ON TWENTIETH STREET, IN THE SKIMPY SHADE OF A LOAD-ING ZONE sign, little Edmund Powers plunked his shoeshine kit down across the street from the Tutwiler Hotel. It was Saturday morning. Might be some businessman would want his shoes shined before lunch. Edmund knew they could get their shoes shined inside the hotel, but might be they’d want their shoes bright by the time they walked in the door. Not much business happening for a Saturday morning.
Edmund spied Mr. No-Legs swinging down the street, dressed in his good, solid blue suit. Can’t shine his shoes, Edmund thought. When the man passed, Edmund said politely, “Howdy-do,” and Mr. No-Legs answered him in kind, not breaking the rhythmic placing of hand mallets before him on the sidewalk and swinging his body through. Edmund had heard Mr. No-Legs had lost his legs in Korea, shot off by a bazooka.
More white women out shopping than any white men doing business, but sometimes men had Saturday meetings; sometimes a group would go laughing into Joy Young’s. Egg Foo Young, Eddie read on the restaurant’s window. Well, he knew what eggs tasted like, anyway.
Oh, no, here came a madman. A sidewalk preacher. His mama had said, “Now, you want to testify at revival, or in church—that’s fine. But folks that preach on the street corner—they got a screw loose, and I don’t want you acting anything but normal when you out in public.” She said it was dangerous to be a standout.
But Edmund could feel the pull of it—just standing on the street corner, opening your mouth, and proclaiming the Lord. He might be able to save every soul in the city, he himself. Folks just needed to hear. It wasn’t the people in church; it was the people out of church who needed to hear the Word. Over in Five Points, there was a statue of Brother Bryan, kneeling. He wasn’t in Bible clothes. He had on an overcoat, and in one hand he held a hat with a crease in the crown. He was all white, even his clothes and his hat. The strangest thing about him was that he was praying looking up. Edmund had always been told to bow his head in prayer. It seemed disrespectful to look right up into the face of God.
If Edmund’s mama would let him preach on the street corners, and he saved every soul in the city—who knew? Maybe right beside Brother Bryan, they’d make a statue of a little colored boy in all-white marble, kneeling, with his head respectfully bowed.
Here came the madman, wearing a sandwich board, written on with Scripture. The word Blood was printed extra big and in red. Full of curiosity, Edmund moved his shoe kit closer. Close by, another man with a sling sack of newspapers was getting ready to call out. Maybe some Mr. Big would buy a newspaper and read the headlines while Edmund shined his shoes. The man would hitch up his pant leg and then rest his shoe sole on the box handle, which doubled as a foot platform. Mr. Big would rest an elbow on his cocked knee and open the newspaper he’d just bought. When Edmund was finished with one foot, the man would step down with that foot, and change sides.
Edmund was proud of his little box kit. Years ago, his big brother Charles had made it in Manual Training class, sawed the boards to the pattern, nailed it together, sanded it, and varnished it with shellac. It had taken all semester. Edmund wanted to work with his hands, and that would be a hobby, when he was a preacher like his beloved Reverend Shuttlesworth. It was a good hobby for a minister; Jesus had been a carpenter.
To look busy, Edmund took out his strips of flannel; he had a black one and a brown one, and an oxblood one. He’d shake them out and fold them more neatly, be industrious. The sunshine was hot on his head and shoulders. If he pretended he’d just had a job and now he was straightening up his office, he might get just the right amount of attention.
In a loud voice, the preacher asked, not of anyone in particular: “Which are you? The wheat or the tares?” He stopped to let his question sink in. He spoke to the empty air, or maybe the blue sky above. He was a big man, poorly dressed in wrinkled tan clothes. “There’s a grrrrrreat winnowing coming. The chaff will be blown away by the breeze.” He pulled his unbuttoned shirt together across his T-shirt, as though he could feel a wind. “A breeze is coming to Birmingham. Watch out, brother! Watch out, sister! Are you washed in the Blood of the Lamb?”
The newspaper vendor—a small weasel man in comparison to the hulking evangelist—turned his back to the evangelist and called out just as loudly: “Extra, extra! Read all about it. King arrested in St. Augustine.” The little vendor wore a flimsy cap with a bill, like a painter’s cap.
“I say unto ye,” the evangelist shouted, but there was nobody there but Edmund. “There will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.” He pointed toward the sky. “There’s a fiery furnace where God makes steel. He will cast down all pagan gods. Vulcan will tumble from the mountaintop, and Red Mountain will open and gush blood and rust.”
Edmund couldn’t help but look south to see if Vulcan was being uprooted, but Vulcan stood serene and shiny, holding up his arm, his head in the clouds.
The newspaper vendor yelled again in a high-pitched voice that demonstrators had been jailed in St. Augustine. He took off his paper cap to smooth his hair straight back from his forehead and temples, which were large and shiny. Receding hairline, Edmund thought. He felt knowledgeable.
A few people walked by on the other side of the street. Two men went inside the Tutwiler, and three white girls went in the Tutwiler Drugstore. A brown man in a matching suit with a felt hat shuffled by.
“King jailed in Florida,” the weasel vendor screamed. Edmund had promised Reverend Shuttlesworth that he would go to jail, but he never did quite get the chance.
