Church Folk - Michele Andrea Bowen [64]
"Marcel," Caruthers said, "I have always believed that where there's a will, there's a way. And I've been a bishop long enough to know that if you have the right amount of will, you can certainly buy yourself a way."
He got an odd, dreamy smile on his face that made Marcel wonder what he was thinking and—not for the first time— if he was right in the head. Every now and then Bishop Caruthers slipped into some spaces that gave him the creeps. After a minute or two Marcel found himself practically yelling, "Bishop!"
Caruthers immediately sat up straight and remembered to give Marcel his attention.
"You're talking about a will and a way. And I know you have the will. But my daddy says that there are people like Percy Jennings who want to bring you back up before this Triennial Conference and petition for your dismissal from the episcopacy. They don't even want you, as my daddy said, to preside over a pissant district out in the swamps of hell."
Venom replaced the grin that had stretched across Otis Caruthers's face only moments earlier. "Who told you that?" he said.
Marcel sat back in his chair rubbing his chin, enjoying being the bearer of bad news. Bishop Caruthers was the one who got all the dirt on everybody else in the denomination.
"Bishop, you're not the only one in this church who can pluck the good grapes off the vine."
"It's preachers like you who put the grapes there in the first place," Caruthers retorted nastily.
He knew the only way Marcel could have been privy to such information was through that ever-tightening connection between his father and Bishop Lawson Giles. Those two wanted to run the whole show, and they were ruthless enough to cut anybody else out, including him. That—and the little hush money it gave him every month—was the reason he had been so happy to learn about Marcel and Jackie Giles. It was a blessing and he intended to make the most of it.
Now Caruthers pushed the envelopeful of money back across the desk to Marcel. "This month's on the house."
"Huh?" Marcel said, confused and growing even more worried.
"The money. You can keep it this month," he told him. "Why?"
Bishop Caruthers laughed and Marcel felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand straight up.
"If everything goes like I hope it will at the Triennial Conference, you won't have to pay me another dime," he said. "But, Marcel—the next time Cleotis Clayton calls you, be a little more friendly to the man. He is, after all, dropping some serious cash in the pot for your father's campaign for bishop, and he has some big plans for the Triennial Conference. You need to be grateful and quit acting like you doing him a favor just by saying good morning to him."
Marcel almost asked, "What plans?" but caught himself in time. If Bishop Caruthers was cooking up some scheme to get reinstated, he wanted to stay in the dark about it for as long as he could.
But Marcel's blessed ignorance couldn't last. He was soon summoned to Memphis by Otis Caruthers for a meal at Willie Clayton's, and he was told to leave that "snippety-up-in-your-face-Miss-Precious-Powers" at home.
Bishop Otis belched loudly to polish off one of the best meals he had eaten in months. Willie Clayton had outdone herself this evening. She had served baked turkey that was crispy brown on the outside and juicy and tender in all the right places. Cornbread dressing with oysters, collard greens cooked with juicy ham hocks, yam pudding, tossed salad, homemade rolls—and his favorite, ambrosia salad with tiny marshmallows and plenty of chunks of fresh-cut pineapple in it. And the dessert—Otis thought he would hurt himself when he tasted the first morsel of the delectable, four-layer red velvet cake Willie had made especially for him.
Marcel Brown sat next to him, picking at his cake, watching Willie's niece, Glodean Benson, work her charms on Rev. Sonny Washington. Sonny could be mean as a snake, and he had been especially nasty since his censure by the Board of Bishops. But tonight he did seem to be falling even more head over heels for Glodean.
"Can I get