Curtis liked to take short puffs of his cigar so he could taste the tobacco better. He puffed a few more times, looking up and smiling at the twinkling stars in the velvety, midnight-blue Carolina sky. Curtis loved himself a Carolina sky—especially on a warm fall evening like this one. It felt good to look up and see evidence of God watching him tonight. Because Curtis desperately needed evidence that God was watching, and better yet willing to help him. If the past couple of practices were any indication of the team’s state and readiness, he might as well go back to the office right now and clean out his desk. And if his boss, Gilead Jackson, had had anything to do with it, Curtis would have been kicked off campus right after they lost the first two games of the season.
He unclipped his phone from his belt and pulled up the team’s last season stats. He shook his head, shut down the Internet, and turned the phone off. Team stats, team needs, team issues, and team problems. It seemed as if that was all he and Maurice dealt with. He closed his eyes and felt these words from 1 John 2 being spoken directly to his heart.
“Stop loving this evil world and all that it offers you, for when you love the world, you show that you do not have the love of the Father in you. For this world offers only the lust for physical pleasure, the lust for everything we see, and pride in our possessions. These are not from the Father: They are from this evil world. And this world is fading away, along with everything it craves. But if you do the will of God, you will live forever.”
Curtis didn’t know why he was remembering, word for word, this scripture his grandmother had e-mailed him a week ago. Gran Gran was very concerned that the things of this world held way too much appeal to him over the things of God. He tried to deny that claim. But now, sitting here consumed with wanting to beat out all of the other teams in the Southeastern Negro Athletic Conference (SNAC), he knew that his mind and heart were completely absorbed with the things of this world. Curtis sighed and looked up at the sky, blinking back tears that came from the double-edged sword of conviction from the Word. What was wrong with him—a grown-tailed man sniffling up like a lil’ wimp.
“So,” Maurice said, eyeing Curtis curiously and wondering what had caused this level of sorrow to come up on him like that. “Are the stats for the mighty Fighting Panthers so bad I should dust off the old résumé?”
“I can’t believe you, the man of God, are talking that mess, Maurice,” Curtis admonished.
Maurice, like his boy Lamont Green’s brother James, was a brother strong in the Word and strong in faith in the Lord. And Curtis always depended on him to see the problem through those lenses that most praying, faith-filled saints viewed the world through. Curtis’s grandmother was like that. No matter what was going on, Doreatha Parker, or Gran Gran, always took the problem to God, left her problem at the altar, praised God for his blessings in her life, and waited in perfect peace for the answer to that prayer to become manifest.
Now here was Maurice, standing right in his face, blowing cigar circles out of his mouth, and acting like he didn’t need to be combing through his Bible searching for a Word from the Lord about this dilemma.
“What is your problem?” Maurice asked, now just as calm and content, despite the stats and impending doom coming from a messed-up team and, even worse, a mean and crazy athletic director.
“My problem?” Curtis asked.
“Yeah,” Maurice answered. “Your problem. Look, Curtis, I love the Lord. I trust the Lord. But I’m faithful, not perfect. Every now and then, I am going to have a moment, even if it’s only for a moment.”
“But you walk by faith and not by sight, man,” Curtis told him.
Maurice could not believe this boy. He said, “Of course I walk by faith and not by what I see with these things”—Maurice pointed at his eyes—“but what about you, Curtis? What are you walking by? And why do you lean so hard on my faith instead of getting in the Word and building up your own self in faith and trust in God? Honestly, I don’t know how you can stand to live life without total dependence on Jesus.”
“’Cause I’m a man. I believe in working and fighting hard for what I believe in.”
“So, Jesus, the one you are called to put your trust in, wasn’t a man, a man’s man to be exact? ’Cause I don’t think a roughneck like Peter, and a smooth thug like Matthew, would have been following and chilling with Jesus if He’d been all wimpy and punkin’ out on some brothers.
