Salvation of Miss Lucretia

by Ted M. Dunagan

  Poudlum thought on it for a few moments before he said, “I think we ought to give it one more day and see if she won’t just let us go of her own free will, and maybe we can walk out of here with our dogs and our rifles.”

  We didn’t have time to discuss our plans because Miss Lucretia was back. As she closed the door, she asked, “How’s y’all’s dinner?”

  She looked real pleased after we both told her how much we had enjoyed it and thanked her.

  “Well, get off dem stools, and give me de good one,” she said. “We gots to do some talking.”

  She waited until after our chains had stopped rattling and we were seated on the floor before she said, “Has either one of y’all got a drogue?”

  Poudlum and I looked at each other in puzzlement,

  then shook our heads, no.

  I suspected as much,” she said. “Foolish boys! But don’t y’all worry ’cause we gonna get one for both y’all.”

  “Excuse me, Miss Lucretia,” I said. “But would you mind telling us what a drogue is?”

  She grasped the thong of bleached bones around her neck and rattled them.

  “Dese be my drogue,” she said. “A drogue be like an anchor to a big ship, the thing dat keeps it steady, what keeps it from drifting onto a rocky shore and destroying itself.”

  “Uh, do you mean something like a lucky charm?” I asked her.

  She looked down at me with disdain, and said, “White folks might call it dat, but it be a whole lot more. A drogue give a helpful feeling to a soldier in war, help anybody conduct demselves through dangerous times.”

  “My drogue is a good hickory stick, or my rifle,” Poudlum inserted.

  “Hickory stick, maybe,” she said. “But not no rifle. Drogue got to be something natural. And since y’all ain’t got one, I done took de liberty to provide y’all wid one.”

  She reached deep into one of the pockets of her dress and pulled out a slim leather throng with a rattlesnake skull on it about the size of a crab apple, and said, “Dis one for you, Poudlum. It gonna keep you safe if you wears it around yo’ neck.”

  I sat there in dread wondering what kind of skull she was going to pull out of her pocket for me, but she hesitated when she saw the look on Poudlum’s face as he held the leather strap out as far away from himself as possible, and starred at the drogue like it was something he didn’t want near him.

  And I didn’t blame him. The small skeletal head had holes where the eyes had been, and even tinier holes where its nostrils had been. It was mighty scary looking.

  “What’s wrong wid you boy? Dat’s a mighty fine drogue.”

  “Yes’m, it is,” Poudlum agreed. “I’m sure it would scare most anything away. The trouble is, it scares me, too.”

  “Supposed to,” she said. “But you don’t have to look at it, you just supposed to wear it. Now go on and put it around yo’ neck.”

  I knew Poudlum didn’t want to do it, but the tone of her voice was more like a command than a request, so I watched as he closed his eyes and slipped the strap over his head until the thing dangled around his neck. He started to look down at it, but then jerked his head back up.

  “Dat’s a good boy,” she said. “Now you won’t hafta worry ’bout no rattlers biting you. And what’s mo, it’s gonna protect you from ’em two-legged rattlesnakes, too. I’m talking ’bout mean and evil folks, whose poison is worse dan one dat crawls around on its belly.”

  She started fumbling around in her pocket again, and what she pulled out didn’t bother me as much as what happened inside her pocket after she pulled her hand out. Her pocket was moving on its own! She had something alive in there!

  Poudlum saw it, too. His eyes got big as he gave me a quick glance. We were both fixing to reach for the wobbly stool and rip the legs off it again, because we suspected she had a snake in there. But before we could move from our frozen state, she let my drogue drop from her hand and dangle from its strap in front of us.

  It was a little pointed piece of yellowish fur with the strap threaded through a hole in it.

  “Dis here a perfect drogue for a white person. Ain’t as powerful as de one I give Poudlum, but white folks don’t have so many bad things befall ’em as colored do.”

  “What in the world is it?” I asked with a quiver in my voice.

  “Can’t you tell? It’s de left ear offen a bobcat. Right ear ain’t got no mojo, so I didn’t even fool wid it. De tail offen a bobcat is a most powerful drogue. It so powerful dat I trade ’em for snuff and stuff.”

