Hoodoo

by Ronald L. Smith

  She rose up off the bed and then bent down and looked me dead in the eye. “And other things too.”

  She picked up the lantern and closed the door behind her.

  Darkness settled over the room.

  I tossed and turned, making the blanket all scrunched up around me. I pulled it higher, all the way to my chin, even though the room was hot and stuffy. I tried to calm down but couldn’t. My heart jumped around like a bird trying to get out of a cage.

  Mama Frances told me one time that counting numbers was a good way to get to sleep. “Count your numbers, boy,” she’d said, “and you’ll doze off in no time.”

  I closed my eyes.

  I’d count to one hundred. That’s what I’d do. I’d start counting and when I opened my eyes it’d be morning.

  I let out a deep breath and turned on my side.

  One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .

  I didn’t remember falling asleep, but when I woke up the next morning, there was a broom lying across my doorway. I knew what that meant. It was a keep-away spell. And people used it to keep evil spirits from coming into their house.

  A Message on Wings

  I put one leg in front of the other and stepped over the broom.

  If Mama Frances thought there was nothing to be scared of, then why’d she put that keep-away spell in front of my door?

  I had to protect myself. Mrs. Snuff said to beware the Stranger. The only stranger I’d seen was the man at Miss Carter’s store, the same man who was in my dreams. Was he the Stranger? What did he want with me?

  I thought back to the dream from the night before. Those words he said stuck in my head. They were the same words he said at Miss Carter’s, all deep and slow-sounding: Mandragore. The One That Did the Deed.

  What did it mean?

  I’d have to ask Mama Frances. She’d know. She knew all about dreams.

  I found her stirring some grits on the stove, like always.

  “You get back to sleep last night, baby?” she asked.

  “Yes ma’am. I counted my numbers like you said.”

  “Good,” she said. “If you get tired of counting numbers you can count chickens, too!”

  I thought that was right funny, but didn’t feel like laughing.

  She moved the pot of grits off the stove and set it on some square bricks pushed together. It had to cool a little before we could eat them. She pulled out a chair and sat down. “Whew!” she said, wiping her head. “Hot out, Hoodoo.”

  I looked at her. She was always standing, always on her feet.

  “Mama Frances?”

  “Yes, baby?”

  “What’s Mandragore?”

  “Mandragore? What kind of word is that?”

  “I don’t know. You ever hear it before?”

  “Where’d you hear this, Hoodoo? At the fair? Something that fortuneteller lady said?”

  “No ma’am. It was in a dream.”

  Mama Frances got a real serious look and then tightened her lips. “Dreams are full of what we call symbols, Hoodoo, and they always tell you something you already know. Deep down inside. What else was in this dream?”

  I looked at her hands. They were old and knobby, like walnuts. They’d been that way for as long as I could remember.

  “A man,” I said. “He came up out of the ground and said that word.”

  She frowned, and her eyebrows went down. “That sounds like an omen. You remember what an omen is?”

  “A sign,” I said. “It can be good or bad. Right?”

  “That’s right, child. And I don’t know which your dream is trying to tell you.”

  I swallowed hard.

  “Mandragore,” she whispered, shaking her head. “I’ll ask your Pa Manuel about it. But I want you to promise me something.”

  “Yes ma’am?”

  “I want you to come to me if you have any more dreams. You understand?”

  “Yes ma’am,” I said again.

  I ate my grits with a big pat of butter on them. Mama Frances didn’t ask me anything else, and by the time I was finished, she was putting on her white clothes to go clean houses.

  Upstairs, I thought about what Mrs. Snuff had said: Your people. They’re in danger too. But their fate is in your hands.

  I didn’t know what that meant. How could their fate be in my hands? Fate is something that happens that you can’t do nothing about, if you didn’t know.

  Search for the black crow. He will help you. Beware the Stranger.

  If I knew how to conjure I could put a spell on that stranger. But I didn’t know how. One time, Mama Frances was plucking a black hen because she needed the feathers to do some kind of conjure work. When she asked me to help, I couldn’t, because every time I touched the feathers I got the shivers.

