Street of Angels Read online

  “Hot tea is supposed to be good for shock,” she agreed. “And the iced tea will be nice for the two of us.”

  Once she had ministered to Angel, and the two women were settled at the kitchen table, tall glasses of tea in hand and sugar cookies at close range, Stella surveyed her once cozy domain with wide-eyed wonder.

  “I am mortified! It’s like I just woke up for the first time in years. The place is piled high in trash! How could any of my friends let this happen to me?”

  Ioletta stared at the garbage with equally wide eyes. Though one might not guess from her shapeless brown and white muumuu and her own extreme roundness, she always kept her house as neat as a pin. Secretly, she wondered where the white woman’s lace doily work (which festooned her own place) could be. She reached out and patted Stella on the back of one hand.

  “It’s the shock, losing your husband and all, dear. I can tell ya from doin’ the same myself and havin’ to take care of my boy. Could be your friends don’t keep house any better, neither.”

  Cookie crumbs sprayed suddenly from Stella, her hand covering her mouth too late. The backs of her arms jiggled, as she continued to heave with laughter.

  “I think you are right, Ioletta,” she said, carefully wiping crumbs into her napkin. “They probably never noticed. But what am I to do?”

  “To do? We’ll just pitch in!”

  “You would be willing to help me?”

  “Help? What’s a little thing like that among sisters?”

  Stella’s jaw dropped. But after a moment’s consideration, she supposed she and Ioletta really were sisters, not in the flesh but certainly in the spirit. Then there was her rearing a boy all by herself, too. It was just that she had never before really thought about it.

  “That Reverend Champion of yours, is he a good preacher?” She abruptly asked.

  “Brother Cedric? He’s a firecracker!”

  “Well, you know that’s what I’ve always heard, and I suppose you could call our Reverend Hankins the same, if you leave out that part about the fire,” Stella said, laughing. “But he does say we’re all the same at the foot of the cross.”

  “That’s right!” Ioletta exclaimed, looking auspiciously over the rim of her glass. “I heard that, and now ifn the firecrackers and the crackers could see their way to come together, maybe God would do somethin’ with the whole lot of us.”

  “Why, Ioletta Brown!” Stella said. “All these years of seeing you pass by on the street, I never would have dreamed!”

  There was the hint of a smile from Ioletta. “Well, I don’t guess us cackling like hens will clean this place none,” she remarked, modestly changing the subject. “Don’t want to be all vines and no taters, you know.”

  “Oh, the work can wait a little longer, I think. Why don’t we sit a while, drinking tea, as sisters?” Stella said, patting Ioletta on the hand and then offering the plate of cookies, which were dwindling fast. Neither one of these women had said no to a bite of food in quite a few years.

  “And I’m not asking for nothin’ in return, Miss Stella. I’m just saying that soze you know--I ain’t lookin’ for no maid’s wages.”

  “Why, I think this is one of the finest Saturdays ever,” she said gratefully.

  It was, too, even with Angel lying on a couch in the living room, an orange and brown afghan tucked up around his ears. At the sound of laughter spilling from the kitchen, he smiled happily, though blood trickled from several of his knuckles and stone bruises were spreading across the back of both hands. It had been a long time since he’d heard sounds of real joy in the house.

  ****

  Chapter 3

  A couple of years later, after Rev. Johnny left for greener pastures (driving a brand new ’59 blue-and-white Chevy Impala Coupe, 3-speed stick-shift on the column with overdrive, Brenda at his side), the church lost its fire. Pretty much everyone lost hope of anything good ever happening again, until a handful of the faithful got the Pentecostal experience, which you knew was genuine because they pronounced it Pennycostal. In fact, a few of that persuasion began to hope they might drop Baptist right out of the title and one day call it Flowers Avenue Pentecostal Church. But they decided that might be a trifle divisive. Anyhow, the old fire returned and some genuine miracles took place, prompting four or five of the ladies to take on Angel McIlhenny as a prayer burden one morning. There was some real shouting for a few minutes, and prophesying, too. They just knew Angel’s gnarled legs would straighten and he would walk like a normal boy. After a while, they went on to praying for his voice. He would speak with the tongues of angels, no more the mute little Angel. Thousands, one of them declared loudly, would come to the river of salvation through the loosing of his tongue!

