Hoodoo

by Ronald L. Smith

  The railroad tracks ran right behind Aunt Jelly’s house, and I liked to sit out there sometimes and watch the trains rumble by. They had names like Silver Maple and Frisco 1062. At nighttime, little sparks shot off the tracks from the wheels running over the rails. I played make-believe that those sparks were falling stars, shooting down from heaven.

  When Aunt Jelly wanted to make some money, she’d cook up barbecue for the railroad men who came through town. She made the best barbecue sandwiches in the county. She’d put cracklin’ right on top of the juicy meat, so when you took a bite, you’d get a big old crunch. Cracklin’ is the dried skin of a pig, if you didn’t know.

  Aunt Jelly came into the dining room with a big plate of catfish and set it down on the table. I reached for a piece.

  “Hoodoo,” she warned.

  My hand froze over the plate.

  “Let it cool first, baby.”

  I put my hands in my lap. Aunt Jelly sat down. “Now go get that pitcher of sweet tea out of the kitchen.”

  I got up and tried not to roll my eyes. She was messing with me. Making me wait for that dang fish. One time she caught me rolling my eyes and told me they’d get stuck like that if I kept it up, so I didn’t do it again.

  I came back with the tea and took my seat. My eyes wandered to the catfish.

  “Lay your napkin down,” Aunt Jelly told me. “Remember how I showed you?”

  I unrolled a napkin and put it across my knees.

  “That’s better.”

  My stomach gurgled. Aunt Jelly folded her arms across her bosom. “How’s my sister?” she asked. “She don’t come by to see me as much as she used to.”

  “She’s okay,” I replied, eyeing the plate. “She’s at work.”

  Aunt Jelly leaned back in her chair and let out a breath. “Lord, those people gonna work your poor grandmama to death one day.”

  It was true. Sometimes it seemed like Mama Frances spent more time at white folks’ houses than ours.

  “Let’s eat, baby,” she finally said.

  I didn’t like that she called me “baby,” but she called everybody that, even if they were grownups.

  I put a few pieces of catfish on my plate and took a bite right away. It had cooled down, and the flaky white meat melted in my mouth. “That’s good, Auntie,” I said.

  She cocked her head. “Now, what’d I say about talking with your mouth full, Hoodoo Hatcher?”

  “Sorry,” I said, still chewing.

  She smiled like she was just teasing and picked up a piece herself. We sat there and ate without saying a word.

  When my belly was fit to burst, she made me do some chores. I didn’t want to fuss about it because the catfish she shared with me was so good. We worked together in her little garden where she grew some vegetables. If it was green and came out of the ground, we just called them greens. You could have mustard greens, turnip greens, collard greens, cabbage greens, and probably some other kind of greens I’d never even heard of. Once they were boiled up and got all soft, you could drink the water left in the pot. Mama Frances called it pot likker.

  We picked the greens, washed them off, and put them in a brown paper bag for storing. After that, Aunt Jelly made me paint her door frame out front. She kept her eye on me the whole time to make sure I didn’t spill any paint. I knew she could’ve done the chores herself, but she wanted me to do them because nobody got something for nothing. Especially catfish.

  After I was done, I cleaned the brushes and washed my hands, then sat down to play a game of hearts. Hearts was the only card game I knew how to play, and I think Aunt Jelly let me beat her half the time. People thought I had some kind of special gift when it came to hearts because of my birthmark, but if I did, it was news to me.

  Aunt Jelly smoked a little cigar and poured herself a glass of moonshine. She put some scratchy records on the wind-up player and closed her eyes and sang along. I liked when she sang “Minnie the Moocher” by a man named Cab Calloway. I didn’t know who Minnie the Moocher was, but I liked the way those words sounded together: Minnie the Moocher. Who was Minnie? What was mooching?

  We played until it started to get dark out. I heard some crickets and a train whistle in the distance. Finally, Aunt Jelly’s eyes began to droop a little and she showed me out. She stood in the doorway, and the light from the moon made her thin flowery dress kind of see-through. I turned away.

