Devil's Call

by J Danielle Dorn

  I lost track of all of Hawking’s questions, for he would ask me on and off about many of the truths I have already recorded for you. Some of the questions he asked were not ones I would have thought to ask, such as whether there are such things as man witches (to use his words) or if witches come from anyplace other than the British Isles. A few of them I refused to answer, such as whether folks from outside of magickal families could learn magick, or whether we could read minds.

  On a particular occasion, I was the one asking after his origins.

  He answered, “Hell . . . I been in De Soto about four years now, maybe five. What year is it?”

  “It’s 1859,” I said.

  “Damn,” he said. “You sure?”

  After three weeks of keeping good pace with the bandits, we were stopped outside Memphis, Tennessee, when the ribbon burned and turned to ash but did not reveal a path. I watched the wind carry the last of it away, then lit another, certain I had allowed my thoughts to stray or some distant noise to distract me. But the second ribbon yielded no more fruitful results. I was preparing to light a third when the butcher returned, and I swore, throwing the matches into the cart and staring to the east.

  “The hell’s the matter with you?” Hawking asked as he loaded a crate of gallon jugs into the back.

  “I lost ’em,” I said.

  “How’d you do that?”

  “They must’ve crossed the river.”

  “That’ll do it, eh?”

  “That’ll do it,” I said.

  “Well, shit,” he said. “Guess we better cross the damned river.”

  On the ferryboat carrying us across the Mississippi River, we saw the leaves changing to orange and yellow on the trees. Hawking and I questioned the ferryman about the bandits, and he seemed unimpressed until I mentioned one of the men was Mexican.

  “Oh, yes,” he said after that moment of uncertainty, “I seen ’em prolly two weeks back.”

  “How many were they?” I asked.

  “Just him and his buddy.”

  “What’d his buddy look like?”

  “Oh, let’s see here . . . real dark eyes, kinda skinny. Didn’t do much walking around.”

  On the other side of the river I lit another ribbon, this time focusing not on the wind but on my memory of the young man’s face. It did not work, and I did not bother swearing.

  “Now what’s wrong?” Hawking asked.

  “It ain’t working,” I said. “I can’t light up their path anymore.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I’ve no idea. Maybe the current washed it away. I’ll have to pick it up again somewhere else.”

  “We’ll find ’em,” Hawking said. “If the ferryman remembers them, we’ve gotta be going the right way.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” I said.

  We decided to head south, figuring if no one in Senatobia, Mississippi, a day’s ride away, had seen them, we could swing east and try our luck there. But we did not have to swing east. Hawking’s time in the taverns was not solely for his benefit, it seemed.

  “I,” he said in triumph, “have been a drunk longer than you’ve been burning ribbons, and those two sons of bitches passed through here two weeks ago.”

  “So they’re headed south,” I said.

  “It would appear so.”

  It appeared so in Pope, Mississippi, as well as Grenada, Mississippi, which is when I next proposed I attempt to light their trail again. That made the butcher laugh. “You don’t need no magic ribbon to see where those two are going,” he said, taking a deep breath.

  “Oh, really,” I said.

  “Put yourself in their boots a minute. You’re wanted men, one of you is a filthy Irishman and the other one’s from Mexico, and the law’s sniffing after you. Are you gonna go east, where you can’t break wind uptown without folks hearing about it downtown, or are you gonna go to the one place where odds are a one-legged dimwit and a Mexican with an itchy trigger finger are going to be the most well-behaved people in the room?”

  “And where would that be?”

  “The Crescent City, darlin’,” he said. “New Orleans.”

  We veered southwest until we found the Mississippi River again, somewhere outside of Vicksburg, where the air began to turn to soup. Outside Natchez we spied a sign pointing travelers towards the steamboat landing in the distance and argued for a spell as to whether we would continue as we were or if we ought to sell the horses and the cart.

  In the end, logic and I won. We could not be certain what would happen in New Orleans, and if we found the three men, we would need the supplies to bind them and the cart to transport them. So we continued on without further incident, until the night we prepared to conquer the last thirty miles into the city of New Orleans.

  I lay down in the back of the cart, as was becoming usual, and used a sack of oats to support my knee, as lying on my side was the most comfortable position. If I were back at the roadhouse, my mother and my aunts and my cousins would inundate me with advice, mix up potions and balms, and all but tuck me in at night.

  As the sun rose over the swampland, I entered the hazy realm between dreams and wakefulness, the place where visions wait. This morning, one found me.

  A bear behind steel bars, pacing the length of its cage, sniffing at the ground. It stopped and lumbered towards me, stood on its hind legs with a curious turn of its head. We stood watching each other until, without warning, it let out a roar that chilled my blood. It was not meant for me. It was meant for what was behind me. I jumped back from the cage and awakened with a jolt.

  “Jesus!” said Hawking as I sat upright and held my hand over my belly, where you were restless and kicking. He turned around in the driver’s seat and asked, “You all right back there?”

  “Your cooking is beginning to affect my dreams,” I said, to the butcher’s amusement. “Where are we?”

  “Welcome to the iniquity capital of the United States,” he said.

