with you, and he forgives your sins. He asks only that you believe in him with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul.”
She smiled wondrously, and Emmy drew away from me and leaned toward her as if sucked in by some powerful, unseen wind.
A man near the front stood and cried out, “Sister Eve, we need a sign. Please, give us a sign, now, tonight.”
“I can’t give you a sign, brother. That comes from God alone.”
“Through you, Sister Eve, I know. I’ve seen it. Heal my son, Sister. Please, heal my son.” The man reached down and drew up a kid who looked no older than I. The boy was hunched, his spine so crooked it bent him nearly double, and he could barely look up. “My boy Cyrus was born with the Devil on his back. He’s been this way his whole life. I heard you take the Devil out of people, Sister Eve. I’m begging you, drive the Devil out of my boy.”
A look of deep compassion washed over the woman’s face. She handed the cross back to the man who’d brought it to her and opened her arms toward the crook-backed boy.
“Bring him to me.”
It was painful to watch the kid make his way up the steps of the platform. His father helped, and when they were both before Sister Eve, the boy stood, but still so terribly bent that it was clearly painful to lift his eyes to her. She knelt down and put her face level with his.
“Cyrus, do you believe in God?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I heard him utter. “I do.”
“Do you believe that God loves you?”
“I do, ma’am. I do.”
“And do you believe that God can heal you?”
“I want to, ma’am.” I could hear the choking in his voice, and although his back was to me and I couldn’t see his face, I was pretty sure he was pouring out a flood of tears.
“Believe, Cyrus. Believe with all your heart and soul.” Sister Eve reached out, placed her hands on his misshapen back, and the snow-white folds of her robe fell across his shoulders. She raised her eyes toward the canvas tent roof. “In the name of God whose divine breath fills us with life, in the name of God who shapes our hearts on the anvil of his love, in the name of God by whose boundless grace the halt and the lame are healed, I ask that this boy’s affliction be taken from him. Take out of his body, take out of his bone, take out of his whole being every last unclean thing and let this child walk upright again. In the sweet name of our Lord, let him be whole.”
And son of a gun, that crippled boy began to draw himself up. It was like watching a leaf unfurl. I could have sworn I heard the cracking of every vertebra as his spine straightened. He stood fully erect, and the lights came back up, and he turned toward all of us sitting on the benches, and I saw that I had been right. A waterfall of tears ran down his cheeks. His father was crying, too, and embraced him.
“Thank the Lord, and God bless you, Sister Eve,” the grateful man cried.
“Praise the Lord,” someone shouted from the benches, and others took up the cry.
Maybe there was supposed to be more healing, I didn’t know. Maybe they were going to pass an offering plate or something. But if this was so, it didn’t happen. What did happen was this. As the man and boy sat themselves back down, a voice from behind us hollered, “Bullshit!”
All heads turned toward the tent entrance, where four young men stood together, grinning like rattlers and unsteady on their feet. One of them held a pint bottle of what I was pretty sure was bootlegged liquor. He’d been the one to call out, and he called out again, “Bullshit, you phony bitch.”
The other three laughed and handed the bottle around.
The man who still held Sister Eve’s cross set it down and stepped up next to her on the stage. He was a burly guy with a nose and face that made me think he might have once boxed heavyweight. Sister Eve raised a hand to keep him at a distance, then she addressed the rowdy group in back.
“Do you have any idea what brought you to me tonight?” She spoke gently, as if coaxing a frightened animal.
“Yeah, I heard about your dog and