  “Tell your grandmama don’t be a stranger,” she called as I headed down the path.

  “I will,” I said.

  I took a few steps.

  “Hoodoo?”

  I turned around. “Yes ma’am?”

  “You been trying to conjure, baby?”

  “No ma’am.”

  She nodded her head slowly, like she was thinking. “Well, give it time, child. It’ll come when it’s supposed to. Remember what your Mama Frances said?”

  “I got to believe.”

  “That’s right. Only believe. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

  “Yes ma’am,” I said, turning back around. Once Aunt Jelly started her Bible talk, I’d never be able to get away.

  I set off and crossed the railroad tracks. Lightnin’ bugs flickered in the growing dark, and night creatures rustled around in the woods. Owls hooted from their perches, possums slunk through the underbrush, and I’m sure snakes were creeping around too, looking for moles and other little animals. I took a deep breath. The air smelled like sweet sassafras.

  And that’s when I heard the scream.

  My feet froze to the ground.

  It was definitely a scream—a woman’s scream—way in the distance. Hair rose up on the back of my neck.

  “Lord, Jesus!” the voice rang out.

  I got real scared right then. It sounded like it was coming from back where Aunt Jelly lived.

  Aunt Jelly!

  I took off running. It was dark, but I could still see by the light of the moon. I ran so fast I fell down and got right back up again. Some dogs must’ve heard me running, because they got to barking all of a sudden. A whole bunch of them—howling at the moon, Cousin Zeke would’ve called it. By the time I reached Aunt Jelly’s, I was out of breath. I ran up the little steps and banged on the old wooden door frame. The paint was still wet, and it got on my hands. “Aunt Jelly! Aunt Jelly!” I shouted between gasps. She didn’t answer, so I pushed open the door and ran inside. The front room was dark and I smashed my toe into a table. A creak sounded on the steps. I whipped my head around.

  “Hoodoo?”

  Aunt Jelly came down the stairs, pulling her robe around her. “What is it, boy? You scared me half to death.”

  She looked real plain because she’d taken off her lipstick and earrings. “I heard somebody scream,” I said. “Out by the railroad tracks. I thought it was you.”

  She didn’t say anything for a second, just stared at me and put her hand on her hip. “Well, as you can see, Hoodoo, I’m as right as rain.”

  She leaned down and looked me in the eye. “You sure it was a scream? Maybe somebody killed a pig.”

  I felt foolish but I’d definitely heard a scream. I just knew it. I didn’t say anything, just stared down at the floor.

  “Sit down, baby,” she said. “Let me make something to put your mind at ease.”

  I sat down on the couch. Aunt Jelly went into the kitchen, and after a few seconds, I heard drawers being pulled open and a spoon clinking around in a glass. She came back out holding a cup in both hands. “Auntie Jelly’s hot toddy will set you straight,” she said.

  She placed the hot cup in front of me. Aunt Jelly knew a whole lot about potions and what she called elixirs. I put my nose to the cup and sniffed. The smell was so strong I was afraid to drink it. I remembered what happened the last time I drank some of her liquor. I didn’t want to get that feeling again. “Don’t be afraid, baby,” she said. “It’ll just calm your nerves. Make you right sleepy.”

  I picked up the cup and took a small swall
ow. I was surprised it tasted good—warm and buttery and sweet and creamy all at once. Aunt Jelly stared at me while I drank it. “You look just like your daddy. You know that, Hoodoo?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t want to think about my dead daddy.

  I drank some more and pretty soon felt a little sleepy. Aunt Jelly sat on the couch next to me. She put a cool hand on my forehead. She started singing a song right then, but the words kind of floated away as she sang. I saw a picture in my head of me sitting under a tree in the sunshine. I was on a little hill by the Alabama River. Everything was quiet. The sun beat down on my neck. I dangled my bare feet in the cool water and splashed my toes. It felt good. I raised my face to the sun, but then the air got cold all of a sudden. A dark cloud passed overhead, leaving trails of black vines snaking down to the ground. The vines turned into long skinny fingers. They were trying to reach me—trying to creep along the ground and then come up and strangle me!

