Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg

different size. The largest looked like a conga. A lean, gray-haired man beat on it with one bare hand and a small wooden mallet.
    A girl wearing a white dress and turban inscribed convoluted designs on the ground between the candles. She used handfuls of flour like a Hopi sandpainter, tracing the swirling figures around a circular hole dug into the packed earth. She turned and her face was illuminated by candle flame. It was Epiphany Proudfoot.
    The onlookers swayed from side to side, chanting and dapping in time with the drumming. Several men shook gourd rattles, and one woman produced a frenzied staccato rhythm with a pair of iron clappers. I watched Toots Sweet wielding his maracas like Xavier Cugat fronting a rhumba band. The empty plaid bowling-ball bag sagged at his feet.
    Epiphany was barefoot in spite of the cold and danced to the pulsing rhythm, twirling handfuls of Pillsbury’s Best onto the ground. When the design was finished, she jumped back, reaching her ghost-white hands above her head like a cheerleader of doom. Her spastic shimmy soon had the whole crowd dancing.
    Shadows shifted grotesquely in the uneven candlelight. The demonic heartbeat of the drums caught the dancers in its throbbing spell. Their eyes rolled back in their heads; spittle frothed on the chanting lips. Men and women rubbed together and moaned, pelvises thrusting in an ecstatic approximation of sex. The whites of their eyes gleamed like opals in their sweating faces.
    I edged forward through the trees for a closer look. Someone played a pennywhistle. Shrill, piping notes stabbed into the night above the dissonant clangor of iron clappers. The drums growled and grumbled, the rhythm as insistent as a fever, delirious, entrancing. One woman fell to the ground and writhed like a snake, her tongue darting in and out with reptilian rapidity.
    Epiphany’s white dress clung to her wet, young body. She reached into a wicker basket, removing a leg-bound rooster. The bird held up his head proudly, his blood-red comb vivid in the candlelight. Epiphany rubbed the white plumage against her breasts as she danced. Weaving among the crowd, she caressed each of the others in turn. A piercing cockcrow silenced the drums.
    Gliding gracefully, Epiphany bent to the circular pit and cut the rooster’s jugular with a deft turn of a razor. Blood spouted into the dark hole. The rooster’s defiant crow became a gargling scream. Its wings thrashed wildly as it died. The dancers moaned.
    Epiphany placed the drained bird alongside the pit where it jerked and bucked, bound legs twitching in tandem, until the wings spread for a final shudder and slowly folded. One by one, the dancers swayed forward and dropped offerings into the pit. Scatterings of coins, handfuls of dried corn, assorted cookies, candies, and fruit. One woman poured a bottle of Coca-Cola over the dead chicken.
    Afterward, Epiphany took the limp bird and hung it, upside down, from the branches of a nearby tree. Things began to break up about then. Several of the congregation stood whispering to the dangling rooster, heads bowed and hands clasped. Others packed up their instruments and they all slipped off into the darkness after shaking hands, first the right then the left, arm over arm around the circle. Toots, Epiphany, and two or three others walked back along the path toward Harlem Meer. No one spoke.
    I tailed them through the shadows, skirting the path and keeping out of sight among the trees. By the Meer the path divided. Toots turned left. Epiphany and the others took the righthand path. I tossed a mental coin, and it came up Toots. He headed toward the Seventh Avenue exit. If he wasn’t going straight home, chances were good he’d be there before long. I planned on arriving first.
    Ducking through the shrubbery, I scaled the rough stone wall and sprinted across 110th Street. When I reached the corner of St. Nicholas, I looked back and saw Epiphany in her white dress at the entrance to the