by DC Alexander
Wanda said “I seen what happened when you went outside, yo eyes glowed and you sunk down in the ground.
That threw me. I had no idea I looked different and I sure as hell didn’t know how I sank down. At the time it seemed totally natural. Not even worth a comment. Looking back, that was some spooky shit.
Damn, it would be nice to get with someone who knew what was going on. “I don’t know what I can do, I can’t guarantee anything, but I’ll do what I can. Yall come get me or call me if you run into something like this, and you can tell the rest of them the same. I’m there if you need me. Where did she get that bag from?”
Wanda said “I aint got no idea, I aint never seen it before.”
The water in the bathroom had shut off, I said “yall hang on and let me ask Stephanie” as I walked to the bathroom. She had finished and went and got in my bed. I stepped in and she was fast asleep. I went over and checked to make sure she was breathing and she was good, so I went back out to them. “She’s conked out, I’ll ask her when she gets up.”
Carl was out on the porch, he come in dragging one of the little ones and said “You tell her, Pemmy, tell her `bout that bag, where it came from.” Pemmy was a little shy thing with great big eyes, she tried not to show it made her nervous but she was steady moving, kinda writhing in place.
She muttered “They a man what wanted Steph to go with him, Steph told me he give her the bag. It spose to be lucky, the man told her don’t take it off for nothin. She took it off and put it away cause it was makin her itch; and then she got sick.”
I said “It had stuff in it, maybe she had an allergy to something and took it off. The fumes was bad, it’s good she took it off.” I thought about it a second, “Carl, is that thing still out there on the street? We need to get it put away where it don’t hurt nobody. Take a stick and I’ll give you a jar to put it in, with a lid, let’s get it put away.” I went and got an empty jelly jar out of the kitchen and give it to him.
Dee stepped out to watch Carl and Wanda stepped close to me and put her hand on my arm, “Rosalee, what do I owe you for this?”
Carl stepped up on the porch and said “She can’t take no money for this, momma, I got this.” She looked at me “Is that ok?” and I nodded at her, I hoped it was ok. Getting me out of the bed at this hour sucked but this wasn’t just me. .
Carl handed me the jelly jar with the bag in it “thank you, I sure do appreciate you fixin Steph up like that. Can I just lay the money on yo chair?”
“Carl, keep the money. I’ll get a favor from you sometime if you feel like you owe me.”
“Are you sure? She wouldn’t have made it without you, I don’t mind payin.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Let’s drop it, ok?”
“Can I hang out over here with you? I can help with Stephanie and whatever you need, I know you aint easy with somebody in here with you, but I won’t get in the way.”
The day was shot anyway, and he could take her home when she got up “Yeah, that’s ok, come on in here and let me look at this.” I lead the way to the kitchen.
He said “Miz Rosalee, would you like more chairs in here? I got some chairs I can give you that look ok, when you get company they could set down at the table.”
I used to have four chairs in the kitchen but they kept breaking till I was down to just the one. Then the last of the old chairs broke. I looked till I found one good strong chair that worked for me and bought it. “Sure, I would like to have more chairs, how many you got and how much you want for them?”
“I aint charging, I got three that is just what you need, I bring them on over here” he went outside whistling. Damn. That was the worse whistling I ever heard. There was no tune to it and the notes were just random. It wasn’t loud, thank god, but it was so tuneless it was actually painful to hear it.
I couldn’t get easy with that bag in the house. It was just waiting for a chance to do something. I sat it on the kitchen table and put more coffee working, I could use another cup; I still wasn’t awake. I did my morning stuff and when the coffee was made, I sat back down at the table with a cup and unscrewed the lid off the jar.
The fumes were still coming off so I put the lid back on it. That one quick whiff was making me numb and fuzzy.
I got up and took the jar and a fresh cup of coffee around the house to the back yard. I gotta undo that back door. It would save me a lot of trouble. I sat down on the back steps and drank my coffee and considered the bag in the jar. This thing is troubling. I more or less agreed to stop whoever is doing this. I needed to know what it was. If I took the lid off it was going to give me trouble. I could see the residue in the jar, it was still strong.
That whole connected to the earth thing, what was that about? It had been such a long time, and it was painful to remember those old times. It seemed like it was someone else, but I remembered going barefoot and hearing the life and the earth. Now I was mostly inside unless I went somewhere, and I wore shoes all the time.
I kicked off my flip flops and stepped off the steps. No conversation, no big revelation. I thought about the jar, taking the lid off, the fumes coming out, and listened for some comment. I got nothing. I picked up the jar and set it on the ground and sat there beside it. Maybe I imagined all that stuff before. No, I know I didn’t, there was something talking with me, I didn’t know about using oil to get the stuff off that girl, and the sinking in the ground, Wanda saw that too.
I poked my fingers at the ground and they slid on in, there was no resistance, I could have put my arm in. It didn’t press back at me at all, and it was comfortable, no scratchy or dirty to it.
I thought “Are you there? Hey, anybody? This is me; I need to do something with this bag.” I got a little set of picture/images/feelings; it was huffy, all take and no give? But not seriously aggravated, just letting me know I had things I was supposed to do.