  “Hoodoo?”

  I shook my head back and forth, trying to wake up.

  “Hoodoo! Wake up, child!”

  I opened my eyes. My mouth was dry. I didn’t know where I was for a second until I saw Aunt Jelly. She tried to pull me to her bosom like she did when I was little, but I wasn’t little anymore.

  She looked down her nose. “You think you’re too big for one of your auntie’s hugs?”

  I didn’t answer. I was thinking about that cloud that turned into a creeping black vine. She picked up my empty cup and sniffed it. “Auntie Jelly’s hot toddy might be a little too strong!” she said, and then laughed.

  And then I remembered why she gave me the drink in the first place. She was trying to calm me down. I’d heard a scream—a scream that sent shivers down my spine and tickled the hair on the back of my neck. She’d said it was probably a pig.

  She was wrong.

  That scream wasn’t no pig.

  That scream sounded like a human being.

  Fate Revealed

  I woke up with my sheets soaked through. For a second I thought I’d peed the bed, like when I was little, but then breathed a sigh of relief. It was only sweat.

  Birds were singing outside my window. A little beam of sun came through and warmed my face. It felt good, but then I remembered the scream I’d heard last night and got scared. I thought it was a lady’s scream, but now I wasn’t so sure. I could still taste that potion Aunt Jelly made me drink in the back of my throat. My head felt foggy, too.

  The smell of hot biscuits got my stomach to rumbling, so I threw on some clothes and headed downstairs. Mama Frances was stirring a big pot of grits on the stove. Grits are like rice but creamier, if you didn’t know. I pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “Hey, Hoodoo,” she said.

  “Mornin’, Mama Frances.”

  “You go ahead and dig into those biscuits. Miss Ross just dropped off some fresh jam.”

  I picked up a biscuit and started to spread a little jam on it. “Ow!” I cried out.

  I dropped it real quick and stuck my fingers in my mouth.

  Mama Frances laughed. “That’s what you get for not saying grace,” she teased.

  I closed my eyes and put my hands together. “Dear Lord,” I said, “thank You for this food we are about to receive to nourish our bodies. In Jesus’s name. Amen.” I opened my eyes.

  “That’s better,” she said.

  I picked up the biscuit again. It was cooler to the touch, so I spread some more jam and butter on it and then took a bite. I rolled the dough around, trying to chew and blow on it at the same time. Let me tell you, that biscuit was so good it melted right in my mouth. The little seeds from the jam got stuck in my teeth, though.

  Mama Frances sat down and pushed a bowl of hot buttered grits across the table. Wisps of steam rose off it like little ghosts. “It’s Colored Folks’ Day at the county fair,” she said.

  They called it Colored Folks’ Day because that’s the only time we could go. If we tried to go any other time, we could get in trouble from white folks. I didn’t think that was right, but Mama Frances said that was the way of the world, and there was nothing we could do about it.

  She pursed her lips and blew on her spoonful of grits. “Maybe little Miss Bunny’d like to go. Would you like that?”

  A warm tingling spread over my face. Me and Bunny Richardson used to play together when we were little, but now that we were growing up, we didn’t play so much anymore. Plus, I was starting to get a funny feeling in my stomach when she stood too close.

  “You want to go?” Mama Frances asked.

  I didn’t say anything for a minute, just stared into my bowl of grits, watching the pool of butter melt. I felt a lump in my throat.

  She grinned. “You shy, Hoodoo? I’ll tell Bunny’s mama you’ll meet her at the fair.”

  “No!” I said, and then realized I’d shouted.

  Mama Frances narrowed her eyes. “Child, don’t you raise your voice in this house.”

  I sunk down in my seat. “I’m sorry, Mama Frances. It’s just—I don’t know. I don’t know if we’re still friends.”

