BLOOD ON THE MOON

25

tion of the curfew. Lloyd walked in, to be confronted by a pandemonium that was part prayer meeting, part coffee klatch. Large tables had been set up lengthwise between rows of wooden pews, and middle-aged and elderly Negroes were kneeling in prayer and helping themselves to coffee and donuts. Lloyd moved slowly along the walls, which were festooned with paintings of a black Christ, weeping, blood dripping from his crown of thorns. He started looking to the faces of the kneelers for signs of holiness or compassion. All he saw was fear. Until he noticed a fat black woman in a white robe who seemed to be smiling inwardly as she dispensed shoulder taps to the people who knelt by the pews nearest the aisle. When the woman noticed Lloyd she shouted, “Welcome, soldier,” above the other hubbub and walked up to him, hand extended. Startled, Lloyd shook the hand and said, “I’m P.F.C. Hopkins. I’m here on a mission of mercy for one of your parishioners.”

The woman dropped Lloyd’s hand and said, “I’m Sister Sylvia. This church is strictly for the Afro-American folk, but tonight is sort of special. Did you come to pray for the victims of this Armageddon? Do that be your mission?”

Lloyd shook his head. “No, I came to ask a favor. Famous Johnson is dead. Before he died, he asked me to come here and tell you to sell his belongings so he can have a proper burial. He told me you know the address of his place in Long Beach and his birthdate. He wants a nice headstone. He told me to tell you he loves Jesus.” Lloyd was startled to see Sister Sylvia shaking her head ironically, a grin starting to form at the corners of her mouth. “I don’t think it’s funny,” he said.

“You don’t!” Sister Sylvia bellowed. “Well, I does! Famous Johnson was trash, young white man! He deserved to be called what he was—a nigger!

And that room in Long Beach? That nothing but fantasy! Famous Johnson lived out of his car, with his sin things in the back seat! He used to come by this church for the donuts and coffee, but that all! Famous Johnson didn’t have nothin’ to sell!”

“But I . . .”

“You comes with me, young man. I shows you, so you forget all about Infamous Johnson with a clean conscience.”

Lloyd decided not to protest; he wanted to see the fat woman’s definition of sin.

It was a high-finned, chopped and lowered 1947 Cadillac, what Crazy Tom would have called a “Coon-Mobile.”

Lloyd flashed his light into the back seat as Sister Sylvia stood tri-26

L.A. NOIR

umphantly next to him, legs spread stolidly, her arms wrapped around her midsection in an “I told you so” attitude. He swung the door open. The tuck and roll upholstered seats were covered with empty soda pop bottles and pornographic photographs, most of them depicting Negro couples engaged in fellatio. Lloyd felt a sudden wave of pity; the sucker and suckee were overweight and middle-aged, and the tawdriness of the photos was a far cry from the Playboy magazines he had collected since high school. He didn’t want it to be; it was too rotten a legacy for any human being.

“I told you so!” Sister Sylvia barked. “This is In-famous Johnson’s house!

You gonna sell them pictures and return them empties, and get you a fast dollar ninety-eight, which ain’t gonna get you nothin’ but two bottles o’

T-Bird to pour over In-famous’s pauper grave!”

Lloyd shook his head. Radio noise from a block away pounded him, causing the whole ugly moment to sway in his vision. “But you don’t understand, ma’am,” he said. “Famous entrusted this job to me. It’s my job. It’s my duty. It’s my . . .”

“I don’t wanna hear nothin’ ’bout that sinner! You hears me? I wouldn’t bury that trash in our cemetery for all the tea in China. You hears me?” Sister Sylvia didn’t wait for an answer; she strode angrily back in the direction of her church, leaving Lloyd alone on the sidewalk, wishing the gunshots in the distance would escalate to the point where they drowned out the radio noise. He sat down on the curb and thought of the two wretched people in the photographs, and of Janice who wouldn’t blow him, but who did the final deed on their first date two weeks before high school graduation, leaving Lloyd Hopkins, Marshall High Class of ’59, aglow with wonder at the love in his future. Now, six years later, Lloyd Hopkins, summa cum laude graduate of Stanford University, graduate of the Fort Polk Infantry School and the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading Class and six-year lover of Janice Marie Rice, sat on a curb in Watts wondering why he couldn’t get what a fat Negro slob probably got all the time. Lloyd shined his light in the back seat window again. It was as he suspected: the guy’s dick was at least two inches bigger than his. He decided it was God and commitment. The jerk in the photo had a low I.Q. and a bad build, so God threw him a big wang to slide through life on. It all worked out.

Janice would take him orally when he graduated the academy and they got married. The last thought made him sex-flushed and sad. Janice made him sad. Then he thought of the daughters they would create. Janice, five foot eleven barefoot, slender, but with a robust set to her hips, was made for