Sugar Groove

Well, I got that hair cut all right--late Saturday evening.

But when I arrived in one of Aunt Eloise's custom-made automobiles, at Anchor of Zion Missionary Baptist Church, that Sunday Morning, I was still laughing out loud at the barber Williemain's joke about the hustler who died, got to Heaven through a ruse; found himself in a strait-jacket; slipped through a loop within it, you might say; only to discover the depths of the trick bag, as he sailed to save St. Peter's out of breath soul. Well, I can tell you one thing, I kept worrying if Williemain would clip my ears off as he spun Sugar-Groove's saga about how he got his wings clipped--almost.

It was always extremely difficult to trace the actual genesis of a story in Williemain's Barbershop, but apparently somebody had asked the question in a most declarative manner: Whatever happened to the body of Sugar-Groove, the scavenger, after he vanished . . . that last time. And this really did it.

After he tied the collar of that red, white and blue apron about my neck, pumped the handle bar of the chair so that my head was at a workable level, Williemain declared:

". . . Well, Sugar-Groove went for a joy ride. Not the kind you fools thinking about. . . . And I sure ain't speiling on Mary Poppins; nor am I riffing on them flying nuns. There's a word for it too, but I'm not telling you dudes doodle-squat--not yet."

He was a Negro hustler, and a drifter, originally from Sugar-Ditch, Mississippi, who flew North "to escape the aggravation"; I knew for a fact that Sugar-Grove had gone to prison for check forgery, in the long ago. And that at one time he had fenced for thieves. He had lived a fast, wild life; but was "converted" on his death-bed by his grand-aunt, then he died, departed, vanished, so the mythos said. Sugar-Groove had so many non-such nicknames, but all were based on Sugar. Or, should I say, sugar-soaked. There was Sugar-Ditch, for his home town, but the only others that I was aware of (Sugar-Dripper, Sugar-Dipper, Sugar-Groove, Sugar-Grove, Sugar-Spook, Sugar-Goose, Sugar-Sack, Sugar-Shank, Sugar-Swift, Sugar-Alley, Fountain-Head Sugar, Sugar-Stoker, Sugar-Stroke, Sugar-Splib, Sugar-Stagger, Sugar-Saint, Sugar-Spine, Sugar-Dick, Sugar-Stud, Sugar-Loaf, Sugar-Smoke, Sugar-Shit; or Sugar-Eyes, and Sugar-Shark) referred to various tributes paid to his revealed sexual merriment, moxy, prowess; or his cunning at dice, cards, gambling tables, games of chance, and romantic intrigue.

Anyway, just before his body was lowered into the ground, and shortly after her husband preached the funeral, Sugar-Groove's Grand-Auntie, Gracie Mae Gates, had a vision.

Grieving before her nightstand, in her grey nightgown, at the stroke of midnight, with her husband spinning the numbers, she placed a conference call to her boss, and they got Gabriel on the line (St. Peter was away on a working vacation, checking on some bankrupt securities out West), and they struck up a peculiar deal over Sugar-Groove's body, in order for his soul to migrate Heavenly in Time, on Time. There was even a divine proclamation devised to that effect, and apparently this written contract or document over his soul greatly compounded, and confounded, Sugar-Groove's status in Paradise. The covenant was quite restrictive.

Gabriel met Sugar-Groove at the gates, with a huff and a puff. Waved a wing-wand over him. Then he needled Sugar-Groove a ray-gun shot to purge his form of all earthly delights and poisons. This serum was composed of materials purloined from the Milky Way. It made the new pilgrim drowsy for a time. After the hypodermic needle to his soul, the glazed migrant was stopped off at the WING ROOM; then Sugar-Groove went slowly winging along. But soon he discovered...