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 8:20a.m.

Summer sunshine reflected off glass high-rises along Ventura Boulevard. Joe Knox flipped down the sun visor of his blue BMW coupe as he drove through the tail end of the notorious San Fernando Valley rush-hour traffic. He turned south into Topanga Canyon, remembering how these mountains used to look as a kid back in the 50s and 60s. The Santa Monica Mountains divide The Valley from the Pacific Ocean. They hadn’t always been a tectonic labyrinth of structures and roads, assaulted by the developers’ hyper-civilized treatment of open space. But Topanga survived. Topanga, where orphans of the hippy years still covet their Bohemian wilds. Where the low-class and the loathing-class consort in the same rural community.

Joe found Greenleaf Road, but Teddi Weldon’s address didn’t seem to exist. Then he discovered the end of the paved road and the beginning of a narrow dirt track with a hump in the middle that wound up the hill behind massive overgrowth. On a rock embedded in the hillside he saw the top half of a set of numbers. He pushed aside the weeds. This was it.

A gust of air rushed over him as a car blew by. He glimpsed a sporty red compact going around the bend. Could’ve killed me, he thought, and brushed dust from his coat sleeves. It was too hot to wear a coat and tie, but he needed this assignment and looking professional was paramount.

The ranch-style redwood house sat between two giant black oak trees. The house was nearly invisible under a cancerous growth of vines. There was a heap of old tires in the front yard.

He knocked on the door. A deep MGM roar rumbled from within. Joe vaulted off the steps and hurtled a pile of dung. Landing on the broken cement walkway, he lost his balance and tumbled butt-first into the tires. The front door opened.

“Hello?” called a teenage girl, who’d developed nicely out of her rookie year as a woman. Tight Levi’s, a sepia colored silk scarf wrapped around fully developed breasts, with long, vanilla-blond hair falling to her waist. “Help getting up?”

Untangling his elbows from the tires and his ego from the embarrassment, he said: “This the Weldon place?”

“Are you Mr. Knox?” He nodded and brushed off rubber dust from his trousers. She held open the screen for him and invited him in, smiling curiously. The odor of captive beasts hit him. Joe inhaled through his mouth. There was a goat in a screened-in side room, a dog curled in the corner, a couple of cats scouting out the visitor, a big rodent he couldn’t identify in a hamster cage, and a huge fish tank holding two big lizards lapping at the air. The living room would have appeared bigger if it were not for the plastic kiddy pool filled with murky green water sitting on a blue tarp in the middle of the room.

A feisty white duck swam around, dipping its head underwater and coming up smacking. Joe stared at the indoor duck pond.

“Coyotes got our other ducks, so we brought him inside,” she explained.

“Sit anywhere,” she said, hands jammed into her back pockets.

Before he could even move, though, a hot, steamy roar blasted from behind and between his legs. He considered a couple of things he shouldn’t do next, but he couldn’t think of one damn thing he should do. He just knew that something big and dangerous was behind him.

“Act natural,” she warned. “As long as you act natural, Daisy won’t hurt you. Slowly—I mean it—slowly turn and smile at her.”

He turned; he smiled; he suddenly had to pee. The imposing lioness raised her big head to inspect Joe, panting, drool stringing down from the corners of her mouth. Her breath could fry aluminum.

“Has she eaten today?”

The girl laughed. “Of course. Two neighbor kids and an arm we think belongs to the Culligan Man.”

The hounsi rushed forward from their places, dropped to their knees and kissed the ground. The mambos draped a string of beads around each of their necks. As if rehearsed, the priest took one of the hounsi’s hands, raised her to her feet, turned her like a ballerina to the right and then the left, and then did the same to the rest of the hounsi.

The hounsi went back to the hounfor and brought out baskets of vegetables, bottles of rum and bundles of sticks and laid them on the ground. Iron pots were brought out and set down. I pictured missionaries being boiled in a giant pot, circled by dancing natives, and some guy chopping up carrots and celery on a rock, and then throwing them in to make the soup tasty.

The hounsi danced in a single rotating line around the priest and all the stuff on the ground, while two hounsi built fires, one on each side of the dance court. Over the fires they set the iron pots and poured liquid from clear, plastic jugs into them. I knew it was oil, because the jugs were like those Ida had in her kitchen. The pots were too small for a missionary, but then I remembered what Mom did when she made stew: first, she chopped up the beef.

But when the oil began to boil, they balled up some concoction in their hands the way Mom rolled cookie dough and dropped them into the pot.

These folks knew how to have a good time at church, I’ll tell you. They danced and sang and drummed for over an hour, and got themselves all in a frenzy. More oil was added to the pots. By then the thatched roof was making me itch and my neck was sore from holding my head up to see. I considered climbing down, going home, but I didn’t want to waste the two hours I’d spent there. Or get caught.

A second team of drummers—including Agovi—took over without a break in the music. The dancers were exhausted, some of them falling to the ground. The priest poured rum into the boiling pots. A blue flame shot high into the air; the hounsi screamed. Two of them threw themselves to the ground, their arms and legs jerking like they were being filled with the Holy Spirit—but I knew there was nothing holy about it, because one rolled on top of the other and they squirmed around on each other like they were having sex, rolling over and over, messing up the vèvè. When they stood up, staggering, they hunched over like they were too tired to dance, twirled their heads on their necks and waved their arms like the Devil jumped inside of them.

From just below me, someone was rushed from the hounfor, covered in a white cloth. All I saw were hands and feet. Must be the bossale, I thought. They led the bossale to the dance court. Following with one hand on the houngan’s assistant’s shoulder for guidance, the bossale walked circles around the two boiling pots.

They stopped at the first pot. The houngan slowly took hold of the bossale’s hand, bent down and, without thinking about it for even a second, dipped it into the boiling oil. The sizzle made me cringe. But there wasn’t a scream. Nothing. The bossale stood rigid. They led him to the second pot; again, his hand was dipped into the boiling oil. They went back to the first pot, dipping in the same hand. No sound, no resistance. I was amazed. When Mom fried chicken, I’d been splattered by flying hot oil enough times to know the burning pain it caused. Couldn’t imagine dipping my hand in the pan. I got sick to my stomach thinking about it. But they weren’t finished. They dipped the hand in oil again. And again and again and again.

I laid there picturing French fried fingers. How did they control the pain? Sure wasn’t God doing it. No way would He get mixed up in something like this. This was...torture. Was it black magic? Could it be explained like...having calluses? Or did the Devil keep the pain away?

After the seventh time the hand got fried, everyone rushed up and crowded around the bossale, laughing and talking. Must have passed the test. What a way to get an “A.” They pulled off the white cloth and tossed it away, but I couldn’t see, because the face was in the shadows.

In the distance, thunder rumbled. A drop of rain splattered my cheek. Then another. The hounsi quickly led the new hounsi kanzo back towards the temple out of the light. The closer they got, the higher I raised my head to see. Would the kanzo be crying, smiling, what? I mean the guy had his hand dipped seven times in boiling oil, for crying out loud.

A few feet before they would have entered the front door of the hounfor out of my view, I shifted forward to see better. My body rustled the dry palm fronds. The hounsi stopped, confused. The hair had braids pinned up top. It wasn’t a he, it was a she. Her head rose slowly. Before I could duck, she spotted me. I locked onto her face.

I heard myself say her name.

Mollie pointed up and cursed me in Creole.