Thrown-away Child

it matter if sound and sight were not really, truly from beyond death? Did it matter if an image conjured in steam was no more real than all the times she saw W illis in her nephew Perry’s face?
    Oh—but what would Willis say of Perry now? Would he send him away from her? Would Willis, too, throw the child away?
    Sister stepped forward to the front of the altar. Her bare toes, brown on the tops and ivory on the bottoms, curled over the edge. Her arms flapped like a pelican snatching up a speckled bass off the blue-gray Lake Ponchartrain. She switched from français africaine to the canga of a Creole patois:
     
“Eh! Eh! Bomba, hen! hen!
Canga bafio, te,
Canga moune de le,
Canga do ki la,
Canga li...!”
     
    Minister Tilton and all the others joined this new chant, their massed voices gathering to a storm of pathos and yearning. A yearning for what?
    Fatherly advice? Motherly love? A piece of the American dream? A ticket north? A view from the top? An even break? A day without fear? One more chance?
    There was a narcotic swing to it all: to Minister Tilton’s thunderclap voice, to Sister’s rapture, to the old Creole words. Especially the words; Violet Flagg, devoutest of all doubters, felt them cut deep inside her.
    “Sis-tuh!” shouted Minister Tilton, rapping his cane, addressing his pretty angel acolyte. His yellow-green eyes bore into her; he knew well the sweet girl-flesh hidden in the billowing satin, and thought now of its pleasure, his loins stiffening. Sister felt the heat of his impious eyes, and felt her own secret shame as well.
    The storm of yearning voices faded, enough for Minister Tilton to be heard over his boisterous celebrants. “Sister, prepare!” he commanded. “Prepare for the dance-uh —the danse calinda of your revered-uh voudou!”
    Sister moved to the altar table. She picked up a leather-bound flask of brandy next to the crucifix candle, opened it, and poured some of the liquor over a sprinkling of brick dust lining a black ceramic bowl. She set down the flask and bowed in the direction of Minister Tilton, then backed off from the table and returned to her bench.
    Dropping his cane to the misty floor, Minister Tilton picked up the bowl with both hands. A shaft of sunlight glinted off one of his diamond cuff links. He lifted the bowl to his lips, and drank down the gritty mixture of brandy and brick. Slowly, he began rotating his hips and shuffling his feet backward, then forward. His movements accelerated as the congregation lifted voice again to the canga, now minus Sister, whose face was once more uptilted to her stained-glass Jesus and heavenly doves.
    Missing not a step of his dance, Minister Tilton poured the rest of the brandy into the bowl and ignited it with his Tiffany lighter. The bowl flamed up high over the altar table. Minister Tilton passed his hands through the flame, and quickened his dance steps as the canga picked up tempo. And soon his powerful voice soared above all the others:
    “I call out Willis Flagg!” he shouted. “Eh! Eh! Bomba, hen! hen! I call out Willis Flagg! Eh! Eh! Bomba, hen! hen! Willis Flagg, speak through me... !”
    Silence, or nearly so, as the congregants waited. Violet cried softly.
    A tall man in a scarlet robe, his head and face concealed by a hood, called from the rear of the church: “Bomba, hen, hen!... Bomba, hen, hen... !” Minister Tilton was as startled as if he had just swallowed a fly. Grasping the gris-gris in both his hands, as if he sincerely believed in its power, he asked feebly of the man in scarlet rushing toward him, “What—?” But there was no answer from the man running crazily up the center aisle, whirling and leaping and howling until he reached the altar’s edge. Until a stunned Minister Tilton tripped over his cane and fell to his knees, and gasped, “No, you mustn’t come up—!” Disobeying, the man vaulted over the railing. He scrambled to the altar stage and took Minister Tilton’s place in the column of light, then turned to the confused congregation.
    He pushed back the hood of his robe. His head and face had been greased, and heavily caked in talcum. The hair was African, the hawkish features European. The camouflage of sticky white powder absorbed the light, deadening it, casting the intruder’s face in a chalky pallor.
    He undid the laces of his robe, allowing it to slip from his shoulders. Beneath, his sand brown skin was oiled and glistening.
    He was nearly naked. Women screamed but did