Rock and Roll Voodoo

by Mark Paul Smith

  Jesse was surprised to see her actually batting her eyelashes. He looked more closely to see if the lashes were real. That turned out to be a mistake. Jennifer moved in close enough to kiss him but stopped just short of putting her lips on his.

  Jesse backed up a step and caught his breath. He did not want to find a Rose in every town. “Those can’t be your real eyelashes.”

  Jennifer smiled and did not accept the attempted brush-off. “They’re as real as when I put them on this morning.”

  Jesse couldn’t look into her eyes. He didn’t want to get sucked into something he knew he shouldn’t handle. “Well, they are beautiful and so are you. But I’ve got to get busy here or the boys will think I’m slacking.”

  Jennifer let him go, but Jesse could see she was watching him as the band did its sound check. After set up, the band checked in to the hotel. It was no Royal Royce but it was clean enough. Picking rooms and beds was not a simple process. Rick was already complaining that each member should have his own room. Rene and Jesse were not happy about sharing a bed. Dale offered to sleep on the floor but Rick talked him out of that. “The floor is not really an option. I found that out the hard way at the Royal Royce.”

  Once they got the rooms and beds settled, it was still two hours until show time. Jesse talked the band into taking a drive to check out the countryside and, perhaps, find a restaurant.

  The rolling hills of northern Louisiana didn’t disappoint. The views were breathtakingly bucolic. Red barns and white farmhouses and green fields with wooden fences highlighted the vistas. Herds of horses and cows grazed in the late afternoon light as the sun buttered the landscape. Oak and Ash and Maple trees cast lengthening shadows across the rocks and grasses of the sloping terrain. A lone, white horse on a hill caught Jesse’s attention. He pulled the van off the road and drove up a dirt path to get closer to the horse. He stopped the van and got out. “Come on guys, follow me. I’m going to ride that white stallion.”

  As the band got out of the van, Butch tried to restrain his friend. “I don’t think that’s such a great idea, Jesse.”

  “I’m sure the farmer who owns the horse won’t think it’s such a good idea either.” Rick threw in his vote of caution.

  “Nonsense,” Jesse said as he started up the hill. “That horse is begging for me to ride it. It’s calling my name.”

  The band looked at each other nervously. Tim called after him. “How does the horse know your name?”

  Jesse didn’t answer the question, although he realized it was a good one. He kept walking. Seeing that Jesse was not to be deterred, the band followed him up the hill until they were within twenty feet of the horse. The horse did not move or seem the least bit disturbed by their presence. It was much larger than it had appeared from the bottom of the hill.

  Dale tried to talk some sense into Jesse. “You’re going to need a ladder to get up on that beast.”

  “All I need is a running start,” Jesse said as he took off toward the horse at a full sprint. The band watched in stunned silence and disbelief. Surely, he wouldn’t go through with this crazy joke of a stunt.

  The horse turned its head around as it heard Jesse coming from the rear. Jesse put his hands on the horse’s hindquarters, and attempted to vault up onto its back. It was a pretty good vault but not quite good enough. His head and chest made it onto the horse’s back but the rest of him crashed into the proverbial horse’s ass.

  The impact knocked the wind out of Jesse and spurred the horse into action. He could feel the kick coming as he slid down the backside of the large beast. He managed to land on his feet and hopped backward as far and as fast as he could. The horse kicked back with both legs as Jesse was moving away. One of the hooves caught Jesse squarely in the right thigh with such force that it knocked him down. He could hear the band running forward to distract the horse. The world was spinning slowly. He wasn’t sure if he could move. The horse turned around and was now looking down on him. He could feel the animal’s hot breath on the back of his neck. He attempted to roll out of harm’s way.

  The horse could have stomped the life out of him right then and there, but it seemed more puzzled than angry. The band screamed at the horse as they charged and waved their arms. The horse looked at them warily. Jesse started rolling down the hill, realizing the horse had kicked him hard enough to cause serious injury. He could only hope the femur wasn’t broken. In a flash of shame, he realized a broken leg was exactly what he deserved for such a foolish, show-off move.

