Pastor Needs a Boo (5 page)

His nephew could try and play games with the Lord if he wanted to. But Russell would not advise such a foolish move. All one had to do was scan the Book of Jonah to figure out that running from the Lord was really a waste of time. The Lord threw Jonah's scary behind down in the belly of a whale. But there was a chance that God might choose a different way of getting Denzelle's undivided attention—like, say, throwing Denzelle down in a locked basement with a bunch of really ugly women who would do anything to get with him.

Russell looked Denzelle square in the eye and said, “Boy, I'm tired, and I have had to deal with nonsense all week during the annual conference. So I'm going to give it to you straight. You're called into the ministry, son. And judging from the way you've been trying to live it up, you've felt the Lord laying something on your heart. You won't be the first preacher to try and run from being a preacher. But I can tell you that it won't work.”

“Then can I have this last night to get myself one good booty call, Uncle?”

Russell popped Denzelle upside the head.

“Boy, you are going to divinity school and to train with the Board of Examiners for the Gospel United Church. You are talking crazy, like you only have a week to live.”

Denzelle didn't say anything, because it felt like he only had a week to live. He knew what being called into the ministry meant. He would have to walk the straight and narrow. He wouldn't be able to hang out with his frat brothers and have a good time.

And that was a shame, because his line brother and friend, Charles Robinson, was working on getting them into the newest and hottest strip club in the area. Denzelle knew that once he started training to become a minister, throwing two fat handfuls of bills at a hot stripper would definitely become a “gone are the things of the past.”

The full-breasted coed sashayed by again and sneaked a smile over at Denzelle. He looked like he was talking to his father. The last thing she wanted was for that fine Nupe's dad to tell him to stay clear of her. Because that old dude definitely looked like a preacher who didn't take mess off of anybody.

Denzelle sighed heavily and said, “So Uncle, what am I going to do about sex?”

“Get married?” Uncle Russell answered, and then closed his eyes and said, “Father, Lord, Jesus—give me strength.”

“
Damn
, that's messed up,” Denzelle swore under his breath, praying Uncle Russell hadn't picked up on his knee-jerk response. He desperately hoped the FBI would call him quick and hopefully get him away from all of this preacher stuff.

Training for the FBI, even as one of the few black recruits in his class, had been a walk in the park compared to what Denzelle went through to become a pastor. It wasn't because they didn't treat him well—they did. He was, after all, Reverend Russell Flowers's nephew. But it was hard to walk the straight and narrow when all he could hear calling his name was the newest favored liquor, a joint, a jumping party at the Kappa frat house, and a fine, hot woman.

Denzelle tried everything to get off the preacher track but to no avail. Nothing he did worked. He tried to avoid reading his Bible but could barely sleep for scriptures he didn't even know he knew popping up in his head. Had he really been in church so much that scriptures were practically second nature to him?

He even went so far as to write a tacky sermon on a note card in pencil after drinking all night when assigned to preach during one of the chapel services for the divinity school program he was enrolled in. Denzelle knew he had this one in the bag: He figured that when he walked in there looking like crap from his hangover, and then they heard that messed-up sermon, they would run him to his car and beg him to leave the program and never come back. No such luck—two divinity school students came down and got saved after hearing his sermon, “Getting Saved Ain't for No Punks.”

Actually, Denzelle had the best time preaching that sermon. It was hilarious, and he whooped and hollered and wiped his face with a handkerchief until he accidently preached himself happy. He intentionally murdered the king's English and used slang and jokes and carried on until he preached those two brothers down to the altar. All of that next week folk were walking up to him, saying, “I ain't no punk man, I know the Lord.”

About the only good thing that happened to Denzelle as a result of being asked to preach that sermon was the number he had gotten from the sister who had been assigned to put flowers in the chapel that week. But that was short-lived. After he preached that sermon, and her brother was one of the two men to get saved, she told him, “Give me back my telephone number. You are a real preacher. I ain't going to hell over you. I don't care how fine you are, and how good your booty looks in those pants you wearing.”