“Ten cents, only a dime. Read all about it.”
Edmund had a dime, but he knew the vendor wouldn’t like it if he bought a newspaper.
“Repent of your wickedness,” the evangelist exhorted. Edmund thought, But I ain’t done nothing. “Sin is a woman with jade in her navel! Sin is mixing of the races! Sin is eating blood and meat!”
The evangelist began to back up toward the vendor while the vendor backed up toward the evangelist. Edmund hoped there would be a collision.
“Good news! Good news!” the evangelist shouted. “Jesus is the good news!” A businessman in a suit walked right past all of them, the evangelist, the vendor, and Edmund, but the hulking evangelist said to Mr. Big in an ordinary voice, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” He actually held out his hand. Edmund knew what Brother Bryan would do. Once he’d given a beggar the overcoat off his back. “Brother, can you help?” When he wasn’t fired up, the big old evangelist sounded old.
Mr. Big just kept walking. Edmund wondered if he should give the evangelist a dime, but before he could decide, the evangelist turned around and said to the vendor, “Brother, can you help?”
To Edmund’s surprise, the vendor dug into his pocket. “I reckon so,” he said. “What’s the news from heaven?”
“It don’t look good for this city.” The evangelist shook his head sadly. “It’s Sodom and Gomorrah. Can a hundred righteous be found? Can fifty righteous be found? Brother, can ten righteous be found?”
The vendor didn’t answer.
“Well,” the evangelist went on in an ordinary voice, “what’s the news from earth?”
It was as though they were in church doing a responsive reading, or singing a duet. Edmund just crouched quietly beside his shoeshine box, listening.
The newspaper vendor said, “Seems like you got the bad news, and I got the good. They got that big nigger troublemaker in jail.”
“That right?” the evangelist said.
“Wanna buy a paper?” the vendor asked. “Read about it?”
“Yeah,” the evangelist said, and he gave the vendor back his dime.
Edmund wanted to laugh. Then both men turned their backs to each other and hollered out at the same time: “Extra, extra!” and “Repent! Repent ye today!” Edmund did laugh, but he tucked his head down, so nobody would see him laughing at two white men. They yelled their lungs out for a few minutes, and then they both stopped.
The vendor said, “People can’t hear the headlines what with you shouting out.”
The evangelist answered, “This is my corner.”
Trouble, Edmund thought. He got ready to move quick, if he needed to. Don’t ever be caught in a cross fire, his mama had taught him.
“Your corner?” the newsman asked. “Your corner is across the street.”
But the evangelist stood his ground. “God changed it to over here. This morning. He said there was more business over here at the White Palace Grill.”
“He’s right,” the vendor said. “That’s why it’s my corner.”
They were both crazy. Edmund stood up slowly, not to attract their attention.
The evangelist slapped his sandwich board with his hand. “You eat meat?”
“Of course I eat meat. I eat right here at the White Palace Grill.”
“That’s not what they serve,” the evangelist said.
“You gonna get yourself sued.”
“I don’t care. What they got is ground-up cardboard soaked in goat’s blood.”
The vendor took off his cap and smoothed his head again. “They have a place for people like you.”
“In the Palace?”
“No. In the loony bin. Tuscaloosa.”
“It’s my work,” the evangelist said. He sounded whiny. “You try to make a living peddling words.”
“I do.” The vendor held up a copy of the Birmingham News.
“Let’s swap around. You stand over there across the street where I used to be, and I’ll stay here. Gimme the papers. You can wear my sign.” He began to struggle to pull the sandwich board up over his head.
“You gotta be crazy,” the vendor said.
The evangelist got the boards off. He rolled his chest around as though it were good not to be confined, but his face contracted with meanness. Edmund could see it. The man was losing his mind in a new way.
“You’re tired of your life, ain’t you?” the evangelist said to the vendor.
He Klan, Edmund thought. Not no preacher. He Klan. Watch out!
The evangelist went on, “I can see it writ on your face.”
The vendor wouldn’t back down, but he spoke slowly and carefully, as though he’d considered the matter. “No, I’m not tired of my life.” He took off his paper painter’s cap, smoothed his hair, and put it back on. “I don’t believe anybody’s tired of their life. Unless you are.”
“See,” the evangelist said, and now his voice was all pleading, not a bit cruel. Suddenly Edmund knew what he was seeing—multiple personalities. He’d heard a sermon about it—how we have different people inside us, fighting one another. That was what was wrong with the evangelist. “See,” the evangelist said, “I’m dying for a hamburger, but I can’t go in, see. God’s watching me. But if I took your place, then God would think it was you going in.”
“God knows the difference between you and me.” The vendor seemed shocked.
“He’s taking a nap.”
“What?” The newspaper vendor couldn’t believe his ears, Edmund could tell. Neither could he.
“He’s just dozed off,” the evangelist explained. “God don’t see good with his eyes closed.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s the only way to account for the holy carnage that’s about to happen here,” the big evangelist said, and suddenly he spoke in the tongue of an educated man. “God’s asleep. That’s the only way it could happen. Undercover F.B.I., brother.” He flashed his badge. “Give me your papers, and you get your ass across the street. You, too, sonny,” he said to Edmund. “Take this goddamned sign.”