“You think those brothers whose money tables Jesus threw over were happy with Him? Don’t you think that at least one of them got riled up and ready to throw down, but something, namely Jesus, made them think twice about doing that? I’ve seen plenty of hard-core thugs in my day. But I’ve never seen any of them roll up on somebody who gave the clear indication that they were not the one to mess with.”
Curtis couldn’t argue against that point. There was nothing in the Word that indicated Jesus had any problems, discussions, or pending altercations following that bodacious confrontation. He knew from coaching all of these years that any brother bold enough to throw down like Jesus did in the temple had better be able to back that up. There were some rough folks back in the Bible days. But it was pretty clear that you didn’t just take a mind to roll up on Jesus. A few Pharisees tried but they got their feelings hurt.
“Okay,” Curtis said with his hands raised in concession, “you have a point.”
“You daggone skippy I do,” Maurice said. “When did a person not have a point with the Word? It’s a—”
“I know,” Curtis replied, irritated. “It’s an infallible, double-edged sword that does not return void. So what else is new?”
Maurice wanted to kick Curtis’s butt. He was his boy and he loved him like a brother. But doggone it, if that negro didn’t try the patience of Job. And Maurice knew he was nowhere near a Job, so his patience was shot. He said, “Why does this have to be so hard for you, Curtis? It’s the Lord. He is a mighty, loving, gracious, and awesome God. Why do you persist in running from Him and your blessings?
“Don’t you know that when you submit to the Lord, He is going to show you, show us, exactly what to do with this team? And there won’t be a thing that Gilead Jackson and his flunkies Kordell Bivens and Castilleo Palmer can do about it. We just don’t know how He is going to do it. And that’s okay because we don’t need to know all of that. Jesus ain’t never worked on a need-to-know basis with anybody. Okay?”
Curtis knew that Maurice was right. But he wasn’t willing to give his life completely over to the Lord because there were some things that he wanted to keep doing that he knew the Lord did not approve of. For starters, he’d have to relinquish what Trina referred to as his “stash of booty-call boos”—the women he could call to get his needs met without explanation or commitment of any kind. They would have to be the first thing to go. Just the thought of letting go of all of that ran his pressure up. What was a brother supposed to do to relieve some tension? Get married?
Next he would have to kick his so-called head boo, Regina Young, to the curb. Curtis knew better than any of his nay-saying friends that Regina, an agnostic, was not the one. She looked good on his arm and didn’t give him a hard time about his other women. Regina liked the prestige of being the coach’s public girlfriend too much to complain to him about things a woman like Yvonne would have checked faster than she could blink her eye.
But being with a woman like Regina Young got old real fast because women like Regina had little or no substance. While they may have had the look of a treasure, they were no more than a cheap piece of cubic zirconium. And women like Regina didn’t even know that they were not jewels. They believed the hype about themselves and thought that their looks, education, airs, and so-called skills in the bedroom really and actually made them somebody.
Once a man got a good dose of Regina Young, he found himself longing for a simple, honest woman who didn’t backstab, harbor secret agendas, or have unreasonable demands. It helped Curtis understand why a wealthy brother like Metro Mitchell, the owner of Yeah Yeah, Durham’s hottest hip-hop store, was so enamored with his ghetto-fabulous baby mama, Dayeesha Hamilton, who worked at the Kroger on Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway. The girl was as ghetto as she could be sometimes. But she was good people. Dayeesha was honest, dependable, a good cook, kept a clean and orderly home, wasn’t greedy, and was a hardworking young woman.
Thinking about how happy Metro Mitchell had been the last time he ran into him with Dayeesha on his arm was enough to make Curtis give serious consideration to canceling out his playah’s card. But all of that was a whole lot easier said than done because Curtis wanted to remain in control of everything. It scared him to think about giving the Lord such complete control of his life. Plus, if he gave over that kind of control, he’d also have to step back and let God do the talking where women were concerned. He liked to be able to select a woman based on his perception of a need that had to be met. And Curtis knew that if God started picking his women, first off there would not be any women, just the good lil’ Christian girl the Lord saw fit to place in his path.