  9

  NEW ORLEANS FELT to me as if I had stepped off the boat to find myself in another country, with only a madman to guide me along. Though he was quite deep in his cups after riding all night, he would not yield the reins to me.

  “We ain’t in the North anymore,” he said. “You need to act right.”

  I said, “Excuse me?”

  “Nobody with half a brain in his skull is going to take you for a man, even if you are wearing pants. I’m just trying to keep you out of trouble.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about, Hawk?”

  “Just watch your mouth, is all I’m saying.”

  I snorted, as a snort was as close to responding without acquiescing as I could come. Before I could ask the butcher what made him such an expert on local culture, he said, “So our first order of business ought to be finding a room for the next couple nights. Then we can start asking around the saloons, see if anyone’s seen these lowlifes.”

  “Saloons,” I said. “Might’ve figured. Only evidence you’re gonna find there is the proof on the front of a damned whiskey bottle.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “Not an idea so much as a vision,” I said. “I saw something last night, in my dream, as we were passing through the swamp.”

  “Bayou,” he said.

  “A what?”

  “Bayou,” he said again in a drawl.

  “What the hell is a bayou?”

  “A swamp,” he said.

  “Whatever you want to call it, I saw something in my dream.”

  “You seen where my rifle’s at?”

  “No. Something else.”

  “So you have been dreaming about me again.”

  “Just drive the damn cart.”

  Ours was among the only carts moving along Tulane Avenue, which I would later learn is one of the city’s main streets. I noticed rails embedded in the stonework but made nothing of it until I heard the clopping of other horses’ hooves. That was when I gasped.

  “Wha
t’s got into you?” Hawking asked.

  The horses were pulling neither a cart nor a stagecoach but rather a car, not unlike what one might find pulled along by a steam engine. This car, for lack of a better word, was made of wood and painted red, with white lettering. People sat on benches inside, if they did not stand and hold fast to poles fastened to the floor and the roof for such a purpose.

  “I’ve never seen such a contraption before,” I said.

  “What? You never seen a horsecar?”

  I shook my head.

  “Damn,” he said, and started laughing. “Girl, you need to get out more.”

  “I get out plenty.”

  “Dancing bare-assed underneath a full moon don’t count, you know.”

  “I will push you off this cart,” I said.

  He just laughed and urged the horses on, granting me a fuller opportunity to study the horsecar and its occupants.

  Out of the din created by strolling women and shouting youths, ringing bicycle bells, and music drifting down alleyways from unseen courtyards, I heard a different voice. Separate from the others, above them. A clear, brilliant tenor, calling out rather than singing.

  The next horsecar was filled. I took a second blinking look to assure myself of what I had seen. It was not a passenger car at all, but rather a small steel cage. Inside the cage was a hulking mound of thick brown fur, the smell of hay and urine preceding it, unsupervised children and unoccupied adults following after for a longer look.

  “Stop the horses,” I said, and repeated myself loud when Hawking looked at me in confusion.

  “All right,” he said, and frowned deeper before urging the horses to pause a moment.

  He turned to watch not the bear, but me as I gathered up the trouser fabric as I would have a skirt and hurried to the back of the cart.

  That clear voice began to articulate itself into words, and I looked ahead to find the source of the announcement. Hawking stayed where he was, reins held still in his hands, uncertain as to what had gotten into me.

  “That’s right, folks!” said the fellow, who was hanging off the back of the next car. “All the way from the Golden State, killer of man, livestock, and children alike, the fearsome grizzly bear! Don’t get too close! She may seem harmless now, but tonight, and tonight only, a single shiny dime will earn you entrance to the mother of all fights! She’s killed hunting dogs, she’s killed mountain lions . . . why, she’s even killed a full-grown bull, can you imagine? Tonight, she takes on a pack of wolves, ladies and gentlemen, the most dangerous and destructive of all nature’s creations, right here in New Orleans! Stop by Dauphine Street between San Louie and Conti Streets. The event will begin at nine o’clock sharp!”

  His voice continued to carry even after his car had passed us by. I was breathing fast, my jaws aching, when Hawking reached back and clamped a hand on my shoulder.

  “Whoa,” he said, and held up his empty palms when I whipped back around. “Calm down, it’s me.”

  “Bear,” I said. “You heard what he said, right?”

  “I think they heard him in Mexico.”

  “There was a bear in my vision last night, Hawking.”

  We resolved to find lodgings with a view of the fight.

  I took note of the names of the streets we traversed and where they were in relation to other destinations. If I were alone, I would have had to stop and ask for directions. My driver, who I could not believe was still conscious after all he had had to imbibe, let alone that he was still upright and coherent, did not stop once.

  “I thought you were from New York,” I said.

  “What?” Hawking said.

  “Do you know where we’re going?”

  “You seen one city, you pretty much seen ’em all.”

  Not in the mood to argue with him, I decided to let the matter rest for now. Blood had its way of outing, after all, and we had a long trip back to the Nebraska Territory ahead of us. At least, that was what I thought, and what I think Hawking thought, as we climbed down from the cart and paid the stabler and went into the hotel.

