Hoodoo

by Ronald L. Smith

  I saw your daddy, boy. He owes me a debt, and I come to collect.

  What did my daddy do?

  I turned around to make sure the Stranger wasn’t on my tail, then let out one more big breath and knocked on the door of the little red shack.

  One Mississippi . . .

  Two Mississippi . . .

  Three Mississippi . . .

  I counted to five, but nobody came. I knocked again, louder this time. “Mrs. Snuff!” I shouted.

  No answer.

  I waited another minute, turning around every few seconds to look at the path that led out of the woods. I thought I’d see a tall, black shape come slinking into the clearing any second.

  Mandragore. The One That Did the Deed.

  I wiped my forehead with my hand. Sweat still slicked my face. Something sharp pinched my foot. I looked down. I was so caught up, I didn’t even realize I’d lost a shoe when I was trying to get away.

  I knew better than to go into somebody’s house when they weren’t there, but I also knew Mrs. Snuff might have some answers about all this craziness. There was no two ways about it. I took a deep breath, turned the handle, and stepped inside.

  The one-room shack was small and cramped and smelled like herbs, old tobacco smoke, and who knew what else. A rocking chair sat in the middle of the room, still rocking, like somebody just got up out of it.

  It was dark inside, but a little sun shined through one dirty window. A black cat lay curled on a ratty old couch, its yellow eyes blinking. “Ain’t afraid of no old black cat,” I said. But I think I said it out loud to make me not so scared. It didn’t work. The cat watched me cross the room, hair rising off its back in little spikes.

  All kinds of tangled roots and leaves hung on pieces of rope from the low wooden ceiling. There were things on shelves too, lined up in mason jars: frogs and little lizards, the dried skin of a snake, a possum tail, blue and red powders as fine as sand, and in one jar, what looked like a tiny human skull, but I never got close enough to really see.

  “Mrs. Snuff?” I called again, this time a little more quiet. I knew I shouldn’t be in here. Mama Frances would whup my behind if she ever found out. But there had to be something here that would help. I had to find out what Mrs. Snuff knew about me and the crow and the crossroads and the Stranger.

  I walked over to a little altar she had set up, just like the one at our house. A bowl of water sat next to some red candles with wax dripping down them and onto the table. What looked like plain old dirt was in another bowl, and some kind of half-burned, funny-smelling tree branch was there too, along with some playing cards. I picked up a few. They were bigger than the cards Aunt Jelly and I used to play hearts. One of them had a man hanging upside down, another one showed an angel blowing a trumpet—that must’ve been the angel Gabriel, I figured—and another showed a skeleton riding a black horse, holding up a sickle. A sickle is a long, curved knife for chopping down crops, if you didn’t know. I got the shakes right then and dropped the cards back on the table.

  Next to the table was a big tree stump with some stuff set on it. The top of it was smooth, like somebody had sanded it down. The Holy Bible was sitting right on it. I was afraid to touch it. Jesus was watching me. I knew He was. This was a sign I wasn’t supposed to be in here. Next to the Bible was another book. I picked it up. A picture of an owl was on the front.

  POW-WOWS

  ———–——— or ———–———

  LONG LOST FRIEND

  A Collection of Mysterious &

  Invaluable Arts & Remedies

  for Man as Well as Animals

  I didn’t understand what that meant. I flipped it open. The words on the pages were small and hard to figure out. I could read pretty good at the schoolhouse, but there were some big words in there I’d never seen before. I turned a page.

  Shivers ran up and down my spine.

  Somebody had drawn a chopped-off hand, with long, nasty fingernails.

  I took a deep breath. Underneath the hand, in big black letters, it said:

  MAIN DE GLOIRE

  I swallowed.

  I didn’t want to look—didn’t want to know nothing about it—but I read down the page, sounding out the words:

  Let all who seek know the power of the talisman. Mandragore, derived from the mandrake root, a corruption of the French Main de Gloire, which is to say “the Hand of Glory.”

