlem saints took down the numbers of his hymns—Lucky Hymns—every Sunday and played them all week long. Get the point?”

“Um-hum,” hummed Laura. “If that minister had lucky hymns, I could have texts—Lucky Texts.”

“Laura Reed’s Lucky Texts,” mused Buddy. “And each time you give out a text, pass the tambourine for a quarter, else the players won’t be lucky the next day.”

“And I wouldn’t get mine either,” said Laura, “without the tambourines.”

“Baby, that’ll add a few more hundreds regular to the bank account every week—and the government can’t tax no church income.”

“Amen!” said Laura.

“Amen’s right, baby,” purred Buddy, putting an electric arm around her neck and drawing her close. “I want you to get me a red Caddy, sports model, convertible.”

“Ain’t one Cadillac in the family enough, sugar?”

“I never did like dark-colored cars like yours,” he murmured, rolling over. “How about it, baby? You know damn well I got a birthday next month.”

“Well, maybe …”

Without moving his lips from hers, Buddy reached up to turn out the light at the head of the bed, so Laura did not finish her sentence.

STRAY CATS, STRAY DOGS

“I
nto my church, yes. Into my home, maybe. But into my bed, no!” said Essie squatting on a kitchen chair in their new apartment. “I takes no stray cats.”

“If you’re gonna throw a hint, throw it clean,” said Laura. “I know you’re talking about Buddy.”

“He’s too good-looking to be any good, anyhow,” said Essie. “That boy was cut out for a pimp.”

“He’s got higher ideas,” said Laura. “In fact, he’s got more than ideas. He’s got get-up-and-go, do something about things—which is more than some people I know ever had. Besides, Buddy’s no stray cat. He’s young, he’s healthy, he’s smart, he’s clean.”

“But he ain’t no saint. If he’s so interested in our church, why don’t he get religion?”

“Converted? Buddy?” Laura started to laugh. Then she said, thoughtfully, “He would if I told him to.”

“You’re not the one to do the telling,” said Essie. “That’s the spark that comes from God.”

“Through me and you in our temple,” said Laura, “I believe I’ll spark up a few sparks and see what I can do with Buddy.”

“You know,” mused Essie, “I took in a stray dog once, so frisky and friendly in the street, and clean-looking. After I had him two or three days around home—this were down in Richmond—I found out that that dog had everything a hound could have. He was so frisky and leaped and jumped so much because he had worms. He scooted and slid across the floor so funny because he had the itching piles. He sneezed so cute because he had distemper. Also he had fleas. Besides, when I took that dog to the vet’s and paid out my good ten dollars, the man said he had a patch of ringworm behind his ear, which is catching to children and humans. I had to get rid of that dog I had taken into my home. Another time I took a kitten borned of an alley cat, but cute. That kitten grew up to claw one of my neighbor’s children in the face, bit me, and had a temper like a tiger. Stray cats, stray dogs, stray people, you can never tell about ’em,” said Essie. “You can never tell.”

“We got a church full of ’em,” said Laura, “and ain’t but one turned out bad—that boy that used to come damn near every night to sing and pray, then would go off down the street and light a fire in somebody’s house and try to burn them up. Thank God, he never lit no fire in our church before they caught him. I would hate to see my Garden of Eden burnt up.”

“When peoples is under the spell of Christ, they most in generally behaves themselves,” stated Essie. “But even religion do not touch every heart in time to save it from a life of hellishness
and hell. Look how long it took Crow-For-Day to get converted and do right—in his sixty-fifth year before he found salvation—because he told me himself he lied when he said he was only sixty on the night of his conversion.”

“Crow’s a right good old deacon, even if he did start out his first testimony with a lie. But what’s a year more or less? If I told my right age, some folks would be startled.”

“Big-Eyed Buddy, for instance,” said Essie.

“Lay off my king-size Hershey bar,” said Laura. “Buddy’s gonna be my business manager.”

