“Oh, Penny Longstocking. All you had to do was ask.”
Marie LaVey called from outside, “Ambulance on the way. Let’s get him out of here.”
He was strong enough to crawl now, slowly, and we helped him down the hill, just as the sirens approached. Hoof and Mad Dog were nowhere to be seen. Marie had assured me we would not have to worry about them. The night before, she had written their names on a small square of paper, rubbed cayenne pepper into it, and said, “Old Man Legba, open the gate! Bind and confuse Victor Radcliffe and Rickey Mad Dog Smith. Confound them and keep them down.” She drew a line through their names with black ink and read from Psalms 140: “Deliver us O Lord, from the evil men: preserve us from the violent men. Grant not, O Lord, the desires of the wicked. Let the mischief of their own lips cover them. Let burning coals fall upon them. Let them be cast into fire, into deep pits that they may not rise up again.”
Closing her Bible, she dropped the paper with their marked-out names into a freezer bag and sprinkled more cayenne into it. She added enough water to submerge the paper. She sealed the bag, shook it and shook it and shook it until pepper powder penetrated their names. While she was shaking, she said, “Hoof and Mad Dog, I bind and confound you!” As if all this might not be enough, she added another prayer: “Radegonde Baron Samedi, guardian of the cemetery, you who have the power of going into purgatory, give my enemies something to do, so they may leave us alone.” Then she put the bag into the freezer and bent down, knocked three times on the floor and whispered, “Papa Legba, now close the gate.”
It was powerful war water she said. When it froze, Mad Dog and Hoof would be stuck in their shoes, wherever they happened to be, and they would certainly be no problem to us.
So of course, she was right. As I went to the cave, they were nowhere to be found. A few weeks ago I would have said all this stuff was crazy. Voodoo. Conjures and curses. The very idea of a stolen soul. But now it made sense. Like artwork that looks flat until your eyes relax, then the depth rolls back and you see into it. Everybody else in Bellin only saw paint. I was looking through the window now.
We carried Seven down the hill and he spent the next three days at the hospital.
In the Emergency Department, Dr. Brandt almost fainted. He stammered medical jargon and nonsense for a full minute before calming himself by listening to Seven’s heart and lungs, believing his ears more than his eyes. Then he chided us that we should have brought Seven in sooner. Marie reminded him that the last time he saw Seven, he had pronounced him dead.
28 If The Fields Could Talk
As she told about the goat without horns, Marie LaVey seemed curiously young. Her face beamed with vitality. Her eyes were deep, otherworldly at times. Seven had lost a lot of his memory, and we were facing the fact that while he was under the influence of tetrodotoxin, his brain had been deprived of oxygen too long. The hospital’s MRI did not show any specific infarcts, or a stroke, but the degree of ischemia was unknown, and he definitely had residual deficits. Marie was repeating old family stories to him, trying to cheer him up, telling things that he had surely heard as a child. I was glad to be there for moral support and Marie was treating me like family now.
She even admitted that the mojo hand she gave me had an element of love attraction in it, because she knew that Seven liked me, and that someday he was going to need me. She said, “Oh ma chérie, I didn’t know all this was going to happen. I must be getting old.” She winked, but it was hard on her. It hurt that her predictive skills were weakening. And she was as shocked as anyone at what Hoof had actually done.
Seven’s eyes were dim and staring at the floor. He was quiet as she talked. He seemed to know all his circuits were not connected. He realized what he had lost and it embarrassed him. Word finding was a humiliation, so he preferred to absorb information rather than try to express himself and fail.
“The goat without horns,” Marie said. “That’s how it all began.” She settled into an easy chair and I saw Seven’s pride. He grinned like he knew this story was going to be good. Marie’s pale eyes sparkled and the color faded out as she looked into the past. She was not just thinking about it, she was there.
“In the 1800s,” Marie told us, “New Orleans was an exotic city. Spanish and Frenchmen had poured in and procreated liberally with free women of color, slave women, and natives. The town of New Orleans was a place where ancestry was mixed as a matter of course. Defining ethnicity became complicated, and after a few generations, impossible. Creole was the word that stuck. It encompassed everyone born of this hodgepodge of cultures and skin colors and the co-mingling of beliefs. For a time, Voodoo and Catholicism, whites and blacks and all peoples in-between walked hand in hand laissez-faire.