  “How in the world do you get hold of a bobcat’s tail and ear?” Poudlum asked her.

  She gave him a puzzled look, and said, “Why, I cut ’em off it, silly boy.”

  “I used dis,” she said as she reached behind her and produced a knife with a long blade that reminded me of the one Mister Kim had used to murder Silas with over on the Tombigbee River, the same one he threw at us that had stuck in our boat when we escaped from him.

  Miss Lucretia must have noticed the terror in our eyes, for she quickly put the knife away, and said, “I just uses it to skin and carve up critters wid.”

  She handed me my drogue, and said, “Now, Ted, you put dis around yo’ neck and we all three gonna have mo mojo dan anybody or any creature in de forest. I got de skin of dat cat, whose ear you got, all cured out and ready to trade.”

  As I was putting my drogue around my neck, I heard Poudlum say, “How in the world did you ever catch a bobcat, Miss Lucretia?”

  “I trapped him. He liked my chickens so much, I sacrificed a old hen I was gonna make chicken’n dumplings wid, but instead, I had me some bobcat stew.”

  “You ate the bobcat?” I asked incredulously.

  “Just a little bit. He was tough as a lighter knot, and had a funky old taste to him. Chunked de rest of him away, but I done cured his skin out so it soft as rabbit fur. Almost hate to trade it.”

  Something moved in her pocket again! She seemed to notice, too, and stood up, and said, “Y’all ’scuse me for a minute.”

  We watched as she walked across the room and disappeared behind the mysterious curtain in the corner. The curtain moved around some and we heard some clicking and rustling sounds behind it. Momentarily, she emerged, and nothing was moving in her pocket anymore.

  Poudlum and I sat there mesmerized.

  She came back to the table and sat back down on the stool as if nothing unusual had transpired and proceeded to load her lip up with a dip of snuff. Then she began talking again.

  “Y’all ought to be proud to be wearing dem shackles. I believes I told y’all my granddaddy wore ’em. One of ’em anyway. Ain’t sure which, but dat ain’t no matter.

  “His name was Kazoola, African name, took de name of Cudjoe Lewis as a slave name after his master. De last name anyway. Don’t know how he got named Cudjoe, but he did.

  “He come across de big water from Africa, wearing dem chains, in de fall of 1859, along with 150 other slaves on a boat called de Clotilda, what docked down in Mobile Bay.

  “It were against de law to bring slaves in at dat time, ’cause a law done been passed in 1807 prohibiting bringing more new slaves in the country, but dis rich shipyard owner down dat way, and some more white folk, done it anyway.

  “My grandmamma told me dey burned dat ship and sunk it in Mobile Bay after dey unloaded de slaves.”

  Poudlum and I sat spellbound by the sound of her voice and the story she was telling us.

  She continued, “Dey burned it to cover up dey criminal acts, and last I heard nobody ain’t never found de remains of it.

  “Granddaddy Cudjoe was de last slave to be put on a boat in Africa, and he was de last slave to get off one over here.

  “He and de others wuz bought for fifty dollars a head in Africa. I don’t know what dey sold for when dey got over here, but I bet my goat herd dem folks m
ade a good profit on ’em.

  “Dat boat wuz eighty-six feet long and only twenty-three feet wide, holding all dem Africans and de crew, and legend has it dat it was a rough ride over here, but dey make it, otherwise I wouldn’t be setting here talking ’bout it now.

  “Six years later, after de big war ’tween de North and de South wuz over, all de slaves was set free, and my granddaddy and ’bout thirty others settled in a place called Magazine P’int, a little north of Mobile, and called it Africa Town.

  “Women folks worked in de fields and raised de crops while de men worked in saw mills fo’ a dollar a day when dey could find de work. During dat time everybody still talked in de African language, and dey avoided white folks, but eventually Cudjoe and everybody else knew dey had to change dey ways and to talk de way of dis new land.

  “My granddaddy died in 1935, fourteen years ago. He was ninety-four years old and dat’s when I was sent to dese woods and left to fend fo’ myself.”