I sent “let’s do the bag, then show me what you need” by thinking about making the bag safe, then me standing there with my arms open waiting for direction trying to feel willing to do something. That’s hard to put into thought. I must have done ok. I got something; smooth a hole out deep enough for the jar to sit in, take the lid off and put it in the hole so the bag fell on the ground.
I reached out and used my hand to smooth the ground, the grass parted and moved out of the way. The exposed bare dirt flowed with just a touch and mounded up making a nice looking little hole with walls of earth around it. I took off the jar lid and slammed it upside down in the hole quickly, the thing went on down through the bottom of the hole till all I could see was the bottom of the jar. I pushed the dirt and grass back over it, it smoothed out like there was never a hole there.
A strong feeling about the place where the old shed had stood, poison, no life, choking. I walked over to it. The grass was having trouble taking it back over but it was trying. I kicked my foot into the bare dirt and uncovered one of the places where somebody had changed their oil. The oil was still there. It had mixed a little with the dirt but wasn’t breaking down. It looked like asphalt with a lot of sand in it. I needed to get it out. I kneeled down and ran my fingers through the dirt, it parted for me and moved aside but the black residue remained. I spent an hour pushing the dirt around and collecting old oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, all manner of old stuff where they had worked on cars in and around the shed. It stuck to itself so it made balls as I moved the dirt. I kept rolling them up, when I got one up the size of a fist I took it over to the steps.
I got finished with it and I had a nice collection of eleven tar balls. I was tired, it took a lot more out of me than I had noticed pushing the dirt around, but the entire area of the old shed was clean and smooth and looked like it had been tilled. It looked and felt right, I sensed satisfaction and relief. I guess this had been itching for a long time. I thought “Aight, I think that does it. Thanks for the help.” I got back ‘satisfaction’.
Whatever. I went in and dumped the tar balls in the trash.
“Umm, well, somebody ask me t’ see if you can, um, can you make a love spell?” I didn’t have any idea, but if I could it would pay well. What he really wanted was a horny spell to make a woman hot for him.
I was feeling contrary “Yeah, I can do that. But they some problems with it, that’s why it’s not so popular. The woman the spell is aimed at, she never gone stop wantin you. If she dead she
gone get back outta the ground and come after you for lovin; she do it all day, all night, every day and every night. When you can’t stay up with her she gone decide you don’t want her. All that love gone turn to hate and she be after yo ass. You sure you want that?”
Carl said “oh, no, it aint for me, it’s for somebody else.”
I just looked at him. He finally looked away, then he looked down and folded his hands up “well, never mind that then, we just won’t do it. I can help you with customers for yo hoodoo stuff though, I can check the money out before they get to you and keep the ones that aint for real away.”
“You got somebody in mind, or you just mean in general?”
“Just in general, and I can collect money, I know how to do it.”
“I aint wantin no bunch a junkies and such shit here, I got to live here.”
“I check them out good, if they aint right I won’t bring them here, and I let you know before I bring anybody round. Would that work?”
That sounded pretty good to me. Maybe I can do something with this. “Yes, but be sure you let me know first, I don’t like surprises unless they good surprises and I don’t much like even the good ones.”
“Yes ma’am, I sure will, and thank you again for Steph, she was in a bad way.”
“Ok, Carl, I gotta go now. You let me know if they is anything else.”
“Yes, ma’am, see you later” and he left.
Chapter Six
E very day something came up that made it seem like I’d be better off with a car. It was hard getting stuff to the house like that plywood without a car. When my air conditioner quit I’d need to find somebody to haul a new one back here or get it delivered, and that costs. So the end result was I needed a car.
First thing I needed to do was get a license so I could drive it. I needed to get some practice so I could pass the test. I had never sat behind the steering wheel of a car before, someone else drove. It didn’t look like much; you lay the seat back and down so just your eyeballs peeped over the wheel, reached way out with one hand on top, and went. But I had to pass that test.
Next time I saw Carl I’d get him to give me some pointers on what I should do, when he showed up about noon I went outside on the porch and sat down. “Carl, I got to get a car so I can go places and get stuff, I aint got no license though. How do I get a license?”
Carl was a little stunned, he said “You aint got no drivin license? For real, no shit?”
“No, I aint got none, I never needed one.”
“Do you have some family that can ride you around and show you how to drive?”
“No, I aint got no family, I got this place from my grammaw when she died.” He should have known that; well maybe not. I didn’t tell people anything I didn’t have to.
“Well shit, Miz Rosalee, that gone make it tough; I aint got no car or I would do it.”
“What if I get a car and you help me get my license?”
“I’d do that in a heartbeat, that’s a good idea. Where you gone get a car and what kind a car you gonna get?”
“I don’t know nothin bout no car, you find me a good one and I’ll buy it.”
“I’ll do that, I try to get you a good one, what you lookin for in a car?” He looked like he should have had a notepad to write on, he was very earnest and thorough.
“I don’t want a gas guzzler; it has to have enough room to haul shit around; I don’t want no leather seats, gotta have cloth seats, and not none a them leopard skin seats neither. It’s got to have all the glass in it and the lights and shit gotta work.”