Maurice snuffed out his cigar on the railing and sat down on the deck bench. He stretched his arms across the back and glanced upward, lips moving but no sound coming out. He didn’t know how they were going to make it through the season going like this.
Curtis was bound and determined to run from the Lord the way Maurice wished some of those players would run down that court to score some points. Every victory and every defeat this season would be riding on what Curtis did or didn’t do regarding getting close to the Lord. Folks didn’t get it that your walk with the Lord directly affected how you went about your business from day to day.
They were just coming out of the early part of the season and had yet to win anything. They had gotten beaten so badly in an exhibition game with North Carolina Central University, a MEAC Conference school, that Maurice dreaded having to drive down the part of Fayetteville Street where NCCU was located.
That had hurt real bad. There was fierce rivalry between the two schools. NCCU, or Central, was pretty much down the street from Eva T. It had been founded a good decade and a half before Eva T. It had produced many of Durham’s black movers and shakers, and the students, alumni, and faculty alike never failed to remind Eva T. that NCCU was the real black college in Durham.
The last thing Maurice had wanted to hear at that game was the buzzer of the final quarter sounding off with a final game score of 78 to 20. Central beat them by fifty-eight points. And that had only happened because one of NCCU’s star players fouled out, another one was on crutches, and a third was sitting on the bench nursing a swollen eye with an ice pack.
If that spanking had not been bad enough, this game was played on Eva T.’s home turf. Eva T.’s president, Dr. Samuel T. Redmond, had sat through the game looking so mean and evil until there was a moment when Maurice could have sworn he was filling out pink slips. And the worst part was that this game paid both teams—$55,000 to the victor and $18,000 to the loser, if they didn’t allow the winning team to keep more than a ten-point lead. In the case of the final score, Eva T. Marshall was eligible for a measly $3,000. That chump change would barely feed the members of the entire team entourage. The cheerleaders alone ate like they were all active members of an NFL team.
The season was relatively new, and the sinkhole they were in just kept getting deeper and deeper. And if that was not bad enough, Curtis’s stubborn behind was stuck on being stupid and resisting getting right with the Lord. Gran Gran had told Curtis that he could expect to walk in some serious valleys if he kept playing “you can’t see me” with God. And now they were standing in the middle of the valley, it was starting to rain, they didn’t have any covering, their feet were sinking down in the mud, and Curtis remained intentionally clueless concerning what he needed to do. About the only hope Maurice had at the moment was that Gran Gran had offered to bring her prayer group, The Prayer Warriors, to practice to lay hands on and anoint the team.
But that wasn’t working because Curtis, with his proud and hardheaded self, kept hemmin’ and hawin’ about the offer. He was just plain scared and punkin’ out over letting his grandmother, Lamont Green’s aunt Queen Esther, and their girls pray over him and the team. What did he think was going to happen—that he was going to hop up and start prophesying and speaking in tongues to the crowd during the halftime show at a game?
Those prayers were going to help the team. It wasn’t something that could be seen, or explained, or proven. It just was. Carnal thinking was a trip and there were times when Curtis Parker, with his excessively carnal-thinking self, practically drove Maurice crazy.
Maurice sighed heavily and said, “Jesus, what us gone do?”
“It can’t be that bad, can it, dawg?” Curtis asked, now concerned about his best friend and most valuable coach for the team. There were three assistant coaches working with the basketball team—Maurice Fountain, Kordell Bivens, and Castilleo Palmer, who’d just earned his master’s degree in sports administration from Eva T. But as far as Curtis was concerned, there was only one real assistant coach. Those other two really didn’t need to be on the payroll, sucking up precious resources and doing absolutely nothing but getting on everybody’s (including the players’) nerves.
