Thrown-away Child

models off the Detroit assembly lines. When the neighbors saw the Packard roll in from Tchoupitoulas Street they ran to their homes and shut the doors and windows until Tilton drove out again. All the neighbors, that is, save Hassie Pinkney. Hassie sat on the front steps of her cottage, straining to hear the sorry conversation going on next door.
    In the parlor of the newly dispossessed Flaggs, Zebediah Tilton was polite and sympathetic. After all, he had no reason to be rude when he bought someone’s home out from under them. The law made everything so easy and polite.
    “Now, I know you can understand that our church has many missions,” he said in his creamy preacher’s voice.
    “What in hell church is that?” Violet asked.
    “The Land of Dreams Tabernacle, Mrs. Flagg. Although we are temporarily conducting services in Bynum’s pharmacy over on Dauphine Street, we do have our Deacons Building Committee searching for a permanent location.” Zeb Tilton’s beefy brown lips widened into a smile, and Violet could see clear back to his gold teeth. “Among our churchly missions is providing what we can in the way of housing for our poor, unfortunate brothers and sisters.”
    Willis sat in a cane back chair in a sort of shock, still as a stone as Minister Tilton talked. Willis seemed as if he heard nothing. For days before the court sale, he had spent almost no time at home, instead sitting up at Shug’s with his cares, hiding from Violet so she would not see him crying in his beer. But he could no longer conceal his sorrow. Willis’s eyes looked as if they might rust away from grief. Violet sat next to him, holding his big calloused hands.
    “Now, I surely don’t want to see good people like you having no place to live,” Tilton went on, soothingly. “But you see, the problem here is that we must serve our members first. So, I’ve been giving this predicament of yours a lot of my thought and my very most powerful prayer. And I do believe I have come upon a solution...”
    When at last he was finished, Minister Tilton had collected twenty dollars on account toward the first year’s tithe to the Land of Dreams Tabernacle. And the church’s two newest members, Violet and Willis
    Flagg, signed some important papers their new pastor happened to have with him, pressed inside a Holy Bible with a red leather cover. They signed where it said “Tenant.”
    After scratching his name to Zebediah Tilton’s lease, Willis rose angrily from his chair, tearing himself ' away from Violet’s grip on his shirt. He stood towering over the pastor. The resignation in his eyes gave J way to rage. His hands, made thick and hard from his work with shovels and stone and earth, clenched into dark fists.
    Violet thrilled to the sight of her husband’s anger. | She closed her eyes and silently prayed, Oh, La, won’t you bless all poor black men for what little arrogance they dare show the world?
    Willis, his voice sounding as if it was a thousand years old, said to Tilton, “I ain’t an educated man, and I ain’t well spoken like you. But it don’t mean I’m simple. Because I sure can figure you just done something crooked here. I’m going to think hard on this, long as it takes. I’m going to figure some way to bring you down for what you done to me and Vi— and most likely other poor folks beside.”
    Minister Tilton smiled. Then he stood up, his chunky physique no match for the tall, lean Willis Flagg. He folded the lease into his red Bible and said, “No need for being vexatious. I know you’re a troubled man this day, and I’m sorry for you. Truly I am. But you’d best not be threatening your landlord, hear? There’s plenty other tenants would love to be in a cottage as nice as you made this one.”
    Minister Tilton put on his hat. He waited for Willis to say something by way of an apology, but Willis maintained a silence that was now as threatening as his clenched fists. Tilton looked to Violet, finding no comfort in her cold glare.
    “You’d best not take an adversary’s tone against a man who knows the mysteries,” he said, turning back to Willis. “You understand what I mean, don’t you, Brother?”
    Willis understood. Since boyhood he had been warned of the abilities and powers of a master voudou: how he could call forth the dead from beyond, and serpents from the rivers and the sea; how he could “fix” an enemy, how his power came from the hearts and fangs and claws of God’s most ferocious