  That was it. That’s what the Stranger was looking for. But what did it have to do with me? I let out a breath and kept reading:

  Take Heed!

  The Hand of Glory is the left hand of a man hanged from the gallows. If the man did do murder, it is known as the Hand That Did the Deed, the deed being murder!

  Beware!

  The more wicked his crime, the more powerful his hand!

  I stopped reading. My throat felt like I had a chicken egg in it. I squeezed my eyes shut but then opened them again. I had to keep reading. I had to know why the Stranger was after me.

  Listen! For Here Is Wisdom.

  Beware! He who holds the Hand of Glory may use the dead man’s fingers as candlewicks, which cast an unholy light, by which the dead can be called from the grave to do the owner’s ghastly work, spreading death and destruction in his name.

  My mouth went dry. I tried to lick my lips but it felt like cotton was in my throat. I stuffed the book in my pillowcase bag.

  And then someone opened the door.

  Mrs. Snuff

  Mrs. Snuff stood in the doorway.

  One hand rested on an old knobby walking stick, and the other held a straw basket filled with a bunch of weeds and roots. She was stooped and bent over and even smaller than I remembered. Her dress looked like a potato sack. That cloudy eye of hers roamed over me. I knew I was in a whole heap of trouble.

  “About time you came to see me, boy,” she finally said.

  I told her everything.

  Meeting the crow, seeing the Stranger at Miss Carter’s store and down at the swamp, the dreams. She listened the whole time, just looking at me with that milky eye of hers. I thought she was going to put a spell on me and turn me into a toad, but she didn’t. After I was done, she sat back in her chair and rocked back and forth for a real long time. I fidgeted in my seat, not knowing what to do.

  “Why’s this demon after you, boy?” she finally asked.

  I shivered. Even though I’d seen the Stranger in my dreams and down at the swamp, to hear her call him that made it real.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I thought you might know. That’s why I . . . why I came to see you.”

  She didn’t answer but just kept rocking in her chair, back and forth, back and forth, creaking the whole time. She was so small she looked like a little child.

  She closed her eyes. “I’ve been feeling his presence in the town,” she whispered, “like a black shadow creeping across the sun.” She reached in one of her pockets and took out an old balled-up hankie and snorted into it. “When you saw that stranger in the swamp, you were in the spirit world. That was his shade you saw. Did you know that?”

  “No ma’am,” I said. “What’s a shade?”

  “His shadow self.”

  I didn’t know what that was either.

  “See, boy,” she went on, “I believe this demon has the power to travel in the land of spirits. You do, too—that’s why you been seeing him.”

  “Me? Traveling in the spirit world?”

  “Yup,” Mrs. Snuff croaked. “And that old crow, too. It saw you were in danger. Even though you were in the otherworld, that stranger still could’ve harmed you. I think that crow was drawn to you because of your deep magick.”

  You got some magick in you, but I think it’s buried. Way down deep. That’s what Mama Frances said.

  “I can’t do magick,” I said. “I’ve tried before, but nothing ever happens.”

  Mrs. Snuff raised her head up high. I got a creepy feeling when she stared at me with that eye because I couldn’t tell w
here it was looking. “We’ll see about that,” she said. “Don’t make no sense for a boy named Hoodoo . . . to not know hoodoo.”

  I figured she might be right about that.

  “Let me see your hands, child.”

  I remembered the last time she wanted to see my hands. Her old claw pinched my skin. But I didn’t have much choice. I came to see her, and here she was, as simple as that.

  I stood up and put my hands out in front of her. She leaned forward in her chair and took them in hers. Her fingers were dry, like old twigs. She pointed to a long line that made a curve in my left palm. “That’s your lifeline, right there.” She jabbed it with a crooked yellow nail.

  “Ow!” I cried, but she just ignored me.

  “But see,” she went on, “it got cut short . . . right here.”

  I looked at the line. It stopped in the center of my hand. “Why’d it get cut short?”

  Mrs. Snuff chewed her lips. “Now, that I don’t know, Hoodoo. Old Mrs. Snuff don’t know everything. Some things she can see, and some she just can’t. They’re like pictures that come when they want to. Understand?”