Nothing helped, not even when he decided to go to a frat party with the sole intent of getting drunk, getting high, and getting laid. As soon as he stepped up in the frat house and placed an order for a shot of tequila, the chapter president came over to the bar where he was standing. The president frowned and said, “Brother Flowers, may I speak to you on the porch.”

Denzelle nodded and followed him out of the house.

“Brother Flowers, have any of your frat brothers done anything to offend you or do you any harm?”

“Huh?” Denzelle answered. He got along with all of his chapter brothers.

“Have we done anything to offend you?”

“Naw, Brother Kincaid. You know it's nothing like that. I mean, why would you think that?”

“Frat, Frat,” Charles Robinson walked up and said. Charles patted the sister hanging on his arm on her big, round behind and sent her back into the frat house, where the music was getting funkier and hotter by the second. He looked at that booty wistfully, twirled a red toothpick around in his mouth, and chimed in: “Look, Denzelle. What Brother Kincaid is trying to tell you is that you are up in here trying to get a shot of tequila, trying to smoke some good weed, trying to get some tail, when what you need to be doing is reading your Bible so you can bring us sinners a word the next time we come to chapel to hear you preach.

“You are a man of the cloth, and now a member of an even more important fraternity—as hard as it is for me to admit that. We can't let you come up in here putting us in danger of getting into some real trouble with the Lord simply because we were stupid enough to let one of His protégés come up in here and act like he don't know Him like you really do.”

Denzelle opened his mouth to protest. But Charles raised his hand to silence him.

“I don't want to hear it from you, frat,” Charles said. “You have been walking around this campus trying to act like you are not as tight with Jesus as you really are. And you can't do that. It's dangerous, and we ain't having it. I know you know the scripture in Revelation about what the Lord will do to folk who think they are all saved and stuff, and what they really are is lukewarm.”

Both Brother Kincaid and Denzelle tilted their heads to get a good long look at Charles Robinson. Charles was one of the bad boys in the chapter. He was the last person who was supposed to know what was in that Bible. And Revelation, too? This was getting way too scary.

“What?” Charles snapped at them. “Y'all both know that my auntee is an evangelist, and so saved Jesus probably calls her on the telephone just to chitchat about what's going on in Durham, North Carolina. You think she hasn't hit me up with some Revelation, trying to scare me to Jesus?”

Brother Kincaid and Denzelle kind of nodded. Charles's aunt Margarita was one of the savedest people they knew.

“Charleeeeee,” Charles's woman said from the screen door. “I'm getting cold.”

Brother Kincaid paused, and then started laughing. It was seriously hot up in that house. He said, “Frat, you better get in there and take care of that fast. And you,” he told Denzelle, with a stern expression spreading across his face, “you need to leave and go do what the Lord bids you to do. And you bet not come back unless it is for a chapter meeting and you are serving as our chaplain. These parties are now off-limits to you.”

Denzelle was too through, even if he was secretly touched by the love and concern of his fraternity brothers. That was the way folk were supposed to act with preachers—hold their feet to the fire to do right. He went back to his car and drove over to Honey's Restaurant off of 85, because it was one of the few places open at this time of night in Durham. He had never been real fond of their coffee, but the pecan waffles were pretty decent in the wee hours of the morning.

As soon as he walked in he spotted his best friend and fellow divinity school student, Obadiah Quincey, sitting in a booth looking like his dog had just died.

“Obie man? What you doing out here at this time of night?”

“I was thinking the exact thing when I saw your red Camaro slide into that parking space, D,” Obadiah said.

“Frat house put me out,” Denzelle answered, sounding a little on the pitiful side.

“Mine did, too,” Obadiah commiserated. “Man, all I wanted to do was drink one beer and play one hand of poker. Was that so bad?”

“I don't think that was too bad,” Denzelle answered, thinking that Obie's frat brothers were even stricter than his about these things. At least he was trying to cut up. But Denzelle knew that Obie wasn't trying to doing anything like what he'd been planning for the evening.

