Lousiana Hotshot

mean— ’cause I’ll bet anything you do know.”
    Lura Blanchard gave her a wry smile that didn’t tell Talba whether she’d bought the lie or not. She said, “Well, let me see what I can do for ya.” And proceeded to rifle the church files.
    She knew exactly what she was looking for and where to find it. In less than a minute, she had an official-looking card in her hand. “Uh-huh. Here’s an update on his address. We don’t see much of Reverend Scruggs anymore.” Her small, proper mouth assumed another wry little twist. “’Course, some folks think tha’s a
good
thing.”
    Talba matched her smile for smile. “He was kind of an old terror, wasn’t he?”
    “Wasn’t much joy in him— all hellfire and damnation. I don’t believe tha’s God’s message, but that was Reverend Scruggs’s path, so who am I to criticize?”
    “Surely the church paid him. I’d have thought you’d have some say-so.”
    “Well, we must have needed him— he was what God sent us. And I certainly wouldn’t argue with His plan for us. Would you?”
    Talba sidestepped that one. “Guess you right,” she said, in her one habitual lapse of standard English— she found it smoothed over a multitude of sticky situations. “Shall I copy down Reverend Scruggs’s address and phone number?”
    “Help yaself, child. Help yaself.” The old woman sighed in what might have been resignation. Talba wondered again how good a friend of her mother’s she was. On impulse she said, “Did you know my father?”
    “Ya father? Why no, I didn’t. I don’t b’lieve he was a member here.”
    And yet he had worn that Easter suit.
    Talba helped the old lady back downstairs and thanked her as curtly as she politely could— a process she managed to pare down to twenty minutes or so. She was itching to get to the Reverend Scruggs before her mother found out she’d been trespassing on her turf.

Chapter 20
    The good reverend had evidently fallen on hard times, or perhaps Baptists simply didn’t pay their ministers much. These days he was living in public housing for seniors.
    She dreaded going to see him. She could remember his flashing, angry eyes, the way he pounded and paced when he really got going. One sermon she particularly remembered, delivered when there had been a lot of gang activity: “The Lord will not
tolerate
such as this. He will destroy these young people as he destroyed the Canaanites, as he destroyed the Philistines, as he destroyed all the enemies of Israel. Destruction shall rain down upon them and peace shall be restored.”
    So far as she knew, peace hadn’t ever been restored, but within three months, seven or eight young men in the gangs had been destroyed. Talba was young enough to be impressed. When she thought about it, that particular sermon had done more than anything else to make her lose interest in the church.
    Considering the neighborhood she was going into, she wished she had a steering wheel lock. The kids in the streets looked pretty much like the ones upon whom the Reverend Mr. Scruggs had called down destruction all those years ago. He must have lost his touch.
    Now don’t you worry,
she told herself.
Crime is down all over the city.
    Still, a woman alone didn’t go places she shouldn’t, and Talba really shouldn’t be here. She wondered if she should get a gun, and almost laughed:
I’d probably shoot myself.
    The man who came to the door looked about as old as Lura Blanchard, but he’d fattened up where she’d thinned out. He had quite a watermelon on him, showed off by a wife-beater T-shirt. Chest hair that peeked out of it was as white as the hair on his head. He was barefoot and struggling to get a pair of specs on his face. “Are you the lady from the home health? We weren’t expecting you today.”
    “Reverend Scruggs?”
    He smiled at that— he must not hear it much anymore. “Brother Scruggs is fine.”
    “Lura Blanchard told me where to find you.”
    “Why I’ll be darned— Lura Blanchard! Come in, come in.” And he opened the door. “Will you ‘scuse me a moment?” He looked hugely uncomfortable.
    A female voice called from another room: “Clarence? Who’s that?”
    “’Scuse me, will you?” The Reverend Mr. Scruggs hitched up his pants as he departed.
    His hair had been black when Talba knew him, and his manner so fierce even some of the congregation’s adults found him scary. More than his belly seemed to have softened up.
    Talba checked out the room while