None of us could any longer view this troubled couple as the enemy. Their very humanness disarmed the group, deflated our self-righteousness. The gathering became a forum to search for solutions, and when Calvin and Geneva departed it was with vows of support from their neighbors. 'Give me a call if it looks like things are getting out of hand,' I told Calvin. 'I’ll contact the police for you. We’ll get this thing cleaned up.'

He never called, but things did quiet down for a time. Then a few weeks later, local police and FBI agents staged a spectacular midafternoon raid on the house, and that did the trick. I didn’t see Calvin or Geneva much after that, and I later learned that he had moved back to Louisiana and she had relocated a few blocks up the street where her sister lived. A developer bought the house out of foreclosure and fixed it up before reselling it to a young family.

We’ve since left the neighborhood, having grown out of the little two-bedroom bungalow after 11 years, and now live in another part of Minneapolis a couple of miles east. We’re less concerned about gangs and guns now (crime has dropped all over the city in the past few years), but we’re not so naive as to believe that the threat of violence and evil has disappeared from our world. It’s still out there, but I’d like to think we’re a little better able to confront and perhaps defuse it because of what we learned that afternoon with Calvin and Geneva, who changed in our minds from feared enemies into human beings after a half hour of hearing their stories.