rather, an occult shop: astrology, Tarot, Magik, psychic literature, wicca, New Age, channeling. The black-haired young white woman behind the counter was friendly but claimed to know nothing about voudou. My questions made her nervous, and, perhaps to get rid of me, she wrote down the name of ''someone who did," a woman who lived nearby and who gave "readings." She suggested, firmly, that I go there.
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It had started to rain again. I wound through narrow residential streets in the black section of town where the best homes had a carport and the worst lacked screens or doors. A dead-end avenue led past a dilapidated frame house where two elderly men and a woman sat on the porch drinking beer. I parked beside a muddy ditch, and walked up. Sarah stayed in the car, reading a novel. The trio smiled as I approached, but their eyes betrayed wariness. I nodded my head in deference and tried to explain why I'd stopped.
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The small unshaven man in the fedora finally spoke. "I don't know nothing," he said, "but my grandson might." With that, he pointed to a modest red brick home across the street. I picked my way back through his puddle-filled yard, and hurried across the asphalt. I knocked on his grandson's open screen door.
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Kevin Guidry, a thin, fine-boned man of about twenty-five, was home taking care of his preschool daughter. I told him what his grandfather had said. He smiled. So long as I understood he was a Christianraised Catholiche didn't mind discussing voudou. He opened the door and showed me to a cloth couch next to the TV in the living room. He said his grandmother had treated people using the "old remedies," and that his grandfather, despite what he'd just told me, "was into one of those African gods," though Kevin didn't know which. I mentioned a few orisha namesElegba, Ogun, Shango, Obatalabut Kevin didn't recognize any of them. He did know his grandfather often made medicines of garlic, herbs, roots and worms.
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