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The healing power had come on Memphis suddenly after an illness when he was fourteen For days, he’d lain in a state of sehts as the fever burned through his body His mother never left his side When he recovered, they went straight to church to give thanks On that Sundayat the old Mother AME Zion Church, Memphis healed for the first time His seven-year-old brother, Isaiah, had fallen out of a tree and broken his arle Me brother when he put his hands on him He never expected the intense warmth that built suddenly between Isaiah’s skin and his own hands The trance came on him hard and fast His eyes rolled back and he felt as if he had left his body and was trapped inside a waking dreae es that he didn’t understand: faces in the mist, spectral shadows, and a funny man in a tall hat whose coat seeht and a fluttering of wings, and when Meathered around him in the churchyard Isaiah had weaseled out fro his arm around in perfect circles "You fixed it, Memphis How’d you do that?"

"I-I don’t know" Despite the New York su the collar on his Sunday best, Memphis shivered

"It’s a miracle," someone said "Praise Jesus!"

Mee of the awestruck congregation, one hand pressed to her ht slap hied him close When she stepped back, there were tears in her eyes "My son is a healer," she whispered, cupping his face

"You hear that? This boy’s a healer," someone shouted "Let us pray"

They bowed their heads and reached out for hi his head and shoulders, his ers clasped in his, his fear turned to exultation I did that, he thought in wonder How did I do that?

Only Aunt Octavia was skeptical "Why would the good Lord give that gift to a boy?" she’d asked his mother later, in the house on 145th Street They were in the front parlor sitting beside the radio and snapping beans for the next day’s supper It had been too hot to sleep well, and Meotten up for a cup of water When he heard the "Souise, Viola A test froht be the Devil himself in that boy"

"Hush up, Octavia," his mother had said She rarely stood up to her older sister, and Memphis felt proud of her even as Octavia’s words sowed doubt under his skin "My boy is so special You’ll see"

"Well, I hope you’re right, Vi," Octavia had said after a pause, and then there was nothing but the sharp snip, snip, snip of string beans being broken into halves and dropped into a bowl

News of Meh the Harleift during services at Mother AME Zion--"We’re not that sort of religion, Viola"--Memphis’s mother had taken him to the various Pentecostal and Spiritualist storefront churches, over Octavia’s objections: "Low-class holy rollers--and soonna come of this, mark me"

There, on the fourth Sunday of every , Me out at faces both hopeful and skeptical While the choir sang "Wade in the Water," and people prayed and soants would come forith their ail the war into that other place in his ue faces in the mist Miracle Memphis And then, when it had mattered most, the miracle had failed him No, not just failed--turned on hi hi an expression somewhere between conteet inside, Memphis John You reht his aunt’s obsessive thoughts about the Devil were crazy But what if she was right? What if there was so its ti and unreadable

The trouble with Jo back at the club had left Memphis rattled, and so, his business taken care of for the evening, he hopped the double-decker Fifth Avenue Coach Coot off around 155th Street He walked several blocks north, then west toward the river, where the houses thinned out, until he ca spot of freed slaves and black soldiers There, in the peace and quiet of possible ancestors, Memphis liked to sit and write Memphis found the lantern he kept secreted inside the knothole of a sheltering oak He struck a match from the book he’d pocketed at the Yeah Man club The flalow Meround and opened his notebook In its riting was like healing: a cure for the loneliness he felt Someti He bent his head over his notebook, writing by lantern light, chasing after words like trying to grab the tails of comets All around him, Harlem was alive riters,the world Mee