Rock and Roll Voodoo

by Mark Paul Smith

  “So, I hear you’re big stars in Shreveport,” Casey said.

  “How’d you hear that?”

  “I think it was you who told me on the phone.”

  Jesse vaguely remembered the call. “Oh, yeah. Maybe I exaggerated a little that night.”

  “It was three in the morning and it sounded like you were knee deep in booze and babes,” Casey said.

  “I was calling from Johnny’s Cimarron. It’s a great club. The owner is helping us book gigs up north.”

  “Speaking of up north,” Casey said. “I got a call from your father in Indiana a couple days ago. Said he can’t get an answer or leave a message on your home phone. He wants to know why I haven’t talked you into law school by now.”

  “What did you tell him?” Jesse asked.

  “I told him you were too busy being a rock star.”

  “What did he say to that?”

  Casey took a long swig of beer. “He asked if you were too busy to call your old man every once in a while.”

  “Yeah, I need to do that.”

  “So, what about Amy?” Casey asked. “Is the wedding still on? Your mother would like to know.”

  “Oh, man,” said Jesse. “I really do need to call.”

  Casey clinked beer bottles with Jesse. “They’re worried about you. And frankly, so am I.”

  “What’s to worry about?”

  Casey stammered slightly like he always did when he was about to make an important point. “It seems like you’re running off down the road without much of a plan. What happened to making a good demo tape and shopping it to record companies?”

  “We’re going to get to that. Johnny said he might be able to help us. He’s been talking to some people.”

  “Who is this Johnny?” Casey asked.

  “You’ve got to come up and meet him. He’s been in the business for decades.”

  Casey closed in on his main issue. “The music business or the bar business?”

  “Wait a minute,” Jesse said. “It’s sounding like you should be managing the band.”

  Casey took the bait. “All right. Let’s say I am managing the band. First thing I would say is you need to move to a music center like New York or Los Angeles. Shreveport doesn’t sound like a step in the right direction. It sounds like the road to hillbilly hell.”

  Jesse held up his hands and lowered his head. “Hey, man. We had to get out of New Orleans, and Shreveport seems to be opening up a lot of doors for us. The crowds are great.”

  “What about the voice?” Casey asked. “What’s it got to say about your new direction?”

  “Funny you should ask. Last I heard from the voice was kind of indirectly, through a Russian ship captain. Did I tell you that story?”

  Jesse told him the story of helping Dmitry defect and reunite with his old friend, Rod. He described the captain’s quarters in detail and talked about the blast of a Vodka buzz from downing so many shots in such a short time. Jesse made it sound like smuggling the captain’s personal effects off the ship was striking a major blow against the Cold War.

  Casey was genuinely impressed. “Oh, man. Wish I’d been along for that trip. That’s one thing about you, Jesse. One of many things I love about you. Everywhere you go, you find yourself right in the middle of something weird and wonderful. I used to think this Voodoo voice thing was just too many drugs. I’ve never heard it myself, but I’m starting to listen for it.”

  “You’ll never hear it through all those legal briefs clogging up your brain.”

  “Wait a minute,” Casey said. “I think I’m hearing it right now.”

  “What’s it saying?”

  “I’m getting a message. Yes, I am. Give me a minute. There. There it is.”

  Jesse set himself up. “What’s it saying?”

  “It’s saying Jesse is completely missing the point.”

  Jesse was on his way to Carmen’s shop in the French Quarter when he ran into Ruthie the duck lady.

  Ruthie answered his question before he asked it. “She’s not there.”

  “Who’s not where?” Jesse feigned ignorance.

  “I know where you’re going. She’s been looking for you.”

  Ruthie laughed and fed a few breadcrumbs to her two ducks on a string. Jesse wondered why she always showed up, even in his dreams, whenever he was looking for somebody. And how did she always know who he was looking for?

  She smiled and answered his unspoken question. “I’m part of your world and you are part of mine.”

  “I don’t doubt that for a minute, Ruthie. Here we are bumping into each other at the same time on the same street in the same city and on the same planet.”