Kordell Bivens was the kind of negro who was fiercely loyal to those he considered a friend—namely his boy and partner in crime Rico Sneed, who was around the basketball team way too much lately. Other than that, Kordell could not be depended on to do what was right and honorable—especially where Curtis and the team were concerned. He was dishonest to a fault. And he hid it behind a solemn, silent demeanor that made most people think he was just personality challenged and weird. Kordell Bivens was the type of negro who could be a guest in a person’s house and turn around and bite them with betrayal like a rabid dog, as his own special way of saying “thank you.”
And then there was Castilleo Palmer—a wannabe player with the erroneous assumption that he was a gift to behold. Castilleo acted like he had the capacity to add something worth anything to the lives of the women he was involved with. About the only thing Castilleo ever did that was worthwhile was to break it off with his nicest girlfriends. And he couldn’t even do that right. The boy was so mean and ugly-acting when he broke off from a woman that she never wanted to have another thing to do with him. In fact, once one of Castilleo’s exceptionally beautiful ex-girlfriends was standing beside a flat tire at the Southpoint Mall parking lot in a thunderstorm. When he offered to help, she said, “No thank you. I’d prefer to be assisted by that man over there.”
She then proceeded to point to a man who was standing at the bus stop singing the theme song from the 1970s version of the movie Shaft, dancing like Michael Jackson on one of his best songs from the famed Off the Wall album, and picking and eating boogers, when he appeared a tad bit tired and famished.
Castilleo Palmer and Kordell Bivens—the assistant coaches from the pit of Hell—with their ever-present, annoying, and so unnecessary sidekick, Rico Sneed. Curtis had inherited those two jokers from his predecessor when he became the head coach of the basketball team. And the only reason he had not chased those two jokers out of his department with a sawed-off shotgun was that he had needed to hire Maurice. Curtis knew that firing Kordell and Castilleo would make his boss, Gilead Jackson, mad, and make it hard to get Maurice on staff at the right salary.
It had seemed like a good plan at the time. But now, having to deal with all the stress, drama, and backstabbing that came with having Kordell and Castilleo as employees let him know he had not exercised any kind of good judgment concerning this matter. He wished he would have followed Gran Gran’s admonishment to trust God, fire those two, and let the chips fall where they may.
Maurice’s eyes were closed and his lips were moving in a silent prayer. Curtis asked him again.
“Man, is it really that bad?”
“Worse,” Maurice answered.
“So, what do we do about June Bug Washington and DeMarcus Brown?”
“Bench ’em, Curtis. They are nothing but trouble, and I’m tired of fooling with those two spoiled, bratty pimp daddies just because Bishop Sonny Washington’s son is one’s pappy, and Reverend Marcel Brown sired the other.”
Curtis started laughing. “Dawg, you make old boy sound like a rutting stag. Sire? If that ain’t some old school mess from what century?”
“Well, it’s true, ain’t it,” Maurice said with a chuckle. “Heck, you and I both know that DeMarcus’s daddy is still pimpin’ and he what … seventy-nine, eighty?”
“I think Reverend Brown is seventy-seven,” Curtis said. “Reverend Harris told me that her dad, Bishop Simmons, was seventy-five, and I think Reverend Brown is a couple of years older than Sharon Simmons-Harris’s father.”
Maurice looked toward the back door to make sure Trina wasn’t in earshot in the kitchen before he said, “Sharon is fine.”
“Yes, Lawd,” Curtis said and held out his fist for some dap. “Umph, umph, umph. And Lawd knows I shouldn’t be talking like this about a preacher. But baby girl is tight—chocolate, tall, slender, with those hips and that butt.” Curtis curved his hands as if he was drawing the shape of Reverend Harris’s butt in the air.
“I know,” Maurice said, taking care to keep an eye on the door. “And those legs? Where did that sistah get those legs?”
“She got ’em from her mama,” Curtis answered, grinning. “You know Mother Simmons is fine and has some big, pretty legs. Lawd knows Bishop Simmons has his hands full keeping negroes off those two.”
“Three,” Maurice corrected.
“Three what?”
“Those three. You said two. It’s three.”
