The Pastor was dabbing his forehead against the heat as the cloud of chalk dust settled into his skin. He had almost finished an abbreviated, hard-hitting bit of scripture:
Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded … I will mock … when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me. Proverbs 1:24–28.
It was one of Celia’s favorites.
Pastor Joshua turned from his work. “Good afternoon Ephram.”
“Afternoon Pastor.”
“Where you off to with one of Celia’s cakes?”
Ephram stared into the Pastor’s eyes and, for the first time since he’d known him, uttered a bold-faced lie, “Mo’s wife is poorly.”
“Her dyspepsia flaring again?”
“I believe so.”
“Well, you give Bessie and Mo my best. They haven’t had a Sunday off since they started working for them Goldbergs in Burkeville.”
Ephram nodded yes lest he give voice to another lie.
The Pastor, reviewing his own handiwork, eulogized, “Sh-sh-shame ’bout old Junie Rankin. Donated more than p-p-plenty to the church fund when he c-come last Easter. He will be missed.”
“He surely will.” Ephram’s heart pinched at the thought while his feet itched to keep walking. He kept his lips pressed tight, lest he inspire one of the Pastor’s on-the-God-spot sermons.
Thankfully the Pastor said, “Now you boys come nice and early Monday morning to set up for the funeral.”
“I will Pastor. I got the whole of Monday off from the store.”
“Good. Good.”
“Well good evening to you,” Ephram managed as he edged away.
“Good evening.” Then he paused a moment, his eyes finally taking Ephram in fully. “You always such a help to this church. Set a fine example.”
“Thank you Pastor.”
“See you tomorrow son.” At that the Pastor patted Ephram’s back, chalk dust billowing about and sticking to his warm neck.
Chapter 4
Five steps away from the church Ephram saw the rooftop of Bloom’s Juke. It stood just across the road and down the rise, brazenly selling bootleg Saturday night straight through to Sunday morning so that good church folks on their way to service passed the weaving and the drunk on their way to bed. As Liberty had been situated in a dry county since Prohibition, it was desperately in need of Ed Bloom, otherwise known as Liberty’s “pocket apothecary.” Ephram remembered how Bloom, a tobacco brown bootlegger from Livingston, had come to Liberty after his brother, Shep Bloom, had been run off by the lobster red sheriff from Newton. But only after Shep had cheated the sheriff out of his 50 percent. So Ed had come in his brother’s stead, with a renegotiated 60 percent cut in the lawman’s favor.
The whole town of men made their way there on Saturday nights. Gathered against stacked lumber and around the pit fire. Inside the one room house, thick with sweat and smoke, men bellowed at the roll of a seven or turn of an ace. Knives lined the backs of trousers and for the men who worked at Grueber’s, or in Newton or Jasper, Friday pay bulged inside work shirts or front pants pockets. Nearly once a month, a few of the working girls from Beaumont would ride down with one of Bloom’s cousins. A Falcon or a Tuscadero with Beaumont plates would alert the men not to spend all of their money on craps and liquor. Bloom partitioned off what had once been a pantry at the back of the house. He’d tacked up a line of string and draped black fabric over it for a door. Put a small kerosene lamp in the corner of the room, which men turned up or down depending on their mood and their need for visuals. Mostly, the lights stayed down. The “girls” were gristle whores, too old for Fair Street in Beaumont, broken from decades of trade. They were two-dollar prostitutes, five with the tight market in Liberty. But sometimes if a man were particularly drunk, they’d go as high as seven dollars. They knew they could get away with it in Liberty. They also knew about the needle of lust that pierces the heart of small church towns. Where Bible quotations were stitched into the lining of panties. And Jesus plaques stared from the headboard of marital beds.
While the inside of Bloom’s main room was loud and light — full of smoke, the sour scent of new alcohol and old sex — outside was for the quiet drinkers. The men who sipped their rye and whiskey under naked branches and whispering stars.
Ephram paused as he recalled last Saturday. He had been resting against the flat tire of Bloom’s rusted Buick. He had thrown his hip out while loading groceries into Mrs. Gregory’s mint green Skylark. And the pain had started making the usual rounds to his sacrum, coccyx and femur. The clear rye helped. Bourbon was his favorite. But Bloom didn’t always have that in, and when he did it was a dollar for one small shot. Ed’s home brew was the economical selection. The first sip cleared his nose and watered his eyes. It tingled against the crown of his skull. The second fell deeper, burning hot down his tongue and sizzling against the acid of his belly. The third loosened the girder of his pelvis, let the spring of pain ebb like a pint of peach ice cream in August. By the sixth and seventh he melted against the flat of the wheel. One half a bottle and he could grin at the shades of grass and the lady bugs tucking into the shadows. The crickets whittled in the dark ushering in something akin to peace.
Ephram softened, like corn bread dipped in warm milk, as Gubber, Charlie and Celia’s former beau, K.O., stumbled onto the lawn. K.O.’s younger brother Jeb was heaving up his first ten drinks.
“That’s the way, boy,” K.O. called out. Firm and dark as stone. The only sign of age a crisping of white along his temples. “Got to lay it out before you can play it out.” Then to the other two men, “He’s seventeen tonight, going to have his first taste when Mabel gets through with Chauncy.”
“Best get sick here than in her lap,” Charlie scolded, in his thin nasal voice. “Say she ain’t comin’ back next man do that.” He wiped the bald of his scalp, then slapped his narrow thigh to emphasize the point.
Gubber Samuels, a butter cream lump of a man, wall-eyed since birth, turned up his whiskey and smacked when it came down. “Best she don’t bring her black ass back nohow. One mo’ drop a’ ugly in Liberty and we gone have us a flood.”
“Mabel’s all right. She know her business.” K.O. lit a Lucky.
Rooster Rankin, nearly dead drunk beside the well, slurred out, “Sh-she sho d-d-do!”
“But the woman too fat!” Gubber countered. “Lord, ain’t seen that many rolls since the Michelin tire man won a pie eatin’ contest.”
“Aw no,” K.O. crossed, “if that’s not the pot callin’ the kettle. Gubber so fat when he die they’ll take him to the River Jordan and jes’ set him down.”
Charlie answered the call, “And why is that?”
“Hell, ain’t nothin’ mighty ’nuff to tote his big ass over.”
A few good sized chuckles skitted across the yard.
“Well, I ain’t got no ‘for sale’ sign tacked on my behind,” Gubber countered.
“Already got a ‘all you can eat’ one takin’ up space.”
The men broke into laughter. Rooster hollered so something gave way in his throat and he took to coughing.
K.O. threw Gubber a rope, “But you right ’bout one thing, Gub. Town full a’ spinster virgins and old married women. Ain’t no bona-fine-in-they-prime women like we usta have.”
Mabel appeared in the doorway. She was a chocolate Easter bunny filling out a blue ribbon dress. “Y’all ain’t much to look at neither.”