by Seth Pevey
The cab began to slow, and the streets to thicken with bodies. Felix paid the cabby and they were off on foot. A few blocks in and the crowds only grew. Hordes of people crammed onto the root-broke lanes, barbeque pits and folding lawn chairs lined the street. The cacophony of competing music bumped against Felix’s eardrums, an alien staccato.
Mighty cooty fiyo, hey la hey, hey la hey…
The detectives picked their way through the throng. They were conspicuous, sore thumbs even— pale men in coats, moving through a Sunday crowd with purpose in their step. The festival goers were almost all of that neighborhood, and many of them seemed to know each other. Large groups formed and were talking, flipping burgers, sharing drinks. It was a community. And here he was, an out of place invader, come to abduct a man in broad daylight.
Fee-no ai nai nay, Jaque a mo fee nai nay.
But Felix called on his courage, and it replied. 18 hours, he told himself, glancing at his wristwatch. 18 hours and this is out of our hands. He wouldn’t let the stares, glances, bemused glares, deter him. He had a young woman to save.
They proceeded, clock ticking all the while as they squeezed between shoulders, dodged coolers, scanned the crowd with narrowing eyes.
Malle cou daiefo, en dans dey, en dans dey.
Finally, they had worked their way up to the front, to where a clearing had been made for the parade to begin. Open street in front, a cluster of bodies tight behind, the detectives jostled for position. The March wind blew and the crowd quieted down. Those strange, lilting chants of pidgin came to a halt. Boom boxes were silenced. They waited, maybe five minutes in the tense expectation of the people, before a loud shout ripped across the spring sky.
“Wild Chappepeela!”
From both sides of the street, out of three shotgun houses, they appeared and formed a long line. Men, women, and children bedecked in suits so garish, so opulent, and so ponderous that the eye simply could not look away. A row of peacocks would have paled in comparison to the flash and swagger of the approaching tribe. Their feathers were yellow and orange, blowing in the March wind. They carried pounds of sequin, miles of stitches. They bounced and danced and called out to each other.
“Here comes the spyboy!”
Another one of the little urchins—Felix believed it was the one who had carried the French horn that day in the Quarter—appeared in a flurry of color. Above him waved a cloud of feathers as he shook his body and stamped, twirled, jumped. His fuzzy britches waved and the crowd cheered for him.
“Spyboy Spyboy,” they cried.
This little one put a hand to his face and looked across the crowd, scanning them. He crouched down soberly, performing like a brave tracking a band of errant settlers, and crept away down the street twirling a feathery baton.
As the rest of the procession drew closer, the rank and file could be seen more clearly. At the front were more of the little street urchins, bedecked in a thousand feathers, the front of their costumes depicting violent scenes of red men breaking a wagon circle, scalping a settler, setting fire to a cabin in the woods while a sequined woman moaned from the window. The boys spun and clacked the pavement for the happy festival goers, who filmed and snapped pictures and shouted encouragement.
“We won’t bow down. Not on da ground. Wild Wild Chappepeela! 13th ward, 13th ward!”
The line of Indians kept moving forward.
Melancon pointed. Felix peered over the sea of feathers, caught sight of the bean shaped-head he had been looking for. A nod passed between the detectives. They waited for him to get closer.
The trombone man wore a suit of orange feather and bone, but unlike many of the others, he wore no mask. He carried a label-less bottle in one hand, a sloshing brown liquid inside, which he raised over his head. Someone had written the words “firewater” in block letters on the side. In his other hand, he brandished a large spear.
Felix looked more closely at the weapon, about ten feet away now. Why did it look so real? The spearhead was jet-black, and it seemed to catch the sun’s rays and glint against its feathery backdrop. Did plastic glint? Trombone Man screamed something indecipherable in a high-pitched wail and took another swig from his bottle, spinning the spear quite deftly in his hand, twisting the shaft of it between his musician fingers. The people called to him, pure joy cracking in their voices.
Go on Wildman, go on. Do that thing. You better do that thing.