  Ruthie lowered her head

  Jesse gave her a hug to get back on her good side. “Oh come on, Ruthie. You know I’m only teasing. You know I love you. I miss you. I haven’t seen you since the Dr. John concert at Tipitina’s.”

  Ruthie brightened up with a big smile and wide eyes. “Wasn’t that a mind-blowing night? Best music I ever heard. People are still talking about it. Your band was good, too.”

  The mention of his band as an afterthought stung a bit. Jesse decided he had that one coming.

  “Ruthie, before you tell me where Carmen is, there is one question I’ve been wanting to ask.”

  “Ask away, dahlin’.”

  “What’s with the ducks?”

  Ruthie’s eyes sparkled with delight. “Funny you should ask. Nobody ever asks. They just assume I’m crazy.”

  Jesse waited patiently for her to continue.

  “You might think I keep the ducks on a string to protect them. Actually, it’s the ducks keeping me on a string. They remind me to watch where I’m walking.”

  It took a second to sink in, but the thought of Ruthie’s “guard ducks” keeping her on a string was hugely funny. It reminded Jesse that most of life is how you look at it.

  He laughed so hard he spun himself around. Ruthie had opened up a hole in his reality, a new way of looking at things. As he looked up, the sky and the top of the old, French buildings swirled around in his head like a Monet painting. He felt like he could be leaving the planet. The only thing that kept him grounded was the sound of his own laughter. When he recovered and completed the spin, he found himself staring into the beaming smile of Madame Carmen.

  Ruthie the duck lady was holding Carmen’s hand.

  Jesse blinked his eyes in disbelief. “Where did you come from?”

  “I stepped in from the shadows,” Carmen said as she and Ruthie had a good chuckle.

  Jesse knew something big was about to happen. His world was about to turn upside down. He could feel it in his gut.

  “No, seriously,” Jesse said, “What’s going on?”

  “Come with me to my shop,” Carmen said without answering his question. “We need to talk.”

  Jesse took her offered hand and kissed it as if by courtly instinct. His mind slipped into a subtle Jasmine confusion. She took his arm and they headed off for her shop at a stately pace. Ruthie and her ducks didn’t follow. Jesse turned around to look for her. She was gone.

  Walking with Carmen down Bourbon Street was like walking with the Queen of England. All who saw her coming quickly yielded the right of way. Shopkeepers and bar owners came rushing out to greet her. Even midday drunks tried to straighten up in her presence.

  “Hola,” she said to those who greeted her, sounding vivaciously and irresistibly cultured. She unlocked the door to her shop and locked it back up after she ushered Jesse inside.

  “Whoa,” Jesse said. “What’s with locking the door?”

  Carmen dismissed the question. “Nothing. I simply do not wish to be disturbed. Do you know why I have brought you here today?”

  “I thought I came on my own,” Jesse said. “Then again, I thought you were Ruthie. Or Ruthie was you. What happened to me when we met today?”

  “You are being shown that you are not in control. Everything is not as you perceive it. What you see
is not what you get.”

  “That’s fine with me. I don’t seem to be doing such a great job as CEO of the universe.”

  “Why do you think the Russian captain came to you?” Carmen asked as she led him in to her office.

  “I thought I found the Russian and helped him escape his ship.”

  “Jesse. Listen to me very carefully. We bring people into our lives to teach us what we know we need to learn.”

  “What was it I needed to learn from the captain?” Jesse asked.

  “Remember what the voice said to him?”

  “Yes, it was telling him to leave the ship.”

  “So what does that mean to you?” Carmen asked.

  “Maybe I have a ship that needs leaving?”

  Carmen’s eyes lit up like she was surprised Jesse could reach the proper conclusion. “Exactly. Don’t take the voice too literally. The ship might be a place or a time or a profession or anything keeping you from what you really need to be doing.”

  Jesse was feeling in tune with Carmen. “I get what you’re saying about creating our own reality. It kind of goes along with my theory that the little things of today foretell the big things of tomorrow.”

  Carmen smiled patiently. “Take that one step further. We create the little things that lead to the big things.”

  “Do we create each other?”