  His mother, hanging back, looked on with wonder and hope but shook her head at the ladies who urged her to join them in the laying on of hands. Her heart was ready to break. What if it didn’t work? Would it make Angel bitter?

  After they finished, with no sign of his legs straightening out for them, though one of the older ladies kept plucking at them expectantly, someone remembered they should have prayed for his eyes. Jesus had healed the blind as well as the lame and mute, hadn’t He? But the moment was broken, the fervor was gone out of them, the Spirit no longer moved.

  #

  “Don’t they know I can talk, Momma?” Angel blurted over the usual Sunday dinner of Southern-fried chicken. For the first time in weeks they were eating alone on the Lord’s Day, abandoned for Game 3 of the ’62 World Series between the Giants and the Yankees, because Stella’s television was always on the fritz.

  “I guess they plumb forgot, Angel,” she said, shocked to hear his voice. It had been so long since she’d heard it herself that it was like a miracle to hear it again.

  “You’re not bitter, honey?” She asked, chewing on a drumstick.

  “No, Momma.”

  Later, she wished the ladies of the church could have been there to hear him speak that once, because his rare outbursts were about to become a lot rarer. A lot of humming he would do, yes, but not speaking. It began that day, and seldom ceased, various little half-musical tones emanating through pursed lips. A few days after, though, was when he really started with the humming. Crawling (his only exercise) out in what Stella Jo called the fallow front field and neighbors considered the weed-bestrewn yard, he chanced upon a handsome wooden mallet. A few feet further along, he found an equally pristine chisel, its shiny planes not showing a lick of rust. No one could figure how either one had come to lie in the yard like undiscovered treasure, but a new world was about to open for Angel.

  He began with weathered old blocks of wood, discards from his father’s DIY house repairs. A rusty vise nailed to the front porch railing was refurbished by a kindly elderly neighbor and moved to the lower steps, where Angel could easily reach his projects. In a few short months, he had transformed the dozens of pieces of wood into a staggering array of angels, many of which surprisingly bore the likenesses of his neighbors, especially those of Flowers Avenue Baptist and what folk Ioletta brought over Sundays for dinner. All the while he hummed his half-tunes, the nok-nok of mallet and chisel playing counterpoint. Miserable, twisted body he might have, but from then on everyone knew that if ever there’d been a prime example of treasures hidden in earthen vessels, Angel was it.

  His mother, when she first saw the miracles in wood issuing from her son’s hands, could be heard to exclaim, “Glory to God, you angels and all his saints!” Long after she had passed from this earthly scene, it was a refrain Angel often heard while at his work.

  When the wood was exhausted, he went right on with the stones in the yard, which were anchored in the dirt like they were the bones of the earth and hard enough to break the blades of the toughest commercial-grade mower, too. Chancing upon them and seeing the angelic faces staring up through the weeds was likely to either startle a person or to inspire an epiphany. Later on, in a year or so, wh
en the veins of rock ran out, granite, marble, and sandstone blocks mysteriously began showing up, until a quarry seemed to have sprouted around the ramshackle house. As the years rolled steadily past, with stone angels evidently falling from the heavens, folks in the neighborhood figured Angel had discovered his mission in life, or his calling, as some liked to say. Certainly, he had found his talent and he wasn’t one to bury it and let it go to waste.

  ****

  Part Two

  Chapter 4

  Rev. John Willimon, Flowers Avenue Baptist’s new Rev. Johnny, arriving close to ten years after the old Rev. Johnny’s departure, waited a few months before paying a call upon Alliance Baptist’s Rev. Cedric C. Champion. Having heard the black minister began his days at the church in prayer, that was where he went, not knowing in the first place where Rev. Champion lived in the black section of town, which it was now called, since this was the period in between Colored or Negro and African American. It goes without saying, it is unlikely he would have visited him in the black section of town even if he had known where the man lived.