“When Marie Laveau was eight years old, ten thousand people from Haiti, most of them free, arrived in New Orleans. They doubled the size of the city and one of them came to work for Marie’s grandfather, who was a royal surveyor for the Spanish Crown. He took her to the bayous and introduced her to runaway slaves—maroons they called them. He taught her root work and secrets for treating malaria, yellow fever, and cholera. Times were much harder then. It was before antibiotics, when medical doctors were less successful than the expert users of herbs. Marie Laveau was one of those experts.
“She was a famous nurse. She had the grapevine boulevard, an intricate system of accomplices all over New Orleans and out to the maroons and back. She knew everything about everybody. She used what she knew to tell fortunes, and to keep judges and jurors honest, lest she make a gris-gris for their wives. Her Voodoo charms brought innocent verdicts to people of color who were wrongly accused. She used tetrodotoxin to lay men out dead, who she later resurrected from their graves. Under cover of the night and on the strength of scary Voodoo spells, she ran the underground railroad from New Orleans and delivered slaves to freedom.
“Most people could not see past the snake around her shoulders, the dancing and chanting, and the gris-gris which always worked. They didn’t know what was really going on. As you can imagine, bringing people back from the dead gave her quite a reputation. Her capacity to give and take life made the police, the city council, and everyone else afraid. But Marie Laveau went to mass and prayed every morning. Her children were baptized and she used Voodoo for good.”
Seven’s ears perked up and his eyes followed his grandmother’s hand gestures. I saw what he was watching—the wrinkles in Marie’s face had faded. She was like the first time I met her. An old woman who strangely became young. Seven’s glance caught mine and I read his eyes, too. He was curious if I saw it, if I saw that the person before us was not just one soul but two.
“All this was deemed morally corrupt,” Marie went on, paying no attention to us. “People with different skin colors were forbidden to marry. The love of Marie’s life, Christophe Glapion, was a white man who passed as black so he could be with her. But they were not allowed to marry. Some free people of color rose to great heights in that early New Orleans society. Marie Laveau was one who did. Her grandfather was a noble Spanish man and she grew up proud. She carried herself with such presence that people on the streets parted the way for her. These hoop earrings were hers, and these bracelets.” Marie jangled the gold hoops on her wrists. “One of her tricks of the trade was organizing balls, where incoming European men were introduced to the most handsome Creole women. She passed this on to her daughter. For a time there were two Marie Laveaus. The first was a great leader to her own people in Congo Square, and later Saint John’s Bayou. She was the queen of the Voodoos, and her daughter Eloise looked just like her. They fooled everybody and had such fun! Marie Laveau could be in two places at once, which only elevated her fame. But Eloise took to the darker side.” She shook her head and the corner of her lips turned wistfully down, as if she were remembering her own child.
“But what brought us to Bellin, was another daughter that Marie had. She was made to marry a white man she didn’t love. That man died on their wedding night, un
der very unusual circumstances, while they were having their first dance. They said Marie Laveau had put the curse on him. So the man’s family captured and sold Marie’s daughter as a slave, to a man named Rhae Cliffe who owned land in Bellin, and he brought her here. This daughter humbled herself and changed her name, to distance herself from the famous Voodooienne. She became known as Marie LaVey. Her first child was born with an olive complexion, a mass of wavy brown hair. He was the son of that white husband who died. She named him Christophe, for her grandfather, the love of Marie Laveau’s life.
“Cliffe took a liking to Christophe and stole him from his mother when Christophe was only five. Raised him in the big house on the hill. That castle the Radcliffe’s still have. Taught him manners and etiquette, to be a genteel houseboy. Cliffe had a boy of the same age, who was named Ray, and the boys spent a lot of time together. They were best friends, to the degree that friends they could be. Raised in the slave owner’s home, Christophe was well fed and dressed, learned to read and write, and was brought up with refined sensibilities. He made a fine impression when serving guests.
