Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier

“Praise the lord,” she said.

Scrunchy stared at my face. “You look just like that Sidney Poitier, the Hollywood actor.”

“I know,” I said.

“But you’re not Sidney Poitier.”

“I am.”

He moved the flat toothpick from the left side of his twisted lips to the right side of his twisted lips.

Remembering the Scrunchy from the bank in Montgomery, I asked, “Are there a lot of Scrunchys in Alabama?”

“Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi. There are Scrunchys all over, Mr. Poitier. Whether we’re related, I can’t tell you, but there’s a mess of us. We Scrunchys have been around forever. I heard tell we was on the Mayweather. ”

“Mayflower,” I said.

“You have our money,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“Some of it,” I lied.

“How much?” Scrunchy asked.

I looked at him.

“Well, we need to get moving on this thing.”

“So, do you have some plans drawn up?” I asked.

“I do,” he said. “Been working on them all night. They’re right here inside on the big table.”

I followed him to the door. I looked to Sister Irenaeus, but could not read her face. It was no surprise; I didn’t know her well enough to read the most obvious expressions. “Sister, when did you find this guy? Where did you find this guy? Why did you find this guy?”

“You said we needed plans. He has drawn the plans,” she said. “He made the blueprints so that we can build our church.”

Inside the house country music was playing. I looked to the corner and saw a stack of 45s on an old turntable. Patsy Cline was singing. I recognized her voice, but the song I did not know. It was a lament, or so I thought, but with all the dancing and howling in tongues, I couldn’t really hear. On the table was a rolled-up sheet of white paper, about two feet long. Scrunchy unfurled and held it open with his soft-looking and meaty hands.

“Well, here it is,” he said.

I looked. The drawing was just slightly more detailed and skilled than the little piece of paper I had been shown earlier. It was a crude pencil sketch of a rectangular building with a pitched roof and a steeple on one end, and beside it was a floor plan that showed there was nothing to it but four exterior walls. There were no measurements or marks indicating windows or doors or any other architectural symbols. I looked at them in turn.

“These aren’t blueprints,” I said. “They’re not even blue. This is a sketch and a bad one at that.”

“Well, son, this is just a start. I just got hired yesterday. The sisters have been asking me to help all along, but they didn’t have any money.”

“And now we do,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“Not yet,” I said.

“You know how it is,” Scrunchy said. He nodded to me as if I knew what he was talking about. “People are always coming to me and asking for plans, then they look at them and go build it themselves.”

“Do you have a state license?” I asked.

“I’m not a contractor,” he said. “Ain’t that something, the way them gals blather on like that?”

“God has sent you with our money,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“Well, he sent me with some of it,” I said. “He sent me with a thousand dollars to get Mr. Scrunchy here going on the blueprints.”

“That is all?” she asked.

“For right now,” I said. I watched her shoulders sag and observed the disappointment on her face. “I’ll get it.”

The other sisters had caught on that not all was well and had stopped chanting and howling and dancing and merely looked at us from across the room. They stood there with their shoulders waiting to sag.

I left them inside and went to my car. I opened the satchel in the backseat and tore the band from a stack. I took ten hundreds and looked at the forty-nine thousand remaining dollars. It was bad enough that some people driving around believed I had this and worse that in fact I did. I took the thousand dollars back inside.

“This is all?” Sister Irenaeus said.

“For now,” I repeated.

Scrunchy took the bills and fanned them through a count. “This will work for my retainer. You will be able to pay me for the rest of my services?”

“How much will it cost, the rest of your services?”

“I would say about five grand, I mean, a thousand more for a complete set of expertly rendered and delivered blueprints,” he said. He glanced at Sister Irenaeus and smiled.

“I can get that much,” I said.

“You said fifty thousand dollars,” Sister Irenaeus said.

“That’s a lot of money, Sister,” I said. “I couldn’t get it all at once.” In my mind loomed the fact that I had in a matter of twenty-four hours met two people named Scrunchy. If that was not an incredible coincidence, then the pock-faced man in front of me was well aware that I had the balance of the fifty thousand dollars in my possession, stashed somewhere, if not on me. So, I added, trying to sound confident, savvy, like anything but the clueless idiot that I truly was, “I’d be a fool to travel with that much money on me at once.”

“I suppose you would be, son,” Scrunchy said. He turned to Sister Irenaeus. “Well, Sister, I guess I’ll go get to work on those blueprints.” Then again to me, “You take care now.” He walked out, got into his truck, and drove away.

“Do you trust that guy?” I asked Sister Irenaeus.

“I do,” she said. “Where is the money?”

“It’s coming.”

“We must build the church,” she said.

“I understand that, Sister.” I looked at the faces of the other women. They seemed more confused than disappointed or put out. Now, their shoulders sagged. “I’m going to grab a bite at the diner.”

I walked out to my car. They didn’t follow. I drove away and stopped just beyond the bend in the drive, still hidden from the road. I got out, took the satchel from the floor in the back, and concealed it under some brush at the base of a twisted and memorable tree. I kept a thousand with me. As I fell in again behind the wheel I observed my face in the mirror. I looked so much older, felt so much older, stiff, and beleaguered. If I hadn’t known better I would have said I had a gray hair.

At the diner, I found Diana Frump shaking her ample rump under her white waitress dress to country music on the jukebox. A couple of men were watching her and laughing. She stopped when she saw me.

“And he’s wearing a suit,” Diana said. “Looking sharp there, Mr. Poitier. Who died?”

I’d forgotten I was wearing the suit. I must have been a sight after sleeping in the car in it. “I might think I did,” I said.

“Come on in, Sidney,” she said. “Have a sit-down.”

I sat at the end of the counter. “A party?” I asked.

“Yep,” she said. “A party because work’s coming to Smuteye. I heard tell that them sisters got money to build their church. That means construction, that means construction workers, that means customers for me. A party. What can I get you?” She walked to the other side of the counter.

“A burger,” I said.

“Cheese?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Ain’t got none.” She laughed. “Just foolin’ with you.” She slapped a fist of meat on the griddle. “Yeah, them sisters found somebody to foot the bill. I guess praying ain’t such a bad gig.”

“Some fool,” one of the men said. He was wearing a John Deere cap. “But I’ll take the work.”

“You know somebody named Scrunchy?” I asked Diana.

“Thornton Scrunchy?”

“Yes.”

“Never heard of him,” she said, then laughed again. “Just foolin’ with you. Yeah, he lives around here. Owns some land. I hear a lot of land, over by the river. He had something or other to do with the paper mill way back when.” She studied my face for a second. “Why?”