  The horse trotted off, and the band came down the hill to Jesse’s side.

  Tim was the first to reach him. “That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”

  Butch and Dale answered in unison and without hesitation. “No, not even close.”

  “He’s done way more stupid things than that, although I can’t think of one right at the moment.” Butch was laughing until he realized Jesse was actually hurt. “Are you okay?”

  Jesse was holding his right thigh in obvious pain. “I was so close to riding off into the sunset. If only its ass wasn’t so damn big. I couldn’t get over that hump. I think the tail got in my way.”

  Rene was out of breath from laughing and running to Jesse’s side. “It looked like you were trying to have sex with it.”

  “Can you walk?” Dale asked. “It looked like that kick nailed you pretty hard.”

  Jesse moaned and held his leg with both hands. “Lucky I was moving away when he got me,”

  Rene became concerned. “I don’t see any bones sticking out. That’s a good sign, right?”

  Dale was the first to suggest treatment. “We’d better get you back to the hotel and put some ice on that thigh. You might not be able to play tonight.”

  “I’ll play tonight if I have to sit in a wheelchair.”

  Jesse limped into the Barmuda, holding his thigh and wincing in pain.

  “What happened to you?” Sheila asked.

  Jesse sat down in the nearest chair, extending his injured right leg. “One of your local horses kicked me.”

  Sheila snapped her head around to look Jesse in the eyes. “What were you doing with a horse?”

  The band told her the story, each member adding a gory detail of his own.

  Sheila got serious. “You’re lucky you weren’t killed. People die that way. You know that, don’t you?”

  Dale put his arm around Jesse. “He’s been watching too many cowboy movies. You should have seen him, running full speed up the backside of that horse.”

  Jennifer brought out an ice pack and tied it to Jesse’s leg with an elastic strap. She used the opportunity to run her fingers high up his thigh. The move was smooth and playfully sexual. Nobody else saw her do it. She was kneeling in front of Jesse, blocking their view. She dragged her fingernails back down his thigh to adjust the ice. Before Jesse had time to get completely wrapped up in the moment, Jennifer snapped the strap so it stung the back of his leg. Then, she got businesslike. “All right, gentlemen. That ought to do it. Get you a chair onstage, Jesse. You’re on in five minutes. We was getting worried about you.”

  The sting of the snapping strap was still on Jesse’s mind as he attempted to ignore Jennifer’s terrible grammar. He could overlook almost any character defect, even lying or being overweight. But bad grammar was a serious problem. It was a deal-breaker.

  The club was filling up fast with rowdy women and their male companions. Each woman got free admission and her first drink on the house, with all other drinks at half price. The band kicked into the first set with Jesse sitting down. Jennifer brought him two shots of Tequila for the pain. Within ten songs, and two pills of unknown prescription from Jennifer, he was playing on his feet again. A few songs later, the ice pack came off.

  The Divebomberz were an instant hit with the ladies’ night crowd. The girls had arrived ready to party and blow off some steam. It didn’t take much to whip them into fever pitch. When Tim kicked in on the fiddle for a couple rocking bluegrass numbers, t
he cheers turned to screams of delight. Near the end of the first set, women started dirty dancing. The dance floor quickly became a girls-only area. The men formed a circle around the dancers to cheer them on.

  The party went from sixty to a hundred in one second flat when a buxom young woman started waving her bra over her head. Several more ladies followed suit. The band looked at each other and laughed as they cranked it up with fast tempo songs. Rick took a solo on the B-3 organ that sent the club into an orbit all its own. Women were trying to out-dance each other. One girl got totally naked and instantly became the star of the show. Sheila and Jennifer hustled her off to the ladies room.

  Jesse knew there would be trouble brewing in the parking lot when he saw Sheila and her girls turning people away at the front door. It was a good thing. She had already sold three hundred and fifty tickets at ten dollars each. The building was fire coded for two hundred fifty-five.

  The club got so crowded and pushy that the band had to take its break in the parking lot behind the kitchen.

