He strode in with a distinct, pigeon-toed gait, which reminded me of a superb Negro baseball player I had once seen as a boy in 1947 play in Brooklyn at a Dodgers game with my father, who loved baseball.
He sat at the table across from me and without a word opened a brown paper bag and unfurled an egg salad sandwich and a piece of the appalling sweet potato pie. I noticed it was the same partially eaten piece that Mrs. Hart had left on her table that afternoon when she got up to leave; that is, after half devouring my piece, she gave the rest of it to him. He unwrapped it, grabbed the odorous thing with his fingers, and gulped it down in what I can only characterize as an act of unbelievable willpower, for whatever ingredients had been tossed into it seemed to have spawned by then, as it smelled horrible. He got rid of it quickly.
As he turned to his more appealing egg sandwich, several workers still streamed in, one of them the young man bearing a boom box, which he placed on an adjacent table and turned on, joined by three of his young friends. The infernal racket of rap music, full of pejorative curses and pornographic references, pounded across the room. The Reverend glanced at the radio, clearly irked, which gave me time to think of an opening line.
“Rev Hart, you walk just like Jackie Robinson,” I said brightly.
He waved me off. “One minute,” he said. He sat up, placed his palms upward, bowed his head, and prayed, drifting off into a kind of zone, murmuring to himself. His prayer, as best I could tell, started out sounding like a choo-choo train, slowly, softly, with several incantations to the Lord for forgiveness, apologizing for gulping his wife’s pie down before giving thanks, holiness, help, blessings for this and that and so forth. He warmed to the task slowly at first, which took about a minute, and five minutes later was full out, preaching like a roaring diesel engine, eyes closed, gone, hollering at God for redemption, mercy, help, and forgiveness for his coworkers. He ended with a long, ranting tirade about devil music, making a few direct references to the roaring, cursing filth that was emerging from the nearby boom box, praying for cleansing and dimension and all sorts of business for those who listened to it, praying for the boom box and even its owner, a young African-American man he referred to by name.
This brought a chortle from the young fellow and his three coworkers, two men of African-American and one of Hispanic descent respectively, sitting with him eating their 2 a.m. meal, talking at the Reverend with genuine amusement and, dare I say, encouragement.
“G’wan, Rev.”
“Git it, Rev.”
“Preach, Rev! You the man!”
“Gracias, Rev.”
“Mention me, Rev, mention me!”
Then they turned the box up a notch. The music boomed louder.
The Rev. Hart, still in prayer, ignored them. He was in his own world. He roared on a bit longer, delivering a litany about the blasphemy of the pornography and funk that wafted out of their boom box. For several minutes, man and boom box shouted at each other. It was a kind of war. And then the box won. The Rev. Hart sat in silence. And as a reward, the other side relaxed: The young man turned down the box to a decent volume.
The Reverend, sitting meditatively, opened his eyes. The spell was gone. Several older coworkers, mostly Dominicans and Haitians who had joined him in fitful prayer with their eyes shut, opened their eyes, too, and smiled at him. The room finally began to simmer down and eat.
“I can break their junk every time,” the Reverend said, glancing at the four young men who were now busy eating. “They don’t know what’s good for ’em.” Then he spoke to the young men directly. “Y’all don’t know what’s good for you. That music is devilment.”
The young men grinned, amused.
“Right on, Rev,” said one.
“You the man,” said another. “Do your thing, baby.”
This whole business took nearly fifteen minutes, and he had yet to speak to me. I was under the impression from the previous lunch break crew that he only had thirty minutes to eat. So I got right to it.
“About the train,” I said.
He cut a nervous glance at his fellow workers, none of whom were now paying attention and who chatted among themselves. “Oh, that old thing,” he said dismissively. “That’s from my grandmother. She died when I was a boy. I never knew her well.”
“Well, she left you quite a present.” I produced the leather portfolio bearing his name in neat gold gloss trim. He barely glanced at it. I opened it to the picture. “Is this you?”
