Hoodoo

by Ronald L. Smith

  “What?” Bunny’s mouth dropped open. “What’s wrong with you, Hoodoo? What made you think that?”

  I kicked a pebble. A cloud of red dust rose in the air. “I don’t know. We don’t play together anymore. Playing’s for little kids anyway. Right?”

  She put one hand on her hip, just like Aunt Jelly, and shook her head from side to side. “You are a silly boy, Hoodoo Hatcher. C’mon. Let’s go.”

  I was glad she said that, because, to tell the truth, I still wanted to be her friend.

  Peanut shells crunched under our feet as we got lost in the crowd. People were everywhere. Sometimes I forgot how many folks lived in our county. They were all shapes and sizes. Some of them were as light-skinned as white folks and some as dark as blackberries. “The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice,” I heard Aunt Jelly say one time, but I didn’t know what it meant.

  We took a ride on the merry-go-round. When I was little, I was afraid of the horses’ teeth because they looked so real. But I wasn’t little anymore. Bunny climbed onto a silvery horse with green stripes, and I got on one behind her that was sunshine yellow. We sat there for a minute and then the music started up—all topsy-turvy and silly-sounding. Bunny screamed as we rode round and round in circles.

  The music died down and the horses started turning real slow. I liked that better, to be honest. We climbed off and the ground started moving under my feet. Bunny twirled in a circle, her arms spread out. “That was fun, Hoodoo!”

  I reached out and put a hand on one of the horses.

  “You all right?” she asked.

  “Yup,” I said, but my stomach was heaving.

  We set off in no particular direction and took in the sights. There was strange stuff everywhere: a man on tall sticks clomped by wearing stripedy red and white pants, a fire-eater blew out streaks of yellow flame, and a lady with ink drawings all over her body hammered a nail up her nose. Why would somebody mark up their body like that? And how come there was no blood from the nail? Bunny stared at the lady like it was the neatest thing she’d ever seen.

  “What you wanna do now?” she asked.

  She stood there looking at me like I had all the answers. I wasn’t sure what to say. I still felt a little wobbly from the merry-go-round.

  “Step right up! Prizes! Candy! Toys! Everybody wins something!”

  I turned to the left. A man with an eye patch stood in front of a stall. A bunch of prizes were stacked up behind him. He clapped his hands together and shouted again. “Prizes! Candy! Toys!”

  “Let’s play,” Bunny said, pointing to the game.

  I sighed. I wasn’t that good at shooting or throwing things. Cousin Zeke made a slingshot for me one time, but I never hit anything with it. He could take out a squirrel with one shot.

  We walked over, and the man took my nickel with a grunt. He looked as mean as a snake in a barrel. I’d never seen a snake in a barrel before, but people said that sometimes. The man reached into a peach bucket full of little brown balls and fished one out. It was soft, like a pillow, but felt like buckshot was in it. I could hear the tiny beads rattling around.

  The game had a bunch of big rings laying down flat with smaller rings inside them, so I guessed I was supposed to throw the ball and try to get it inside one of them.

  “If I win,” I asked Bunny, “what prize do you want?”

  She hummed to herself a second and then pointed. “That one.”

  I followed her finger to a case stuffed with teddy bears, wooden toys, some boxes of candy, and a giant pink rabbit. Figures, I thought, that a girl named Bunny would want a rabbit.

  I tossed the ball from hand to hand a few more times. I took aim. Concentrate, I told myself, just like Zeke had told me to do with the slingshot. I lowered my arm, counted to three, and tossed the ball underhand. I held my breath. It seemed to take forever until it hit the rim of a ring and clattered down, lost in a wooden maze that held up the whole game. I tried two more times but with no luck.

  Bunny sighed. “That’s okay, Hoodoo. I didn’t want that dumb old rabbit anyway.”

  I knew she was just saying that to make me feel better.

  The man looked at me and smiled. He had exactly one tooth in the center of his gums. “I thought you said everybody wins something,” I said.

  He spit a wad of brown tobacco in the dirt. “Sometimes,” he said, chuckling. “Sometimes.”

  I shook my head. That just wasn’t right. Pa Manuel said the carnival was full of cheats, and that a sucker was born every minute. I guessed that meant me.

