13
What’s gotten into you?” Nettie asked as she ran into Landon’s office after hearing loud banging and clanging sounds.
“I can never find anything in this office,” Landon barked.
Nettie picked up the file drawer that had been pulled from the cabinet and thrown on the floor. She put it back where it belonged and then said, “I try to keep everything in order for you. Just tell me what you’re looking for and I’ll find it.”
Landon sat down behind his desk and rolled his eyes in agitation. “I was working on my sermon for Sunday service. But I couldn’t concentrate, so I decided to work on the housing project, but I can’t find the file on the homes that are up for sale.”
“I left that file on your desk.” Nettie moved a few pieces of paper and then picked up the file and handed it to him.
Landon took it but then flung it back down on his desk. “What’s the use? I’ve been beating my head against a wall for this project for so long and still haven’t come close to getting anyone into a home yet.”
“What are you talking about? You’ve found two eligible people.”
“And I need ten. So what does that tell you?”
Nettie put her hands on her hips and gave Landon a disapproving look. “It tells me that you’ve got eight more to go. But based on your attitude I think you need to step back and take a break.”
Landon sneered at the thought. “I can’t step back. It was so all-fired important that I help people who don’t even want to help themselves that I put everything I wanted on the back burner.” To himself, he added, now I have nothing but this project.
“Go home, Pastor Landon. You need to get some rest.”
Landon’s mind had drifted back to Pilgrim Baptist Church, where he’d stood on the front steps of that church and had his heart ripped out of his chest as Shar beamed up at her fiancé.
“Did you hear me, Pastor?”
“Huh? Did you say something?”
“Go home. You’ve been here working all day. Don’t stay late tonight. You need some rest.”
Landon put his face in his hands as he tried to calm himself. When he looked up, he decided. “You’re right. I’ve been working on this project for too long without a break. I’m going home and getting some sleep.”
“I think that’s an excellent idea. Get you some rest, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Landon jumped out of his seat and headed toward the door. His hand was on the knob, but he remembered something and then turned back around. “Hey, Nettie, when I give you my letters to mail, have you ever not had enough postage to mail all of the letters?”
“No, why?”
“A friend said that she hasn’t received my letters lately.”
Nettie hunched her shoulders and with wide-eyed innocence responded, “I can’t imagine why anyone would have problems receiving your mail, but I’ll check with the post office.”
“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.” But the minute Landon stepped outside, he dreaded the thought of going home. Sitting down on the church stoop, he tried to figure on something to do this evening. Going to an empty house to spend another night with nothing but his passion for the community to keep him company wasn’t on his to-do list. So he walked the neighborhood. Landon desperately needed to remind himself of what he was fighting for.
He’d been working so hard for the past few months, trying to do right by the people in the community that he’d let down the one person he wanted to spend a lifetime with. But Landon was having a hard time understanding how Shar didn’t know how he felt about her. Maybe the truth was, Shar knew and didn’t care.
She wanted Nicoli James and that was all that mattered to her. Now Landon needed to figure out what mattered to him. And as he walked block after block of the Black Belt, his conviction for his mission in life grew stronger. The men, women, and children in this neighborhood needed him, and he wasn’t going to let them down.
He headed home. Turning on to his street, Landon became a bit perplexed. Although it was dark out by that time, his street appeared to be lit up like a Christmas tree. He kept walking down his street, and as he got closer to his house, Landon realized that it wasn’t lights from a Christmas tree that lit his street, but a burning cross that had been erected in his yard.
So now they’ve come after me, Landon thought. He had seen crosses a-plenty in the South. Erected whenever the Ku Klux Klan thought a colored man had gotten too big for his britches. Landon shook his head as he thought about the day Shar’s father had told him he was a day late and a dollar short. That’s how he felt about this attempted intimidation from angry people who wanted things to stay the way they were.
They should have burned this cross in his yard before Shar kicked him in the teeth with her betrayal, because now he was too numb to care about it. He walked past the cross, opened his front door, went inside his house, and flopped onto his bed without taking his street clothes off. The rains came and quenched the fire outside, but the one burning in Landon’s heart would be much harder to get rid of.
“What’s this I hear about you and Nicoli getting engaged?” Mahalia asked as she took a seat next to Shar.
Shar rolled her eyes. “Nicoli was just jealous because my pastor came to see me the other night, so he told him that we were engaged. But I’ve only been seeing Nicoli for a few weeks.”
“Just like a dog, marking his territory,” Mahalia said.
“What territory?”
“Girl, you too wet behind the ears to know what Mahalia is talking about. That’s why you don’t have no business with that snake,” Sallie said.