  “I’m saying we are all part of the same thing. The illusion is that we are separate individuals, fighting with each other for limited material resources.”

  “So that’s why you and Ruthie sometimes seem like the same person?” Jesse asked.

  “We are only what you make us out to be.”

  Jesse thought about that for a moment, and then returned to the issue at hand. “So, why did you bring me here today?”

  “Come, sit with me. I’ve been reading and studying and talking to people about you. Somehow, you are in my life to teach me something I need to know. It’s not just you learning from me. We are learning together.

  “I need to help you escape this place and time. It’s important for you to look at yourself from a different perspective. Do you trust me to do that?”

  “Yes.”

  She handed him a small cup of what looked like black coffee. “Then drink this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Call it love potion number nine.”

  Jesse drank the offering without further hesitation. He didn’t hold his nose, but he did close his eyes. He didn’t sip it. He threw it back like a shot of booze. It tasted like licorice and scotch whiskey. It never occurred to him to ask Carmen if she would be drinking with him.

  She did not drink her own potion.

  Whatever was in the little cup made him immediately relax in his chair. The same dizzying feeling he had felt in the street a half hour earlier, just before he saw Carmen, came over him. He felt lightheaded. The world began to swirl. He put his head between his knees. He lost consciousness.

  He awakened to find himself standing around a large fire in the middle of a gang of angry black men who were shouting and armed with machetes and muskets. He was in a jungle that didn’t look anything like Louisiana. There were too many palm trees. He had a sinking feeling he was no longer in North America. Was he on an island in the Caribbean Sea? He could smell the salt of an ocean breeze flavoring the dark night air.

  It took a few minutes to realize what was going on. The men were speaking a strange language, but Jesse understood every word. He was one of them. They were screaming about cutting off heads and ears and anything that might be attached to the white men who had beaten them and kept them in chains for so many years. He felt his own anger taking control. The group of at least three hundred men was gearing up to go out on a night attack.

  Jesse looked at his hands and arms. His skin was dark brown and shining with sweat. He ran the fingers of his left hand through his hair. It was thick and wiry with a receding hairline and a bald spot on the back of his head. He had a black powder pistol in his right hand. The weapon felt comfortable in his grip. He had fired it many times. He knew how to use it, how to load it and how to take it apart for cleaning.

  Jesse looked around the fire and saw many faces he knew well. Dupre and Big Ben and Gypsy were there. So were Pete and Tim and the whole band. Casey was at his side. Dmitry was nearby, standing next to Johnny. Dr. John and Professor Longhair and Allen Toussaint and the mystery man from the bayou were all playing drums in ominous beats.

  They were all slaves. Jesse got the distinct feeling that he knew, or had known, every single person in the angry, jungle mob.

  A hush fell over the gathering as a Voodoo priestess walked into the fire ring and took control of the ceremony. She was thin and had a European face with an aristocratic nose. She was wearing a red, silk, wraparound dress with a tall, feathered hat that looked like a crown. Around her waist was a thick leather belt that carried a long, Spanish cavalry sword. She began by drawing a grid in the dirt with white paint. “This will unlock the material world and serve as a spiritual gateway,” she said as she threw down potions, both solid and liquid, and began chanting to summon the spirits for protection in the upcoming battle. She was not the only woman at the fire. Carmen and Ruthie and Amy and Loretta were serving as the priestess’ handmaidens. They, too, had become African women. Jesse wanted to go to Amy’s side but found he could not make his body follow the emotional desire.

  The priestess conducted a call and answer chant that whipped the makeshift army into a frenzy. More people joined the fire as she called to the moon and the stars for strength and courage. She warned the men not to rape the white women, even though their own wives and daughters had been raped. She spread her arms wide to issue the command. “Kill them but do not rape them. The Voodoo gods will not tolerate rape. The white people must pay with their lives for what they have done to us. But we must not sink to their level of sin.”

  The handmaidens brought forth a two-hundred-pound black hog and tied it with ropes to the trunk of a large tree at the outer edge of the fire circle. They had trouble with the animal as it squealed and squirmed, trying to break free.

