The Witch of Bourbon Street

by Suzanne Palmieri

  “I’m such an asshole,” he said, parking his truck next to Trinity Bridge and heading to the boat he kept docked there to go out to the Sorrow Estate. Then he saw Pete’s truck speeding from Tivoli.

  Pete fairly skidded to a stop and jumped out.

  “Dammit, Danny. What took you so long?! Jack’s gone. Been gone for almost a week already, but I only found out today. Millie come by the gas station askin’ if we seen him. And I said no, because, Dan, I’m so sorry. He said he’d stay close to home and I didn’t think to question it because he’s such a smart kid. I’m so sorry, Dan. We been lookin’ for hours now. Got some boys from Tivoli Proper in trucks. But we ain’t checked over here, ’cause Millie said she’d take care of it. And no one wants to tell Frances.”

  “Wait, slow down, Pete. Frances doesn’t know?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  “Well, that don’t make sense. She always knows when something’s going on with Jack. Those witchy ways of hers. She has to know!”

  Pete shrugged. “Maybe she’s got him with her, like, hidin’ him or somethin’.”

  “That’s crazy talk, Pete.”

  “Maybe so, but I think it’s time we call the police. Don’t forget, those Tivoli trash boys were in rare form last week, too. Could be a whole host of trouble.”

  “Now I know you lost your mind. You know a full-out search of this bayou will bring a lotta things out in the light that people don’t want found out. We do things different. You ready to bring all that down on this place?”

  “Look, Dan, I don’t care who’s poaching or who’s growing or who’s trafficking. All I want is to find Jack. You left me responsible, and I failed you. And I failed that boy. So let me do it now.”

  Danny tried to talk him out of it, but he knew as soon as Pete was out of sight he was just going to go back to Tivoli and get the police. Pete slammed the door to his truck, tires squealing as he pulled away. And then Danny hopped in his little boat so fast, it almost capsized. Soon enough he was on his way to Frances, watching the Sorrow Estate come into view. He watched and waited. He was scared, and he didn’t know why. Danny pulled his boat over to the side. He wasn’t worried about Jack, not yet. He was sure the boy was pulling some kind of stunt. He was worried about whether or not he’d ever be able to make things right. Millie, arriving late, saw him and waved her arms like, Don’t come. Don’t come? Screw that. Like Old Jim had said, it was time he grew a pair. And with one defiant step after another, Danny made his way toward his ex-wife, his ex-lover, and a young girl he was convinced was his daughter.

  15

  Clever Jack Gets Out-Clevered

  Jack

  While his father was facing that thick fog, Jack woke up and had to face the facts. His week outsmarting his family with that Great Idea of his hadn’t worked out so good. No one seemed the least bit worried. He was hungry. And though he’d never admit it, he was tired of being quiet. It’s hard to hide when you’re a boy. He’d read The Legend of the Sorrow Women cover to cover, twice. Learned a few racy details about Serafina and her years running 13 Bourbon as a brothel. But not racy enough … seems she used a whole bunch of herbs in her bar, and those men didn’t ever touch a lady at all, just thought they did! It was sure as heck funny, but not sexy. He also saw a few more of the Sorrow ghosts, but none of them spoke to him the way Helene had. He was glad it was finally solstice. He could make his big reveal, even if no one made a big deal out of it.

  He snooped around after his mama and his new sister. Sippie was her name. His mama and Dida were yelling it so loudly, it was as if they needed to hear it echo off the universe to make it real or something. He’d thought it over and decided he was downright giddy about having a sister. If he hadn’t inherited a double dose of stubborn from both his parents, he’d have forgotten the whole plan and run over there to spend time with her. But he convinced himself that the Important Work he was doing to Save His Family would benefit her as well.

  “It’s my first act of brotherly love, is what it is,” he told himself. “Don’t need both of us dealin’ with all that crazy.”

  Then he changed his mind again and decided to just head on down to Sorrow Hall to help everyone get ready for the solstice.

  That’s when Millie Bliss knocked on the door and walked in with a bottle of root beer and a plate full of bread and molasses.

  “Hey, sugar, how you doin’? I missed you.”

  “I did okay, but I don’t think it worked.”

  “Of course not, your mama saw you, you know. That first day. She’s just been waiting for you to come out.”

  “So she wasn’t even worried?”

  “Nope. She’s been too busy with that Sippie of hers. I suppose you’ve been watching.”

  “Yeah, it’s a fine mess. Maybe I should just throw in the towel, Millie.”

  “No, sir, you just need a little more time. And you got something working in your favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A storm is coming, Jack. A big one. And they’d be worried sick if you were lost in something like that.”

  “But where would I go?”

  “I have an idea,” she said, taking a little bottle out of her pocket.

  “What’ll it do?”

  “Put you to sleep. Like Dida.”

  “But Dida didn’t wake up for one hundred years!”

  “That’s because no one knew where she was. I’ll take you somewhere safe, and you’ll emerge triumphant and safe after the storm. Think about it, Jack … everyone will be all cooped up at Thirteen Bourbon riding this thing out, with no escape route. This storm is a happy accident.”

  “Then why can’t I just wait it out awake?”

