Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier

The screen door opened, and a short man in a ball cap walked in. “Hey, Diana,” he said.

“Hey, Dan.”

The man sat next to me at the counter and said, “Hey.”

“Hey,” I said.

Diana put a cup of coffee in front of him. “We were just talking about the sisters.”

“Those crazies?” he said. “Gonna build themselves a church. Out of what, is what I want to know.”

“They might,” I said. I didn’t know why I said it.

“I don’t see how,” he said. “They ain’t got no money. I wish they did. We could use some jobs around here. There used to be a paper mill up the road about a thousand years ago.”

I put down my plastic fork and knife and wiped my mouth with my paper napkin and considered just how much money I had. I could finance this church myself. The thought of it was repulsive in some ways, since I found religion generally offensive and off putting; my mother had always been adamantly opposed to absolutely anything having to do with the notion of a so-called higher being. But my impetuous, abrupt, and inexplicable desire to assist the forlorn sisters had nothing to do with a god, religion, a sudden onset of a messiah complex or/and certainly not my own (perhaps, sadly needed) salvation. It had simply to do with a newfound and fairly ironic way to spend my ridiculously easy-to-come-by money.

“May I use your phone?” I asked.

“There’s a pay phone on the side of the trailer over there.” She pointed. “Next to the porta-johnny. It’s the only phone I got. Need quarters?”

“No, thanks.” I excused myself, nodded to Dan, and left the diner. The screen door slammed. The phone was not in a booth, but bolted to the vinyl side of the trailer. I placed a collect call to Podgy, and while I waited to be connected I studied the words, names, and numbers scratched into the wall.

I hate Farley

Jiggles Boatwright sucks for free

Call Janifer 234–756

Sheraff Purkins is a shithole

If you here reading this you fucked

Podgy accepted my call. “I need you in Smuteye, Alabama,” I said.

“Who is this?”

“It’s me. Sidney.”

“I know no Sidney.”

“Not Sidney,” I corrected myself.

“Mr. Poitier?”

“It’s me. I need you down here in Smuteye, Alabama.”

“Surely, there is no such place.”

“There is and I’m here.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

“No, I want you to build something.”

“What?”

“A church,” I said, not quite believing it. There was thick, awkward silence. “Podgy?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s me, Podgy,” I said, again. “Not Sidney.”

“I will not come to a place called Smuteye,” he said.

“I want to build a church for someone.”

“I know nothing about building. You have money. Hire somebody. I am too busy with the network. I am producing a special about the rap music.”

I looked at the phone in my hand. He was right. I had a checkbook. It was my money. I didn’t need Podgy Patel holding my hand. “You’re absolutely right, Podgy,” I said.

“I know I’m right. Just as I know there is no Smuteye. You are too funny, Mr. Not Sidney. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to get back with my posse.”

I drove back to the sisters’ place and found them, frighteningly, much as I had left them, with their heads upturned stupidly to the sky. Of course my return could only be construed as prayers answered, and who was I to dispute this belief? After all, my complete faith in the nonexistence of their god notwithstanding, I was at a loss to explain my reappearance.

“We knew you would come back,” Sister Irenaeus said as I got out of my car. There was an arrogance in her tone that made me immediately sorry I’d returned. Yet I did not leave. Inexplicably.

“I’d like to talk to you,” I said. “To all of you.”

They stared at me.

“Can we go inside?”

We marched up the one step, through the solid wooden door, and into the austere two-room building. I assumed the room in the back was where they slept. I gestured for them to sit and so they did. The windows were shut tight and so it was not only hot inside, but airless.

“So, you want to build a church,” I said.

“You know that is true,” Sister Irenaeus said. The others nodded.

“Do you have a plan for this structure?” I asked.

“We do.” Sister Irenaeus looked over at Sister Firmilian and nodded. Sister Firmilian got up and walked to the writing table against the far wall. She opened the drawer, withdrew a paper, and brought it to me.

I looked at it. It was a crude sketch on lined, white-notebook leaf. Two angles were depicted — from above and from in front. The church was to be a rectangle with a pitched roof.

“What do you think?” Sister Irenaeus asked.

“I don’t know how to build a church,” I told them. “However, I have a lot of money.” I let this sit with them for a moment. “And I’m willing to pay for the materials and labor to have it built.”

All their eyes lit up.

“God has answered our prayers,” Sister Irenaeus said.

Sisters Chrysostom and Eusebius immediately went into a state and started rattling away in tongues; their eyes rolled up into their heads and pretty much scared the living shit out of me. The other three carried on as if nothing was happening.

“As I was saying, I will pay for your church. But you’re going to have to find an architect to draw something usable.”

“You will do that for us,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“No, you have to do it.”

“God has sent you.”

“No, bad judgment has sent me.” I pulled out my checkbook and started writing. “This is for fifty thousand dollars. This should get you started.”

“I do not have a bank account,” Sister Irenaeus said.

I looked at her.

“We have no money,” Sister Origen said.

“You will take care of it for us,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“No,” I said, sick of saying it. “I’ll find a bank, cash a check, bring you the money, and then I’ll leave.” With that I walked out, thinking that I should forget everything, but I’d told them I’d give them the money and so I would. I wondered as I fell in behind my steering wheel if there was a bank in Smuteye.

The sign on the one-story brick building set between a dry goods store and a defunct mortuary said Smuteye Farmers Savings and Loan, and I had no reason to doubt it. I parked diagonally in an unmarked space, only because the one other car there was so parked. It was across the street from nothing. The bank was quite naturally tiny: one old-fashioned teller’s window with one old-fashioned teller, a man, and just one desk on the floor behind which sat an old white woman with a canister of platinum blond hair set upon her small head. Since the check I sought to cash was relatively large I went to the desk instead of the teller.

“I’d like to cash a check,” I said.

“I see,” she said without really looking up at me, though I knew that she had looked me over and was still doing so. “Well, have a seat and we’ll see what we can do for you.”

I sat.

“I don’t believe you have an account with us.”

“That’s true, I don’t have an account here. And it’s a rather large check I’d like to cash,” I told her.

“Hmmm. How large?”

“Fifty thousand dollars.”

She whistled and I thought I saw a disbelieving smile behind her cat-eyed, horn-rimmed bifocals. “Hmmm. Is it a cashier’s check?” she asked.