And he went on about Moms and her skills in some Caribbean conjuring they call obeah, that is one powerful mixin’ of African and Christian rituals and English magic – and she also knew the power of somethin’ he called “Amerindian art”. I didn’t catch what he said about that, cos as Pa Campbell went on and on, I could only see the pictures in my head of Moms lockin’ the doors and lightin’ the candle and crushin’ the goat-blood letter and burning somebody’s name in the fire. And then it hit me and I said to myself: “Shit, Skid. Your old lady is a witch and your brother is a damn wizard.”
Well, you can bet I didn’t sleep all week, and every time I looked up from my bed in the darkness, there was ol’ Frico’s outline, sittin’ up, lookin’ back at me, like he knew I found out somethin’. Hell if he was gonna get me to talk, though. I wanted solid proof of the originations of these powers before I went back to bribe him with somethin’. So I just rolled over and went back to sleep with one eye open.
PART TWO
An old broom knows where the dirt is.
– Everyday proverb
Eight
“Load up!”
It was Saturday, so Pa Campbell would be taking the gators in his old Ford truck over to Al Dubois Fish and Seafood in New O’lins East, and Moms said I could tag along. Harry T couldn’t make it, cos he said he was “keepin’ the Sabbath” that weekend, which prob’ly meant he would be recordin’ movies on the second-hand VCR he bought off Belly, as soon as he figured out how to put the thing back together. I reckon he borrowed the VCR and pulled it apart and didn’t know what screws went where, so he ended up buyin’ the scraps. But it was no problem if Harry T didn’t make it. I was diggin’ Pa Campbell’s stories, and on the way, he told me some more.
“Your pops and I don’t get along no more, on account of yo’ mother wantin’ to stop all them conjurations. I told your pops, ‘Alrick, let her be.’ He said if Valerie knows ’bout the spirits in the swamps and if she wanted to stop conjuring, that would be her entitlement, but she shouldn’t be preventin’ him from protectin’ his chil’ren. So each taam one a y’all was about to be born, your pops made sure the baby would be under guard.”
“Under guard?”
I thought he was gonna blast me again about not watching enough TV, but he said, “Yeah. Now, this ain’t necessarily hoodoo, but nine days or so before the baby is s’posed to be born, theah is a tradition to supplicate and ask an archangel to come protect the newborn.” I shivered. “Yeah, dat’s right. These are things you need to know, son. Right now, I’m appointin’ maself your Godfauder, and since I’m half-Catholic, that means ol’ Pa Campbell is responsible fo’ your spirichual upbringin’. Now, lissen. They got spirits that like to harm li’le children, so that thirty-foot archangel is s’posed to hover over da house whirlin’ all six brass wings and beatin’ them forward like blades on his bronze armour. Terrible sight, if you saw it. He’s a warrior angel, so he’s ready with a fire sword in one hand and a burnished-metal mirror – yes – a mirror in the other hand. See, the only thing ’cept Almighty God dat can scare the ol’ Devil or a spirit away from a poor soul is the Devil’s or the spirit’s own reflection. So the archangel goin’ hafta hold that mirror up high so dat they can see themselves and git back, you understan’? And if they don’t fly away, then the ol’ sword of the Almighty’s goin’-a hafta come down hard and discourage ’em some more, you understan’?” I shifted in my seat. Maan, that angel sounded scarier than the Devil.
We turned into the Fish & Seafood place. “Well, your momma, she found religion while she was pregnant, and told your pops that the archangel Michael, he knows his job already. Your pops asked me to intervene and git her to agree to ask for protection, cos if there is disagreement between the parents the archangel ain’t gonna visit. But I said no: that was between she and him and God and the archangel. So, up to this day, your pops thinks I betrayed our years-long friendship and, worse, he’s dead sure that the archangel never showed up and a female spirit called Old Hige, she flew up from the Gulf and rocked a cradle or two many nights.”
Well, I reckon that when he said that, I should’ve been all freaked out or riled up or I should’ve just thought Pa was plumb nuts. But no. Matter of fact, that was the best damn news I’d gotten all year. This was confirmin’ that fifolet story and the fact that Frico had some kind of energy in him. But then again maybe Pa Campbell was missin’ his pills or was kinda walkin’ on a slant on account of that whiskey flask he kept throwin’ back when he thought I wasn’t lookin’.
