Mules and Men

by Zora Neale Hurston

  And ever since the days of Moses, kings have been toting rods for a sign of power. But it’s mostly sham-polish because no king has ever had the power of even one of Moses’ ten words. Because Moses made a nation and a book, a thousand million leaves of ordinary men’s writing couldn’t tell what Moses said.

  Then when the moon had dragged a thousand tides behind her, Solomon was a man. So Sheba, from her country where she was, felt him carrying power and therefore she came to talk with Solomon and hear him.

  The Queen of Sheba was an Ethiopian just like Jethro, with power unequal to man. She didn’t have to deny herself to give gold to Solomon. She had gold-making words. But she was thirsty, and the country where she lived was dry to her mouth. So she listened to her talking ring and went to see Solomon, and the fountain in his garden quenched her thirst.

  So she made Solomon wise and gave him her talking ring. And Solomon built a room with a secret door and everyday he shut himself inside and listened to his ring. So he wrote down the ring-talk in books.

  That’s what the old ones said in ancient times and we talk it again.

  It was way back there—the old folks told it—that Raw-Head-And-Bloody-Bones had reached down and laid hold of the taproot that points to the center of the world. And they talked about High Walker too. But they talked in people’s language and nobody knew them but the old folks.

  Nobody knows for sure how many thousands in America are warmed by the fire of hoodoo, because the worship is bound in secrecy. It is not the accepted theology of the Nation and so believers conceal their faith. Brother from sister, husband from wife. Nobody can say where it begins or ends. Mouths don’t empty themselves unless the ears are sympathetic and knowing.

  That is why these voodoo ritualistic orgies of Broadway and popular fiction are so laughable. The profound silence of the initiated remains what it is. Hoodoo is not drum beating and dancing. There are no moon-worshippers among the Negroes in America.

  I was once talking to Mrs. Rachel Silas of Sanford, Florida, so I asked her where I could find a good hoodoo doctor.

  “Do you believe in dat ole fogeyism, chile? Ah don’t see how nobody could do none of dat work, do you?” She laughed unnecessarily. “Ah been hearin’ ’bout dat mess ever since Ah been big enough tuh know mahself, but shucks! Ah don’t believe nobody kin do me no harm lessen they git somethin’ in mah mouth.”

  “Don’t fool yourself,” I answered with assurance. “People can do things to you. I done seen things happen.”

  “Sho nuff? Well, well, well! Maybe things kin be done tuh harm yuh, cause Ah done heard good folks—folks dat ought to know—say dat it sho is a fact. Anyhow Ah figger it pays tuh be keerful.”

  “Oh yeah, Mrs. Rachel, Ah’ve seen a woman full of scorpions.”

  “Oh it kin be done, honey, no effs and ands ’bout de thing. There’s things that kin be done. Ah seen uh’ ’oman wid uh gopher in her belly. You could see ’m movin’ ’round in her. And once every day he’d turn hisself clear over and then you could hear her hollerin’ for more’n a mile. Dat hard shell would be cuttin’ her insides. Way after ’while she took down ill sick from it and died. Ah knowed de man dat done dat trick. Dat wuz done in uh dish of hoppin-john.”1

  Mrs. Viney White, a neighbor, was sitting there so she spoke. “Ah knowed into dat mahself. It wuz done over her breaking de leg of one of his hens dat wuz scratchin’ up her garden. When she took down sick Ah went to see her and Ah told her folks right then dat somebody had done throwed at her, but they didn’t b’lieve in nothin’. Went and got a Medical doctor, and they can’t do them kind of cases no good at all. Fact is it makes it worser.” She stopped short and nodded her head apprehensively towards the window. Rachel nodded her head knowingly. “She out dere now, tryin’ tuh eavesdrop.”

  “Who you talkin’ ’bout?” I asked.

  “De one dat does all de underhand work ’round here. She even throwed at me once, but she can’t do nothin’. Ah totes mah Big John de Conquerer2 wid me. And Ah sprinkles mustard seed ’round my door every night before Ah goes tuh bed.”