  “These herbs have special ancient properties so you won’t need food and water. Like, slow-release nutrients. That’s how Dida stayed alive. I don’t want you to be runnin’ around in a hurricane tryin’ to find a cheeseburger and a Coke. Do you?”

  “I don’t think I want to, Millie. I think I just want to go back. And ride out the storm with everyone else. Maybe the change wasn’t this at all. Maybe it was Sippie. I’ve been spying on Mama. She looks happy.”

  Millie sat back and looked thoughtful.

  “I guess you’re right, Jack. And she is. She’s mighty happy. How about we have a root beer, and then I’ll take you back home?”

  That root beer was dripping with cold. He took it gladly.

  “Thank you, Millie. Really. I’m sorry I was so mean about you and my daddy,” he said.

  “It’ll all be okay, Jack. I promise you. Just go on to sleep now. You ain’t got a choice in it.”

  “What?” he asked, looking at Millie. There were two of her, then three. Bright, white fear washed over him as he reached for his conjure bag, but no amount of salt or hope or silver dimes could help. Then, the blackness came.

  * * *

  Jack wakes up inside a dream. Only Jack knows the language of dreams, and this is different.

  He’s in a place he’s never been. Tucked in an unfamiliar bed. He tries to move, but his body won’t listen to his mind. Mama called that “body rooting.” He’d watched a TV show with Uncle Pete where they called it “sleep paralysis,” and the people on TV said sometimes you could die like that. Jack said it was a load a shit, and Pete made him put that nasty bar of soap from the gas station bathroom in his mouth. And when he had come back spitting out soap bubbles and reaching for a root beer in the cooler, Pete had laughed and said, “I didn’t really mean it, boi! You ain’t got enough a your mama’s ways to read my mind?”

  Jack knew better than to tell Pete that reading minds wasn’t like pumpin’ gas. You had to concentrate, and it took a lot outta you, so it had to be important. Besides, Jack wasn’t so sure he wanted to go into Pete’s mind. Nothing but beef jerky, boobs, and booze in there.

  Jack lies still in his rooted place and thinks he may have been too hard on Uncle Pete. He doesn’t want to admit it, but he’s scared. He closes his mind again, trying to rea
ch out for his mama.

  “Mama?”

  Jack opens his eyes. He’s in trouble.

  His mother always told him that dreams are mysterious things. She didn’t teach him much about anything else, but she always answered his questions about dreams.

  “No dreamin’ is ordinary,” she’d say. “Most people have dreams that tell them some kind of truth about somethin’ they worry over. Only most people don’t know the language of dreams, so they push them aside like food they don’t like. The best kind of dreams are the ones you can reach right into. Be careful with those, Jack. Listen, look, and feel all around inside those reaching dreams. They can take you places you can’t get out of, so you watch your step, boy.”

  “Close your eyes, Jack … see me.”

  “Mama?”

  “No, boy. It’s Serafina.”

  “Everything is dark.”

  “Try to look deeper.”

  Greens and blues and all sorts of colors burst behind Jack’s eyes. He’s in a perfect painting of the bayou, and Serafina is there, leaning against a tree, looking too much like his mama.

  “I’m not here, right? Millie gave me something and I’m not even really here?”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. But aren’t you the least little bit curious about why you may or may not be here and who the hell you think I am, little one?”

  “You’re Serafina, I’d know you anywhere. And I’m here because I want to make my family worry. Wait, it doesn’t sound good when I say it like that.”

  “I think I like you.”

  “You don’t even know me,” he says.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I … I think I made a mistake. And if I’m here with you, maybe I’m dead. Mama said Millie don’t know shit about root work. Damn, I’m not ready to be dead yet,” Jack says, fear filling his voice.

  “Oh, cha, you ain’t dead. You are on the grandest adventure of your whole life. And you got a job to do for me. That’s why I snuck into Millie’s little spell.”

  “Her spell?” asks Jack.

  “Aye, her spell. She’s fixin’ on taking you for herself. Gonna pretend you died in the storm and scoop you up and away.”

  “She can’t do that! I won’t let her,” Jack says angrily.

  “You are in way too deep here, boi. You let your mama and daddy and your new sister, Sippie, take care of the living side of things. I just figured, while you’re here, you could help me with something.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “You’ll figure it out. Just remember, there’s a purpose to you wandering around inside this chasm.”

  “Don’t you have any real answers? You’re just like one of those magic eight ball. But bigger. And prettier.”

  She laughs wildly, with her head thrown back, before morphing into trees and the sky and the aerial map of the bayou, and suddenly Jack is flying, listening.

  You’re strong, like your mama, your sister, and me. You gonna need it. Trust.

  Then the world is dark again.

  Nothing’s there, not even the light that plays behind your eyes when you close them.

  “Dark ain’t never really dark, Jack,” Dida’d told him when he was little and afraid. “There’s light everywhere. You just got to look. But if you ever get to a place where there really ain’t no light at all, open your eyes fast, Jack. Open ’em fast.”