“Naw,” he said, waving his hand. “That’s my great-grandpa there. He got his money same way my pa did. Selling booze and cigarettes. Making money hand over fist selling evil, the devil keeping score,” he said, biting into his egg sandwich.
“Reverend Hart, let me be clear here. That train is rare. It’s quite valuable. I’d like to buy it.”
He frowned, suddenly miserable. “For God’s sake, go ahead then. Since you keep crowing about it, g’wan and buy it.”
“Don’t you want to know what I’ll pay?”
“Whatever you say,” he said miserably, looking away.
“It’s probably worth . . . I’d say it has considerable value. Much more than you think.”
He looked around nervously, then glanced at his watch and brightened. “Only three minutes left for meal break,” he said gaily. “Factory rules. They’re tight about mealtime breaks around here.”
“Reverend, for what that toy is worth, you could buy this place, fire your boss, and have lunch all day.”
A sudden, wild look crossed his face, then disappeared.
“Just do what you want with that thing,” he said. “How much you wanna pay me for it? Whatever you say is fine. I’ll take whatever you got.”
I could stand it no longer. “Reverend Hart, do you realize what you’re saying?”
I spoke louder than I wanted to, and several people sitting nearby glanced at us. He suddenly reached over and grabbed my arm with such force that I was nearly pulled across the table. The pallor of his yellow face seemed to darken. He leaned in close, whispering, his face drawn tight, and suddenly fierce and wild.
“Do what you want with it,” he said. “I got a church to run. And a God to serve. And that devilment”—he pointed to the boom box—“is what I’m put on this earth to stop. That dumb train is just a silly earthly thing setting in my house gathering dust and bringing sin. You come all the way here to talk ’bout that thing? I already told you: Do what you want with it. Talk to my wife.”
“But she told me to talk to you!”
He stared at me with such force, such severe purpose, his face crunched into outrage, his eyebrows furled into angry valleys meeting at his eyes, his thin mustache suddenly drawn around the corners of his mouth in roaring fury, that I became frightened. His whole sense of purpose seemed so deep and wretched that I felt panic.
He must have seen the fear in my face, because he released my arm and with what seemed a great effort cleared his face of the expression until it was again blank and docile.
“Just set it up so that Junior gets any money from it when me and my wife is gone,” he said. “I don’t want him to know about it till I’m gone. You’d be doing me a favor. And don’t tell my wife what it’s worth. Can you do that for me?”
I assured him I could.
“Then it’s done,” he said, standing up. “And I reckon there’s a small piece in it for you, too, somehow, which I hope you enjoy. And take it with my blessing. Good day, mister. God bless you. I got to get back to work.”
• • •
TO MAKE A long story short, I got the train.
And a few days later I sold it.
I am rich.
It drew so many millions to myself and to the good Rev that I . . . I am loath to state exact amounts, as Uncle Sam has developed a sudden interest in the hyper boost to my once-modest income, and my lawyers have the
ir hands full. Suffice to say it was the biggest—and emptiest—commission I ever got in my life. I could have gotten many more millions had I sold the train on the open market, but the fact is, I have no children, and the Reverend wanted quiet. And frankly, how much money does one really need?
As it was, the buyer paid quite respectably—very respectably—for it, and he too wanted secrecy. He was one of my regulars, a billionaire from America’s upper crust who was familiar with the train’s story and wanted it kept quiet, in honor of General Lee and his beloved son and his beloved South. I’m told when he took possession of the train he put it on a private plane and flew it to Zurich, where it was placed in a private Swiss bank. It lives in a specially air-conditioned vault by itself. Every week, a worker wearing an all-white, special dust-clean suit, complete with mask and gloves, enters the vault and cleans the train and air brushes the entire vault.
The 15 percent commission set me up for life. That’s what the Reverend insisted I take. It’s above my usual 10 percent. The Reverend, of course, is set as well as any millionaire in New York City.