  “Yeah, and another thing,” Mrs. Rachel said, “Ah keeps her offa me too. She tries tuh come in dis yard so she kin put something down for me too, but air Lawd, Ah got something buried at dat gate dat she can’t cross. She done been dere several times, but she can’t cross.”

  “Ah’d git her tuh go if ah wuz you, Rachel,” Mrs. Viney said.

  “Wisht ah knowed how. Ah’d sho do it.”

  “You throw salt behind her, everytime she go out of her gate. Do dat nine times and Ah bet she’ll move so fast she won’t even know where she’s going. Somebody salted a woman over in Georgetown and she done moved so much she done wore out her furniture on de movin’ wagon. But looka here, Zora, whut you want wid a two-headed doctor? Is somebody done throwed a old shoe at you?”

  “Not exactly neither one, Mrs. Viney. Just want to learn how to do things myself.”

  “Oh, honey, Ah wouldn’t mess with it if Ah wuz you. Dat’s a thing dat’s got to be handled just so, do it’ll kill you. Me and Rachel both knows somebody that could teach you if they will. Dis woman ain’t lak some of these hoodoo doctors. She don’t do nothin’ but good. You couldn’t pay her to be rottin’ people’s teeths out, and fillin’ folks wid snakes and lizards and spiders and things like dat.”

  So I went to study with Eulalia, who specialized in Man-and-woman cases. Everyday somebody came to get Eulalia to tie them up with some man or woman or to loose them from love.

  Eulalia was average sized with very dark skin and bushy eyebrows. Her house was squatting among the palmettoes and the mossy scrub oaks. Nothing pretty in the house nor outside. No paint and no flowers. So one day a woman came to get tied to a man.

  “Who is dis man?” Eulalia wanted to know.

  “Jerry Moore,” the woman told her. “He want me and Ah know it, but dat ’oman he got she got roots buried and he can’t git shet of her—do we would of done been married.”

  Eulalia sat still and thought awhile. Then she said: “Course Ah’m uh Christian woman and don’t believe in partin’ no husband and wife but since she done worked roots on him, to hold him where he don’t want to be, it tain’t no sin for me to loose him. Where they live at?”

  “Down Young’s Quarters. De third house from dis end.”

  “Do she ever go off from home and stays a good while durin’ de time he ain’t there neither?”

  “Yas Ma’am! She all de time way from dat house—off fan-footin’ whilst he workin’ lak a dog! It’s a shame!”

  “Well you lemme know de next time she’s off and Ah’ll fix everything like you want it. Put that money back in yo’ purse, Ah don’t want a thing till de work is done.”

  Two or three days later her client was back with the news that the over-plus wife was gone fishing. Eulalia sent her away and put on her shoes.

  “Git dat salt-bowl and a lemon,” she said to me. “Now write Jerry’s name and his wife’s nine times on a piece of paper and cut a little hole in the stem end of that lemon and pour some of that gun-powder in de hole and roll that paper tight and shove it inside the lemon. Wrap de lemon and de bowl of salt up and less go.”

  In Jerry Moore’s yard, Eulalia looked all around and looked up at the sun a great deal, then pointed out a spot.

  “Dig a little hole right here and bury dat lemon. It’s got to be buried with the bloom-end down and it’s got to be where de settin’ sun will shine on it.”

  So I buried the lemon and Eulalia walked around to the kitchen door. By the time I had the lemon buried the door was open and we went inside. She looked all about and found some red pepper.

  “Lift dat stove-lid for me,” she ordered, and I did. She threw some of the pepper into the stove and we went on into the other room which was the bedroom and living-room all in one. Then Eulalia took the bowl and went from corner to corner “salting” the room. She’d toss a sprinkling into a corner and say, “Just fuss and fuss till you part and go
away.” Under the bed was sprinkled also. It was all over in a minute or two. Then we went out and shut the kitchen door and hurried away. And Saturday night Eulalia got her pay and the next day she set the ceremony to bring about the marriage.