  Poudlum and I, by now entranced with her story, saw Miss Lucretia’s eyes moisten, but she didn’t cry. She wiped her eyes with the loose sleeve of her dress, and continued her story.

  “Dey wuz churches, and most folks in Africa Town got to be good Christians, but dey wuz some dat hung on to de voodoo, and it was passed down from generation to generation to a chosen person. I wuz de last one, de last voodoo queen, but before I could pass it on, folks decided dey didn’t want no mo’ to do wid voodoo.

  “I refused to give it up, and after my granddaddy died, I was condemned to stay in dese woods and told I could practice all de voodoo I wanted, but not to never come back out.”

  I think she wanted to tell us more, but she had become emotional and couldn’t. Her hands trembled and her lips quivered.

  “Who brought you in here, Miss Lucretia?” Poudlum asked softly.

  “Preacher,” was all she could manage to say.

  “Must not of been much of a preacher,” I said.

  “Him and de deacons,” she muttered.

  “My preacher wouldn’t never done nothing like that to you,” Poudlum said. “He would’ve talked and prayed over you till all the voodoo was out of you.”

  I knew Poudlum was right, and suddenly my feelings for Miss Lucretia transformed from fear and mistrust to sympathy and care. And I could tell by the look I got from Poudlum that he felt the same way.

  When she had regained her composure somewhat, she wiped her eyes again, and said, “I do gots myself a Bible, and I reads it some.”

  “Then how come you still practicing voodoo?” Poudlum asked.

  “I has to live back in dese woods by myself. If I don’t furnish rattlesnake and bobcat skins to my nephew twice a year, and mix up voodoo potions, he won’t come back in here and bring de few things I needs to survive.”

  Poudlum looked at me, and said, “I told you so.”

  I realized he was right, and that this poor woman was being taken advantage of, that she wasn’t a voodoo queen at all, but rather a human being who had been abandoned by her fellow human beings.

  “What time of year does your nephew come to see you?” Poudlum asked.

  “He due any day now. I must have about fifty snake skins for him. Plus de three bobcat ones. He’ll be mighty proud to see ’em.”

  “I bet he will,” Poudlum said. “Then skins are worth a heap more than the stuff he brings you.”

  “Did you ever trap a panther, Miss Lucretia?” I asked.

  Her eyes lit up, and she said, “I been trying to trap one of dem black devils fo’ years. A bobcat might claw you up bad, but you don’t want to be messing wid no panther, ’cause dat could be fatal.

  “I got me a panther pit, and I keep trying to entice one into it, but dey too crafty. I baits it wid a live chicken, but all I catch is bobcats.

  “Dat pit is where you boys might have ended up if I had a let you keep dat saw blade and use it to cut yo’selves loose wid.”

  Poudlum stood up, and motioned for me to do the same. Then he said, “Miss Lucretia, we fixin’ to show you something that has nothing to do with tricks or voodoo, but something that was made possible through the power of the Lord!”

  Chapter 8

  Voodoo Secrets

  I knew what Poudlum had in mind so I stood up with him, stretched my chain taut, and at his signal we stomped and jerked on our chains simultaneously. They both snapped in two like rubber bands, and I had to dodge as the loose end of mine whipped by my face.

  Miss Lucretia’s jaw dropped, and her black eyes bulged almost out of their sockets. She gasped in amazement while we stood there holding the loose ends of our chains.

  Finally, she spoke in a confused stutter, “You-you-you boys knows some voodoo. Y’all got mojo!”

  “No, ma’am,” Poudlum said. “Ain’t no voodoo or magic got nothing to do with us breaking these chains. We had a link of them sawed through ’cept for one little bit, and we just broke that little bit when we snatched on ’em.”

  “You mean y’all could’ve done busted loose and left if you wanted to?” she asked.

  “We could have,” Poudlum calmly answered.

  “Well den, why didn’t y’all?”

  “We talked about it and considered it, but we didn’t for a lot of reasons.”

  From her questioning eyes we knew she wanted to know those reasons, so Poudlum kept talking. “Number one was that we like our dogs a lot, and we didn’t want to leave without ’em. And we also want our rifles back. We just bought them last week, and we was mighty proud of ’em. We was also afraid of falling into one of your panther pits.”

