The man in the passenger seat retrieved a pistachio from the oil-stained bag in his hand and maneuvered it into his mouth, cracking the shell with his back molars. But he kept his eyes on the museum the whole time.
“I did indeed, Mr. Jefferson,” he answered at last.
The wind whipping down 125th Street in the wake of the zippering trolleys was brisk, and Memphis Campbell blew on his hands for warmth. A tall ladder leaned against the outside of a brownstone where two men hoisted a banner above a second-floor window: MISS CALEDONIA: READER OF OBJECTS, HEALER OF MALADIES, DIVINER EXTRAORDINAIRE. Memphis shook his head. Everywhere he looked, it seemed people were trying to cash in on the Diviners craze.
As he walked with his younger brother, Isaiah, and old Blind Bill Johnson, Memphis counted the signs hanging from doorways or posted in windows up and down the streets of Harlem: FATHER FORTUNE WILL FREE YOU FROM HARM. MYSTICAL MOHAMMED, TELLER OF TRUTHS FROM BEYOND. OBEAH MAN: PALMS READ, FORTUNES TOLD, CURSES LIFTED. Most of them couldn’t tell a crystal ball from a bowling ball. And the only fortunes were the ones they were collecting from gullible clients.
None of them had half the stuff Isaiah did, and Memphis knew it galled his little brother not to be lapping up the attention. Ever since Isaiah had gotten sick, their aunt Octavia had kept a watchful eye on him, preaching about “the dangers of the Devil’s business.”
“You remember what happened? How you lay in that bed for three days?” she’d said, pronouncing each word as if she were spitting it into stone to stand the test of time. “Jesus healed you, so don’t you go throwing his blessings away. This family has no business with Obeah men, mambos, houngans, and card readers. And we certainly don’t have business with Miss Margaret Walker. Never again.”
But it hadn’t been Jesus who’d healed Isaiah. It had been Memphis himself.
He’d never told his aunt that he’d gone to his brother’s bedside as Isaiah lay in that sleep between life and death. In secret, he’d put his hands on his brother, and the power he’d thought had left him forever the night he tried to cure his dying mother had rushed through him once more, just as it used to do back when he was the Harlem Healer, curing the sick in a storefront church with his mother looking on and praising God. It seemed that Memphis had been given a second chance at his gift. He didn’t know why. But he did know that this time, he’d figure it out on his own terms. And no one, except for Theta, would need to know until he was ready.