  Bunny wanted to see the Alligator Boy, so we headed that way. I didn’t see how anyone could be part gator, but I still went along with it. We passed a pen where a bunch of prize pigs snuffled in the mud—big ones, with black spots standing out on their pink skin. “Uh-oh,” Bunny said.

  “What?”

  J.D. Barnes and Otis Ross leaned over the little fence, making squealing sounds and throwing peanuts at the pigs. J.D. caught my eye and elbowed Otis. They both made sour faces in our direction and started to walk over. My bones shook in my pants. The next thing I knew, they were standing in front of us.

  “Look who it is,” said J.D. “Little Hoodoo Doo-doo.”

  “And his girlfriend,” said Otis. “Funny Bunny. She your girlfriend, boy?”

  Bunny gave them a look that could’ve stopped a bull in its tracks. “Go on,” she said, flapping her hand like she was shooing away flies. “No one wants you here.”

  “Who’s talking to you?” said J.D., and he took a step closer. He and Otis were both in the same grade as me, but they looked like half-grown men. J.D. was as big as a house and had a scarred-up nose like a mangy old dog. Otis was skinny but had muscles all up and down his arms.

  I was scared but had to do something. If I could conjure, I could’ve taken care of them a long time ago. But I wasn’t any good at conjuring.

  I took a step sideways and stood in front of Bunny. J.D. looked at Otis and laughed. And then he turned back to me and poked me hard in the chest with two fingers. I fell to the ground, right in the mud. They both howled with laughter.

  “You got doo-doo on you!” cried Otis.

  “Yeah,” J.D. chimed in. “You got doo-doo on you. Hoodoo.”

  I stood up. Mud was all over my hands and backside. Cold and wet seeped through my pants. I wiped my hands on my knees, making the whole thing even worse.

  “You are both so stupid!” Bunny shouted. She clenched her fists and sneered. I thought she was about to fight them on her own.

  “Hey!”

  Bunny’s big brother, Ozzie, rose up in front of us. His arms were like tree trunks and his hands like two hammers. He reached for his belt. He had a steel bull on the buckle and was known for beating people’s behinds with it.

  J.D. and Otis both took off running like pigs after slop. Ozzie looked me up and down, frowning at my muddy clothes. He lowered his head. “You okay, Hoodoo?”

  “Yes sir,” I said.

  I didn’t know Ozzie too good. People said he was a boxer and carried something called a bowie knife. A raised dark line ran across his right cheek like a zigzag. I always wondered how he got that scar, since he was the one with the knife. He looked out to where J.D. and Otis had taken off running. “Boys ain’t got the sense to pour piss out a boot,” he muttered.

  Bunny put her hand to her mouth and giggled.

  Ozzie hitched up his pants and looked to his little sister. He bent down a little. “You okay, baby girl?”

  She nodded.

  He pulled a clean hankie from his back pocket and handed it to me. “Go ahead and wipe yourself off, Hoodoo.”

  I took the hankie and wiped my hands. It came away all wet and dirty. I felt right stupid in front of Bunny with mud all over my backside. I balled up the hankie and tried to give it back to Ozzie, but he looked at me like I was crazy, so I stuffed it in my pocket.

  “Don’t worry about those boys,” he said. “They’ll get what’s coming to them.”
/>
  I thought about that and wondered if I’d be the one to give it to them.

  Ozzie touched the side of Bunny’s face and then punched me on the shoulder. I think he was just being friendly, but I almost fell over. He grinned, and the scar on his cheek wrinkled. “You two get going,” he said. “And stay out of trouble, Hoodoo.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I nodded like I understood. I wasn’t the one who started the trouble, so why was he saying that to me?

  Once we were a few steps away, Bunny stopped and turned to me. “Thank you, Hoodoo,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For standing up for me, silly.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s okay.”

  “You still wanna see the Alligator Boy?”

  I didn’t feel like seeing no Alligator Boy. I just wanted to go home. If people saw my behind, they’d think I went and pooped myself.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Bunny gave me a little half smile. “It’s okay,” she said. “I think I’m ready to go, anyway.”