  “I think so,” I said.

  She reached up and took my chin in her hand, then turned my head one way and then the other. I felt her eyes roaming over my birthmark. “Your people say anything to you about this mark?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “Hmpf,” she said, letting go of my chin. “Gotta have heart. Bring me that bag over there.” She pointed to a burlap bag on the floor by the couch. The cat watched me the whole time, yellow eyes gleaming. The bag wasn’t heavy, but I felt something inside of it. I handed it to Mrs. Snuff and she reached inside. Whatever it was she took out was nasty-looking—all wrinkly and gray.

  “Aha,” she croaked, seeing my face. “Ain’t nothing to be afraid of. This here chicken foot will get rid of the bad juju left from that demon.”

  I didn’t know what bad juju was, but figured it wasn’t good if it had to be gotten rid of. I got the willies right quick. “It’s okay, Hoodoo,” she said.

  She took my left arm in her bony hands and started chanting, scratching me with the chicken foot the whole time. It didn’t hurt, but it felt kind of funny, like somebody was tickling me. She did the same thing to my other arm, the words coming fast and quick. I didn’t understand them at all. Maybe it was African. That’s where Mama Frances said hoodoo came from. But she also said it came from all over the world, so I wasn’t sure.

  After Mrs. Snuff was done, my arms felt all prickly, like I’d been rolling around in the grass.

  She put the chicken foot on the table. I didn’t want to look at it.

  “Now, one more thing,” she said. “You need a talisman to keep away evil.”

  I didn’t know what that was and my face must’ve shown it.

  “It’s something you wear or hold in your hand. Something that will protect you, like a mojo bag.”

  “My Mama Frances made a mojo bag for me one time,” I said, “but it didn’t work.”

  Mrs. Snuff winked at me. “That’s ’cause you got to believe, boy.”

  I sighed. Everybody kept telling me that.

  “What you need is a cat’s-eye stone, a piece of broken chain, and a rat bone.” She reached back in the bag and pulled out a red cloth sack with a piece of rope around it. She handed it to me. “Put them in this here bag, and then spell it and keep it with you at all times. You hear?”

  “Yes ma’am,” I said, but wondered how I was going to spell the bag when I didn’t know how to conjure. “Thank you . . . Mrs. Snuff.”

  “You just call me Addy, boy. That’s my Christian name.”

  “Yes ma’am,” I answered, but still didn’t call her Addy. That just didn’t seem right.

  “Now you get yourself home before your people have a fit.”

  I headed for the door.

  “And keep that mojo bag close, you hear? That’s a powwow. Don’t let nobody else touch it. Keep it in your pocket.”

  “Yes ma’am,” I said again.

  I reached for the door handle.

  “Hoodoo?”

  I turned around. “Yes ma’am?”

  “You forget something?”

  She picked up my pillowcase bag from the floor and held it out in front of her.

  Dang! That bag had her book in it. The one I stole. She was gonna turn me into a toad.

  “C’mon, boy,” she said. “I ain’t got any more time for your foolishness.”

  I eased out a breath and walked the few steps to take the bag. She smiled a sly grin. “You bring that book back when you’re finished with it, too,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  She narrowed her eyes. At first I thought she was going to scold me for stealing, but if she wanted to do that she would’ve already done it, seeing as how I broke into her house.

  “I think you might be needing it,” she said.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said.

  Mrs. Snuff raised her hand and tapped a finger to the side of her head. “A wise man don’t look for danger,” she said, “but he’ll die for a cause he knows is righteous.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She smiled. “That’s for you to figure out, ain’t it?”

  She winked at me with her good eye before I turned the handle and stepped outside.

  A Broke-Down Shack

  “Boy, where in God’s name have you been?”

  Mama Frances rose out of her chair.

  The kitchen was dark, except for the glow of the kerosene lantern. I didn’t feel a chicken egg in my throat anymore. Now it was a goose egg.

