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“Sure it works,” Benoit said.
“I’m about to puke from this fish already. I don’t want nobody fooling with me.”
“Tell him to get hisself healed, Billy Jo.”
“Get yourself healed,” Billy Jo said, his mouth filled with bread and carp.
“Let me be.”
“Go ahead, Brother.”
“I ain’t sure.”
“It ain’t Jesus’ will to let a man suffer when you can cure him.”
“You want me to try, Jeffry?”
“No.”
“Don’t listen to him. He’s sick in the head with fever,” Benoit said.
“His head’s all right. He ain’t got faith,” Brother Samuel said.
“You got no faith, Jeffry,” Benoit said.
“You guys let me alone.”
Most of the men had finished lunch and came over to watch.
“How about it, Brother?”
“I’ll try.”
The men held Jeffry’s arms and legs to the ground and pulled up his shirt to expose his stomach.
“Goddamn you bastards! Leave go! Do you hear me! I’m sick! Turn loose!”
He struggled for a moment and then became still. He twisted his head up to watch his stomach and to see what Brother Samuel was going to do.
“What’s them things you got?” Daddy Claxton said.
“Them’s what I control the spirits with.”
He knelt beside Jeffry, his face the color of mud under the straw hat that came down to his ears. His large ill-fitting clothes were damp with sweat.
“I’m going to use my moccasin fang and turtle foot first. It ain’t going to hurt none, you’ll just feel something pulling on you when the spirit leaves your body.”
“You guys got no right to let him do this,” Jeffry said.
“It’s time you got religion,” Benoit said.
“This ain’t religion. It’s conjuring. Don’t let him touch me with that stuff.”
“Lie still,” Brother Samuel said. “I’m going to make a cross on your belly.”
He drew a white impression of a horizontal line across Jeffry’s stomach with the turtle foot, then drew a vertical line through it with the snake fang. He placed the fang and the foot on the ground beside a piece of string and the ball of hair taken from a cow’s stomach. He folded his hands together and rocked slowly back and forth.
“Goddamn each of you bastards,” Jeffry said. He struggled again. The men held him firmly. The figure of the cross was pink and white on his stomach.
