The other sisters had caught on that not all was well and had stopped chanting and howling and dancing and merely looked at us from across the room. They stood there with their shoulders waiting to sag.
I left them inside and went to my car. I opened the satchel in the backseat and tore the band from a stack. I took ten hundreds and looked at the forty-nine thousand remaining dollars. It was bad enough that some people driving around believed I had this and worse that in fact I did. I took the thousand dollars back inside.
“This is all?” Sister Irenaeus said.
“For now,” I repeated.
Scrunchy took the bills and fanned them through a count. “This will work for my retainer. You will be able to pay me for the rest of my services?”
“How much will it cost, the rest of your services?”
“I would say about five grand, I mean, a thousand more for a complete set of expertly rendered and delivered blueprints,” he said. He glanced at Sister Irenaeus and smiled.
“I can get that much,” I said.
“You said fifty thousand dollars,” Sister Irenaeus said.
“That’s a lot of money, Sister,” I said. “I couldn’t get it all at once.” In my mind loomed the fact that I had in a matter of twenty-four hours met two people named Scrunchy. If that was not an incredible coincidence, then the pock-faced man in front of me was well aware that I had the balance of the fifty thousand dollars in my possession, stashed somewhere, if not on me. So, I added, trying to sound confident, savvy, like anything but the clueless idiot that I truly was, “I’d be a fool to travel with that much money on me at once.”
“I suppose you would be, son,” Scrunchy said. He turned to Sister Irenaeus. “Well, Sister, I guess I’ll go get to work on those blueprints.” Then again to me, “You take care now.” He walked out, got into his truck, and drove away.
“Do you trust that guy?” I asked Sister Irenaeus.
“I do,” she said. “Where is the money?”
“It’s coming.”
“We must build the church,” she said.
“I understand that, Sister.” I looked at the faces of the other women. They seemed more confused than disappointed or put out. Now, their shoulders sagged. “I’m going to grab a bite at the diner.”
I walked out to my car. They didn’t follow. I drove away and stopped just beyond the bend in the drive, still hidden from the road. I got out, took the satchel from the floor in the back, and concealed it under some brush at the base of a twisted and memorable tree. I kept a thousand with me. As I fell in again behind the wheel I observed my face in the mirror. I looked so much older, felt so much older, stiff, and beleaguered. If I hadn’t known better I would have said I had a gray hair.
At the diner, I found Diana Frump shaking her ample rump under her white waitress dress to country music on the jukebox. A couple of men were watching her and laughing. She stopped when she saw me.
“And he’s wearing a suit,” Diana said. “Looking sharp there, Mr. Poitier. Who died?”
I’d forgotten I was wearing the suit. I must have been a sight after sleeping in the car in it. “I might think I did,” I said.
“Come on in, Sidney,” she said. “Have a sit-down.”
I sat at the end of the counter. “A party?” I asked.
“Yep,” she said. “A party because work’s coming to Smuteye. I heard tell that them sisters got money to build their church. That means construction, that means construction workers, that means customers for me. A party. What can I get you?” She walked to the other side of the counter.
“A burger,” I said.
“Cheese?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Ain’t got none.” She laughed. “Just foolin’ with you.” She slapped a fist of meat on the griddle. “Yeah, them sisters found somebody to foot the bill. I guess praying ain’t such a bad gig.”
“Some fool,” one of the men said. He was wearing a John Deere cap. “But I’ll take the work.”
“You know somebody named Scrunchy?” I asked Diana.
“Thornton Scrunchy?”
“Yes.”
“Never heard of him,” she said, then laughed again. “Just foolin’ with you. Yeah, he lives around here. Owns some land. I hear a lot of land, over by the river. He had something or other to do with the paper mill way back when.” She studied my face for a second. “Why?”
“Is he an architect?”
“Elroy, is Scrunchy an architect?”
“Thornton Scrunchy is a lot of things,” said the man in the cap. “An architect? I don’t know.”
“He ain’t no architect,” said the other man, a fat man. “I reckon he’s a Baptist jest like the rest of us.”
The screen door opened and slammed shut, and I turned to see a policeman of some kind standing rigid, in dark glasses and a Smokey Bear hat that wore him. He was a skinny, young man with a bad shave. He rested his right hand on his sidearm, a large-caliber revolver, and rested his eyes on me.
“Hey, Horace,” Diana said.
“Diana,” he said.
I looked away from him and at my near-ready burger sizzling on the griddle. Diana watched the man behind me, seemed nervous as she flipped the patty once more. I felt the deputy approach me, hover at my shoulder.
“What’s your name, boy?” the deputy asked.
“This here is Sidney Poitier, Horace,” Diana said.
“Not the Sidney Poitier,” Horace said.
“No,” I said. “Not Sidney Poitier.” I knew it was a bad idea to say that as soon as I opened my mouth.
“Why don’t you step out and put your hands on that counter for me,” the deputy said.
I turned to look back at him. “What did I do?”
“I think you know what you done,” he said.
I supposed that was true of all of us, and in a strange way I found it a reasonable utterance.
“Now, I ain’t gonna ask you again.” He released the leather keep on his holster. “Hands on the counter and spread them legs.”
“What’s this boy done?” asked the man in the tractor cap.
“I think I done caught myself a murderer.” The deputy seemed ready to giggle he was so excited.
“You don’t say,” said the fat man.
I leaned against the counter as instructed, and Horace kicked my feet into a wider stance. He then frisked my torso, under my jacket, and then moved down to the pockets of my trousers. He found the lump of cash in my front pocket.
“What do we have here?” he said. He pulled the wad of bills out, looked at it, and whistled. “Boy, howdy!”
“What is it, Horace?” asked tractor cap.
“A ton of money.” The deputy leaned closer to me. “This here is a lot of money for a nigger to be carrying around.”
I cleared my throat and said, quite without good judgment, “One, I’m not a nigger, and two, that’s not that much money.”
“Oh, I got me an uppity one,” the deputy said.
“He’s uppity, all right,” tractor cap said. “Tell by that suit.”
“How much money he got?” from the fat man.
“Ten crisp one-hundred-dollar bills,” the deputy said.
Tractor cap whistled. “That must be close to a thousand.”
“Pretty close,” I said.
“Shut up, boy.”
I shut up.
The deputy reached out and took my left wrist and pulled it behind my back, slapped a cuff on it, and then said, “Put the other back here.” I did and I was cuffed. “Don’t you try running now.”
“I won’t run,” I said.
“Okay, let’s go.” Horace put his hand in the center of my back and shoved me through the screen door and across the gravel to his battered squad car. He opened the back and muscled me down into the seat. He let out a rebel yell and said, “Have mercy. I done caught myself a crook.”