Shar ignored Sallie. She didn’t have much good to say about any man. She told Mahalia, “Nicoli didn’t mean anything by what he did. He knew that Pastor Landon had hurt me by not responding to my letters, so he was just trying to let him know that I done moved on.”
“I’ve met Pastor Landon. I even had a few conversations with him concerning what he’s trying to do with the housing situation in Chicago. He’s a good man. Are you sure you want to mess that up?” Mahalia asked.
“Pastor Landon is the one who messed up. He left me in the lurch without so much as a by-your-leave. I can’t sit around and wait on him to save the world. I need someone in my life right now.”
Mahalia stood up. But before she left she said, “Now, Shar, you’re younger than me, and where you’re going, I done all ready been. So I’m gon’ tell you straight. That Nicoli James don’t have the same love for gospel music as we do. He’s just like my first husband, always looking for the money and trying to see how the things in your life can benefit him.”
Shar shook her head emphatically. “Nicoli isn’t like that, Mahalia. I don’t have no money, but he still wants to be with me. He loves me.”
Mahalia sat back down. “I thought you just been seeing him for a few weeks?”
“That’s right. I can’t explain how it happened. I just know that he loves me and I love him right back.”
Sallie rolled her eyes heavenward. She tapped Mahalia on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s go practice. You can’t open a closed mind.”
As the two women walked away from her, Shar suspected that they thought she was the biggest fool who’d ever come north. But as Nicoli sauntered over to her, put his arms around her, and pulled her into a loving embrace, Shar stopped concerning herself with what other people thought. However, she did have a bone to pick with Nicoli. She pulled out of his embrace and sulkily asked, “Why you going around here telling everybody that we’re engaged?”
“I thought we were.”
“How? You never asked for my hand in marriage. And besides, we’ve only been going together for three weeks. We can’t just up and get engaged.”
The look on Nicoli’s face was serious as he told her, “It don’t take me two years to decide what I want, Shar. I’m not that pastor friend of yours who wants you one minute and then leaves you high and dry the next.”
Sometimes, Shar wished that she had never mouthed a word of her and Pastor Landon’s business. Nicoli seemed to delight in telling her just how little Pastor Landon cared about her. But maybe he was right. And maybe she needed to be with someone who knew his mind and had no trouble acting on it. “All right then, Nicoli, we’re engaged. But we need to keep this just between us until we talk to my ma and pa about it.”
He held up his hands. “Whatever you say, baby, whatever you say.”
Nettie knocked on Pastor Landon’s front door. When he didn’t answer, she tried the knob. It was unlocked. She thought it strange that Pastor Landon wouldn’t lock his front door when there had obviously been a cross burned in his front yard the night before. She and her parents had heard about it first thing that morning, so Nettie made it her business to come and check on him.
“Pastor Landon,” she called from the entryway.
He didn’t answer.
She called again, “Pastor Landon? Are you here?” Please God, don’t let him be dead. With little concern for her own well being, Nettie rushed through the house in search of Landon.
“If you’re in here, please speak up, Pastor Landon.” Desperation dripped from Nettie’s voice as she made the plea.
Landon yelled from the back of the house, “Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Pastor. Nettie.”
“Oh.”
She heard the disappointment in his voice, but she didn’t care. She was just grateful that the Klan hadn’t strung him up or shot him and left him for dead in his own home. “We heard about what happened last night, so I came to see if you were all right.”
Landon walked into the living room. He had on a long terrycloth robe, pajama pants, and house shoes. “Why aren’t you dressed?” There was distress in Nettie’s voice as she viewed the disheveled look of her pastor.
“I think I’m going to stay home today. I need to rest.”
With hands on hips Nettie took charge. “Stay home if you like, but you are going to sit yourself down in this kitchen so I can fix you some breakfast and then you can lay back down if you want to.”
Landon sat down as he was told but said, “If I’da known you were this bossy I don’t think I would have hired you.”
As she scrambled eggs, Nettie smiled as she said, “You sure would have hired me. Believe it or not, you need me. And by the way, I already had that hideous cross removed from your front yard. It’s going to take a while for the grass to grow back, but that’s all the damage you received.”
Landon rubbed his temples. “I forgot about that cross.”
“How could you have forgotten about something like that?”
He laid his head on the table. “I had something else on my mind.”
“Sit up, Pastor. That’s enough moping around. I’m going to take care of you, and you’re going to be just fine.”
Landon turned around and looked at Nettie as if seeing her for the first time. “So you’re going to take care of me, huh?”
“That’s what I said.” She put the eggs on his plate and then handed it to him. Nettie then stood behind him, smiling as he took the first bite.