Black Officer, White Army (eBook)

CHAPTER 10

Ye Shall Be Known By Your Acts

Every Sunday morning when I was growing up, our family attended church services—not periodically or sporadically, but every Sunday. The only illness that would exempt us from this requirement would have been the equivalent of the Ebola virus. When Daddy was on active duty in the United States Army, we attended Protestant services on Post. When he retired from the service, we attended services at the Church of Our Savior United Methodist, a small square building just up the hill from our house in the Westwood housing division in Junction City, Kansas.

A weekly dance would occur in our home to get six people in and out of a bath and a half and dressed in time for the service at 11:00 a.m. And I mean impeccably dressed. The males wore suits and ties, the females dresses. I don’t know if there is an actual verse in the Bible about presenting yourself at your best before God, but that’s what my parents taught us. At twelve years old, Mommy determined I was ready to wear hosiery with my dresses. These garter stockings were the bane of my existence. Each stocking was preformed to fit a shapely woman’s leg. I was neither shapely nor a woman, so the stockings would pool like deflated balloons around my ankles.

Daddy was always the first one ready—and the calmest. The rest of us rushed around like mice in a maze.

“You have ten minutes. The car is leaving in ten minutes!” Daddy called out.

I had finished getting ready and left Devereaux and Mommy jockeying for a position in front of the mirror in the upstairs bathroom. Daddy was sitting on the arm of the sofa in the living room.

“I bet you wish you were still in the Army,” I told him. “Organizing troops and convoy vehicles was probably easier than wrangling these folks.” Daddy winked at me and went outside to pull the car out of the garage. A few minutes later, the six of us piled into our behemoth powder-blue 1969 Ford Galaxy 500 for the ride up the hill.

Church of Our Savior United Methodist was a modest building with a sanctuary that had seating for about 100 people, but rarely saw more than fifty-five; a canteen for post-service punch and cookies, chili cook-offs and bake sales; the pastor’s office; and restrooms. We arrived at the church with just enough time to greet a few folks and take our unstated, yet universally understood, reserved seats in the second row on the right side of the sanctuary.

I liked our church for many reasons. One reason was we sang a lot. Mind you, I didn’t say we were good at it. No one in my family was blessed with a singing voice, but we sang our hearts out. One of my favorite hymns was “Because He Lives”:

God sent his son, they called Him Jesus;

He came to love, heal and forgive;

He lived and died to buy my pardon;

An empty grave is there to prove my savior lives.

Because he lives, I can face tomorrow,

Because he lives, all fear is gone;

Because I know He holds the future,

and life is worth the living,

just because He lives.

To this day, my eyes fill with tears upon hearing this song. The hymn speaks to me because there were times in my life when I feared what tomorrow would bring. I made it through remembering that He lives.

Another reason I liked church was the length of the service: one hour. I had friends who attended other churches whose services carried on into the afternoon. They’d go home for dinner and were expected to return for an evening service.

There was no such expectation like that at Church of Our Savior United Methodist. If the pastor ran over time even ten minutes, the congregation would begin squirming in their seats. And if he repeatedly ran over time Sunday after Sunday, it would become a topic on the agenda of the next church executive board meeting. My parents impressed upon us that Christianity was as much about how you lead your life during the week—how you treated others—as it was showing up on Sunday. Long hours in church didn’t automatically make you a better Christian.

One particular Sunday, when it came time for the minister’s sermon, I looked down at my watch. It was 11:35. We were right on schedule. He usually spoke fifteen to twenty minutes. Then we’d bless each other in parting and be on our way. But the minister was halfway into his sermon when I realized I was no longer focusing on his words. I could hear my stomach rumbling. The preservice chaos at home rarely allowed enough time for even a bowl of cold cereal. I just prayed no one could hear the growls coming from my belly.