He swung and swung the spear, looped the point over his head and danced, tapped his feet, pounded his chest with the bottle, gnashed his teeth, shook his hips and called out again in pidgin to the tribe around him.
On his epaulettes were stitched two skulls, their hollow eyes staring up at the oak boughs overhead. Felix thought he heard the roll of thunder then, as he struggled to decipher the odd mix of words coming out of the suspect—a hopeless exercise. That strange call and response, chanted in unison over the din of the crowd, was not any language that could be read. It was something else. Something not written in a book: older than memory, certain in its cadence.
Melancon nodded at Felix again, but the young man could feel a shaky unease in the soles of his shoes. The unison of the tribe, their swagger, their wildness: if this wasn’t a stupid, patently foolish move he was about to make...
But he recalled to mind the words his friend Tomás was always saying to him.
“Acting brave is being brave.”
And so, he prepared to act. To play the part. Rescuing damsels wasn’t for the faint of heart.
A deep breath. The Wildman approached.
Now only two feet away.
Felix swallowed his fear, steadied himself. This man may be a killer, he repeated to himself.
Before he allowed his niggling doubts to talk him out of it, Felix extended his good arm, reached out and gripped the feathery muscles of the Wildman, challenged him in front of the crowd, in front of the tribe, in front of the spirits that really did seem to flit about the old oaks and headdresses
The incredulity in the Wildman’s eyes at being seized, at that moment, right at the height of his prowess, was something Felix would never forget.
Landry’s head bent back in recognition. The flame in his eyes grew wilder, incredulous. “Make way for the Big Chief,” he yelled, close enough to Felix’s face that the young man could smell the brandy, could see the pores in the Wildman’s nostrils leaking sweat.
Landry snatched his arm away, violently. Two other men in Indian outfits pushed Felix, and he fell backwards out of the roadway and landed rudely on a few members of the cheering crowd.
But Felix was up again, on his feet—feet that were carrying him forward despite the pulsing fear in his mind.
The two pushers approached him a second time, but Felix raised a hand to them and spoke, putting as much authority into his voice as he could, bracing for another push.
“This man has a warrant for his arrest!” the young detective lied over the din of the crowd, over the strangely spoken songs, over the feathers flying. “Don’t get yourself an obstruction of justice charge! He has to come with me.”
But the two pushy Indians wore masks, and so were stone-faced and uncompromising, heavy and inscrutable behind their grandiose coverings. They moved towards him and had Felix’s arms behind his back before he could say more.
The crowd had noticed. Perhaps they thought it was a part of the show. A chant began to rise around him. “Take him to the Chief! Take him to the Chief! Take him to the Chief! To the Chief with the pale face!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Felix could see his partner tagging along, pulling at the arms of the captors and being brushed aside.
A surge of bodies and feathers were pushing him onward, and now he was in the street, separated from his partner and surrounded by a sea of hard, unfamiliar faces. Some wore masks and some didn’t, but all of them turned their gazes onto him, seemed to lick their lips.
“Sleuth Scalped,” the headline read.
His legs were kicked out
from under him, and Felix found hands tugging at his belt. After a short but futile attempt to keep the gun at his side, it was jerked away from him, and he just caught a glimpse of the .38 as it was passed off into the crowd.
It was then he found the circle clearing, and himself kneeling next to his partner in the center of the space. Melancon wore a look of shocked defeat; his weapon was gone as well. At the other end of the circle The Wildman stood tall in his Indian suit. His bottle was gone and he now had a double grip on the long spear, holding it across his chest and glaring down at them with his bushy brows furrowed in hatred.
“He don’t bow down, on no body’s ground,” the Wildman sang, and the tribe called it back to him.
“That’s the Wildman,” one of the little urchins urged. “You can’t be messing with the Wildman.”
Felix said nothing. He was lost in this moment. It was a language he didn’t speak and he was in no position to ask any questions. Fear paralyzed him as the circle of faces tightened and loomed.