“Dang, man,” Obadiah said, and put syrup on his waffle. “I guess we are officially preachers, huh.”

Denzelle reached out for some skin and just nodded. They had somehow officially crossed over into being men of the cloth.

“Precious memories,” Denzelle whispered to himself. He and Obadiah had stayed up all night eating waffles, drinking Honey's watery coffee, and talking about what it would be like to be full-fledged men of the cloth. He picked up a picture of him and Obadiah, taken the day they received their final papers and preacher's licenses, and were approved for full ordination. They were so young back then. Obadiah's solemn face stared back at him, looking almost the same, with the exception of the silver streaks in his hair.

They had been through a lot in the more than thirty years of being best friends and fellow preachers. Thirty years was a long time to be charged with trying to get a bunch of black folk in Durham and Raleigh on the King's High Way. Denzelle loved the black church. But church folk were something else. And he couldn't wait to get to Heaven to ask the Lord about His decision to call him to such a great commission. Well, actually, Denzelle could wait to get to Heaven. As much as he wanted to hear the answer to that question, he was content to wait on the opportunity to present it “face to face.”

 

Chapter Three

It didn't seem like he'd been in this business that long, even though Denzelle could see the decades of time passed in the silver sprayed across his head and in his mustache. Where had the time gone? He should have felt like a seasoned warrior on the battlefield of the Lord. But there were times when he still felt like a rookie.

To most folk Denzelle was not only a seasoned preacher, he was a man held in high esteem, and one who was to be feared—especially if you found yourself on the wrong side of the law. Anybody staring down the barrel of one of his guns needed to be scared. They also needed to start praying and making one last attempt to get right with the Lord.

Denzelle made quite a name for himself back in the mid-1980s as both a preacher to watch and the FBI agent to fear, when he served as a major player in one of the most successful drug busts in Durham County while simultaneously helping his denomination do serious damage to some crooked and corrupt preachers in the Gospel United Church.

He helped dismantle a powerful southeastern drug cartel run by the notorious Dinkle Brothers of western North Carolina. By the time Denzelle got through with Harold and Horace Dinkle they were relieved to go to jail, at an undisclosed federal facility, away from everybody interested in what they were compelled to tell the feds. Agent/Reverend Flowers had received many awards, along with a key to the city of Durham, for his work on that case. He also moved up in the Gospel United Church, and for a young pastor was given one of the better church assignments at that time.

Tabernacle Gospel United Church, in Greensboro, North Carolina, was a midsized congregation with a strong operating budget and a dedicated group of members. Tabernacle knew it was the training stop for preachers on their way up to the more prestigious and wealthier congregations. And the church considered it something akin to a calling to be able to provide the kind of foundation and training needed by ministers on the fast track, like Reverend Denzelle Flowers.

The good folk at Tabernacle Gospel United Church fell in love with their new pastor, with his bad self, almost the moment they met him. Several ladies took note of how pastor always dressed, and they were especially impressed on the Sunday he showed up at church in a tailored, Carolina blue suit that fit his body better than they imagined his gun fit in its holster.

As one woman put it, “Normally, I ain't for a man in a pastel-colored outfit. But daggone it, if pastor has given a whole new meaning to the term Easter suit. And those baby blue gators? Lawd, ha mercy.”

The church's resident hoochie secretly agreed with that assessment. That Tar Heel suit fit Reverend Flowers so well it gave her cause to ponder on what was up in that suit to make it hug all of the right spots on her new pastor's body.

Sharlena Maxwell licked her lips when going through the receiving line after service and said, “Pastor Denzelle, you served up this morning's sermon so hot and good, you made me hungry.”

Denzelle, who knew he was looking good in that suit, with the silk, blue, and cream paisley–printed lining in the suit coat and the silk tie matching the print in the lining, smiled back at his fine parishioner, took her hand, and said, “Sister…”