Bo Willie Strikes Again

Often people ask me, “Junebug, how come you so hard on preachers and church people?” And I must confess, the question gives me cause to ponder. First of all, I don’t hold special grief for Christians — far as I’m concerned, it matters less than a tinker’s damn whether you’re talking Christian, Jew, Moslem, or what have you. The fact is that most church people I know are just as good, if not better, than most the people I know who don’t go to church.

The problem is that I expect religious people to do better than others do. If they can’t really be better people, at least they should try to act better than everyone else. When it turns out that a good many priestly people can only act like they’re better than other people, it gives the serious ones a bad name. And that makes it so a bunch of folk who had no good intentions in the first place can jump in and hide themselves among the flock like wolves in sheeps’ clothing. That’s the kind of holy roller that gets my goat. When enough scoundrels of this type hook up together, you get a real mess on your hands.

A case in point is Bo Willie Redd down in the Treme district in New Orleans. You might remember him as the guy who had the gall to steal the battery out of my car and then try to sell it back to me.

Bo Willie’s Daddy, Mr. Chink Boudreaux, had “The Famous Bar on Barracks Street.” Mr. Chink suffered with a heart condition and high blood pressure. Well, in point of fact, Bo Willie’s the one who was due to step in, but his sister Bernice is the one who actually took care of things. Bernice is a serious, churchgoing Catholic herself, but she was the only one of the six kids with enough business sense to take care of things. When Bo wasn’t in jail due to one scheme or another, they couldn’t get him to work. He wouldn’t even let you say the word “work” when he was listening.

About 10 years ago, late in the evening in the fall of the year, I was on my way to The Famous Bar on Barracks Street. As I reached for the door, Bo’s girlfriend, Velma Bertrand, came tearing out. Nearly knocked me down and didn’t even say “excuse me” or nothing. She wheeled around on one high heel as she cleared the sill. She pulled her tight-fitting print skirt down with as much dignity as she could manage and shouted back into the dusky room, “. . . and bet’ not be here when I get back.”

I was about to tease Bo Willie about it till I noticed that his wife, JoAnn, was sitting with him at a table near the jukebox. Her jaw was tight, tight, tight, and he was intense, too.

“Hey, everybody.” I felt really lame. You could feel the tension in the room.

Bernice, who was usually the loudest one in the place, said quietly, “Hey Junebug.” She dug down into the cash box and came from behind the bar with a fistful of quarters. She rolled her eyes at Bo as she rocked from one hip to the other in front of the jukebox punching buttons.

B.B. King growled in his heavy tenor voice, “The thrill is gone . . .” The sharp, shrill stings of Lucille’s strings underscored the point.

Fast-talking Henry Turner, who called himself “The Soul Burner” on his radio program, chug-a-lugged the last half of a Miller horse and said, “I got to go see a dog about a bone. I’ll plant y’all now and dig y’all later.” Henry looked both ways before disappearing out the door, too.

The rest of us left in the bar tried to keep conversation going, but everything pointed back to Bo Willie and JoAnn at the table by the jukebox leaning into each other, talking quietly so no one else heard what they said.

As B.B. King’s plaintive wail came to its last lingering run, I heard, THWAT! PLING-A-DING! THUD! As I turned around, Bo Willie flung the small cocktail table aside with one hand, and JoAnn was sliding down the wall next to the jukebox staring at Bo with fierce and fearless eyes. Bo caught the dark glasses slipping down his nose in his left hand. He stood over JoAnn, his short, wiry frame taut. “Bitch!” The word squeezed out between clenched teeth. “I told you!”

“You a sorry ’ho, Bo! A sorry ’ho!” JoAnn said from the floor. “You can’t even take care of your own children.”

Bo glared at her for a moment like he was intending to reach down and separate her soul from her body with his two hands.

“You a sorry ’ho. A sorry ass ’ho,” JoAnn said again.

Bo quickly crammed his glasses back on as if he was afraid that we’d see the fear that her words had awakened. He turned and walked out, slamming the heavy wooden door behind him.

I went to help JoAnn up from her crouch beside the jukebox. She jerked back from me. “Don’t you touch me, man!” The way she said “man” made it sound like a cuss word. “You sorry son-of-a-bitch. You don’t know me! I can take care of myself.” She rose. With puffy cheek and still tearless eyes, she collected her purse and cigarettes, uprighted the table and chairs, and looked at each of us in the room. Without a word, she walked from the bar in the same direction that Willie had gone, toward her own home down the block.

It was silent in the little barroom except for Marvin Gaye’s pained falsetto plea which now seemed much too loud, “Mother, mother, there’s far too many of you crying . . .”

Velma busted through the door, her right hand jammed into a heavy pocket, “All right, Mother — they better’ve been gone! Give me a goddamn Heineken, Bernice.”

Armed with no more than the spirit of righteousness, Bernice stepped from behind the bar. “You come in here gunning for my brother with that filthy language dripping from your mouth, and you think I’m going to give you a beer? You better get out, and think twice before you come back again.”

“You wrong, Bernice.”

“You don’t know how wrong I can be if you don’t leave your hand in pocket and back your butt out that door.”

The next day Bo came over to my house. He said, “I’m sorry you had to see that yesterday. I blew my cool. Bernice told me I had to come over to apologize to you.”

“I’m not the one you plastered up against the wall, Bo Willie. You apologize to JoAnn?”

“What I need to apologize to her for? She’s the one who started all the mess!”

 

About six months ago, I was walking down Lynch Street in Jackson, Mississippi, on my way to Jackson State University where I had been telling stories. I passed by this little church with a hand-painted sign that said, “A Powerful Revivalist From New Orleans.” I glanced in the front door as I was passing by, and who should be up there preaching the sermon just as big as day? You guessed it. “REV. WILLIAM R. BOUDREAUX!!” Bo Willie Redd himself! I couldn’t believe it. He was 10 years bigger and bolder, but it was Bo Willie.

I eased into the back pew and listened till service was over. The place was crowded. They had a really hot choir. I was surprised to see them doing a Gospel Second Line. While the choir sang, Bo opened the doors of the church, and at least 30 people of all ages stepped forward looking to find a church home.

After the singing and soul saving was done, Bo got down to the serious business of raising the offering. It was a big offering too.

Afterwards I waited for him outside the church. He and the pretty woman who had directed the choir were about to get in this big, brand new, black BMW. “Bo Willie? That is you, ain’t it?”

“Junebug! What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here is the question. I was work—”

“Whoa, man! You know how I feel about that word. Where’re you staying? Let me give you a ride?”

“I can’t imagine you as a preacher, Bo Willie.”

“Junebug, I’ve been born again. If I had known how easy this racket is, I would have been all up in the holiness business a long time ago. It’s easier than running a barroom and a lot less dangerous. As long as I have something to say, I never run out of stock.”

“But do you believe what you’re preaching about?”

“That ain’t got nothing to do about it, Junebug. It’s a business proposition. As long as they believe it, that’s what’s important. You can see how well I’m doing. As a matter of fact, I’m on my way to Virginia Beach. I want to join up with the Christian Hundred TV Club. I’ve heard that they’re running short of black preachers over there.”

Whether Bo Willie makes it to the Christian Club or not, I believe that the covers are bound to be pulled off of Bo Willie and other professional distributors of holiness like him. When they’re exposed, we’ll see a bunch of angry people who’ll make JoAnn and Velma look like chumps.