  All eyes fixated on the sword of the priestess as she slowly drew it from the sheath and held it high to glint in the firelight. She sang a song of sacrifice. “There will be much blood on this night. Let this sacrifice show that it will not be our blood flowing from the battle but the blood of our oppressors, the plantation owners.”

  The cheer was deafening. The drums pounded out a victorious crescendo.

  The priestess pointed the sword at the pig. The crowd quieted suddenly. She leveled the sword, grabbed the handle with both hands and approached the pig. She began wailing a song that seemed to terrify the doomed animal. She moved forward with her sword and slowly but relentlessly plunged it into the front of the beast, through its heart and out the backside. Its horrible squealing stopped with a silence that stunned the gathering.

  The night air was completely silent. Even the crackling of the fire and the sounds of insects ceased. Jesse held his breath until he managed to suck in a lungful of damp jungle air.

  The pig fell against the tree, eyes wide open in the shock of death.

  Two warriors cut the ropes from the tree and hoisted the pig by the sword that killed it. They paraded the bleeding sacrifice around the fire. Men began to moan as they held out their hands to receive the blood and spread it on their weapons and bodies. The ceremony morphed into well-organized squads of men, who began marching into the jungle on their mission of murder. Jesse was going to battle. He was someone he had never been. His feet and legs were running down a narrow path. He was being swept along by an energy not his own. His squad of men ran for nearly a mile before they came to a clearing with many plantation buildings neatly arranged in a compound.

  There was no guard on duty. The owners and their families were sleeping. A gentle breeze was swaying the palms. Everything was peaceful until the slaves used their torches to set all the buildings on fire. The wo
od frame structures were fully engulfed in flames by the time screaming women and men with weapons came pouring out to defend their homes.

  The white people never had a chance.

  Jesse raced into the confusion of battle with no fear in his heart. This was the moment he had waited for his entire adult life. His mind whirled into a kaleidoscope of memories of chains and whips and slavery and brutal oppression. He had nothing but murder on his mind. The next thing he knew, he was about to fire his pistol, point blank, into the silver-haired head of a white man. The man was on his knees, begging for mercy. Even though the man’s face was contorted in terror, Jesse knew he recognized him from somewhere besides the plantation.

  The pleading man’s house with the long front porch was in flames behind him. Women and children were screaming. Warriors were shouting. Rifles were exploding.

  The white man begged with his hands clasped in front of him, as if in prayer. “Please, please. I have a wife and children. I am a man of God.”

  Jesse showed no mercy. He pulled the trigger and felt the power of the exploding gunpowder recoiling his arm and shoulder. The shot made a clean hole on the man’s forehead and came out the back of his head in a grotesque spray of brains and blood and bone. The man slumped into a pile of lifeless flesh and bones at his feet, a father and husband no more.

  Jesse looked down at his victim. Even in death, something about the man seemed so familiar he was sure he must have known him well at some point. It felt good to kill him. The power and finality of revenge surged through his veins. His spine jolted an electrical shock from his buttocks to his brain. His mind was clearer than it had ever been. Decades of torture and depravity had fueled his violence even more than the adrenaline rush that was making him feel superhuman.

  He reloaded his pistol with powder and shot. The smell of blood and gunpowder and screaming terror filled his nostrils as he sucked a deep breath of the wicked air into his lungs.

  A white man with a sword charged at him, screaming out of the darkness of thick bushes at the edge of the fire. Jesse let him get close enough so he couldn’t miss. The pistol exploded with a blinding flash as he pulled the trigger. The man staggered as the shot ripped into his chest and tore through his heart. Blood spurted out twenty feet. A shocked surprise filled the mortally wounded man’s eyes as his sword kept swinging forward in a death throw. Jesse stepped aside to avoid the blade. Blood splatter temporarily blinded him. He dropped his weapon to wipe his eyes, first with his fingers and then with his shirt. The complete vulnerability of blindness panicked him until he could see again. He picked up the dead man’s sword and plunged it in the ground, as if that would offer protection. Once he could see again, he scooped up his pistol and reloaded it.