  I dug my fingers into my pants pockets and pulled out some change. I had two pennies left from the fair. I bent down and stuck one in the heel of my shoe. I heard that was supposed to help keep evil away. I thought about the other things I heard my family talk about—laying down tricks and sprinkling powders—but I didn’t know how to do all that.

  I stuck my hands in my pockets and turned them inside out. That was supposed to help too. But I couldn’t go around all day looking like that. People would think I was touched in the head. So I stuffed them back in.

  I looked around my room. There wasn’t a whole lot there. Just my bed, a bird whistle, some marbles in a cloth sack, Daddy’s old trunk, and an end table with a Bible that I was supposed to read from every night, even though I didn’t.

  I chewed my lip. Right then I remembered something I’d heard Aunt Jelly say one time. She was showing me how to cook barbecue and was talking to a man named Cuz. I guess “Cuz” was short for “cousin.” Anybody could be a cousin where I came from. All you had to do was come over and eat every day, and you could be a cousin. This man Cuz said somebody was after him and he needed some help. Aunt Jelly whispered and told him what to do. She didn’t think I was listening, but I was. Maybe it’d work for me, too.

  I opened the little drawer where the Bible was and reached inside for my pencil and paper from the schoolhouse. I wasn’t supposed to use the paper because I needed it for when school came back, but this was something I had to do. I stuffed everything in my pillowcase bag and went back downstairs.

  Mama Frances had put some fresh flowers on the little altar on the table at the foot of the steps. An altar is where you put things to help your dead family look over you, if you didn’t know. Once your people died, they became something called ancestors.

  There was a little toy Jesus, some red candles, some dirt in a bowl, a glass of water, and a ring with a painted eye on it. I wanted to pick it up but thought better of it. It was too big to be a lady’s ring. Maybe it was my daddy’s. Mama Frances must’ve put it there.

  The smell of the flowers was sweet and made me a little sad for my dead daddy. I reached out and touched one of the little purple leaves. I closed my eyes. “Dear ancestors,” I said. “Please look over me and Mama Frances. Please keep that stranger away from our door and send him back wherever he came from. In Jesus’s name. Amen. Thank you.”

  I opened my eyes. “There,” I said.

  Outside, I had to dig around for a while to find a hammer and nail, but finally found them in a little steel box by the outhouse. I think Pa Manuel used that toolbox every now and then. He was always coming over to fix something. Once I had everything I needed, I set off on my way.

  I passed by Miss Carter’s store and saw Ozzie playing dominoes with some of the older men. I stopped to watch them, but they didn’t even look at me. They just slammed their dominoes down on the table and shouted at one another like they were crazy. They were drinking liquor, too. I could smell it, sharp and strong. Drinking liquor was bad enough, but drinking it in the morning was just plain crazy.

  Blue and purple wildflowers sprung up all around me the closer I got to the woods. I plucked a handful of strawberries from a little patch and po
pped them in my mouth. They were the sweetest strawberries I’d ever tasted, and I let the juice run down my chin. I felt a little bit of joy right about then, but it disappeared as soon as I looked at the red smudges on my fingertips because it made me think about blood.

  I made my way through the woods, looking at each tree as I passed it. I needed to find a big one. The air was thick and muggy and little gnats flew around my head. I hated gnats.

  One tree stood out from the others, with a wide trunk and gnarly arms stretched to the sky. I stood under it. The shady leaves cooled me off a little. I slung my pillowcase bag off my shoulder and sat down. Then I took out my pencil and paper. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. The last thing I wanted to think about was that man—the Stranger—but I had to put a picture of him in my mind for the spell to work. I just hoped I had the right man. He was the only stranger I’d seen.

  I put the pencil to paper and drew a circle shape for his head. That was the easy part. Then I added the hat. I started on the eyes next—black and evil-looking. The nose was just a dot and the lips two little lines pressed together.

