Father Divine's Bikes Page 3
Gazzi was a religious man, and he liked to think that rain dampened not only the skin and by shutting out the sun, the spirit as well. At forty-five, he found it increasingly helpful to rationalize his paltry hates with metaphysical justifications. Gazzi was like many men faced with the onus of mediocrity. He lightened his burden with whiffs of heavenly ether. His devotion, simplistic and deluded as it was, remained.
Metaphor was Gazzi’s best friend. The New Testament was his favorite. It was a mother lode. Gazzi accepted his assigned place among the humble standing in the back of the Temple, but from time to time was irked that he had not once had a chance to strut his stuff up front among the Pharisees. Perhaps Ruby West was his Mary Magdalene, a fallen angel destined to lift him off the squalid streets of the Third Ward and put him back into a squad car.
If so, it would be a rare stroke of good fortune, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. It was an open secret that Boiardo was about to use Beacon paperboys as runners to expand his numbers racket onto Zwillman’s turf. Gazzi had sniffed it all out. White kids were being recruited by three black bookies posing as barbers, then pushed into battle by Frank Marsucci, the punk circulation manager. If true, it would end the uneasy truce that had kept mobster bloodshed to a minimum.
He had been warned by Tony to be blind, deaf and dumb when it came to mob crime in the Third Ward, but the ice pick murder had freelance written all over it.
About a year earlier, Richie Maxwell began a habit he had grown to hate. He was once again about to sneak around corners to get a haircut.
That morning Richie closed the door to the family’s third-floor apartment behind him. He had taken only a few steps when the door popped open, and his mom warned him for at least the thousandth time to stay away from the cheap candy at Milt’s Confectionery. His teeth would rot and the family could not afford a big dentist bill.
Geesh, he thought. I’m not a baby. I’m almost fourteen. He just nodded as he always did, then crossed the landing and headed down the stairs. His deception started when his dad gave him fifty cents to get a haircut at Top to Bottom, the local barbershop. He decided to take a shortcut through the Negro part of the Third Ward. He started to turn back, when a big black man in a starched white, loose-fitting coat greeted him from a storefront doorway. Damn, Richie thought to himself, a black dentist? He never imagined that there could ever be such a thing around here.
“Peace, little brother! Peace!” the smiling man bellowed. “Never seen ya’ll around here before.”
The man beckoned from the open door of a shop, whose fresh white paint, blue-trimmed windows, and white Venetian blinds made it a stark counterpoint to the drab, rundown buildings around it. “PEACE” was centered atop each of the two front windows on either side of the door in six-inch gold letters.
“You come to the right place. We’re snappy an’ good, real good. Get ya’ll trimmed, good lookin’, and outta here in ten minutes. An’ for jes’ a dime. Ten lonely pennies.”
This guy isn’t a dentist at all, Richie thought. He’s a barber and a cheap one at that. Only a dime. He fingered the fifty-cent piece in his pocket. Why not take a chance? If this guy is as good as his word, I’ll walk out with forty cents in my kick. Richie looked around and saw that there were no other whites on the street. It was safe for him to risk it so he stepped inside. He didn’t want to be seen patronizing a Negro shop and be labeled a white nigger.
“Peace, little brother, in the name of Reverend Major Jealous Father Divine, we welcome you. Take a seat, right here.” Two other Negro men in white coats were standing around the shop. The smallest of the three took a spotless white cape from the back of a barber’s chair, snapped it twice, and spread it open to cover Richie.
All that Richie knew about Father Divine came from the streets, and from his father, who called him “an uppity nigger fake.” Richie could see for himself what was closing in around his neighborhood, and Father Divine was a big part of it. “Peace” signs on diners that served ten cent meals, even some of them free, grocery stores that beat hell out of A&P’s prices, and “Father Divine’s Peace Mission” signs on old hotels and factories, now “Heavens on Earth.”
From the very beginning Richie had doubts about these three guys, and he didn’t know exactly why, just a creeping thought that everything wasn’t on the up-and-up.
