HOLLOWAY: She look like she five hundred. You be surprised when she say she ain’t but three hundred and twenty-two. Don’t ask me how she lived that long. I don’t know. Look like death scared of her. Every time he come around her he just get up and get on away. Ask West about her. He’ll tell you. He done went up there to see her. He been waiting to bury her since he saw her. Even told the people there in the house that he’d do it for free.

MEMPHIS: I ain’t seen her change nobody’s luck. Every nigger I know got bad luck. If it was easy as that . . .  hell, we’d all be rich.

HOLLOWAY: See? There you go talking about being rich. I ain’t talking about that. I ain’t said nothing about getting rich. I’m talking about getting your luck changed. You go up there with the wrong attitude and come out with worse luck than you had before. That’s what the problem is now. Aunt Ester don’t buy into that. She don’t make people rich. You go up there talking about you wanna get rich and she won’t have nothing to do with you. She send you to see Prophet Samuel . . .  and you see how far that’ll get you. Most people don’t know Prophet Samuel went to see Aunt Ester. He wasn’t always a prophet. He started out he was a reverend. Had him a truck, and he’d stand on the back of that truck . . .  had him a loudspeaker, and he’d go out and preach the word of the gospel and sell barbecue on the side. Everybody knew Reverend Samuel. He even went out where the white folks lived and tried to preach to them. They seen him with that truck and thought he come out there to steal their furniture. Called the police on him. Many a time. He go on and pay his fifty-dollar fine for preaching without a permit and go on back out here.

They had him in big trouble one time. He had all his money going to his church and they arrested him for income-tax evasion. That’s when he went to see Aunt Ester. He walked in there a reverend and walked out a prophet. I don’t know what she told him. But he went down to see the mayor. Say if they arrested him they had to arrest Mellon too. Say God was gonna send a sign. The next day the stock market fell so fast they had to close it early. Mellon called the mayor and told him to drop the charges. The next day the stock market went right on back up there. Except for Gulf Oil, which Mellon owned. That went higher than it ever went before. Mellon was tickled pink. He sent Prophet Samuel a five-hundred-dollar donation and a brochure advertising his banking services. Had his picture taken with him and everything. That’s when Prophet Samuel went big. The police didn’t bother him no more. Wouldn’t even give him a parking ticket. If he hadn’t started walking around in them robes going barefoot and whatnot . . .  ain’t no telling how big he would have got. A lot of people didn’t like him wearing them robes . . .  baptizing people in the river and all that kinda stuff.