The details didn’t matter – but if that bastard Frico had powers, then I was sure I was born to help him use them. I wish I was him to be honest. But with my luck, if I wasn’t “under guard” and some entities came crowdin’ around my crib, I’m dead sure all those bastards brought me was the gripes.
Anyway, Pa went in to the Fish & Seafood guy, Al, and while they were hawkin’ over prices, up drove a noisy Mitsubishi Montero beside Pa’s truck – and who was in the passenger seat but little Miss Vietnam, Mai. Her mother was takin’ a nap in the back seat.
“Oh Mai, Mai, Mai,” I called out as soon as I saw her, but she didn’t get it. When I was about to explain the joke, her grandpa, he leant across from the driver seat and looked at me. He had bags under his eyes, ready to pack every bad thing you ever did, and the permanent knitting of his grey brows was sayin’: “Back off my granddaughter” or something worse. So I kinda slinked down in my seat and waited till he had taken two buckets of jumbo shrimp inside. Then I jumped back up in my seat and tried to flirt with Mai again. But she was all business that day. They had to drop off pounds and pounds of shrimp that they were growing themselves right in the swamp across from us, and then they were going to pick up somebody who just got in from Vietnam.
“You should come meet Kuan, you’ll like her.”
I said, “Sure,” even though I wasn’t no great fan of her grandpoppa and his talking eyebrows. Well, out comes the old guy again with Al Dubois behind him, and I see somethin’ he does: he lets Al give Mai the money for the load of shrimp, like he didn’t want to touch the dough. Strange man. And that Mai, she was so cute, she just unrolled that big coil of money and told Al to wait while she counted it, like she was some kind of responsible adult. Then, when the Montero rattled up again, Mai’s mother woke up and counted the money one more time.
Well, they left as Pa Campbell was walkin’ out, and he climbed back into the truck with money and one of those corny pine-cone air fresheners. He knew his van smelt like stale fish. Now it would smell just gorgeous. He passed me two dollars. “You deserve it, cos I ain’t talked to nobody like this in fourteen years, you heah?” I was goin’ to say thanks when he said: “Now I jus’ paid you to shuddup. So lissen, let me wrap up the story.” So we took off and he told me how my parents had both put bottle spells on each other.
“That’s when you get a good sturdy bottle and you put cinnamon and spices and some hair or a picture of the one you love in it and seal it up real good. And the idea is that they should stay with you for ever, cos you locked them in.”
As much as it was hard to imagine my parents with that sorta groovy, magical relationship, I started feeling sad when Pa Campbell said it ended even before Pops moved out. After Moms started going to church and was born again, she decided to break her bottle, saying that love shouldn’t be locked up. Pops got drunk and broke his soon after.
“He shoulda sealed up those bottle spells and thrown them in the Gulf o’ Mexico, I tell ya. Dat’s what I did with Ma Campbell – and now she’s with me every single goddamn day that the Lawd sends! Hell, I cain’t even go to the grave by maself!” He laughed and farted. “Anyway, after the bottle spells got broke, your folks just found it harder and harder to stay together. And you shouldn’t blame yaself son. It has nothin’ directly to do with you. Grown folks are strange and stay in the worst of places for all the wrong reasons. Matter o’ fact your pops came back to me to conjure up a new love bottle spell after he moved o
ut, and I said no. Seemed he was try’na win her back, but I tell ya, theah ain’t no earthly power stronger than a woman who’s made up her mind, y’heah me? Hell, he even drew three Xs on that priestess, Marie Laveau’s grave, and made a wish to git your momma back. Now... your pops, he seemed OK ’bout me sayin’ no to doin’ another love bottle spell at the time, but then three week ago he came into the swamp and bought a goat kid off me sayin’ he wanted to try ‘something different’ for Thanksgivin’. Now, I sold him the goat, but goats don’t go ‘gobble-gobble’, so I knowed somethin’ was up. And now you’re telling me your momma got a goat-blood letter, right?”
“Letters.”