  Poudlum looked at me and I knew he wanted me to continue our talk and tell her the main reason we hadn’t run away.

  I cleared my throat, and said, “Another thing is, Miss Lucretia, we, uh, we like you and we think you ought not to be abandoned back here in these woods. It’s true we want our dogs and rifles back, but we also want to help you. At first we was real scared of you, but we done seen that you are just a poor woman who is being abused and taken advantage of.”

  At this point, I looked back toward Poudlum for help, and he picked up and carried on. “We gonna be your friends, Miss Lucretia. We don’t mean you no harm, and we hope you don’t mean us none.”

  Without saying a word, she reached into her dress pocket and pulled out the old rusty key and proceeded to unlock the manacles on our ankles, so that we were finally completely free.

  As we shook them off, she said, “Cast off yo’ chains and be free, you two little angels. I wuz scared of y’all at first, too. Dat’s why I took de dogs and de guns. I’s afraid y’all might be coming in here to do me harm, but I knows better now. What can I do to show y’all I means well?”

  We were both sitting down on the floor rubbing our ankles, glad to be rid of the shackles, when Poudlum looked at me, and said, “What you think? Go ahead and tell her.”

  “Miss Lucretia, what we would like first is to get our dogs back, and then we would like to have supper with you—to sit down and eat with you.”

  “Lawd, bless yo’ little white soul,” she said. “Ain’t nobody set down and eat with me since 1935. It gon be my pleasure to fix us some supper. We got a pot of butterbeans left from earlier, and I got another pot of rabbit stew simmering on de fire outside right now.”

  “That rabbit stew ain’t like your goat stew, is it?” Poudlum asked.

  She hung her head slightly, and said, “Naw, it ain’t. I’ll eat some first to show y’all. I put my secret potion in dat goat stew to subdue y’all, just like I done wid de dogs.”

  She got up off the stool and said, “Y’all come on out to my outside kitchen, and let me stir dat stew, den we’ll go get de dogs and bring ’em back fo’ we eat supper.”

  Miss Lucretia had a rude shed built of four cedar posts supporting a rusty tin roof, but open on the sides. There was a small
table made out of rough lumber next to a stone fire pit with a grill over it of several layers of fence wire crisscrossed over each other. I didn’t have to use my imagination to guess where the wire had come from.

  Sitting on the back of the grill was a pot with leftover butterbeans, and in the center was another pot with steam coming up from it. The smell made my mouth water. I leaned over and looked inside to see a mixture of rabbit, carrots, and potatoes.

  There was a big black iron skillet hanging on a fence post, which I supposed she used to fry okra and bake her cornbread and biscuits. Overhead, a few boards placed crossways served as her shelves, and contained several old metal coffee cans. I supposed she kept her flour, meal and lard up there.

  She stirred the stew, and said, “Dat’s gonna be just about right when we gets back.”

  “We going to get the dogs?” Poudlum asked.

  “Uh huh, y’all come on and just follow me.”

  She led us to a trail in the opposite direction of the goat pen. Just before the trail entered into the forest, we passed another pen which was full of chickens. This pen was also constructed of old fence wire crisscrossed in the same method as her grill so there were no holes big enough for a chicken to get out of or for a fox to get in.

  Miss Lucretia stopped and looked all around the pen like she was making sure everything was secure. Then to my amazement, she opened a rickety gate, reached in, snatched a squawking chicken up and then closed the gate.

  “I’ll scramble us up a mess of eggs in de morning,” she said as she slipped what looked like a small sock over the chicken’s head to quiet it down.

  Then she started back down the trail, holding the chicken by the feet, swinging it as she walked, and said, “Let’s make haste. We got to get in and outta here fo’ it gets dark on us.”

  “How far we got to go?” I asked her.

  “Most a quarter of a mile. Can’t keep dese things too close to de house.”

  “What things?” Poudlum asked.

  “De place where I got de dogs,” she answered. “Y’all keep yo’selves quiet. When I walks through dis forest, I likes to hear what else is roaming around in it fo’ it hears me.”