In our post-service tradition, my father would prepare the fluffiest, sweetest buttermilk pancakes imaginable. As I watched the minister’s gestures, I could see a stack of four lovely golden-brown pancakes with creamy butter slathered between the layers, genuine maple syrup dripping down the sides from layer to layer, and four thick slices of sugar-cured bacon. My stomach grumbled again. Mommy leaned forward in front of Devereaux and glared at me as if I could control the noise. I shrugged my shoulders.

Finally, we stood for the benediction, and I sighed. It was, however, false hope. This was when the excruciatingly painful part of Sunday morning church services began. I greeted a few people and followed Daddy out to the car. The five of us sat in the car waiting for Mommy, who seemed to think it was her mission to have a conversation with every single person in the congregation. I was an eternal optimist. I could be optimistic when there was a meal involved. I always thought each Sunday would somehow be different. But it wasn’t. This was her world; we just lived in it.

Daddy checked his watch a few times. Forty-five minutes had passed. By now my stomach had a death grip on my spine.

“Come on, Bidey,” I heard him say under his breath. I poked my head over the front seat.

“What was that, Daddy?” I asked.

“Nothing, I was just talking to myself,” he said.

Finally, Mommy emerged talking to the pastor. We had been waiting in the car almost an hour—almost as long as the duration of the service. Everyone else had left, and the pastor was locking the front door of the church. Daddy started the engine and drove the car up to the sidewalk. Mommy got in and was a chatterbox all the way home, oblivious to how she had inconvenienced all of us.

This was a scene that repeated every Sunday. When Curtis started driving, Devereaux and I were allowed to ride to church separately with him. At least we could escape. But my father would never leave church without my mother. He never expressed anger toward her. He was an incredibly patient man.

At home, Daddy immediately headed for the kitchen. Before long, I heard the sound of sizzling bacon, and that heavenly aroma filled the house. I went to my bedroom and changed into shorts and a T-shirt, then joined him in the kitchen.

“Buddy, can you watch the bacon for me while I change?” he asked.

“Sure.” He handed me the long fork. I slid the bacon slices around the skillet to make sure they browned evenly. The hum of the exhaust fan over the stove was hypnotic. When each slice was done, I removed it from the skillet and placed it on a plate lined with paper towels to absorb the excess grease.

Daddy returned and mixed the ingredients for his pancake batter. I never saw him look at a recipe. He just knew what to add. He poured the batter into two circles on a large preheated black cast iron skillet that had been lightly coated with bacon grease. After a few seconds, bubbles started to form in the batter. Daddy noticed me watching intently.

“You see the bubbles that are forming?” he asked. I nodded. “That’s part of what will make the pancakes fluffy.” He picked up a metal spatula. I thought he was going to flip the pancakes. Instead, he used the spatula to lift a little bit of the outer edge of each pancake off the skillet.

“So how do you know when to flip them?” I asked.

“In a few minutes, all of the bubbles will have popped, and the surface will be dry, not shiny. That’s when I’ll flip them. If you do it too soon, they’ll be gummy inside; leave them too long, and they’ll be too dry.” As Daddy explained the finer points of making the world’s fluffiest pancakes to me, I remember thinking, This man cares so much about his family that he makes pancakes for us each and every Sunday morning.

It wasn’t enough that he did these wonderful things for us. I remember one day I accompanied him while he ran errands around town. Before going home, we stopped at McDonald’s for coffee. My father loved McDonald’s coffee. Didn’t matter what the time of day was, he was always ready for coffee.

We sat quietly in a booth as he sipped his coffee, and I licked my ice cream cone. He cleared his throat a few times and frowned slightly.

“How’s that cone?’ he asked.

“It’s good,” I said. He shifted his weight in the seat. He started to speak but then took another sip. Clearly there was something on his mind.

Finally, he said, “I realize I don’t say this to you, but I love you.”

“I know that, Daddy,” I said slowly, unsure of the reason he felt the need to say it.

“When I was comin’ up, my parents never said things like that to Garland and me.” Garland was his older brother. “I want to make sure you know that.”

“I do, Daddy.”