“Goddammit, Skid. He made multiples to give the spell at least one chance ta work. Or prob’ly just to scare her into takin’ him back, I reckon.” He paused. “Well, son, we need ta pray hard, cos if you’re saying dat your momma blocked out the windows and crushed dat letter and burned all of them along wi’ somethin’ else... then in a coupla days, your pops has a serious conjuration comin’ right back to him like a boomerang.”
We headed across the Lake. On the causeway, Pa Campbell stationed the radio. Shoehorn Johnny, a great street-performance old guy from downtown, was finally gettin’ to playing his jazz trumpet live on the air.
“Well, at least somethin’ is new for somebody roun’ heah.”
That’s when Pa gave me a grand tour and some history. “You know, your pops was a visionary. Do you know why I came to live in the swamps, kid? I came to live in the swamps to escape, to get off the grid again, perm’nently. To renunciate society.”
“Renounce society.”
“Yes, renunciate it. It means ‘to give it all up’. Look up the word son, I told you I ain’t got the taam. Anyways, there were some other reasons, but deep inside I reckoned since e’rybody was waitin’ for a bomb to be dropped, I might as well go somewhere I could be self-sufficient if there was a big kaboom. Close to a river with all the critters we could eat. Just kinda lay low until all this Cold War thawed out, if nothin’ really happened. And you know you cain’t lay any lower than Noo Orlins! This place is below sea-waada level, son. Somethin’ else for you to look up. Anyway, Ma Campbell, she stuck around, and while her folks and my folks all got together and headed off to dig some bomb-shelter complex in the desert, she came to Noo Orlins wi’ me. Now ... your pops, he came to the swamps for the opposite reason. Progress. And he was on to somethin’... well... sorta.”
Later, when we got back from across the Lake and drove along Michoud Boulevard close to the crack on the map, Pa stuck his hand out the window and pointed. “See that whole area, kid? That was supposed to be a sprawlin’ community called ‘Pontchartrain’ or ‘Orlandia’, dependin’ on who you ask. They even built the levees for dat development.”
I looked where Pa was pointin’, and all I saw was water and marsh. At one point, we passed a road that zoomed in over our heads off the highway and then just crash-landed in an open field. It was a ghost exit, a road that went nowhere. I reckoned that it was supposed to be one of those interchanges that Pops was excited about back in the day before I was born. The road headed into the bushes, and you couldn’t see the end of it, like it just sliced into the earth and went all the way down to hell. I felt a chill. It was a strange sight. Pa went on:
“After a while your pops was figurin’ he could get more business in his repair shop as soon as the community grew up around him. But now that the oil’s gone bust, all that development is dead. These days, you can still see that big ol’ concrete sign somewhere near one of these exits that says: ‘NOO ORLINS EAST’. They made that sign when they tried to get things goin’ one final time. Well... some people say that’s a gravestone, son, cos the project died. And your daddy’s plans, they broke apart like that swamp soil does in the summer.”
My chest felt heavy. Pa was killin’ me now. But he couldn’t tell, so he kept on.
“But to be honest, I always wanted the swamp to stay the way it was. Even though in truth: it was never the same ag’in. I reckon all those critters that lost theah homes and survived, just had to keep coming east, cos they were wonderin’ where the hell theah home went. Soon we had tons of ’em when the development came to a halt. But gen’rally it was OK. Like they say, if there ain’t nothing broke, then nothin’ needs to get fixed... or something like that. I don’t recall exactly. I ain’t taken that damn pill t’day, and Ma Campbell is goin’ to shoot me.”
Nine
When we got back home it was after dark, and the mosquito fire had gone out early, on account of a sudden evening shower. Moms was standin’ on the dark porch in the doorway of the house. The light behind her made her look so witchy I felt better when the truck lights hit her and showed her face. She shielded her eyes and walked towards us before the truck even stopped.
“G’night, Lobo. Can I talk to you for one minute?”
Damn. Pa was in for a Valerie Beaumont lecture – and I was out of luck too.
“I don’t know what you been telling my son,” Moms told Pa. “I don’t care exactly. I just want to tell you that from here on, I’d like to keep some things private. You know how Alrick feels about tellin’ them too much about...”
Pa scratched his beard and nodded.
“And one more thing, Pa. I don’t appreciate you feedin’ my children them swamp rats, y’hear?”