  The doors of the church were solid oak, with handsomely carved panels, the kind that easily bloodied one’s knuckles. Having already knocked once, he glanced at his watch and prudently decided to wait a minute before knocking again. The seconds seemed to drag by like an hour. Were the few people driving down Flowers Avenue gawking? He could almost feel their eyes burning holes into his back.

  This time he pounded on the door with the fleshy part of his fist. Drawing his coat tightly about his shoulders, he raised his collar against a sudden, biting wind. It wasn’t quite six o’clock in the morning, an ungodly hour to be standing on a doorstep, even if it might be thought of as God’s doorstep, it being a church and all.

  Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. How appropriate, that verse coming to mind, he thought. Was this what it was like for Jesus to stand outside the hearts of some men, calling to be let in, shivering in the wind and breaking His knuckles against the oak doors of a heart hardened against Him? All the more appropriate, he thought, as he raised his fist to the door and pounded again, since the verse had been directed by Jesus to a church.

  One of the doors swung open. A man perhaps 6’2”, his shoulders broad enough to fill the empty door frame, looked down at him.

  “Reverend Champion?” He asked, wondering if this was perhaps someone else. From all the stories he had heard about the man, he expected someone much younger, not someone with silvery hair and a paunch.

  “Do you need help, son, or are you just looking for spare change?” Rev. Champion asked, eyeing him closely, especially taking note of his bad haircut and scuffed shoes.

  “I’m Reverend John Willimon,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. He suddenly felt like an idiot, standing before the man, him thinking he was there for a handout. He recognized the problem immediately. Champion was dressed in suit and tie, while he had dressed in blue jeans and a check shirt, throwing on an old jacket just before coming from the house, when he saw it was cold outside.

  “I’m sorry, son, what was that?”

  Rev. Johnny noisily cleared his throat and then stuck out his right hand. “Perhaps I’ve come at a poor time,” he said. “I’m Reverend John Willimon, the new pastor of Flowers Avenue Baptist.”

  He watched the eyebrows go up, saw the hesitation in the black minister’s eyes.

  “Reverend Willimon. Really?” He said, smiling at last and warmly accepting his handshake.

  “Reverend Johnny--” he corrected him. “At least that’s what most people around here call me. I should have telephoned you. It’s your prayer time, isn’t it?”

  “Please, come in,” Rev. Champion said, stepping back to motion him inside. Once he had closed the door, he gestured for him to follow.

  “It might surprise you how many interruptions I have at this hour of the morning. People see the light in my office window even with it way at the back side of the buildin’.”

  “Your church is about the size of ours,” the white minister commented, as they walked through the sanctuary.

  “The building, you mean?”

  “Yes, the building,” he answered. He looked for an attendance and offering board at the front of the church, like they used at Flowers Baptist, but saw none. He didn’t need it, though, since anyone with eyes knew attendance was considerably higher here than at his own church. One didn’t have to ask; you could see the crowds around the church doors on any given Sunday morning or evening and for Wednesday night services.

  “We run about 600, most Sunday mornings,” Rev. Champion said. “If you’re wondering.”

  At least the man’s face didn’t communicate pride. His voice was basso profundo, yet his demeanor matter-of-fact. Willimon wondered what he could accomplish, reading out his sermons every Sunday, if he had a voice like Rev. Champion’s. Almost, he thought he should maybe go home and start practicing on lowering his voice. It wasn’t that his own voice was weak or oddly high; it was just that anything coming from such an instrument sounded impressive.

  At sight of Rev. Champion’s bulging bookshelves, his eyes nearly popped from his head. His face shone with open admiration as he took a seat in one of the chairs opposite the massive office desk.

  “Amazing,” he managed to say.

