House of Blues

private prayer. You put down a dollar bill
at the time, if you wanted to be so blessed, which struck Skip as at
least as good a deal as playing Lotto. She did it herself, praying
for enlightenment on the subject of Evie, figuring it couldn't hurt.
    Back in her seat, she thought: What did I do that
for?
    The service was long, but it built. Skip tried to
explain it later, to Steve, but she couldn't. What she noticed about
halfway through was that her hands tingled and her ears rang a little
bit.
    When the congregation was invited up to the altar to
pray, in some sort of ritual that looked like communion without the
bread and wine, she found herself going, though she knew she didn't
have to, that it would have been perfectly acceptable to stay where
she was.
    She didn't especially believe in God, at least not
this one, or at least didn't want any contact with him, after the way
he ordered all that slaughter in the Old Testament and the way
everyone spoiling to get in a war used his name as a rallying cry.
But there she was, kneeling in some unknown and probably unheard—of
neighborhood in the middle of nowhere that probably wasn't even on a
map, with fifteen or sixteen strangers whose lives she probably
couldn't begin to fathom if they spent the next three weeks telling
her their family histories.
    And something odd happened to her. Something came up
through her bent knees—or perhaps it started in her feet, she
couldn't be sure—and coursed through her body. It couldn't have
been the famous "spirit" because surely that came down
instead of up; but it was something. She felt an odd peace afterward,
a curious fulfillment.
    Holy shit. Maybe that was a religious experience.
    Of course it was, stupid. You're in a church.
Anything that happens here is one by definition.
    Uh-uh. What about that woman with the little boy?
    At the beginning of the service, a little boy had
started to cry and his mother had hit him with a belt in the pew
beside her, apparently brought especially for the purpose.
    Watching her wasn't a religious experience.
    But what the odd occurrence was, she couldn't decide.
Perhaps because it was a small, very focused group, something was
unleashed that she hadn't experienced before—some kind of directed
energy.
    This was why she thought later that she needed Steve
for a reality check. She couldn't even really describe the thing,
much less be sure it was real.
    Afterward, she was about to go talk to the minister
when a small woman tapped her on the back. "Aren't you Skip
Langdon?"
    She turned around, amazed. New Orleans was tiny in
some ways—you always knew someone wherever you went—but this time
it was not only unlikely, it was impossible. This neighborhood was
probably unknown even to the census takers.
    " I'm Emmaleen Boucree. Tyrone's mother? I saw
you at a concert once, and Joel showed you to me."
    She was from the family of musicians that had
produced Darryl. Skip blurted, "What on earth are you doing
here?"
    Emmaleen smiled. "This my old church. I went to
this church years ago. My mama still live in the neighborhood, but
she gettin' on now. Really gettin' on. She ain' really well enough to
come to church. I just come over and bring her something to eat on
Sundays and I drop in for services when I have time. We all go to
Spiritual churches, all us Boucrees—didn't you know that?"
    " Spiritual churches?" Weren't all churches
spiritual?
    " Oh, yeah. We kind of different." She
cackled.
    "It was—um, a beautiful service."
    " Was, wasn't it? But kind of tame. You should
see it when folks really get goin'—come sometime to the Friday
evenin' healin' service; then you really see something. Now how can
we help you?"
    Well, I had this funny feeling when I was supposed to
be praying, and I was just wondering—was that God or anything?
    " You didn't come here to get touched by the
spirit, did you? Miss Langdon, you with me?"
    "Sorry, I guess I spaced out. I'm trying to find
someone named Evelyne Hebert. Everyone calls her Evie. Do you know if
she goes to this church?"
    " Don' ring a bell. Which I think prob'ly means
no." She waved an arm. "You can see it's kind of a
shrinking deal anymore—Sunday mornin's at least. I think the Friday
night healin's go a little better, probably. L'es go ask somebody who
knows."
    She took Skip to the fancifully dressed clergyman,
who confirmed that no Evelyne or Evie Hebert, or anyone answering her
description, was a member of the church or had been. But he said