  Two

  Now I was in New Orleans and I asked. They told me Algiers, the part of New Orleans that is across the river to the west. I went there and lived for four months and asked. I found women reading cards and doing mail order business in names and insinuations of well known factors in conjure. Nothing worth putting on paper. But they all claimed some knowledge and link with Marie Leveau. From so much of hearing the name I asked everywhere for this Leveau and everybody told me differently. But from what they said I was eager to know to the end of the talk. It carried me back across the river into the Vieux Carré. All agreed that she had lived and died in the French quarter of New Orleans. So I went there to ask.

  I found an oil painting of the queen of conjure on the walls of the Cabildo, and mention of her in the guide books of New Orleans, but I did a lot of stumbling and asking before I heard of Luke Turner, himself a hoodoo doctor, who says that he is her nephew.

  When I found out about Turner, I had already studied under five two-headed doctors and had gone thru an initiation ceremony with each. So I asked Turner to take me as a pupil. He was very cold. In fact he showed no eagerness even to talk with me. He feels sure of his powers and seeks no one. He refused to take me as a pupil and in addition to his habitual indifference I could see he had no faith in my sincerity. I could see him searching my face for whatever was behind what I said. The City of New Orleans has a law against fortune tellers, hoodoo doctors and the like, and Turner did not know me. He asked me to excuse him as he was waiting upon someone in the inner room. I let him go but I sat right there and waited. When he returned, he tried to shoo me away by being rude. I stayed on. Finally he named an impossible price for tuition. I stayed and dickered. He all but threw me out, but I stayed and urged him.

  I made three more trips before he would talk to me in any way that I could feel encouraged. He talked about Marie Leveau because I asked. I wanted to know if she was really as great as they told me. So he enlightened my ignorance and taught me. We sat before the soft coal fire in his grate.

  “Time went around pointing out what God had already made. Moses had seen the Burning Bush. Solomon by magic knowed all wisdom. And Marie Leveau was a woman in New Orleans.

  “She was born February 2, 1827. Anybody don’t believe I tell the truth can go look at the book in St. Louis Cathedral. Her mama and her papa, they wasn’t married and his name was Christophe Glapion.

  “She was very pretty, one of the Creole Quadroons and many people said she would never be a hoodoo doctor like her mama and her grandma before her. She liked to go to the balls very much where all the young men fell in love with her. But Alexander, the great two-headed doctor felt the power in her and so he tell her she must come to study with him. Marie, she rather dance and make love, but one day a rattlesnake come to her in her bedroom and spoke to her. So she went to Alexander and studied. But soon she could teach her teacher and the snake stayed with her always.

  “She has her house on St. Anne Street and people come from the ends of America to get help from her. Even Queen Victoria ask her help and send her a cashmere shawl with money also.

  “Now, some white people say she hold hoodoo dance on Congo Square every week. But Marie Leveau never hold no hoodoo dance. That was a pleasure dance. They beat the drum with the shin bone of a donkey and everybody dance like they do in Hayti. Hoodoo is private. She give the dance the first Friday night in each month and they have crab gumbo and rice to eat and the people dance. The white people come look on, and think they see all, when they only see a dance.

  “The police hear so much about Marie Leveau that they come to her house in St. Anne Street to put her in jail. First one come, she stretch out her left hand and he turn round and round and never stop until some one come lead him away. Then two come together—she put them to running and barking like dogs. Four come and she put them to beating each other with night sticks. The whole station force come. They knock at her door. She know who they are before she ever look. She did work at her altar and they all went to sleep on her steps.

  “Out on Lake Pontchartrain at Bayou St. John she hold a great feast every year on the Eve of St. John’s, June 24th. It is Midsummer Eve, and the Sun give special benefits then and need great honor. The special drum be played then. It is a cowhide stretched over a half-barrel. Beat with a jaw-bone. Some say a man but I think they do not know. I think the jawbone of an ass or a cow. She hold the feast of St. John’s partly because she is a Catholic and partly because of hoodoo.