“Father Divine’s sort of a big deal around here, ain’t he.”
“Not just here but around this great country of ours.” The three black men said “Amen.”
“What your mammy an’ daddy call ya, son?” his barber asked as he draped and fastened the cape over Richie’s shoulders.
“Richie, Richie Maxwell.”
“Fair exchange needed here. Right here’n now, if ya be one of our regulars. So, here’s us. I be Darn Good Disciple.”
“Darn Good Disciple?” Richie responded, thinking that he had wandered into a loony bin and wondered if the forty cents was worth it.
“Yes, little brother. And that’s ’bout as strong as our talk gets. No profanity is tolerated by the Divine Father,” the big man said. “He’s our messenger, and there ain’t no room in his message for cursing and the like. That brother over there is God’s Tall Timber.” He was seated in the middle of three chairs watching Darn Good Disciple at work.
The third starched coat was sitting in one of the four customer chairs, two in front of each of the front windows. His legs were stretched out as he looked Richie over. He seemed reluctant to give Richie his name, hesitated, and said, “I’m Righteous Reckoning.”
“Now, let’s see to that haircut,” Darn Good Disciple said and set to work.
After his haircut he handed Darn Good Disciple his fifty-cent piece and got a quarter, nickel, and dime in change. “Ya’ll come back. Been open only a month now, and you be our first white customer,” the tall black man said with a wink.
“Uh…Okay. Thanks,” Richie mumbled and left.
That’s how it started and he’d been going back every two weeks. If his father knew, he’d be in big trouble. His dad feared the blacks, convinced that it was only a matter of time before they took over Newark.
Richie had just finished serving novena at St. Mark’s. As he walked out of the church, he saw the caravan of cars squeezing its way up Market. The parade was headed uphill through a throng of salutation-shouting Negroes and some whites who were pressing into the center of the street from both sides.
That morning the Beacon had written it up:
Father Divine Welcomes
Wounded Negro Vets
Into His Heavens
The Evening Clarion, which had become concerned over Father Divine’s growing strength in the city’s Negro community, heralded the upcoming event as a white man’s worry. Ever since Germany’s surrender in May, there had been a steady trickle of wounded Negro veterans returning from Europe with their Purple Hearts. Editors, with no evidence to support their claim, hinted that black veterans were squandering their mustering-out pay and allowances on cheap booze and women, making them easy targets for Father Divine to showcase.
Discharged Negro Vets
Wounded and Jobless
Join Growing Movement
The caravan of uniformed veterans, white-gowned sisters, and dark-suited brothers edged its way up the hill. Richie could see that for the people around him, there was no movement, no horde of disgruntled black veterans, but only one drawing card, a small, skin-headed black man in the back seat of the biggest convertible he had ever seen. There were dozens of cops spread out along the route.
The black woman beside Richie was wringing a blue and white handkerchief in her hands. Beads of sweat had formed on her face and her breasts heaved in deep, labored breaths.
“Peace! Peace! Our great Father has given us Peace!” she screamed. “I was a sinful woman, a lustful woman, until Father Divine accepted me!” She was jumping up and down. “Father, father, you’ve shown me the way!”
“It’s the Holy Way, the way to
salvation, sister!” a big, Negro man in patched Levi overalls responded with roaring enthusiasm.
Then Richie thought someone had turned a radio on. Glancing at a pocket of dancers on the other side of the street, he realized it wasn’t a radio at all. Their song was contagious.
“Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch onto the affirmative, don’t mess with Mr. In-Between… oh yeah, don’t mess with Mr. In-Between.”
A tall Negro man noticed Richie’s enthusiasm, and together they sang out, “Oh yeah, don’t mess with Mr. In-Between.”
“Peace, brother!” shouted a chorus of euphoric faces, a throbbing black universe engulfing a now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t galaxy of white and gold-capped teeth.
“Peace! Peace! Ah done found peace!” squealed a woman, a thin reed slapping against a vast wind of emotion.