  Stay calm, he thinks, looking around. There are windows nailed shut from the inside, with a bit of light filtering through. Dark ain’t never really dark. He breathes out, relieved. He knows the room is comfortable and old-fashioned with high ceilings. Nothing dark, dank, or dangerous looking. He hears all the women in his life talking to him in a loud whisper. Dida, Mama, Claudie …

  “Think about something safe. Something that makes you feel like you float. Think about it real hard and then don’t try to move your whole self, just one tiny part, like a pinky or a baby toe. It’s like quicksand, that kind of dream, the harder you fight, the longer you stay stuck.”

  Jack thinks about water. Of floating down the bayou in a pirogue with his mama in the summer, leaning back against her, feeling the safest he ever feels, the silence between them full of love and light, the only sound the soft ripple of the water as they glide through the shallows. Jack tries to wiggle his little finger.

  It still feels heavy and stuck, but part of it has grown weightless.

  Keep trying.

  Pinky to hand, hand to arm, arm to neck, neck to head, shoulder, arm, hand, fingers.

  Jack sits up. But when he looks down, he’s still there, sleeping. Only part of him—the soul part—is moving. But it doesn’t matter to Jack, because something is always better than nothing. And he doesn’t feel like a shadow. He looks at his hands; they still look like his hands.

  “Well, if that’s the way this works, what the hell,” he says, standing up to look around, pulling his legs free. He knows it should be scary, seeing himself lying there, unmoving. But it’s not.

  “You’re not dead, Jack,” comes a voice from a corner under an eave.

  “I didn’t think so,” Jack responds with a start. “And it’s rude to talk to someone you don’t know. Come here where I can see you.”

  A girl a little younger than Jack walks out into the middle of the room. She’s wearing an old-fashioned white dress, and her hair looks as if it might have been neat once upon a time, but now it has a red bow falling down the side. She tries to push it in place but it slips back down.

  “Here, let me fix that. You don’t have to be afraid. I’m Jack.”

  “I’m not scared, and I don’t need your help. I’m Belinda B’Lovely Sorrow. And I’ve been here longer than you. Besides, I’m more like a boy than a girl anyway.”

  Jack almost runs to squeeze her, while yelling, “Dida!” But he stops himself. Maybe she doesn’t know she’s lost. Or grown into an old lady. He doesn’t want a weepin’ little girl on his hands. It seems strange that Dida could be two places at once, but here he is, about to straighten a bow in her little-girl hair, while his body is still on the bed behind him.

  “Just come here and let me fix it. I like messy things, but that looks a half-cocked kinda crazy.”

  “I’ve tried, but when we’re like this, we can’t see our reflections.”

  “Maybe we’re vampires.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She walks to him and he reaches out, half expecting his hand to go right through her, but it doesn’t. He unties the bow from its tiny knots and smooths down her hair gently.

  “There, now, where do you want it? I’ll put it back.”

  “Here,” she says, pointing to the side. She pulls some of her black hair across and shows him where to tie it so it stays out of her face. After, she pats it. “You did a fine job … for a boy! Merci!”

  “Are you stuck here, Di … I mean Belinda?”

  “I guess.”

  “Forever?”

  “That’s the part I don’t know.”

  “You get lonely?”

  Belinda is quiet. “What’s your full name, boy?”

  “I’m a Sorrow, too. Jack Amore Sorrow.”

  “Well, that’s a relief. I don’t know you, though. And you’re dressed funny. I’ve been away a long time, haven’t I?”

  “My mama says you can’t measure time. Says time is all around us, and we just aren’t evolved enough yet to move between.”

  “Evolved. That’s funny. My daddy has this big old book, The Book of Sorrows. And it says you shouldn’t try to move through time ’cause you could go crazy.”

  “I’ve read that book, too.”

  “So if you have my name and you’ve read our book, then you know things I don’t, things that happened already, right?”

  Jack pauses, not knowing what to say.

  “Never mind, Jack … Time travel, or whatever this is, is complicated. Anyway, I have an idea.” says Belinda.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Want to leave here?�
��

  “You know how to get back? Why didn’t you just—”

  “No. At least I don’t think so. But I’ve been by myself for so long, and maybe if I show you what I’ve learned here, you and I can put two and two together.”

  “Well, I don’t feel like sittin’ here watching myself sleep. How do we get out of here? Wherever here is.”

  “You got to think of where you want to go is all.” She holds out her hand. As soon as he takes it, they are outside, on Trinity Bridge, and everything is quiet and still. Not a person in sight. The water doesn’t move under them, the clouds don’t move over them. The sky is a perfect shade of blue.

  “Everything’s stuck.” He looks around in awe.

  “Most things. But some things still move. Come on.”

  “Where we going, Belinda?”

  “Call me Bee.”

  “Fine. Where we goin’, Bee?”

  “First we got to figure out where we are in time. See, I notice that time jumps all around like leapfrog here, only I don’t ever know where I’m going next. There’s one place, though … it’s not always so nice there,” she adds quietly, before continuing, “That helps me get to other places. It’s like the X on a treasure map or something. Sometimes I hear people calling me when I’m there. Maybe someone is calling you, too, Jack.”

  Jack clasps her hand once again, hoping she’s right, and together they smudge the blue sky.