  I sighed inside. I’d ruined Bunny’s fun. I didn’t win that pink rabbit and I couldn’t fight, either.

  I rubbed my arms. It was cold all of a sudden. The air smelled like a copper penny. I looked up. The moon was moving through the clouds real fast. I always wondered how that happened. Was the moon moving or the clouds?

  We started walking back the way we came in, past the merry-go-round and the game where I didn’t win a prize. I couldn’t do nothing right. The man with the eye patch smiled at me again, his one tooth sitting in his head like a little fence post.

  Up ahead, a brown tent was pinned down to the ground by four wooden stakes. A sign with bright red letters was in front of it.

  MRS. SNUFF

  FORTUNE TELLER

  YOUR FATE REVEALED

  25 CENTS

  “Mrs. Snuff,” I whispered.

  “You should do it, Hoodoo,” Bunny said. “Get your fortune read. Maybe she’ll say you’re gonna grow up rich and famous.”

  I thought about that for a second. I didn’t want to talk to no fortuneteller. She might say something about that scream or the dream I had with the strange man. I let out a deep breath and jingled the change in my pocket. I wasn’t sure I had enough left for both of us, and I didn’t want to go in anyway.

  “That’s okay,” Bunny said. “You don’t have to pay for me. I’ll just watch. C’mon.”

  A man sitting on a bale of hay took my money. His lips moved in a funny way, like a cow chewing its cud. I pulled aside the flap of the tent and walked in. Bunny followed behind me.

  The dirt floor smelled wet and musty, like moldy leaves. Red candles sat on stumps of wood, and a bunch of jars full of something all slimy were stacked in one corner. A tiny little woman sat hunched over a scarred wooden table. Bunny elbowed me in the ribs. “Go ’head, Hoodoo.”

  She must’ve been Mrs. Snuff, I figured. She was wearing a red robe, like she couldn’t even bother to put on real clothes. She curled a long finger in my direction. I got the heebie-jeebies real quick but didn’t want to look afraid, so I slowly walked over and sat on a wooden stool in front of her. Bunny stayed standing up beside me. It was so quiet, I didn’t even hear all the people outside.

  “What is your name?” the lady croaked, staring dead at me. One of her eyes was clouded over and looked all milky.

  “Hoodoo, ma’am,” I said. “Hoodoo Hatcher.”

  “From-across-the-river Hatchers,” she asked, “or the city Hatchers?”

  There were all kinds of Hatchers in our town—white Hatchers and black Hatchers and some that were black and white at the same time. I didn’t know which ones we were, so I just said, “Emanuel Hatcher’s Hatchers.”

  “I see,” she said. “And what do you know about hoodoo . . . Hoodoo?”

  I didn’t answer. She took my right hand and turned it over. Her skin was brown and rough and crisscrossed with wrinkles. She looked like she was about a hundred years old.

  “One hundred and five,” she said with a wink.

  I swallowed hard.

  She let go of my hand. Her eyes traveled up my face and landed on my birthmark. “Where’d you get that mark, boy?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I was born with it.”

  “Gotta have heart,” she said, almost to herself. “Gotta have heart.”

  Right about then I felt like I wanted to get up and go, but Mrs. Snuff suddenly sat up straight, like she was stricken. “Darkness follows you,” she said, her good eye going all wide.

  “Your people,” she went on, her old lips trembling. “They’re in danger too. But their fate is in your hands.”

  The red candles all around us whooshed out. Bunny gasped. Chicken skin rose up on my arms.

  “C’mon, Hoodoo,” Bunny said. “We should go.”

  I started to get up, but Mrs. Snuff’s old claw shot out and grabbed my left hand.

  “Ow!” I cried, but she didn’t let go. She closed her eyes. I saw the tiny veins on her eyelids standing out, like they were alive under her skin. She held on so tight her nails were digging into me.

  “Search for the black crow,” she said. “He will help you. Beware the Stranger.”

  I yanked my hand away and jumped up, knocking over the little wooden stool. I raced to the front of the tent and flung the flap open, with Bunny hot on my heels.

  Once we were back in the crowd, Bunny took my hand and looked at it. “Did she hurt you?” she asked. “That lady’s crazy!”