I never spoke to him again. Milton, my attorney friend in New York—he got so fat from this deal he retired—handled everything from the Reverend’s end. The Reverend bought his wife a new stove, paid off his phone bill, and had the rest of the sale proceeds placed in a trust in his son’s name. Even his wife doesn’t know the value of the fund, which at the moment, according to Milton, brings in about four million a month toward little Junior’s future, give or take a few hundred thousand. Every day the Reverend, who, as I understand it, has yet to buy that American-made van that his church so desperately needs, draws $45,000 in interest.
I supposed that would be the end of it. But I confess I could not understand it. I still can’t. I am, after all, a man who sells more than toys. I sell stories. And the story of the Under Graham Railroad Box Car Set eluded me. It was confounding. The Reverend refused to tell me how he got it. He refused to talk about his grandmother or his family. That was the condition of the sale as well. That I never ask. I had to accept those terms, which afterwards I deemed simply unacceptable. It just clawed at me.
I suppose it was for that reason that several months after the sale was completed I called his house. The surface reason was that one of his funds had matured and needed his signature, though Milton could have easily processed the business without him. But it gave me a worthy excuse, since the Reverend refused to talk to Milton himself and only dealt with him through me when the deal was consummated.
I was happy to call him—delighted, in fact. To my surprise, his phone was shut off. My curiosity wore at me, and I began to drift toward his Queens neighborhood occasionally. I came up with the notion of actually buying the dream house in Maui I once wanted—I could afford it, after all—and the idea of flying to Hawaii out of JFK seemed suddenly attractive. Thus I found myself frequently driving four hours from Pennsylvania to Kennedy Airport, knowing the freeway passed the Reverend’s house. I drove through the neighborhood several times, hoping to spot the Reverend by chance and broach the subject with him of how the train survived this long, how it made it to the North, who stole it from the general, and so forth. But to no avail. When that didn’t work, I drove to Brooklyn and parked outside the Domino plant at night, hoping to catch him on the way in or out of the busy plant gate. But I could never spot him in the hundreds of workers who wandered by.
This is where I started to wonder: If he didn’t know his grandmother, how did he know the story of the train? Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps it was all some kind of ruse, a game he played with himself? Or with me?
It was too much. After several months I gave up, decided to enjoy my newfound wealth, and almost forgot Reverend Hart.
Until last month.
I happened to be in Brooklyn. I was there to check out a collection in Greenpoint owned by an Orthodox Jew. The collection wasn’t worth much, maybe a few hundred thousand, but the man planned to use the money to pay tuition for his daughter to attend New York University, and that’s a big order these days. He was a nice fellow, an English teacher, and he really needed help, and I was glad to assist. I planned to meet him Friday morning, but I got hung up in traffic and didn’t make it to his house in Brooklyn until nearly 7 p.m. Too late did I realize, awful Jew that I am, that it was Friday night, the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath. He couldn’t see me. He couldn’t touch a doorknob. Even if he could, he wouldn’t be amenable to discussing anything as worldly as money. Or a toy. He wouldn’t be available until probably Sunday.
I was disappointed and starving, and knowing I had a long drive back to Pennsylvania, I drove around Greenpoint looking for a place to eat. I stopped a passing pedestrian to ask about the whereabouts of a good diner and was directed to nearby Williamsburg. I found the street and diner in question, and as I sought a place to park, I noticed a crowd lining up to get into a corner bar across the street from the diner. The neon sign above the door said “The Tonk: the funkiest, nastiest, skankiest, hip-hop and R’n’B club in New York City!” Underneath that in smaller brightly lit script letters it read “Tonight and every Friday night: Dr. Skank.”
I pulled my Mercedes-Benz, the newest top-of-the-line model—which I own now, by the way, no more leasing—up to a parking spot across the street from the club. I was fidgeting with the back-and-forth of wedging my car into a tight parking space when a familiar figure with a pigeon-toed gait wandered slowly right in front of my car. I almost hit him.
It was Reverend Hart. I noticed his walk immediately, along with the telltale ragged baseball cap with the Jesus admonition on it. There was no mistaking it.