  “The ones around her altar fix everything for the feast. Nobody see Marie Leveau for nine days before the feast. But when the great crowd of people at the feast call upon her, she would rise out of the waters of the lake with a great communion candle burning upon her head and another in each one of her hands. She walked upon the waters to the shore. As a little boy I saw her myself. When the feast was over, she went back into the lake, and nobody saw her for nine days again.

  “On the feast that I saw her open the waters, she looked hard at me and nodded her head so that her tignon shook. Then I knew I was called to take up her work. She was very old and I was a lad of seventeen. Soon I went to wait upon her Altar, both on St. Anne Street and her house on Bayou St. John’s.

  “The rattlesnake that had come to her a little one when she was also young was very huge. He piled great upon his altar and took nothing from the food set before him. One night he sang and Marie Leveau called me from my sleep to look at him and see. ‘Look well, Turner,’ she told me. ‘No one shall hear and see such as this for many centuries.’

  “She went to her Great Altar and made great ceremony. The snake finished his song and seemed to sleep. She drove me back to my bed and went again to her Altar.

  “The next morning, the great snake was not at his altar. His hide was before the Great Altar stuffed with spices and things of power. Never did I know what become of his flesh. It is said that the snake went off to the woods alone after the death of Marie Leveau, but they don’t know. This is his skin that I wear about my shoulders whenever I reach for power.

  “Three days Marie, she set at the Altar with the great sun candle burning and shining in her face. She set the water upon the Altar and turned to the window, and looked upon the lake. The sky grew dark. The lightning raced to the seventeen quarters of the heavens and the lake heaved like a mighty herd of cattle rolling in a pasture. The house shook with the earth.

  “She told me, ‘You are afraid. That is right, you should fear. Go to your own house and build an altar. Power will come.’ So I hurried to my mother’s house and told them.

  “Some who loved her hurried out to Bayou St. John and tried to enter the house but she try hard to send them off. They beat upon the door, but she will not open. The terrible strong wind at last tore the house away and set it in the lake. The thunder and lightning grow greater. Then the loving ones find a boat and went out to where her house floats on one side and break a window to bring her out, but she begs, ‘NO! Please, no,’ she tell them. ‘I want to die here in the lake,’ but they would not permit her. She did not wish their destruction, so she let herself be drawn away from her altar in the lake. And the wind, the thunder and lightning, and the water all ceased the moment she set foot on dry land.

  “That night she also sing a song and is dead, yes. So I have the snake skin and do works with the power she leave me.”

  “How did Marie Leveau do her work?” I asked feeling that I had gotten a little closer to him.

  “She go to her great Altar and seek until she become the same as the spirit, then she come out into the room where she listens to them that come to ask. When they finish she answer them as a god. If a lady have a bad enemy and come to her she go into her altar room and when she come out and take her seat, the lady will say to
her:

  “‘Oh, Good Mother. I come to you with my heart bowed down and my shoulders drooping, and my spirits broken; for an enemy has sorely tried me; has caused my loved ones to leave me; has taken from me my worldly goods and my gold; has spoken meanly of me and caused my friends to lose faith in me. On my knees I pray to you, Good Mother, that you will cause confusion to reign in the house of my enemy and that you will take their power from them and cause them to be unsuccessful.’

  “Marie Leveau is not a woman when she answer the one who ask. No. She is a god, yes. Whatever she say, it will come so. She say:

  “‘Oh, my daughter, I have heard your woes and your pains and tribulations, and in the depth of the wisdom of the gods I will help you find peace and happiness.

  “‘It is written that you will take of the Vinagredes Four Volle1 for him, and you will dip into it a sheet of pure parchment paper, and on this sheet you will write the names of your enemies and send it to the house of your enemies, tightly sealed with the wax of the porcupine plant.

  “'Then when the sun shall have risen and gone down three times, you will take of the water of Mars, called War Water, and in front of the house of your enemy you will sprinkle it. This you will do as you pass by. If it be a woman, you will take the egg of a guinea fowl, and put it into the powder of the fruit of cayenne and the dust of Goofer, 2 and you will set it on the fire in your own house and in clear water from the skies you will boil it until it shall be hard. This you will do so that there shall be no fruit from her womb.