  “Lemme make sure I’m understanding you,” Hawking said, holding the door open for me. “A bear spoke to you in a dream and told you to stay at this snobby hotel?”

  “Not in so many words,” I said.

  “And she says I ain’t got a plan.”

  Though I would not give him the satisfaction of telling him so, the moment we stepped inside I knew Hawking had a point. It was a far grander place than I had ever been in before, with parquet floors in the entryway and corridors and what appeared to be marble in the lobby. I felt every bit the uncivilized hag those who would string me up would have named me, and Hawking appeared to have been inebriated for a week straight. He had not shaved, and neither of us had bathed in some time.

  The courtyard was strange, filled with plants whose leaves were like big green feathers, their trunks like an insect’s carapace. Vibrant flowers with names I could not recall, having never encountered them before, filled pots and boxes. And then there was the matter of the pool.

  “Why’ve they water in the center of the courtyard?” I asked in a low voice as we made our way along the breezeway.

  The water in question filled a depression that appeared from our vantage point to be at least six feet deep and shaped like a rectangle. Its color was a foul green, but that had not been enough to stop a family of five from donning ankle-length gowns and floating about in it.

  Hawking said, “That’s called a bathing pool, dear.”

  I managed not to hit him until we were well clear of public view, with the door shut behind us and locked against intrusion. Though we had little to carry, neither did the room afford us much in the way of space. The proprietor had presumed us married and installed us in a room with a single bed and a single bath. That we did not have to share this bath with the rest of the floor was enough to give me pause, but then I realized we would not have to pump water from a well to fill the tub either.

  At the window overlooking the street, I began to feel the grime of the road in my hair and under my fingernails. Hawking continued to complain about my lack of any plan, calling me “damned devil woman” and a slew of other vulgarities.

  The tub did not have any water in it. There were two strange knobs and nothing to draw up the water. I had to swallow my pride and ask Hawking how to use it.

  “Maybe the bear will tell you,” said Hawking, plopping on the bed.

  I slammed the bathroom door to mute his laughter.

  After fiddling with the knobs for a time, a scalding hot torrent of water flowed into the tub. When I came out over an hour later, my digits gone to raisins and the water so cold that my skin pimpled as the air met it, Hawking was facedown on the bed, breathing heavy but not snoring. I took his hat from where it half covered his face, then pulled off his boots and unfolded the blanket at the end of the bed. He did not stir as I draped it over him.

  I intended to pull the curtains closed when I walked over to the balcony doors, their glass inlays allowing the late-afternoon sunlight into the room, but I had never stayed in a hotel room before, let alone one with a balcony. So I let myself out, stepping around the iron table and its uninviting chairs to rest my hands atop the rail. The temperature high as it was, I had taken to rolling up the cuffs of the oversize shirt until they reached my elbows. Likewise, I rolled up a handkerchief and used it to hold my hair off my neck. A slight breeze blew down the street and offered some relief to those of us out of doors. I heard a low noise I could not identify in the street below.

  A large cage, at least eight feet tall and three times that length, stood in the middle of Dauphine Street. While the horses were nowhere to be seen nor the wolves the crier spoke of, the cage was not empty. I heard the noise again.

  It was the bear. She was whining, a low, pained noise.

  Were Hawking awake I suppose he would have asked me what I was doing and tried to stop me. But he was not, and so I slipped out of the room unaccosted.<
br />
  In the street, men stood outside public houses with their shirts unbuttoned to reveal their chests, smoking cigarettes and laughing loudly. This was a different country, and I did not intend to remain here long enough to learn the customs or the laws.

  Without a breeze, the smell of the bear’s litter stung my eyes. I came to just outside arm’s reach of the cage, and the beast stirred and pricked its ears. I saw no signs of injury, and when she turned her head towards me, I sensed neither hunger nor anger. She would not try to attack me through the bars.

  This is a foolish act I undertook, and yet I undertook it anyway. I reached between the bars to splay my fingers across her flank, to read the energy of her bones and muscles. I began to wonder what would happen if I were to undo the cage latch. If the bear would find its way home peacefully, or if it would leave mangled corpses and missing children in its wake.

  It was not the threat of catastrophe that convinced me to leave the cage locked and step away. It was necessity. Without the cage, there would be no spectacle, and it was the spectacle Hawking and I were counting on to draw the highwaymen out of hiding.

  A low groan left the bear’s chest, a note of understanding or forgiveness in its tone. Perhaps you think your mother crazy, reading this, but I know the bear would not have harmed me even if I had unlocked its door. It lifted its snout once, then lowered its head again. I took it as a missive to go. So I did.

  I returned to the room to find Hawking had not stirred, which was just as well. While I waited for him to resurface, I lay down atop the bed, as far from his corpse-like stillness as I could. I hummed at first, finding my voice somewhat dusty after so long on the road. But I did find it, and though I would have never sung for my own sake, I sang for yours. Judging by the movement I felt beneath my ribs and the palm of my hand, it was not a wasted effort.

  In time the daylight faded and the sky lost its color and the inkiness of night overcame it. Music belonging to a genre I had never heard before drifted over the rooftops, and the crowd began to gather. Hawking returned to consciousness with a deep breath.