He didn’t notice me. He seemed to be in a kind of fog, walking slowly, deliberately, as if he were marching to his own death. He trudged sadly, as if in a trance, to the front of the line of clubgoers who were waiting to get into the club. He stepped up to the bouncer at the door, who saw him, nodded, and let him pass, and the Rev disappeared inside.
“That’s impossible,” I said aloud. Then I remembered his wife said that his weekend job was the worst of all. Working as a janitor at a horrible nightclub.
I quickly finished parking, crossed the street to the club, stood in line, bought a ticket, and went inside.
In the bar it was dark, smoky, loud, filled with flashing neon lights, pounding rap music noise, and wriggling bodies of young squirming girls and bulked-up young men dancing. It was clear that I would not find him in that crowd, and so I gave up, deciding to make for the door, convinced I’d made a mistake. He’d never be here. However, the room was so thick with wild young people, packed like sardines, I could not make my way back to the door. I was pushed in deeper, trapped in a wedge of humanity as the incessant sounds of rap music pounded the walls and bounced into the air amid the excited crowd of young squirming bodies. They moved like wild animals, dancing, laughing, smoking, sipping beer, guzzling alcohol. Onstage, four young men in headphones operated turntables, each playing theirs in turn. It was a kind of competition, creating a tremendous, booming racket that blasted out of giant speakers on each side of the stage, while in front of the turntables, a young man holding a microphone beseeched the crowd, admonishing the youngsters in the most graphic terms imaginable to be foul, dirty, nasty, filthy, and to dance the night away. He was followed immediately by another young man who took the microphone from him, then by another, and then a young woman, then another young man, and then another, each surrendering the stage to the next in turn, ranting and talking in various rhymes, trading quips—a nonstop litany of rhyming and fibbing, flattering, and heretical yelling. While I’ve never been partial to this bit of youngster foolishness, trapped as I was, I found myself forced to listen, and was stirred a bit by some of what I heard. The young men and women were telling stories, some funny, some touching, some ironic, stories about their lives, their poverty, their middle-class lives, the emptiness of their parents’ wealth, the strife of their struggling m
others, and all manner of things, far beyond the mere pornography and filth I’d associated with this music before. Indeed I was so taken by some of the stories that after a few minutes I forgot where I was, for each of the young poets who leaped onstage was better than their predecessor, and each ended their stirring performance by reminding the audience that an even greater presence was among them, The Great One, Dr. Skank, who had started it all, The Originator of the Original, The Anointed and the First, The Greatest Rapper of All Time, was coming in just a few moments. The crowd buzzed with anticipation each time his name was mentioned: Dr. Skank.
The mention of the coming messiah was enough to jolt me back to the reason I stood among those young hooligans, an old man among children, for I too had a special person I was coming to see. I looked around for several long minutes for the Reverend, who I expected was pushing a broom in the back somewhere or admonishing a poor young soul—there were plenty of candidates there, to be sure. But he was nowhere in sight. I decided to try to leave again. I’d had enough. This was, after all, his life and his business. This was his war. Let him fight it. He’d asked to be left alone. I would honor his request.
Just as I turned to fight my way to the exit, the music onstage quit and the stage lights dimmed, the flashing neon lights ceased, and the dark room went quiet.
An excited announcer took the stage. “Y’all have been cool,” he said. “Y’all have been nice. So now, here’s what you’ve been waiting for: The Grandmaster of Dirty Ass Funk, The Mister Meister of Sweetness. The Funk Beast of the Infatuation. The Original Godfather of Rap. The One. The Only. The Grand Funkmaster and Stinkmeister. The Original Rapper of the Original Rap. The man who created hip-hop as we know it. Give it up y’all for The Doctor of the Shit! The Mister of the Mister. The Doctor of Historical Noise. Here he is. . . . Dr. Skank!”
The crowd roared. A lone spotlight hit center stage, and into it stepped Rev. Spurgeon Hart.
He was dressed in sparkling white tennis shoes, colored shoelaces, brand-new sweatshirt and sweatpants, and dark shades that covered half his face. He wore a brand-new baseball cap sideways, and a ragged T-shirt that said “Fuck you and everything you stand for.”