“His mother was heartbroken of course, and was only allowed to see her son from afar. As years went by, she witnessed his transformation, saw him become more and more different from herself.
“Cliffe Rhae was a cruel man, and Christophe was made to watch as little Ray whipped his mother and punished the other slaves. Ray was a little nine-year-old boy, slight and sensitive, and his father made him drive the men like animals. Christophe had to see it.
“It happened in a Voodoo ceremony on June 23, 1861. Midsummer Eve, the night of Saint John’s Eve. The Civil War was marching toward Bellin, Tennessee, and on the next day Bellin would be attacked. A cauldron boiled over a bonfire and Marie LaVey was the Voodooienne. She set the ceremony in motion, dancing and everyone cast offerings to the pot—snakes and snails and whatever they could give. She plucked and immersed a live chicken in the water, held it down with bare hands, and did not get burned. Guidé had mounted her and she felt no pain. The grand finale was to be the slaughter of a kid goat, which was tethered and robed in a scarlet blanket, adorned with daisy chains. It was led to a place at the feet of Marie LaVey and it bleated in tones that sounded human. They say it sang in Creole, words that sounded like Li Grand Zombi.
“Guidé hollered through Marie so everyone could hear, ‘Tell my horse to set this goat free!’ The crowd fell silent. It was not uncommon for the spirit of a dearly departed to take up residence in an animal and imbue it with human traits, so the crowd considered which of their friends this kid goat might be.” Whippoorwill. The speckled brown bird flittered to a perch on the window sill, tilted his head like he was listening. Seven rolled his eyes at me.
“They also knew that Guidé had to be fed. He required sustenance and if it were not this goat, another animal would have to take its place. Guidé said through Marie, ‘Papa Legba has grown weak. He’s tired of goats and chickens. Snails and snakes won’t raise his blood tonight. Papa Legba has needs!’ She shimmied and shook. Her eyes rolled back and her chin grew long. A guttural tone erupted from her, felling the revelers like thunder. Papa Legba had mounted her and through her said, ‘Tell my horse to bring me the goat without horns!’ Marie LaVey collapsed to the dirt. She came back to herself and stole away to Rhae Cliffe’s house. She struck little Ray with a hammer, brought him to the cauldron and sacrificed him, the goat without horns. The other slaves had lost family members too and little Ray had abused them all. The loa said to do it, and everyone was in a frenzy. It was Saint John’s Eve.” The bird flew onto her shoulder and she cooed, kissed it on the head.
“Cliffe never figured out what happened, and the next day the Union Army overran Bellin. He assumed that Ray was one of the casualties. But Christophe knew better. He also knew Ray cried and had nightmares about the cruelties his father made him do. Having lost his only friend, Christophe refused to return his mother’s glances from the field. She fell into a desperation and before she died, Marie Laveau had sent word to her, and told her what to do. She put a curse on that family. They are the Radcliffes now, and it would come to pass that one of them would be born with a hoof for a hand. That boy is Victor, and the bones of his very great-uncle are still hidden in the cave.”
“Those bones have been there all this time?” I said.
“Yes, they are those of that same little boy Ray. And something else about Ray. He had a clarinet. He was teaching Christophe how to play. The old melody was his. The one you were tinkering with when you came here that first day.”
Seven looked impressed, like I was levitating before his eyes.
“And if the fields could talk, we would know many secrets more.” Marie paused to let us take it in. “You, Seven,” Marie LaVey said, “are the seventh generation of Marie Laveau. She said her seventh son would complete the curse.”
“And you?” I asked her.
“Marie LaVey’s boy Christophe was my great-grandfather. He lived to be almost a hundred and I still remember his wise old face. He taught my mother, and her mother. We learned everything from him. After the war ended, that houseboy was free, and he was smart. He ran North to New York and had already been educated, as educated as any person of color could be. He looked white enough and no one knew otherwise, so he told them he was from Spain. Said he was orphaned at birth and never had a chance to learn the language. He was a charmer and Christophe fell in love with a Spanish woman. He never wanted to see Bellin again, but he told stories about the bluegrass hills of Kentucky just across from his childhood home, and the place sounded magical to me. I was still a little child when he died, but I shared those stories with Louisa and we dreamed of this strange place. She grew older and the curse took hold, so we figured we should come back, that we had to be here for Seven to end it.
