Graveyard Society Eve

By Everett D. Wair

Graveyard Society: Eve is an adult comedy story about a churchgoing Chicago woman who is gunned down on a cold winter night. After her burial, her soul rises among those souls of Oak Wood Cemetery on the South Side of Chicago. The cemetery is a famous graveyard that comes to life with spirits and ghosts living as if they're alive and waiting to make their final transition to heaven or hell. Time passes, and her best friend, also a ghost, informs her that her daughter is living a life of sin and is being controlled by the neighborhood pimp. Now Eve has a mission to rescue her daughter from living in sin, but Eve has to reveal a long-hidden secret while she's in the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662429972

Book preview

Chapter 1

There’s no place like Chicago. It is a city with lots of history. For example, there’s Alphonse Gabriel Capone, sometimes known as Scarface, who was an American gangster during the Prohibition era and the cofounder of the Chicago outfit. The first African American mayor Harold Washington served Chicago from 1983 to 1987 and beat out incumbent mayor Jane Byrne. It is the city where the forty-fourth president, first African American one, Barack Obama won the 2008 election. Chicago’s African American newspaper, The Chicago Defender was founded by Robert S. Abbott in 1905 on the South Side of the city. But one of the city’s most popular areas was and still is Bronzeville.

Bronzeville was known for its policy racket (also known as the numbers racket), its drug kingpins, its gangs, and Oak Wood Cemetery on the South Side, not far from Lake Michigan and the Loop, where important and the common people are laid to rest. It was where the first open-heart surgery by Dr. Daniel Hale Williams was held, where the first black-owned and black-operated state bank was built by Jesse Binga.

The nice gray stone three-flat apartments built throughout Bronzeville area is where Eve Moron—an African American woman in her thirties, slender, attractive, dreadlocks, in African attire—and her daughter Fifi Moron—a teenager in high school who loves wearing hip-hop attire, hair in braids, cute, medium complexion—live, on the first floor of a gray stone apartment building in Bronzeville. Also in her neighborhood are many business with small storefronts, such as barbershops, discount stores, restaurants, and small storefront churches.

The winters of Chicago are so cold that one could see his or her breath when speaking. The snow on the ground makes the air even colder as Eve approached her storefront church. Eve wears a long thick coat, a scarf tied over her head, gloves keeping warm her hands clenching her Bible as she and her next-door neighbor and best friend Peaches walked. Peaches resembles Kathy Bates. She is attractive, in her forties, Caucasian, a little overweight, has long blond hair, and wearing a thick long coat that stops at her knees and a knitted cap with Snoopy on the front of it and its earflap covering her ears. She sticks her Bible into her purse and unbuttons her coat as they enter the church.

As they prepare to enter the church, they hear the chorus songs filtering outside the church doors.

You ready to go in, Peaches? asks Eve.

Yeah, girl, soon as I make a few adjustments under this heavy-ass coat, replies Peaches.

I’m ready for spring, says Eve.

And I can’t wait, replies Peaches as she opens the church door for them to enter.

Inside, the storefront Baptist church has several rows of seated congregation, both young and old. Several older women are wearing casual winter outfits as they fan their faces with church fans because the ceiling-light fans are just lighting the church room and spinning. Some of people are looking through their Bibles. Two ushers, one male and one female, dressed in black-and-white and wearing white gloves are standing at the entrance doorway with one hand behind their back as the chorus sings.

The inside of the church is of a modest structure with a two-feet-high platform. The chorus is on the right side, and a three-piece band on the left side of the platform, with a drummer, a bass player, and a piano player hammering the keys. Rev. Speed and two of his deacons sit in the center of the platform, with a podium at the front of the platform. The Reverend Speed steps to the podium and speaks.

Amen, amen, says Rev. Speed, a heavyset African American in his late forties, partially bald in the center of his head, wearing a black-and-gold robe with a crucifix in the center of it hanging from his neck. Praise the Heavenly Father! Can I get an amen?

The congregation loudly says, Amen, Pastor Speed! Amen.

Eve and Peaches enter, and the ushers escort them to their seats. They settle in. Praise the loud! Praise the loud! says Peaches.

Eve nudges her in her side. "It’s ‘Praise the Lord… Lord…not L-O-U-D, Peaches," says Eve.

Ain’t that what I said? Loud, says Peaches.

Never mind, girl. Never mind.

The chorus sits down. God is good! The Almighty God has been good to us people! Rev. Speed yells out. Praise the Lord! yells out one member of the congregation! To all of us here tonight, says Rev. Speed before he stops and sighs, a church member needs our guidance. A man came to me a few days ago. I was in my office doing some paperwork at the time. He knocks on my door. ‘I need help, Rev,’ he tells me. He was looking very sad and depressed. I took him into the church, and we prayed. Asked God for help and guidance. Did God answer his calling? I’m gonna let the brotha tell you from his own mouth. C’mon up here, Brotha Tommy.

Sitting in the front row is Tommy Locket, a Caucasian man in his thirties wearing a white shirt, navy-blue pants, and black shoes. His long hair was in a ponytail as he went to the podium. Rev. Speed greets Tommy with his hand out. Tommy shakes it.

Thank you, Rev. Speed, congregation… As God is my witness, he is there when you need him, says Brother Tommy. Can I get an amen?

Amen! Amen, praise God! yells out Eve.

Amen! says the congregation. The organ player plays a few keys in acknowledgment.

A few months ago, my life was in disarray. I went home after work one night and found my wife with not just one man—she was lying between two men, naked as a plucked chicken in our bed I had just got out the layaway, Lord, have mercy! says Brother Tommy.

A woman I married! A woman that had my gay son! After I caught her having sex with those men, she just looked at me, lying between her two lovers, and said, ‘Do do do!’

Cry out, Brotha Tommy! a church member yells out. Shameful! another church member yells. Sinful woman!

"I felt like God had forsaken me. I had no one to turn to but the Almighty Savior.

"I lost everything—my house, my wife, my job… I became addicted to alcohol. I felt like life wasn’t worth living anymore. I became homeless and lived on the streets of this here Windy City. I couldn’t take it anymore! I had fallen to my knees! I was lying just across the street in front of the church here, disoriented a few weeks ago. I looked up from where I was lying on the dirty ground and saw this church from across the streets. I was so weak could barely stand, but I stumbled to the doors of the Lord for help and guidance. I told Rev. Speed, and he said to me, ‘No way, brother. You’re here in God’s house, aren’t you?’

Rev. Speed said to me, ‘Whatever you think you have lost, God will not forsake you.’ Rev. Speed told me this, and with just those words, I felt a ton of weight lifting off me. It’s like God was telling me that everything was going to be all right. And now I’m here, standing before you, saying that my life is much better than before, my peoples, says Tommy.

Eve yells out, The Lord works in mysterious ways!

Amen! replies Brother Tommy. Brother Tommy starts singing Jesus Can Work It Out.