Dammit, she knew. That gossip Ma Campbell must’ve told her. Guess that explained why me and Doug were gettin’ doused with cerasee tea for two days straight.
Moms continued. “Pa, you know. You’ve been there. Where I come from—”
“Yes, yes Val, I know, where you come from you don’t eat that typa crap. I know. Y’all prefer a big plate of curried goat meat or some salted codfish for that blood pressure of yours,” he said, tryin’ to laugh things off. But Moms wasn’t amused. So Pa said he was sorry and offered to do anything to make it all up to her. She said she’d let him know as soon as she came up with some good punishment.
“And you’d better make sure you keep your word, cos I’ve got a witness.”
“Really? Who?”
“This same last boy of mine that you just hauled in here all odd hours of the night.” And she looks me dead in the eyes as if she wants to cast a dark spell on me.
I didn’t get punished, though. So I took it that I should count my blessings and just get to sleep, even though I wanted to ask her a few things. But Moms, she kept rakin’ Pa over the coals a li’le longer – and she was riled up with ol’ Ma Campbell too. You’d think with all the trouble her fugitive son had been causin’ up and down the Mississippi, Ma Campbell would want to mind her own business... but no.
Pause. Remember that guy James “Couyon” Jackson I told you about? Well, before he was a notorious gang leader he was just poor ol’ Ma Campbell’s slow-learnin’ son. When people in the swamp and the city talked about James Jackson, they kept their voice down like they were talkin’ about Beelzebub hisself. That’s because James Jackson was known all along the length and breadth of the Mississippi for a heartless way of huntin’ animals – and it was even rumoured that he hunted humans. One night, he supposedly shot a fishin’ partner for a tin of chewing tobacco and dumped him in the Rigolets waters under the train bridge. They say he called it an accident and got off scot-free cos of no evidence. And I heard that all that time he’s talkin’ to the judge, he’s chewing the dead man’s tobacco in the courtroom.
Now, I’ll be the first to tell you that last part don’t sound possible, but everybody said it’s true, and you know that’s how gossip turns to gospel. Furthermore, Pa said that good-for-nothin’ boy was actually chewin’ Court Case Root. That’s some powerful herbal chew, similar to John the Conqueror root, if you know about that kinda natural magic stuff. I heard people sayin’ that James spit a cheekful of Court Case Root on the courtroom floor, repeated a Psalm and walked free. Judge didn’t know what hit him.
Now Ma Campbell, she was so scared of what her son had become. Ever
y time there was a nasty murder or robbery you could expect ol’ Couyon Jackson to show up in the swamp and lay low for a few days. Poor Ma Campbell she’d be happy he was OK, but anxious for him to leave before Pa called the police or traded blows with him. Pa had grown James up like his own boy. He sent him to school and all that, but when James had trouble keepin’ up with the other kids in school, Pa would say: “Ma, I told you that boy James is couyon.”
Now, you wouldn’t want to be called “couyon”, even though it sounds like nice Cajun French. Well, neither did James, cos it simply means you’re an idiot. As you would expect, James hated bein’ called that name so much, he’d still go wild if you said it to his face. People say six dead men did.
Anyway, when we went inside, I followed Moms with my eyes. We were in the house all by ourselves. I was goin’ to say somethin’ sweet to her and make friends and just call it a night – but the night wasn’t over by a long shot. She switched off the porch light and spoke without lookin’ at me.
“Your brothers are out searchin’ for Calvin. He didn’t come for any food today. I just hope he’s not gone back over into that man’s yard.”
I didn’t like the sound of that one bit, and I started itchin’ to get out there and help. Well, before long she switched back on that porch light and said: “We’re going out, and I need you to go on up ahead to the tracks and tell them to wrap it up until tomorrow. Calvin can bring himself home.”
I sure hoped she was right. We had to be feedin’ the poor pups with medicine droppers, cos Backhoe Benet separated them from their mom, so I wouldn’t want to imagine what else he would do. When we got closer to the tracks, I saw the flashlights first. Doug and Tony were out there. I guessed that as usual Frico had prob’ly been allowed to go do some weird night-time sketchin’ and could come home any time he wanted, but I was bein’ given the cold shoulder for ridin’ with Pa.
Sketcher Page 8