Richie was bewildered, fascinated. It was like a happy nightmare. From where he stood he could see Father Divine’s car a block away. The man was engulfed by grasping faithful who crowded around his convertible.
The Cadillac convertible was followed by a line of other open cars and flatbed trucks loaded with Negro servicemen. A few white faces also bobbed above their uniforms. The first of the trucks had already passed Richie. Each veteran had a Purple Heart prominently displayed on his chest.
Women in flowing white walked beside the vehicles. It was bedlam all up and down the line. The chanting worshippers could not contain themselves. The men in uniform responded, extending their eager hands into the crowd.
Singing was going on all the while. The crescendo became a frenzied cry of liberation.
Listen, we want you to know,
Father Divine is our Prophet.
We were blind but now we see.
He opened our eyes.
Praise God for His Holy Prophet!
It was an anthem sung on friendly shores. Richie was caught up in the excitement. Father Divine’s car was still a few hundred feet from Richie when he found himself eagerly joining the other worshippers as they pressed from the sidewalk out onto the street, straining against a human chain of chanting, black-suited men who tried desperately to keep a path open for the motorcade.
Upper windows along the street were crowded with the cheering and the curious. Fire escapes were crammed with the young and the old. Gray-haired men and women, black and white alike, nodded in wonderment.
People poured out of the stores. Richie found himself being pushed toward Father Divine’s convertible as it passed slowly in front of the bursting knot of people. He still couldn’t see the man, but some of the others could, and their happiness inspired everyone.
“Peace! Peace is ours for all time!” screamed a big Black man on one side of Richie.
“Peace, brother,” came the chorus of those around him.
“He’s got a sickle in one hand and a hoe in the other!” shouted a fat black woman on the other side of Richie. “The sickle of retribution and the hoe of the harvest! Vengeance and life!”
“Vengeance and life!”
The fat woman’s ponderous body shoved against him as she tried to get closer to Father Divine. He followed in her wake. She would clear his way to the Divine chariot.
Propelled forward by the surging crowd of followers, Richie was thrust against the rear left fender of Father Divine’s car. He got a good look at the Divine One up close.
The driver was a young white guy, dressed in a white suit. There were three husky Negroes, one in the front seat and two in the back. They were dressed in black and they seemed tense and alert.
Standing to the left of center in the back was a black man little more than five feet tall. The squat black man wore a tan tropical worsted suit that was neat as a pin. A bright red tie was neatly in place, its knot parting the ends of a starched white collar. Next to him was a tall, blond white woman. She was young. She wore a white dress. She silently nodded to the crowd, always smiling.
What impressed Richie the most was the man’s head. It was hairless. His eyes were bright and shiny in a fierce sort of way. His wide mouth was always smiling.
Their eyes met for an instant.
“Peace, my little white brother. Peace!” Father Divine intoned.
Richie was pushed from the side of the car by a white-gloved, black-suited man.
“Move on, little brother. There’s others who want to glimpse God’s Prophet!”
Richie stumbled back just as an open Ford convertible was passing. A white-robed woman in the front seat was breaking open rolls of pennies and passing the loose coins to two men standing in the back. Every five yards or so they would each toss out a handful.
“Peace Pennies! Peace Pennies!” they shouted. “Pennies from Heaven right here in Newark!”
The kids were generally too fast for the grown-ups, darting quickly through the crowd and sliding through people’s legs if necessary to reach the heavenly largesse.
Teenagers were the big winners. Just as fast as the smaller kids, but stronger, they muscled their way from one coin to the next. All the while there was a constant squealing of happy voices, as brothers and sisters of all ages gathered their treasure.
Richie regained his balance just in time to spot a fistful of pennies heading in his direction. His first reaction was to duck. Some of the coins bounced off his back and shoulders. One of them went down the back of his polo shirt and fell out the loose end to the street. Two of the pennies were within inches of each other only a few feet away.
Richie bent down and was about to pick them up when a big black kid pushed him out of the way.
“That penny ain’t for you, white boy! Ah ought’s to kick yer ass jes for the fun of it. Now git.”
