Half of Paradise

“I ain’t the warden. I can’t know what they’re going to do,” Billy Jo said.

“You said we was getting oranges.”

“Drink the tea. It helps your stomach,” Brother Samuel said.

“It’s just like the drinking water.”

“Stop bitching,” Billy Jo said.

“I seen some carp eating off a dead cow once,” Daddy Claxton said.

“Maybe you’re swallowing the same carp,” someone said.

“It wouldn’t bother me none. I eat worse. When I was a boy my pap used to bring home garfish that was caught up on land in the flood basin.”

“This tea ain’t no different from the water,” Jeffry said.

“It’s boiled. That makes it different. Drink it and shut up,” Billy Jo said.

“I’ll puke up my dinner.”

“Let Brother Samuel work on you,” a man from gang two said.

“He didn’t do me no good.”

“You wasn’t cooperating,” the man said.

“I ain’t got my powers no more,” Brother Samuel said.

“You know that ain’t true, Brother. What’s that thing around your neck?”

Brother Samuel touched the wooden disk that hung on a leather cord.

“The Black Man give it to me. These letters is written in a language that ain’t even used no more. It means I got the power to control spirits.”

“I thought you didn’t have no powers.”

“I still got my magic powers. I ain’t got my spiritual ones.”

“What’s the difference?”

“My magic ones is from the Black Man, and the others is from the Lord. I ain’t had no truck with the Black Man since he made me sin agin Jesus.”

“Look at it this way,” the inmate from gang two said. “If you use the Black Man’s powers to do the work of Jesus, then you can get back at him for making you sin.”

“I ain’t thought of it that way.”

“Ain’t it the work of the Lord to heal people? Well, that’s just what you’re doing.”

“That’s the way I figure it, too,” Daddy Claxton said.

“Use some of them things you carry around with you,” the inmate from two said. His name was Benoit. He was dark complexioned and unshaved, with close set pig-eyes, and he smelled of sweat and earth.

“I ain’t sure it’s right. I gone back to following the Word.”

“Lay down, Jeffry, and let him heal you.”

“I don’t want to be healed. I tried it once. It don’t work.”