Thrown-away Child

stared, gape-mouthed, unable to help the women and the young. The tall, muscular naked man grasped the shoulders of a terrified Zebediah Tilton and lifted him several inches off the floor, then dropped him. Tilton crumpled in a heap.
    The man again roared to the congregation, “I, Willis Flagg, have come out!” He then knelt to Minister Tilton, and whispered, “Number’s up, chump. We on to you and Hippo and your scam. And I am in control of all these crazy people in your church. You spend all these years riling people up with hoodoo and voodoo, that’s an unwise crime. Because the people you do wrong, they going to rile right back at you. Hear them out there?”
    The noise of the church was frightful—the screaming and pounding and shrieking of the Lord’s name-The naked man put his lips to Tilton’s ear, an growled, “All I got to do is throw you off this altar» tell these good people to tear up your phony ass. You be one dead nigger.”
    Tilton said something that sounded like a small animal trying to loose himself from a trap.
    “We got cops all over the place, by which I mean brothers from the Ninth Ward,” the naked man said, still shouting into Tilton’s hot ear. “Don’t be expecting no politician friends or ofay cops to save you neither. They on their way to jail. Only thing going to save your blubber ass now is you give me straight answers when I ask you. You got that? I think you do.”
    The naked man stood up. He stripped Tilton’s robe of all gris-gris and, with elaborate gestures, dropped them into the bowl of flaming brandy, so that all in the church could see he meant to destroy the minister’s control over them.
    “Be gone, the imposter’s fakery!” the naked man shouted.
    He then raised an arm, asking for silence. It took nearly twenty minutes for the crowd to grow quiet to hear anyone on the altar. Slowly, the naked man pointed at Hassie Pinkney in her pew, her hands raised to cover a scared horse face.
    “You!” he shouted at Hassie. “You were in league with the imposter cowering at my feet. You placed the snake below the steps, where you knew it would strike me. I carried that venom in my body for years after, until it killed me. You killed me!”
    The naked man used both his hands to pull Tilton to his feet. “And why? Because I threatened the imposter’s crimes against us all.” Tilton was shoved forward a few steps. “Behold, the imposter! You know he’s stolen from all of you—all of you! Be free of him from this day forward!”
    Mama sobbed.
    “La, gawd—have mercy!” Miss Hassie screamed.
    The congregation rose. Men shook their fists at Tilton. Women spit.
    “Yes, yes— you!” the naked man shouted, jabbing his fingers into Tilton’s pudgy back. “You oppressed us and cheated us for so many years—before and since my death!”
    Sister seemed to float above the rim of the altar. The congregants became quiet as she pointed to the screaming, trembling Hassie Pinkney.
    “You were the one, Auntie,” she shouted. “You gave me to the drunken man, to save yourself from being raped! You turned Mama and Daddy against me! You threw me away to Minister Tilton, who has had me in his unholy way!”
    Sister stepped back, and the naked man took over. “But there’s more,” the naked man said, shoving rudely at Tilton. “Who you been working for, Zeb? Whose hey-boy is you? Tell us now—good and loud!“
    “Hippocrates Beauregard Giradoux!” Minister Tilton hollered, his eyes glowing with fear. “Hippo, he done it, not me. Hippo’s the devil behind it all!”
    “I am not alone,” the naked man said. “There are others who were killed! Homeless brothers—boys and men. Tell us, who did the devil Giradoux call on to carry out these murders?”
    “The po-lice!”
    “Who? Say it loud!”
    “Detectives name of Eckles and Mueller and LeMay.”
    “Say it again, imposter!”
    Tilton named the killers, straight into the lens of the television camera advancing up the aisle to catch the confession.
    “Eckles... Mueller... LeMay.”
    “And what was the purpose of this reign of terror?” The naked man shoved a fist into Tilton’s spine. “Tell us!”
    “Money!”
    “Money, you say! Look out upon the poor people of your congregation... Look at their faces, look at all the faces that have known hunger. Imposter! You eat so well a hundred people in this room could have their Give us this day our daily bread answered with what you ate this morning! Shame on