  I pulled my head back and looked at it. It didn’t really look like him, but I figured it was close enough.

  I took out my hammer and nail. With my left hand, I held the paper up to the tree, and with my right, put the point of the nail right on the Stranger’s forehead. “One . . . two . . . three!” Bam!

  I drove the nail right through the picture and into the trunk of the tree.

  I dropped my hand. “There,” I said. “Begone, you old stranger.”

  The corners of the paper fluttered in a breeze. I bent down to pick up my bag. When I rose back up and took another look, the Stranger’s eyes were bleeding.

  That ain’t right. Somebody’s playing tricks on me.

  I stretched my neck out, like a snappin’ turtle, trying to get a closer look. A bird squawked in the branches. I moved a little closer, my breath caught in my throat. It was just tree sap, leaking through the paper. “Fool boy,” I said, just like Mama Frances would’ve. I chuckled a little, trying to put myself at ease. But it still gave me the willies.

  I set off on my way back home. Soft green moss grew on the ground and made my feet sink in a little. I liked moss. It looked all sparkly when the sun hit it. One time I lifted a patch right out of the ground and brought it home, but Mama Frances told me to get that dirt out of her house.

  A fly landed on the back of my neck and I slapped it away. Another one buzzed around my head at the same time. I waved that one away too. “Get outta here!” I shouted. But that only brought more flies, hissing and swarming. “Get off!” I cried, but the flies kept coming—big greenies, like a black cloud. They landed on my head and back, down in the little cracks of my too-big shoes, tickling my ears. They were everywhere!

  I ran toward the river, the flies buzzing on my tail. I figured I might have to jump in to get them off, but by the time I got there, they were gone. I sat down and put my head between my knees, breathing hard. Sweat poured off my face. I didn’t know if those flies were a good thing or a bad thing, but I didn’t like it one bit. And even though they were gone, I still felt their ghosts on my skin.

  I slumped back against a long-beard tree. The Alabama River flowed below me like a wide silver ribbon. I was on a little hill, and the shade made the sweat dry on my skin. If Mama Frances knew that, she’d make me take a bath when I got home.

  A big old boat was out there, carrying chopped-up logs. Clouds of black smoke puffed from a hole in its top. I wondered what it would be like to jump on that boat and go wherever it was headed. Where would it take me? What would I see? I knew there was more to the world than our little town, but nobody I knew had ever been outside it.

  Some dragonflies floated over the water, their wings flashing like red- and green-colored glass. One time, a man brought something to the schoolhouse called a kaleidoscope, and when I looked through it, a bunch of colors swirled around. That’s what the dragonflies’ wings made me think of.

  It was nice and cool under the tree, and I felt like I could’ve fallen asleep right there. Dang flies, I thought. That was crazy. Now that I’d nailed that stranger’s picture to the tree, he couldn’t get to me. There were probably some words to go with that spell but I didn’t know them. I closed my eyes and stretched my feet out in the cool dirt. Sweet sassafras drifted on the air.

  “Hoodoo.”

  I jumped up, wide awake.

  “Who’s there?” I called to the air. It was quiet for a minute, except for the sound of a boat in the distance, chugging its horn.

  “Hoodoo,” the voice called again.

  I pushed myself up on my elbows, looking left, then right. I couldn’t tell if it was a man’s or a woman’s voice, but it was kind of high and reedy. Hair rose on the back of my neck. I looked around. It was quiet for a minute, and then a black shape swooped down from the tree in a flutter of feathers. It was a crow, a big one, with eyes as black as the devil’s. Leaves and twigs fell onto my head.

  “Caw! Caw!” the crow squawked. “Don’t fear me, child.”

  I blinked and jumped back, then swallowed. “How do you . . . how can you talk?”

  The bird buried its beak in its blue-black feathers. “Danger comin’, Hoodoo. I was sent by your daddy. From the crossroads. He’s stuck.”

  “My daddy? What do you mean, ‘stuck’? What crossroads?”