  I lowered my eyes. “Just around,” I said. “I was out collecting stuff.”

  She shook her head. “You and your dang collecting. If you stay out this late again I’m gonna whup your narrow behind.” She paused and cocked her head to the side. “Matter of fact, go get me a switch right now. And don’t come back with no small one, either!”

  I gulped.

  “I’m sorry, Mama Frances. It won’t happen again. Promise.” I tried to smile. That usually worked.

  “Sweet Jesus,” she said, shaking her head again. “Just get yourself up those steps before I change my mind. And don’t even think about supper!”

  That was fine with me. I wasn’t hungry anyway.

  I felt bad because I was telling a lie. But what could I do? I didn’t want my family getting hurt. Their fate was in my hands, like Mrs. Snuff had said.

  Before I went to sleep, I lit a candle and put it on the table beside my bed. I didn’t light it most nights because the moonlight came through the window and helped me sleep. But tonight, there was no moon, and the room was so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

  After everything I’d seen today, I decided to say my prayers out loud instead of inside my head. I knelt at the foot of the bed and put my hands together like a little steeple.

  “Dear Jesus, please protect me and my family. Mama Frances, Pa Manuel, Aunt Jelly, and Cousin Zeke. Oh, and Bunny, too. Please shine Your light on us and protect us from evil. And send that stranger back to hel—I mean, protect us from the man called the Stranger. And please tell my mama hello, too. Thank You, Lord. In Jesus’s name. Amen.”

  I climbed into bed and pulled the quilt up around my neck. I’d put Mrs. Snuff’s powwow book in Daddy’s trunk and the mojo bag under my pillow. She’d said to keep it close, and I didn’t want Mama Frances finding it. She’d have all kinds of questions, and I had to do this on my own. That’s what Pa Manuel told me once. “Hoodoo,” he’d said. “Sometimes you gotta take things into your own hands.”

  That’s what I was doing—taking things into my own hands.

  Hands.

  The Hand of Glory.

  The Main de Gloire.

  I blew out the candle and started counting my numbers.

  Bunny sat with her back up against the pecan tree in our yard, whittling a stick with her pocketknife.

  It was
morning, and the sun felt good on my arms and neck. I’d never seen a girl whittle before, but it looked like Bunny’d done it a thousand times. A little pile of wood shavings fell in the lap of her skirt. I’d told her all about how I found Mrs. Snuff and what I had to do.

  “You saw him?” she said, her mouth wide open. “The . . . Stranger?”

  She stopped whittling and folded up her knife.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But Mrs. Snuff said I saw him in the dream world. She called it his shade.”

  Bunny’s face soured. “I would’ve gone with you. We could fight that old stranger together!”

  “I have to do it on my own,” I said. “Remember what I told you? I don’t want nobody getting hurt? That stranger is after me, and I have to stop him. It’s my business.”

  I felt like a grownup all of a sudden.

  Bunny smiled. She opened up her knife and started whittling again. “You set your mind to it, you can do anything, Hoodoo. That’s what my mama always says.”

  “You know where to get a cat’s-eye stone?” I asked her.

  She bit her lip. “Ozzie has a ring with a cat’s-eye. I’ll see if he can lend it to me.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to give it back,” I said. “Mrs. Snuff said I need it for a mojo bag to keep away evil. I need a rat bone, too.”

  “I bet we can find one of those,” she said. “You can come by tomorrow, and then we’ll look for a rat bone. We can have some lemonade, too.”

  “Okay,” I said, then leaned back up against the tree. Sunlight came down through the leaves and warmed my face. Bunny set down her knife, closed her eyes, and whistled a little song.

  After a minute, a woodpecker started rat-a-tat-tatting on a tree trunk. We sat there for a long time, not saying a word, just listening to the bird pecking holes in the wood. Finally, some big old cicada bugs swooped down from the trees and started clacking all around us. We both jumped up and took off running. Bunny was laughing and screaming as she ran, swatting at her head the whole time. Let me tell you, it was the most fun I’d had in a while.