  Rene was in good spirits as the band started passing around a joint. “I’m starting to feel like a rock star.”

  Tim was more specific. “That naked babe had some serious dance skills.”

  Dale put his hands on his hips. “Was it the dance moves or the bare ass that really caught your eye?”

  “She was so drunk she won’t remember a thing tomorrow,” Butch said. “Sheila did her a big favor dragging her out of the party.”

  Rick was thinking money. “Looks like we should start playing for the door. Or at least get a percentage of what they take in on the cover charge.”

  Dale was on the edge of being alarmed by the crowd. “I’ve never seen people get this crazy on a Wednesday night.”

  Butch took a thoughtful hit on the joint. “I think ladies’ night at the Barmuda is a bigger deal than anybody thought it would be. It almost feels like some kind of women’s movement thing going on.”

  Sheila broke into the band circle in a little bit of a panic. “Sorry to interrupt. You boys better get back in there and play. These women are fixing to tear my place apart.”

  “Is it like this every Wednesday night?” Dale asked.

  Sheila looked at him like she was surprised he didn’t know. “This is our first ladies’ night, and it seems like half of Louisiana is ready to come out and get some equal rights.”

  “What’s making them so crazy?” Dale asked.

  Sheila had a ready answer. “I think I better rethink the half-priced drinks.”

  The band went back in and took the stage. Sheila had some pretty tough looking ladies trying to handle the crowd and keep people off the stage. But the party quickly spiraled out of control. The crowd rushed the stage. The band was overwhelmed by a Tsunami of naked flesh and wet undergarments. Somehow, they were able to keep playing. The women were careful not to trash the musicians or their gear. No one wanted the music to stop.

  The party came to a screeching halt when police lights began flashing all over the parking lot. Sheila came back in the front door, frantically waving her arms, and signaled the band to stop playing. Something had gone terribly wrong outside. Screaming could be heard once the music stopped. Jesse thought he heard a voice in the parking lot screaming someone had been shot. The band remained onstage as an ambulance arrived and police began clearing the club. The Barmuda was officially a crime scene investigation.

  Sheila came back inside, crying and shaken up pretty badly. She climbed onstage to inform the band.

  “It’s my girl, Jennifer. She got shot. They’re not sure if she’s going to make it. She got shot in the stomach trying to break up a fight. It was two idiot men fighting over a girl. I can’t believe this could happen at the Barmuda. I’ve been here for twelve years and we’ve never had any trouble like this.”

  Jesse was stunned. He couldn’t believe the woman who had been flirting with him was now fighting for her life. Sheila began sobbing as Jesse enveloped her in a hug of despair. “Did they catch the shooter?”

  “I think so but nobody knows for sure what really happened,” Sheila said.

  Sherry came onstage. “Did you guys hear the gunshot?”

  “We couldn’t hear anything in here.” Rick put his arms around Sherry like she’d been his wife for ten years. She started crying.

  Sheila broke out of Jesse’s hug. “I’ve got to get to the hospital. Sherry, here’s the keys. I’m sorry but I need you to stay here and lock up. Guys, I’ll come to the hotel as soon as I know what’s going on.”

  They sat down at a table near the bar. The cops had cleared out the place in a hurry. Only Sherry and two other waitresses were left to close down the large, empty hall.

  Jesse felt strangely responsible for what had happened. In a way, it felt like his fault. Then he came down to earth and reminded himself that he wasn’t the center of the universe and that everything didn’t happen because of him.

  Sherry brought them a bottle of Tequila and six shot glasses. Nobody in the band said anything as they downed their first shot. Dale broke the silence as he poured out the next round. “No way any of this is our fault. I don’t know why we’re sitting here feeling guilty.”

  “It’s just being part of a scene where somebody gets killed,” Butch said.

  Tim downed his second shot. “At least it didn’t happen in the club.”

  Jesse responded softly. “I didn’t even hear the shot. But I looked through the window and saw Jennifer get loaded into the ambulance on a gurney. She damn sure didn’t deserve anything like that.”