“We mostly kept to ourselves in Bellin. But the Radcliffes know we’re here. And they know the queen of Voodoos still visits me sometimes on Saint John’s Eve.”
“That’s next week,” I said. “Victor thinks he will be crowned the new king, because of what he did to Seven.”
Seven stuttered and focused, put his words together. “He tried, but he couldn’t kill me.”
“But he proved his power is strong,” Marie said.
“We should sacrifice Hoof in the cauldron,” Seven chimed, the clearest sentence he had said all day. “He’s the real goat without horns.”
“He is.” Marie nodded absolutely. “He is indeed.”
“Where is he, anyway?” I asked, realizing that I had not seen or heard from him since before Mad Dog sent me to the cave.
“Ha!” Marie said. “He’s still stuck.” She hopped out of her chair, strode over to her freezer, and pulled out the plastic bag with a lump of peppery brown ice, a piece of paper frozen in it. She dropped the ice into a skillet and turned the gas on high. The brown ice sputtered and rolled, leaving a bubbly trail. “It’s time to release him,” she said.
Seven came to her side and pressed a spatula down on the ice, held it in place. “I’m going to burn his feet.”
29 Don’t Stir Up Dried Cowshit
Seven was sluggish, still not himself. He stammered and had trouble finding the words he needed to say even the simplest things. I kept the pace unhurried as we climbed the hill to his cave. When we got inside, I lit a blue candle. This was supposed to destroy Victor’s influence. And it seemed like the right thing to do. I was worried that Seven and his grandmother were cooking up something horrible, like turning Hoof into a zombie, or that they might actually be planning to kill him. As awful as what Victor had done to Seven was, I did not want to see another cycle of revenge. If they struck back but didn’t kill him, he would just do something else as soon as he had the chance. Velvet was sinister, too. He could probably enlist her and of course they could make Mad Dog do anything. Saint John’s Eve was only two nights away.
“I still don’t want to give these to the police,” Seven said, picking up a long bone in the cave
.
“We have to tell them,” I said. “You can’t have human bones laying around in a cave. Who knows? Maybe that story your grandmother told wasn’t even true.”
“It always sounded true to me.”
I picked through the long bones and the little ones, the skull. My spade hit something hollow. “Did she say there was supposed to be anything else here?”
“Not that I-I know.”
“Well, there is.” I dug around the edges, and uncovered a rectangular case. I excavated it without causing any harm. Scraping away the mud and sand, I found two latches and a handle. When I had cleaned it well enough not to soil whatever might be inside, I jiggled the latches and blew more dirt out. They popped open, and there, couched on blue velvet, was a clarinet.
It was a beautiful instrument, sleek and old-fashioned like I had never seen. The keys were tarnished but the pads were intact. I cleaned my hands in the pool before touching it. “That must be Ray’s,” Seven said.
Even as I was assembling the pieces, I heard the melody that I thought I had made up, the one Marie LaVey sang in Creole when we first met. As soon as it was together I played it. Seven was thunderstruck. “How do you know that song?”
“It just came to me. I thought I made it up, but I guess I knew it from somewhere. I don’t know where I heard it.”
“Creole. Very old. And powerful. My mom use to play it. She always said she was missing a note. You’ve found it. I can feel it in my bones.”
I played it again and repeated the loop.
Seven transformed before my eyes. His synapses reconnected. The dead-end pathways that had stalled his memory and prevented him from finding words, those oxygen-deprived neurons fired like rockets, and my dear Seven came back. His enunciation was perfect, and he sang the song as I played it. He sang it perfectly. And it was more than that. The song came through him, came through the clarinet. I was the instrument, observer, and player all at once. It all happened in a rush. Then memories flooded Seven again, the curse on his family, what Hoof had done. His brow sunk low and he gritted his teeth. “I’m going to kill him,” he said.
Blue Bottle Tree Page 21