“You can have him,” said Essie.

“My idea man! That boy’s got ways of making loot I ain’t never knew existed—also of making love. And if I have my way I’m gonna wrap him up in money like a Hershey bar is wrapped in tin foil.”

“Loot, loot, and likker, his speed!”

“Unholy trinity,” said Laura. “I think I ought to bring that man to the fold. Imagine what a shouting there would be if Buddy got converted some Sunday!”

“What about Monday?”

“Meaning by that?”

“You should be as good on Monday as you are on Sunday.”

“Buddy
is
sort of untamable like, ain’t he?”

“Stray cats, stray dogs, stray people!” said Essie.

“But are you forgetting what we said in the beginning, Sister Saintly—that our aim was to save them
lower
down than us?” asked Laura. “You done got on a mighty high horse of late, Miss Essie. I hope you don’t be riding for a fall.”

Having the last word and already at the door, Laura withdrew, breasts higher than ever, head higher still.

GOD’S MARQUEE

“N
ot quite a year,” said Laura, dusting off the Bible preparatory to evening services, “and already we got a little church and a big apartment. Soon we gonna have a big church. Essie, I signed the lease on that old showhouse today.”

“It look mighty rundown to me.”

“They gonna paint it up, turn the stage into a rostrum, and put our names in big lights outside where it used to say J
OAN
C
RAWFORD IN
T
HE
L
OVES OF
P
ASSION
, or some such jive. We’re gonna fix up that big room down under the stage for the robing room. And you and me’ll have dressing rooms down there, too, when they get ’em built. But I guess I can robe with the choir at first—except we ain’t gonna call it a choir no more after
we move. We gonna call it the Tambourine Chorus, and our church the Tambourine Temple.”

“Which was whose idea?” asked Essie.

“Buddy’s,” said Laura. “He’s an idea man! We’re gonna get two pianos, one on either side of the stage—rostrum—and everybody in the chorus will have a tambourine.”

“I bet Birdie’ll buy herself a new set of drums.”

“She’ll pay for ’em herself, too,” said Laura, “much as she has to run to the toilet during services. That woman must have had a busted bladder once.”

“Birdie Lee had a hard life before she come back to Jesus,” said Essie.

“She’s one of your stray cats for true,” said Laura.

“ ‘Our church has no doors,’ you stated yourself out there on that corner, Laura.”

“There comes that little old varmint of a Birdie Lee now,” said Laura. “Look, she’s heading straight up the side aisle, I’ll bet toward the bathroom.”

“Birdie’s always ahead of time for services. Good evening, Sister Lee.”

“Good evening, all. I’ll see you in a minute. When you got to go, you got to go!” Birdie disappeared behind the Garden of Eden and down the back hall.

“Birdie’s being cute,” said Laura. “And she never did buy one of my bottles of Holy Water yet.”

“Birdie ain’t so simple,” said Essie. “She knows the score.”

“Look, people coming already. Why don’t you raise a hymn, Essie, while I go back and make myself a pot of coffee. I neglected to eat my supper tonight.”

“Out riding?”

“Yes, out riding—in my Cadillac.”

Laura disappeared as Sister Essie went down on the floor level to shake hands with the folks who were coming in. “Sister Jenkins, howdy! … Mrs. Longshaw, how you been? … Brother Bullworth, good evening to you! … Deacon Crow-For-Day, come in! … God bless you, Sister Jones.”

On the day when they moved their church into the renovated theatre, as soon as their numerous members got off from work almost everybody turned out to help, and Deacon Crow-For-Day carried the Bible. Laura carred the rostrum in her big new Cadillac with Buddy driving. Essie took the bus up to the old reconverted theatre which, sure enough, had their names up in great big lights: THE REED SISTER’S TAMBOURINE TEMPLE with the possessive in the wrong place. Nobody noticed that. Besides it was day-dusk so the lights were not yet on.