The Wildman was swinging the spear again, waving it out in front of him. As he did, he took steps towards the young detective. Each time the point of it got closer to Felix’s face, he became more and more certain that it was not made of harmless plastic. It was no toy. No symbol. Closer now, and Felix could almost make out the chip marks, the Neolithic technology that had shaped the obsidian spearhead. He recognized the material now. The same material that the little Voodoo doll was made from: the same material as the bean-shaped stone head which rested in his coat pocket.
Closer now. A rabid yelling of gibberish. The point came still right between Felix’s eyes. That black volcanic stone held a razor-sharp edge, it was certain now. This was no Shanghai Carnival kitsch. It was a weapon as old as toolmaking itself, and it was inches from Felix’s exposed face, hurtling through the air at baseball speeds as the Wildman began again to swing. Were it to make contact, Felix knew, it was apt to shave off his jowl like it was made of butter. If it hit his neck? Well, that would be the end of this parade and all others after it for Felix Herbert.
Felix, impotent and disarmed, watched the blade cross and re-cross his field of vision and thought these terrible thoughts.
“Landry, that’s your name isn’t it? Trombone Landry? You’ve got to give it up!” he heard Melancon saying. “There is a warrant about to be issued for your arrested. For a murder in the state of Florida. You’ve got less than 24 hours. Now you can come with us and we can talk about the best way to handle it, or you can take your chances with an NOPD SWAT team.”
“Landry ain’t here, I’m the Wildman. Wild Chappepeela!” he yelled.
“The Chief coming!” the urchins screamed. A ripple moved through the crowd, a parting of the waters. Landry stepped back.
And then he appeared. The crowd seemed to suck in its collective breath all at once, and their chatter went cold. Lightning struck in the distance.
A truckload of feathers and beads approached on long legs. An Indian suit far larger and more opulent than any of the others in the tribe, looking to weigh at least a hundred pounds, moved towards them like a Carnival float. But the man inside was a specimen, a ship of muscle that seemed to glide under this burden. Maybe six foot four and built like a stack of boulders, the man approached on long legs and carried his bulky suit like it was a handful of feathers. On his broad, oak-bough shoulders rested an enormous headdress that nearly eclipsed the sky. Beneath him a grand skirt swayed, embroidered with a series of images: a black body hung in a square, surrounded by a sea of torches; a red woman carrying an armful of vegetables away from the edge of a city; a plantation house burning while warriors on horseback cheered and rode circles around it.
A jewel encrusted belt buckle the size of a dinner plate kept the skirt hiked up. Orange feathers came out from the center in every direction, drawing the eye at last to the elaborate headdress, a wild eruption of color enshrining his masked face. Behind that mask, one could not make out his features.”
“Make way for the Big Chief!” Wildman Landry cried.
The imposing figure stood over them. He pointed a large finger in Felix’s face.
“Who calls on the Wild Chappepeela tribe, pale face? Be you friend or foe?”
Melancon stood up and brushed himself off. “We are detectives. And your Wildman here has got to come with us.”
“Nobody have to do anything without my say so. I’m the Big Chief here.”
Melancon narrowed his eyes at the chief. “Listen, whoever you are. This isn’t a game. This man here is wanted for murder. Now I’m sorry to interrupt your party, but…”
“Oh no…this definitely is no game. Do you know why?”
“Do I know why what?” Melancon said. His face was getting red and his clothes had been torn by the men who’d taken his gun. He was breathing heavily. Between Felix and the ancient, roughed up Melancon, it was clear they were not striking much fear into the heart of the Big Chief.
“Do you know why it is we do this?” the big man boomed, waving his feathered arms out to indicate the crowd, the tribe, the thunderheads. “Do you know why this isn’t just a game?” Big Chief said. But he wasn’t talking to the detectives. It was clear he was giving oration to the crowd that was now pressing in to watch this drama unfold.