The joyous crowd swirled around them in happy pursuit of the motorcade. Nobody bothered more than a quick glance at their white brother as he picked himself up from the ground. Richie hightailed it home.
Over the next few months, the ten-minute haircuts at the Peace Barber Shop stretched to fifteen minutes and included, at no extra charge, a Father Divine catechism lesson.
“You be a Catholic, right?” Darn Good Disciple began.
Richie nodded.
“Big churches, idols all ’round, and man-oh-man, you people surely do like the crucifix. Got poor saintly Jesus hanging all over the place. Seen some of ya’ll’s goin’s on Sunday at St. Mark’s. Great big costume parties.”
“Now here’s for you to understand,” God’s Tall Timber said. “We create our heaven right here, right on this street, around the corner, and across the land. Take this little shop here. It was a rundown paint store, but no more. We took it, changed it, and followed the Divine One’s message that shows us that even the most humble, dirty, and abandoned buildings are our temples. Our Heavens.”
And so it went, haircut after haircut. At first reluctantly and then with increasing ease, Richie found he was enjoying the hell out of their Heaven on Spruce Street.
Richie also learned that nobody should mess with Father Divine’s Heavens. God’s Tall Timber many times over the months would talk of the first Heaven at someplace on Long Island, wherever that was. White people didn’t like it that Divinites came by the thousands to the big Peace Feasts and that the Divine Father drove around in a big Cadillac convertible.
“They couldn’t abide by it, them uppity whites,” Darn Good Disciple said. “Would ya’ll believe it, they called in the police and had the Blessed Father arrested. Even claimed he had a harem.”
“God-fearing with peace and love for everyone filling their hearts, black and white,” said God’s Tall Timber, “were jes’ too much for them to accept. They be seein’ a Peace Heaven grow amongst ’em, and ’stead of love, in return they wanted war.”
Righteous Reckoning chimed in when describing that there was no reckoning equal to Father Divine’s when he felt he was wronged. “Justice Lewis J. Smith couldn’t imagine what he was callin’ down from Heaven when he gave the Divine One a big fine and a year in jail. Nope, had no idea.
“Justice Smith couldn’t see that he was looking into the face of peace in his courtroom. Couldn’t understand the message, no matter that it floated right before his eyes. It was peace, brother, peace!” God’s Tall Timber said. “Justice Lewis J. Smith died four days after messin’ with the Divine One in his Heaven.”
“I remember exactly what Reverend Major Jealous Divine said with sadness in his heart after Justice Lewis J. Smith passed. I memorized every word. Those words made me the believer I am today and put righteous fear in my heart: ‘I hated to do it. I did not desire Judge Smith to die. I did desire that my spirit would touch his heart and change his mind that he might repent and believe and be saved from the grave!’” Righteous Reckoning stood tall and straight while reliving his epiphany.
“That poor Justice Smith, if he had only opened his heart. A harem indeed! He should have known that our International Peace Mission Movement has the strictest morality code on earth,” God’s Tall Timber intoned.
Richie had just been treated to a bravura performance of a blasphemy the trio rolled out whenever they met a genuine true-believer. They hadn’t figured this kid out yet, if he fit into their plans, but he had listened transfixed so their bullshit was still working.
Richie was surprised to learn that there was no greater patriot than Father Divine, who gave his blessing to the good work of the Founding Fathers and the men who fought in the war, gave advice to Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself, and, in fact, decided to be an FDR neighbor of sorts when he purchased an estate across the Hudson from the president’s Hyde Park home and called it Krum Elbow. Richie was bombarded by the Scripture according to Father Divine: segregation was wrong, lynching must end. FDR’s welfare was a handout that weakened men’s spirits.
“A man gots to work,” Righteous Reckoning chimed in. “Else he ain’t no man.”
Funny, Richie thought. That’s what Dad always says.
Aside from the sermons, he enjoyed their stories about Father Divine. Mostly he just accepted them. But one day, he heard the one about Johnny Mercer, the big time song writer and just couldn’t believe it.