“Well,” Curtis said, “who is number three? I know that Sharon has a younger brother, Theo Jr.”
“She has a younger sister, too. Linda Simmons Bradley.”
Curtis rubbed his chin. The only Linda Bradley he knew of lived in Atlanta, and other than being short and red, she did look a whole lot like Sharon Harris. He said, “Reverend Bradley’s wife, Linda, is Sharon’s sister? Reverend Bradley, the pastor of River of Life Gospel United Church in Atlanta?”
“Yep,” Maurice answered.
“Small world. But you know she and Sharon favor a lot—especially those legs.”
“Yep,” Maurice answered. “Linda Bradley has a set of legs on her, too. I’ve heard that Reverend Bradley has had to roll up on more than a few negroes about his wife—especially when they go to the Annual Conferences.”
“I can understand why that would be the case, Maurice.”
Maurice nodded. His baby Trina was fine and he didn’t know what he’d have to do if he had to deal with fine-woman issues as a preacher. At least folks expected coaches to cuss and fight and act crazy. But preachers were another story. He didn’t envy them—not one bit.
“Curtis, hurry and do something about June Bug and DeMarcus because I don’t want to be bothered with them this year. They need to sit out until they bring those grades up and quit ho-hoppin’ in the dorms. I know that June Bug has had two pregnancy scares since school started. And DeMarcus came this close”—Maurice held up his hand with his thumb and forefinger less than an inch apart—“this close to getting pistol-whipped by Mr. Chandler, the head of the mail center on campus, for being at his house with his wife when he wasn’t home.”
“Why was that boy over at Dave Chandler’s house like that? Is he taking a class with Pauline?”
“Yeah. And the dummy is failing it with flying colors. That’s why he was over there—getting some tutoring. At least that is what he told Dave right before he got tossed out of the front door without his new 250-dollar shoes.”
“What is wrong with Pauline Chandler?” Curtis asked, agitated. “You know one of Kordell’s campus women, Prudence Baylor, told her not to marry Dave Chandler when she started chasing him five months after his wife died. Prudence said that spending a night with Dave was worse than standing in a long line at Wal-Mart on Black Friday. Whatever he thought he was doing took forever and got on your nerves something terrible.”
Maurice started laughing. Real life at an HBCU could give any reality TV show a good run for its money—and that included his favorite reality show, Flavor of Love.
Curtis said, “We have more problems than we need because DeMarcus decided to help Pauline get out of the Wal-Mart line.”
“Yeah. That is part one of our problems,” Maurice went on. “There’s a part two. Dr. Redmond will not override Gilead Jackson’s refusal to let LeDarius Johnson, Earl Paxton Jr., Sherron Grey, Mario Lincoln, and Kaylo Bailey get cleared to serve as the starting lineup for upcoming games.”
Curtis ran his hands over the stubble of his close-cut hair and banged his hand on the deck railing. “Do Dr. Redmond and Gilead Jackson want to win any games this season? Heck, with a starting lineup like that, we have a chance to take the conference title—even with the losses we’ve already sustained. Those brothers are the best players on the team, and the only ones, in spite of June Bug and DeMarcus’s talent, with a chance of being scouted for the NBA. Maurice, when was the last time Eva T. sent anybody to the NBA?”
“Nineteen-ninety-three.”
“You’re joking?”
“Nope. And it’s not because we haven’t had any NBA-quality players. But they all transferred to bigger schools, with better basketball programs, and more television coverage when it became clear that the last coach wasn’t going to play them right.”
“WHY?” Curtis practically shouted, and then calmed down. This was almost criminal. If this wasn’t his own team, he would have reported them to the NCAA for unethical practices.
“Not quite sure. But I know that some of the players that were allowed to start had parents with pockets deep enough to buy their non-basketball-playing sons a prime spot on the team. Or Gilead is sleeping with somebody’s mama and has to do something to pacify the girl and keep her from acting crazy on campus, or worse, going and telling his wife.”