Melancon picked his crushed fedora off the street and slapped it across his thigh. “That doesn’t matter right now Big Chief. I’m not here for cultural enrichment, and neither is my partner. The State of Louisiana—and most likely the FBI, too—they have a bone to pick with this trombone playing Wildman here. With Landry. Now, I’m here to bring him in for questioning. Before this situation gets way out of hand.”
The crowd gave out a series of boos, hisses, insults. The Wildman, hands still clutching his weapon, moved to the side of his Chief. Shoulder to shoulder they stood in defiance.
Big Chief ignored Melancon entirely, continuing his speech to the onlookers. “You can’t understand what this means. What it means to all of us here! Because all you see are a few pretty feathers. All you see are some poor folks dancing. Because you have no perspective. You think your law is the only one that has ever mattered. You think it is permanent. But it is not so. You stand here on a pile of corpses, of bones that you don’t even care to see. Because to see them would fill you with shame.”
“Well, you can tell that to the agents of the state,” Melancon replied. “You interfere with this citizen’s arrest and they are going to want a word with you. Likely they’ll remind you just how much our laws do matter, Big Chief.”
The chief raised his arms. “Foolish pale face! You don’t hear my words. Sit and listen.”
With that Landry Ducet kicked the knees out from Melancon, who tumbled again onto the roadway. Big Chief hovered over him, over Felix, blocking the sunlight now. The great masked face scanned the crowd. He raised his arms.
“I will tell you why.”
“All quiet for the Big Chief’s words!” the Spyboy cried.
A loud, clear voice: Big Chief yelled it out to his tribe with a musical rhythm and cadence.
“Once upon a time, three hundred years ago, when the French founded this city, they brought with them our great ancestors. They stole them, in fact. Stole them to do the work they wouldn’t lower themselves to do. Our people. Brought here by force, on great ships, bearing great chains and shackles.”
The crowd let out a low hiss. Big Chief paused and looked around at the nodding faces of the crowd, nodded his great mask back at them in return.
“But those first years were hard. What fool of a Frenchman builds a city in a swamp? The swamp, she doesn’t want no village. She will eat up the sticks and stones of men’s cities. Eat up a man’s flesh. And so, these new Frenchmen with their perfume and fancy clothes…soon these pale men find themselves at odds with the swamp. Soon they find their soft bellies going empty. A great famine falls over the new land!”
Felix simply stared. What was happening here? Was he going to die? The loud voice of
the Big Chief seemed to puncture his fear, and his thoughts. The profundity of danger. Felix couldn’t help but be entranced, however much peril he was facing. He sat picturing the hollow-bellied Frenchmen and a forest of dark wrists in chains.
“So, my friends. Ask yourself a question that you already know the answer to. When the slavers went hungry, do you think they were willing to split the last loaf of bread with those that they held in bondage?”
Big Chief held up a wagging finger, looked from face to face in the crowd. Voices shouted, “no!”
“And so, ask yourself another question. What’s a hungry Frenchman to do? What does this selfish man of chains do with his slaves, when he himself is nearly starving to death and can’t afford to fill his own belly?”
“Where are you going with this?” Melancon asked, anger in his voice. “We’ve got a job to do here and....”
“Silence! The Chief speaks!” Trombone Landry hollered and waved his spear in Melancon’s face.
“The answer is, when the slaves can’t be fed, the slaves are set free. Imagine that, friends. There is freedom in hunger, in an empty belly. Strange, no? Turn them out! The starving masters cried. And just outside of the city gates, right where we now call Rampart Street, they unhooked the chains from our people’s wrists and told them, simply, good luck.”
Voices of derision, incredulity, mumbled grievance from the crowd.
“And so, there were our ancestors, standing with their backs to the city walls, facing a swamp of deep, dark, mystery. Their bellies growled terribly and the famished children cried to their mothers, began to die one by one. These were people from all over West Africa…they spoke different languages. They worshipped different Gods. But one thing they all shared was a belief that their ancestors would help them. The spirits of their fathers. The lwa.”
The Big Chief squatted down a bit, the bulky suit scraping the ground, he got face to face with a button-faced little girl standing on the edge of the circle.