  Dale hung his head and folded his hands in a praying motion. “Maybe she’ll be okay.”

  Much later that night, after the band had fallen into bed, good and drunk, Jesse was having troubling and frightening dreams. All the traumatic experiences of recent months were fighting with each other on the stage of his overloaded and intoxicated brain. In his dreams, the Gypsys and the Wheelers were killing each other. The ship captain was riding the white horse. The Safari Club was burning. Pete was choking on his own cocaine. The slave uprising on the Haitian plantation was connecting with the tragic ending to ladies’ night at the Barmuda Triangle.

  Jesse was desperately trying to revive the white-haired plantation owner he had just murdered when he started hearing a loud voice shouting at him.

  He awakened to find himself pumping Rene’s chest in the double bed they were sharing at the hotel. Rene was yelling at him to stop.

  Dale jumped out of his bed and turned on the lights.

  Rene pushed hard on Jesse’s chest. “Jesus, Jesse, get the Hell off me. What are you trying to do?”

  It took some time for Jesse to fully awaken and let go of Rene. Eventually, he got off him and sat on the edge of the bed. He put his head in his hands in a futile attempt to regain control of his mind. Rene and Dale sat down on either side of him, ready to do whatever it might take to bring him back to reality.

  Dale rubbed Jesse’s back. “You were dreaming, my brother. It’s okay. It was just a dream. Everything’s going to be fine. We’re here together and we’re awake. What kind of dream was it?”

  Jesse gave Dale a guilty look. “I killed somebody and I was trying to bring him back.”

  Rene got off the bed and stood up. “Oh, great. You were trying to kill me. That’s some heavy shit.”

  Jesse waved Rene off to let him know nobody was trying to kill him. “No, it wasn’t you in the dream. It was somebody I barely recognized. Man, oh man, that tequila put me over the edge last night. How much did we drink?”

  Rene groaned. “More than any of us can remember.”

  Dale stated what all three of them were thinking. “It might be time for us to back off the bottle for a while.”

  “No shit,” Jesse said as he got off the bed and staggered to the bathroom just in time to throw up in the toilet.

  Butch and Tim and Rick stormed into the room.

  Butch talked directly to Dale. “What’s going on? It sounds like pe
ople are fighting in here.”

  Dale was relieved to see the cavalry come to the rescue. “What took you so long? We could all be dead by now.”

  Rick offered an explanation. “We were out pretty hard. So what is going on?”

  “Jesse just had a bad dream,” Rene said. “He thought he’d killed somebody and he was on top of me, trying to revive me.”

  “Serves you right for sleeping with him,” Dale said.

  Butch chuckled. “He wasn’t giving you mouth-to-mouth was he?”

  Rene laughed “No. Thank heavens for small favors.”

  Tim was still waking up. “Oh, man. My head is killing me.”

  The band was all wide-awake now, and trapped in the middle of a collective hangover.

  Sheila met the band the next day at the club. She started crying as soon as she walked in the door. “Jennifer is gone. She didn’t even make it to the hospital. By the time I got there, she was already gone.”

  The band hugged her and mumbled sympathies as they sat down at a round table near the front door.

  “I guess you know I’ve got to shut down for a while. I can’t just go on like nothing happened. I’ve got to shut down for I don’t know how long. It’s out of respect for Jennifer and for my own sanity. I’m sorry. I can’t pay you for the whole week. I can pay you for last night and tonight but I can’t pay you Friday and Saturday if I’m not open. I know none of this was your fault. I would ask, though, that you check out of the Dixie by 3 p.m.”

  Nobody said a word.

  Sheila tried to stop crying. “Who would have thought this would happen on my first ladies’ night?”

  “Did she have any kids?” Butch asked.

  Sheila started crying again. “That’s the worst of it. She has two little girls. They’re eight and five years old. What’s going to happen to them? Neither of their fathers has ever been any help at all. Jennifer had to support them herself. She was such a good worker. She was my right hand. Her mother kept the girls when Jennifer worked. I guess grandma will have to be mom now.”