“Are you telling me that Delores doesn’t know what her husband is doing? Gilead ain’t got that kinda play in him.”
“You ain’t never lied, dawg,” Maurice said with a smile spreading across his face. “Gilead doesn’t strike me as the type of brother who can run with boo and then come home and tighten up everything all right and good with wifey.”
“Naah, Maurice. He ain’t coming home doing nothin’ but lyin’. Gilead don’t have that kind of stamina. You’ve seen how the brother has to walk with those old bad and stiff knees. Give him a few rounds with one of his women, and a blue tablet wouldn’t even be able to help that negro.”
Maurice shook his head in disgust. He was all man—a guy’s guy if there ever was one. But he never had and never would cheat on Trina. For one, the loving was just too dang good. And two, he’d better sleep with one eye open, if she found out. Because she’d do some serious damage to his person, not to mention his body parts.
Thirdly, he wanted to set a good example for his two sons, even if they never ever saw him tipping out. He’d read enough books on spiritual warfare to know better than to do anything that could give the enemy a reason to attack his home because the head had gone weak and left a crack in the wall for the Devil to wreak havoc in their lives. Cheating on your wife was just wrong—there was no excuse for it. The Word made that clear in no uncertain terms. And Maurice wasn’t doing anything that would interfere with his prayers being answered. 1 Peter 3:7 shot straight from the hip when it stated, “In the same way, you husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat her with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God’s gift of new life. If you don’t treat her as you should, your prayers will not be heard.”
Maurice loved Peter. He was a trip—just as crazy, impetuous, and gangsta as he could be. But Peter loved him some Jesus. And Maurice did, too. Plus, Maurice wanted to see the team win the conference title. He didn’t have time to be out there laying up with some trash and not getting his prayers answered. And it wasn’t because he didn’t have any offers. Women threw coochie offers at him all the time. Maurice Fountain was definitely easy on the eyes—six-five, built like a diesel truck, honey complexion, and dark, curly mingled gray hair—a welcome sight for the women who admired him from afar on campus.
“And I’m beginning to get concerned that there is another hidden reason, Curtis. But what I keep thinking is just as crazy.”
“Aren’t you the one always telling me that the Devil is just as crazy?”
Maurice smiled and nodded. That was one of his famous Mauriceisms: “The Devil is just as crazy.” He said, “Sam Redmond and Gilead Jackson want a new coach. And it’s something about this coach that is going to get them a whole lot of money—not money for the department. This is change they’ll drop right into their pockets.”
“Winning the conference title and playing your way to a seat at the dance during March Madness is a sure way to boost revenues, and even raise salaries,” Curtis told him.
“I know. But it goes further than that. That’s all I know right now.”
“That’s enough, man. I see why you stay on your knees. If I kept getting info from Jesus like that, I’d be on my knees, too. That’s scary, man. Something that has better revenues than a straight-up conference win.”
“It is scary, Curtis, if you don’t have the Lord on your side. But with God, none of these weapons formed against us—no matter how big, sinister, and well-planned—can and will prosper. That’s why you have got to quit playing and get your life straight. I mean it, man. You are the key.”
Curtis didn’t want to hear that. He knew Maurice was right but was having a hard time receiving that truth to his heart. He said, “Man, I will work hard, make whatever sacrifices—”
“This is about obedience and submission, not sacrifice, Curtis. God prefers obedience any day over sacrifice.”
Maurice stopped talking and took a deep breath. Why couldn’t this negro just admit that he couldn’t handle this by himself? Pride—nothing but pride. Curtis wanted to get all of the credit for putting this thing right. But that wasn’t going to happen—not this time.
Help this boy, Jesus, Maurice thought. He trusted the Lord. But trusting God while going through struggle was very hard to do—especially when it involved your mortgage, the light bill, the car note, and everything else where money, a job, and a steady source of income were the prerequisites to making this all work. And when you added in food to the equation—especially the way his two boys could plow through a meal—he might as well throw in the towel.