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 any peace after that, though. Everything she looked at was that child. Jesus made it beautiful to haunt her. She couldn’t lie with that man without she saw it, staring through the chimney at her, shining through the brick in the middle of the night.” She moved her feet around so that just the tips of them stuck out from her skirt which she had pulled tight around her legs. “She didn’t have nothing but good looks,” she said in the loud fast voice. “That ain’t enough. No sirree.”

“My Jesus,” Haze said.

“It ain’t enough,” she repeated.

“I hear them scraping their feet inside there,” the blind man said. “Get out the tracts, they’re fixing to come out.”

“What we gonna do?” Enoch asked. “What’s inside theter building?”

“A program letting out,” the blind man said. The child took the tracts out the gunny sack and gave him two bunches of them, tied with a string. “You and Enoch Emery go over on that side and give out,” he said to her. “Me and this boy’ll stay over here.”

“He don’t have no business touching them,” she said. “He don’t want to do nothing but shred them up.”

“Go like I told you,” the blind man said.

She stood there a second, scowling. Then she said, “You come on if you’re coming,” to Enoch Emery and Enoch jumped off the lion and followed her over to the other side.

The blind man was reaching forward. Haze ducked to the side but the blind man was next to him on the step with his hand clamped around his arm. He leaned forward so that he was facing Haze’s knee and he said in a fast whisper, “You followed me here because you’re in Sin but you can be a testament to the Lord. Repent! Go to the head of the stairs and renounce your sins and distribute these tracts to the people,” and he thrust the stack of pamphlets into Haze’s hand.

Haze jerked his arm away but he only pulled the blind man nearer. “Listen,” he said, “I’m as clean as you are.”

“Fornication,” the blind man said.

“That ain’t nothing but a word,” Haze said. “If I was in Sin I was in it before I ever committed any. Ain’t no change come in me.” He was trying to pry the fingers off from around his arm but the blind