  I pulled my hand away and rubbed the spot where Mrs. Snuff had grabbed me. “No,” I said. “I’m okay.” But inside, I was still shook up.

  “What’s she talking about?” Bunny asked. “What crow? Who’s the Stranger?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Just some crazy old lady, like you said.”

  But I wasn’t so sure about that. Was she talking about that nasty man at Miss Carter’s—the same man I dreamed about? He was the only stranger I’d seen lately.

  “Hoodoo?” Bunny said.

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  But I could tell by the way she was looking at me she knew I was hiding something.

  “Don’t worry about that lady,” she said. “She ain’t right in the head, with her crazy old eyes. C’mon. Let’s get some hush puppies. My treat.”

  That sounded good to me. Hush puppies are fried pieces of cornbread, if you didn’t know.

  It took us a little while to find the hush puppies man, but when we did, we sat down under a long-beard tree and shared them with an ice-cold Co-Cola.

  “Your grandmama tell you what happened last night?” Bunny asked.

  I licked my fingers, all sticky and greasy. “Nope.”

  “Somebody dug up some bodies at the graveyard.”

  “That’s bad,” I said. “Why would somebody do that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But my mama said Miss McGuire went by there last night to drop off some flowers, and that’s when she saw it.”

  “Saw what?”

  Bunny slurped from her straw, then looked up at me. “Their hands, Hoodoo. Somebody went and chopped off their hands.”

  Dead Man Walking

  I walked through the graveyard on my tiptoes, trying not to step on the graves. If you stepped on a grave, people said, the dead could steal your soul. I could barely see, and the only light came from the moon, spreading a glow through the long-beard trees.

  Something kept tickling my face, like a spider’s web. I brushed it away, but that didn’t do any good. It was stuck there, creeping across my skin.

  I was looking for Daddy’s grave. I didn’t know why, but I had to find it. The headstones on the graves were so old, I couldn’t read the names.

  I took a few more steps and stopped.

  The ground was moving under my feet!

  My head went dizzy, like I was back on the merry-go-round at the fair. My mouth clamp
ed shut. I saw something out of the corner of my eye and turned.

  A hand, followed by a long arm, shot right up out of the dirt. Crooked black fingers grabbed at the empty air.

  And then, with a sound like an ax chopping through wood, a dead man rose up out of his pine box.

  He had on a long cloak and a wide-brimmed black hat. His eyes glowed red. He was coming for me. “Mandragore,” he said, as slow as molasses. “The One That Did the Deed.”

  “Aieeeeee!” I screamed, waking up.

  Mama Frances rushed into my room in her nightgown, swinging a kerosene lantern. “What is it, Hoodoo? What’s wrong, child?”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and set the lantern on the floor. The thin mattress sunk under her weight. I had to settle down for a minute to get my breath back. The dream seemed so real. I touched my face to see if there were any spider webs on it. “Bunny said somebody dug up some bodies at the graveyard,” I said all in a rush. “She said somebody chopped off their hands!”

  Mama Frances’s eyes widened. “Hush now, child. That was a terrible thing. No need for you to fret about it.” She paused. “Whoever did that is goin’ straight to hell.”

  I was shocked. Mama Frances didn’t usually say cuss words in front of me, but I wasn’t sure hell was a real cuss word because Preacher Wellington said it in church all the time.

  “Why would somebody do that?” I asked her.

  She stroked my hand. “A lot of strange things in this world, Hoodoo, and only the Lord above knows the answer.”

  I thought about that. Did the Lord really have the answers? But then I got scared because, if He wanted to, the Lord could strike me down with a bolt of lightning whenever He felt like it.

  “There was a lady at the fair,” I said. “She said I was in danger. She said to look for a black crow and to watch out for the Stranger.”

  Mama Frances’s head snapped back. “Who said that, Hoodoo? What lady?”

  “A fortuneteller.” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand. “Her name was Mrs. Snuff. Is something bad gonna happen?”

  Mama Frances pursed her lips. “Snuff,” she whispered, like she might’ve known the name. She shook her head. “You just close your eyes and go back to sleep, baby. Ain’t nothin’ to fear here. We got the power of the Lord in this house.”