  The scowl fell away from her face. “Sure you are, baby. You just got to take the first step.”

  I spread a little more jam on the biscuit. It was dark and wet, like blood, and that made me think about the scream.

  Maybe it was a pig.

  One time, Cousin Zeke took me out to Mr. Haney’s farm to buy some hog meat. The dead hog was strung up on a steel pole with a big old cut right down its belly. I felt bad for the hog, but Zeke said it’d had a good life and people had to eat. He said nothing would be wasted. The meat, the bones, the guts—there was something to be made out of all of it. I guessed I didn’t feel so bad after he said that.

  “Hoodoo? You listening to me, child?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “I said you got to take the first step.”

  “Okay,” I said, but wondered what that first step would be.

  After breakfast, I went outside. The sun blazed like fire and I started to sweat right away, so I sat under the pecan tree and let the shade cool me off. Sometimes, I threw rocks up into the high branches and watched the nuts rain down onto the ground. Mama Frances made pecan pie whenever I picked up enough. She made other kinds of pies too: fig, plum, peach, and apricot. Peach pie was my favorite. She kept the fruit in mason jars in the cool dark under the porch. Once they got all soft and squishy, she’d put them in a pie. If I could eat only one thing and had to decide between Mama Frances’s pies and Aunt Jelly’s catfish, I think I’d be in a whole lot of trouble.

  I stayed out in the yard for a long time, smashing pecans up against the tree trunk. Once they were cracked open, I picked inside the shell so I could get all the little nuggets. I think I was being idle. That’s what Mama Frances called it. Being idle means wasting time, if you didn’t know. I was thinking about Bunny and the fair and wondering what we’d do there. But something else was bothering me too—that scream, and the way it floated through the trees and over the tracks, sending a chill across my neck. Just thinking about it gave me the shakes.

  The county fair was set up by the old cotton gin mill and surrounded by woods with tall weeping willow trees. I called them long-beards because the stringy gray moss that drooped down to the ground looked like the long beards of old men.

  It’d only taken me a few minutes to get to the fair. I knew all the little paths through the woods, and even though it was getting dark out, I didn’t even think about the scream. I never did say anything to Mama Frances. She’d probably tell me I was letting my imagination run wild. Taking a flight of fancy, she called it. I decided to just leave it alone. Whatever it was, it didn’t have nothing to do with me nohow.

  I came out of the path through the woods and into the clearing. Some lights were strung up through the trees, blinking red, blue, yellow, and green. Little flags on poles snapped in the dry wind. The smell of sugary-sweet cotton candy rose on the air. There were other smells too: sour hay and
horse doo-doo, fried chicken and catfish, roasted peanuts, and a bunch of other stuff all jumbled up together.

  I jingled the change in my pocket. Mama Frances had given me a whole bunch of it and told me to have a good time.

  Somebody screamed.

  I snapped my head left—then right—then up above. A bunch of legs, like a big old spider’s, dangled from a wheel going round in the sky. People screamed and laughed and threw their arms up in the air, acting right foolish. You couldn’t get me on one of those things if you promised me a hundred Squirrel Nut Zippers.

  “Hey, Hoodoo.”

  I turned around.

  It was Bunny.

  “Hey, Bunny.”

  We stared at each other a minute. I looked down at the ground and shuffled my feet. Time got real slow all of a sudden. I snuck a look at her.

  Bunny smiled. “Well, let’s go inside,” she finally said, after I didn’t say anything else.

  I dug into my front pocket and fished out two nickels for the ticket-taker man. He handed me two orange stubs and I stuck them in my back pocket.

  “My mama said Miss Frances said you wanted to go,” Bunny said. “So I thought I’d join you.” She smiled again, showing off her perfect white teeth. Her hair was tied in two pigtails. I got that funny feeling in my stomach and almost had to turn away. Bunny just looked right at me and waited for me to say something. I shuffled my feet again. My hands were sweaty. “I wasn’t sure,” I finally said, “that you wanted to be my friend anymore.”