Free The Black Mass of Brother Springer by Charles Willeford Page B

influence of modem art on our current civilization. But a sermon on art hardly seemed appropriate for a group of Negroes, and I didn't know any of the individuals I had met so far well enough to feel them out on the subject.
           What did I believe in? By speaking on my own beliefs, thinly disguised as something else along the Bible party line, perhaps I could inject enough sincerity into my voice to put over a sermon.
           Breakfast. A plateful of hot grits, fried white meat, and store purchased white bread. By mixing some of the grease with my grits, and using plenty of salt, the breakfast was excellent. I drank two cups of instant coffee and then hollered for Ralphine to clear away the dishes from my desk. Cackling she carried the dishes, one at a time, into the kitchen.
           "Did you enjoy your breakfast, Captain?" She asked me in her high rickety voice.
           "It was fine, Ralphine, but tomorrow toast the bread, and get a stick of margarine at the store."
           "Yes, sir." Ralphine wandered into the bedroom with a broom, bent in half, like a miniature bear shambling forward with a load of buck shot in it's belly.
           Working slowly on a yellow, ruled tablet with a soft pencil, I began to write my sermon. The deeper I got into the text, the more I enjoyed it. I was writing again, at any rate, and the stuff was damned interesting. There was the bit from Sartre's Being and Nothingness that I remembered, and I elaborated on this theme for a few pages, and then I recalled K's conversation with the priest in Kafka's The Trial, and I had a few things to write about that wonderful conversation. For a few minutes my mind blanked out, and then I remembered a fragment of a scene from Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn, and I wrote down some of my thoughts on Miller's philosophy about money. This was a capital sport, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly, but what was I doing? In my neat legible handwriting I had covered two dozen sheets of paper. I reread what I had written and discovered a veritable mishmash; a confused and groping mind, lost indeed insofar as belief in God was concerned. Some of the writing was well done, but there were no references to the Bible. This was the touch my sermon lacked. Laboriously, I rewrote my sermon, and on every other page I inserted into the text a selected passage from the Bible. As a result of these additions, my sermon underwent a miraculous transformation. Such is the power of words, and words in themselves mean nothing. But then, actions meant nothing either, and inasmuch as the people who would attend church and listen to my sermon on Sunday were already believers who were afraid not to believe, my words could not influence them either for harm or for good.
           Or so I thought when I reread my doctored sermon. Lunch. String Beans, boiled potatoes, corn bread and iced tea. After eating heartily I took a nap and slept until six that evening.
           When I awoke I was in a kind of stupor, and my right arm was numb; I had been sleeping on it all afternoon. I walked about the rooms of the little house shaking my arm to get some feeling back into it. Ralphine was gone, but she had left a potful of mustard greens simmering on the Warm burner of the electric stove, and there was a plateful of cold cornbread on the kitchen table covered with a paper napkin. I nibbled on a piece of cornbread, and then took a chair out onto the porch and sat down in the dark. Across the empty lot black men and women ambled by the church along the sidewalk. Smoking cigarettes and watching the traffic I noted that not a single white man passed by. There was a streetlight on the corner, and I could see the traffic plainly although nobody could see me in the darkness. I was an alien in this black corner of the world; dark laughter and loud, exuberant conversations floated across the lot from the passers by.
           The mosquitoes drove me inside after