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was the occasional whispered advice from the bartender that what he was saying constituted “dangerous talk.”
    One early August morning in the year 1950, Willis sat on a step out back after his boiled quicklime and cayenne rituals, smoking a pipe of tobacco. Violet was getting ready to go over to a mansion on St. Charles Boulevard where she had a job cooking and cleaning for old Doc Giradoux.
    Willis’s left leg dangled off the side of the pine steps and his bare foot swung back and forth, toes brushing through the dewy grass. Suddenly his body was convulsed by a spasm so overwhelming it threw him to the ground, where he twisted around for a few seconds in mute pain. Violet found him there when she returned home in the afternoon. He was sprawled on his back in the grass, his face covered with bits of blossoms, the white and purple petals fallen from the chinaberry tree.
    Violet ran to the confectionery shop up on Tchoupitoulas Street where there was a public telephone and rang up the mansion on St. Charles. Doc Giradoux, the only white physician known to make house calls on Negro patients, came speeding over to the lane in his Buick. The doctor examined Willis right where he lay, and after a minute or two pointed to a blue-black welt on his left ankle.
    “He’s full of venom, that’s clear,” Doc Giradoux told Violet. “Good thing I got here when I did. Another hour or so, and your Willis’d be a goner.”
    That day was the beginning of the end.
    The lane was never paved, lighted, curbed, or connected to the city sewer line. Nor was it ever so much as named. Nor was there any explanation from the parish assessor’s office.
    During this period, the Most Reverend Zebediah Tilton somehow had the wherewithal to buy up more ragged neighborhoods of New Orleans, building his rent rolls and multiplying his church membership. Then after a series of storefront efforts, he finally built his very own house of worship—the Land of Dreams Tabernacle.
    Willis’s health declined in direct proportion to Zeb Tilton’s rising fortune.
    Each year he grew a little weaker, until eventually he was unable to do a day’s work the same as other men, until everything fell on Violet’s shoulders. Violet cleaned more and more white people’s houses up on St. Charles Boulevard. Willis stayed home and cared for the cottage and the garden—and little Perry.
    Sometimes Willis fell down doing simple tasks such as scrubbing the steps and hacking out kudzu from the grass. He kept this a secret from Violet as long as he could.
    Violet eventually found it impossible to be off at work all day worrying about her husband falling down. The cottage needed a strong man’s care. Violet applied for a row unit in one of the new city housing projects going up across town, figuring this would be easier for Willis. Which it was, but only physically so. Moving day broke their hearts.
     

FOUR

    “Serious now. How you expect folks want to put out the long money with all that dangerous trash lying close by their doorsteps? Good folks, the right kind of folks.”
    “I admit we got a little problem on that account.“
    “Well, we best take care fast as possible. Bad enough to be having our own dollars blowing in the wind. We got to protect our investors.”
    “Like I say in the first place, it’s going to take us a subtle mind to solve the problem.”
    “Subtle as dynamite soup.”
    “There you go again, talking all disturbed like. Look at you, scratching your head like some old mama fuss about her wayward boy. What you fretting about?”
    “Scheme you come to me about the other day is what.”
    “You ought to get a load of your puss. I swear to God, anybody see you right now they’d say you’re about as embarrassed as a priest with his pants down.”
    “I’d say embarrassment’s the least of our worries.“
    “Sit back. Relax. Pull your damn self together.”
    “I need a drink.”
    “Lately you’ve been awful needy.”
    “Never you mind