“Aight, I go see what I can find. How much are you willin to pay for this car?”
“Hell, I don’t know how much a car costs; you tell me if it a good deal.”
“I can get a old car like you talkin about for cheap, a couple thousand dollars maybe; a new car gonna cost fifteen thousand dollars or more, and if you talkin a new Cadillac, it gone start at about maybe twenty five thousand dollars.”
“I aint got no twenty five thousand dollars for a car; I don’t need no car like that no how. I just need somethin I can drive to the store and back and it won’t break down and I can haul stuff in it.”
“Let me see what I can find then and I let you know.” Carl left looking like a man on a mission.
Stephanie went home. She felt better A few days went by with no excitement. She came over and brought me some banana pudding. “Thank you for what you did, that man was gonna break me in and put me on the street.” She’d been perfectly polite since she was sick.
I asked “Who is this man?”
“His name is Earl, and he stays in the Village in one of them old houses. He came up here from New Orleans a while back. He’s been gettin girls from school to hook for him. I know some of them wouldn’t do that; when I tried to talk to them they acted like they didn’t know me and they didn’t talk with me. Then they gone all of a sudden and nobody sees them anymore. They aint run away though, I know one or two of them that didn’t run away for sure. “
“Is Earl the one that give you that bag thing, the fetish?”
“Yes’m. I wasn’t gonna take it, but he was talkin with me over by the high school, tellin me I different from the rest of them girls and things like that and when I walked off I had the bag. I aint sure how I wound up with it, it was around my neck. I kinda remember he put it on, and he said don’t take it off, it’s lucky, and he laughed about that like it was real funny. It’s kinda like a dream. I can’t put my finger on just how that happened.” We talked about it a little more, but that was about all she had to tell me. She was still a little down and wore out and seemed to be drifting mentally a little.
The Village was a bad place. There were a lot of empty houses over there, squatters and meth labs moved in them and stayed there with no electric or water and it got nasty. They didn’t care. The weeds in the yards were head high some places so you couldn’t see the front of the house. The parks were wild, untended and overgrown with weeds. There was no law there and very little decency, ever body that could leave left. The ones who were still there were the ones hiding out from something or just couldn’t get out. Nobody went over there after dark unless they lived there or they were looking for something they couldn’t get elsewhere.
The banana pudding was some good stuff, Wanda knew she could cook. I ate a little, but this Earl stuff was worrisome. It was gettin too close to the house. When a place ran down like the Village had it was like a wound. If it didn’t get cleaned out, it’d get infected and spread and get worse.
The dopers over there were bad enough, but if there was some hoodoo man taking these girls I couldn‘t afford to leave it alone. I didn’t have any place to go from here. I’d have to do something. And I did agree to try.
I put up the banana pudding. It’ll go bad quick if it’s left out. That would be a shame. I put on my shoes and poured a glass of tea and set out on the porch. I needed to find out where that Earl man was staying in the Village, I’d have to go talk with him.
I hadn’t been sitting there long when Carl pulled up in front of the house in an old blue car with a man I didn’t know. They got out and came up in the yard; Carl said “Miz Rosalee, this here is Sammy and he wants to sell this car” careful not to show favoritism to either of us.
I got up and wa
lked down in the yard with them. Sammy came up to me holding his hand out to shake hands and said “Pleased to meet you.” He was skinny, just a little taller than me, which meant he was short. His hair was cut close to his head and his clothes were clean and well cared for. He wasn’t a drunk or a druggie, so the car probably wasn’t stolen.
We made a little small talk while we sized each other up. I didn’t know anything about cars, but I knew people. I walked out to the car and looked at it, all the windows were there and the seats weren’t torn up. We looked in the back. Sammy lifted a piece of the floor and said “That spare is a real tire!” I wondered if some of them had imaginary tires but I didn’t say it, I didn’t want to look ignorant.
He told me it didn’t use oil and it wasn’t bad on gas and it had ninety four thousand miles on it. It’s been sitting in a garage for the last ten years, it was an old Ford Taurus station wagon. Four Door.
I thought a minute. I told him “I don’t know much about cars but that’s pretty old and a lot of miles. If this car breaks after I buy it, what are you gonna do?”
“If somethin breaks on this car I’ll fix it, if I can’t fix it I give yo money back. This here is a good car, it belonged to my momma but she can’t drive it no more and I don’t need another car.”
“How much are you wantin for this car, I aint got much, but I need a way to go.”
He got all serious and looked me in the eyes, “Miz Rosalee, Carl’s my cousin, he says you a good woman, so I gone cut you a deal. I can let you have this car for four thousand dollars cash money today because I need the money. It’s worth a lot more than that, but I kinda in a tight spot and this gone help us both out.” He smiled, he was giving me something wonderful, he was thinking I’d go for the first shot and he was counting his money already.
I looked sad and turned around and studied the car, “How old this car, exactly? My math aint good on them big numbers”
“It aint but barely seventeen years old, but most of the time it just set in the garage, it aint been out in the weather hardly at all. My momma drove it slow, it aint never been gouged or ragged out. She used to keep a line of cars behind her every where she went, they had to set there and wait on her to move.”