  “The crossroads, boy,” the crow said, like I was supposed to know what it was talking about. “You gotta set something right for him, or he can’t pass on.”

  “How can you talk?” I asked again, not even believing I was talking to a bird that knew my name. And then I remembered Mrs. Snuff’s words: Search for the black crow . . . Beware the Stranger.

  “I’m a spirit, boy,” the crow said. “From the other side.”

  “A spirit?”

  The crow stuck its beak in the wet dirt. When it came back up, a fat worm dangled at the end of it.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked.

  “There’s a bad man in town,” the crow said. “A demon. He’s dead and alive at the same time. If you don’t stop him, he’ll bring terror and darkness on your people.” It gulped down the worm. I had a vision of the dead man rising out of his pine box. Mandragore. The One That Did the Deed.

  I thought I was going to be sick. A dark cloud passed over the sun. My arms got cold all of a sudden.

  “So what’s my daddy want me to do?”

  “Ack!” the crow screamed. “You gots to kill him, Hoodoo.”

  “Who?”

  “The bad man,” the crow squawked. “The Stranger.”

  “What?” I shouted. “I can’t kill nobody. That’s crazy!”

  “If you want to help your daddy pass on, you gots to.”

  “How?” I asked. “How am I supposed to kill somebody?”

  The crow cocked its head. I swear the dang bird winked at me. “I don’t know, boy. That’s for you to figure out, ain’t it?”

  And with that, it let out a cry and flew into the air, its wings as loud as a clap of thunder.

  Crossroads

  I ran home, jumping over logs and dashing through fields of cattails, slipping in patches of wet mud. Thorny brambles stung my ankles but I didn’t feel a thing.

  Mrs. Snuff was right. I found the crow—or it found me—and it said to beware the Stranger, too. Just like she did!

  It was the man at Miss Carter’s store. It had to be. He was the same man I dreamed about. The same man who rose up out of that pine box!

  I swung the door open and rushed inside. Mama Frances was snapping green beans at the table. “There a fire somewhere, Hoodoo?” she asked without even looking up.

  “No ma’am,” I said, and suddenly thought I’d dreamed the whole thing. But then I saw the crow’s shiny black eye in my mind and knew it really happened.

  “I saw a crow,” I said. “It talked to me.”

  Mama Frances stopped her snapping. She looked
up. She must’ve thought I was crazy. “Did you actually hear the words out loud, Hoodoo, or in your head?”

  I had to think about that. I knew that dang bird talked to me, but the more I thought about it, I wasn’t sure. “I think it was out loud,” I said. “It said that Daddy was stuck in the crossroads and I needed to help him pass on.”

  Mama Frances pressed her lips together.

  “What’s the crossroads?” I asked. “Mama Frances, how can a bird talk?”

  She threw the last bean she’d snapped into the pot. “Sit down, Hoodoo,” she said.

  I pulled out a chair and sat. Mama Frances let out a breath. “Where were you when you heard this?”

  “Down by the river. I was just sitting there watching a big old boat go by. I fell asleep, and then this crow came down from the trees and started talking to me.”

  She closed her eyes and opened them again. “You sure it said ‘crossroads’?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Well, child, the crossroads is the place where heaven and hell meet. It’s where people get stuck when they have to finish business in the living world. It’s also a place where two roads cross at a right angle, and where powerful mojo can be done, but it’s dangerous, because the old devil himself can sometimes rise up and cause confusion.”

  I didn’t like the way that sounded, and it made me right scared.

  “What else did this crow say?”

  My left hand started itching and I scratched it.

  Mama Frances raised an eyebrow. “What’s wrong, child? Why you scratching your hand like that?”

  She took my hand in hers and turned it over.

  “Just itching,” I said.

  She dropped my hand and fixed her eyes on me. “You been trying to conjure, boy? Something you been messing with?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “You just be careful,” she said. “You hear me?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “If you see that crow again, I want you to come straight to me. You understand?”