  “I like to think I know what I’m talking about, when I’m preaching,” Rev. Champion remarked.

  It was difficult to tell if the minister from Flowers Baptist had heard him. His eyes still scanned the stacks of shelves with their burdens of leather and hardbound books.

  “It is a surprise to see you here,” Rev. Champion spoke bluntly. “Is there a problem?”

  “I-I’m sorry--a problem?” He asked, looking blankly at his counterpart.

  “With one of my parishioners, perhaps?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that,” he answered, wondering vaguely what Rev. Champion would have said or done, if there were such a problem. “I’ve been in the area a while, now, and thought I should introduce myself.”

  Rev. Champion stared curiously.

  “Us both working in the same field, the field of the Lord, I mean,” he tried to explain, nearly stuttering. “I thought we might, you and I, cooperate, you know.”

  Something flickered at the corners of Rev. Champion’s mouth. Was it amusement?

  “Of course, I’m sure I could learn a lot from you--you being so much older than me and all,” Rev. Johnny finished lamely, feeling more and more the idiot.

  There it was again! Only now, there was a definite twinkle in the man’s eyes. Rev. Johnny rose hastily to his feet.

  “No, no, sit down. Please,” Champion said, his voice a pleasant rumble.

  Rev. Johnny collapsed into his chair. Gratefully, it was a sturdy, high-backed leather chair and did not collapse with him. Cheeks coloring, he gripped the chair arms tightly, the urge to run still upon him. Not for the first time, he wondered why he had ever been called into the ministry and how it was that he had ended up in Calneh, especially on Flowers Avenue. At 30 years-of-age he had come late to the ministry and often wondered if he should have come at all.

  “As someone so much older in the ministry,” Rev. Champion said, “I believe I have some explaining to do. Right about now, I suppose you feel like you’re sitting here hat in hand, as they say.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Well then, that makes you an answer to prayer.”

  “I’m sorry?” He said, his cheeks coloring once again.

  Rev. Champion roared with laughter, a laughter that was clean and without rancor, a cousin to the exultant shouting he did from the church platform Sunday mornings and whenever else he preached, that is, when he was under the unction. It was so completely unrestrained, the younger man quickly found himself smiling and laughing along with him.

  “I-I’m sorry!”
Rev. Champion said, wiping tears from his eyes. “But how many times do you think I visited your Flowers Baptist to introduce myself to the new pastors?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how many of them do you think welcomed me into their private offices and took me up on my offer of cooperation?”

  Light seemed to dawn in Rev. Johnny’s eyes. “Are you saying none?”

  “Ten different pastors in less than twenty years over there, and my answer is zero, big fat goose egg, son--and before that, huh! We won’t even talk about them. None of them acknowledged we worked in the field of the Lord together--it was the same Lord, to them, I suppose, just different fields, me on my side of the street with my Negroes, and them on their side of the street with their white folks.”

  “And never the twain shall meet,” Rev. Johnny muttered.

  “If not for them, son, I would have been to see you right after you settled in. I’d say I gave up one too soon.”

  Rev. Johnny looked away, his gaze focused on the office windows and the gradually brightening daylight. He wondered to himself if he’d unconsciously chosen visiting this early in the morning because he didn’t wish for anyone to see him at Alliance’s doors?

  “I want things to be different,” he said, struggling against a sudden burst of emotion. As awkward and foolish as he had felt introducing himself, he could only imagine what it had been like for Rev. Champion to approach Flowers Baptist’s former pastors--not just once, but ten times.

  “It’s a good feelin’ to be an answer to prayer, isn’t it?” Rev. Champion asked.

  “If you really think that’s what I am,” he answered stiffly. “No, it is, aside from the embarrassment--sorry it’s so late in coming.”

  Feeling uncomfortably close to babbling, he pushed himself to his feet. He didn’t honestly know how they and their respective churches might cooperate, but if the opportunity arose, he was willing. If nothing else, he’d made his point.