by Tom Poland
“I got some killing mediums while you all were at the spit earlier today. We got what we need here to hex one Officer Garrett. ’Course, he’s lucky to be alive. You know I could have crushed his fat head with those oysters.”
“I half expected you to,” I said. “Why didn’t you?”
“I got a better death planned for him … a slow, cruel way to die.”
Cameron placed his equipment alongside the box and we headed for the killing ground, Rikard’s place for conjuring and killing with the evil loa, Petro.
We shoved off and eased behind the lodge to a narrow tributary we’d never entered before. Using a forked stick, Rikard lifted camouflaged barbed wire, which we ducked beneath, and the boat slipped ahead. We were on our way. For a long time, the creek wound its way through massive cypress and tupelo before opening into a bay beyond which a peninsula with large trees as dark as coal jutted into the water. Goat heads, broken bottles, and strange dolls hung from tree limbs.
Rikard cut the engine and the cackle of marsh hens filled the air. He broke out his lantern and pale yellow light played across the water. We drifted into a dim swampy area and tied up beneath the largest live oak I’d ever seen as a Great Horned owl floated in—silent as death—and landed.
“Right here is where I’ll do it,” Rikard said, handing me the lantern. He carried his box ashore beneath the immense oak. He went over and kissed the tree and praised the tree in Gullah. “This here is Old Man Oak. He’s the source of all wisdom on this island. His roots hold this island together and my root medicine is as powerful as he is … almost.”
Other strange objects and voodoo dolls with skull-like heads hung from massive limbs as thick as trees themselves. Many holes pockmarked the ground, and it seemed artillery had pounded it a fortnight. While Rikard made ready, I helped Cameron set up his equipment. Then, Rikard took the lantern from me and sat beside a small but deep hole.
“Tell me,” I asked, “what pushed you to kill Garrett?”
“Cade. He shouldn’t have killed Cade. Then too, like I say, sometimes you got to do something evil to feel good. I’m sick of Garrett’s fat-ass. He thinks he can come to Sapelo and kill who he wants. I liked Cade, was going to pass my voodoo on to him. Well, Garrett won’t kill anymore. I stole that bastard’s shadow today. That I did. Now I got his soul, not that it’s worth taking.”
“Is that when you stuck the nail into the ground?”
“Sure enough. I stuck the nail through his shadow. The bastard’s soul, what little there is, is in this nail now,” he said pulling the nail from his pocket. “His ass is mine.”
Rikard removed the heavy black cloth and pulled out a horseshoe crab.
“Most folks think this is a crab, a horseshoe crab, but he’s not. His kin have been here 400 million years. No sir, he’s not a crab, he’s a sea scorpion, and he’s gonna sting the life out of Garrett for forty-eight hours. As for the poachers, I’ll hex them too. You talked me into it. That you did.”
We stood beneath this ancient oak about to witness a “killing hurt.” Cameron popped his lights and a silver flash illuminated the swamp. The light hit Rikard full force, who stood beneath the tree like an oracle of death. I half expected a thunderclap but nothing but the song of cicadas filled the night.
“Now you fellas, when you print this story, make sure you lie. Don’t go calling this a killing hurt though it is. Call it an ‘avoidance hurt’ … a hurt designed to make people stay away from my island, but don’t say Sapelo.”
“Won’t a voodoo priest know the kind of hurt you’re conjuring?” I asked.
“Hell yes he will. He’ll lay hold of the truth, but he’ll understand why you’re lying. The city folks won’t know the difference. So, let’s do it. You watch and make notes. You, Camera Man, you take pictures.”
Rikard reached into the box and withdrew a doll looking very much like Garrett, except it was dressed in black, not the gray-green of Garrett’s uniform. Then he withdrew four more black dolls.
“Now, most killing hurts operate on the “like-to-like” principle. This here doll symbolizes Garrett, which I see you realize. That belly gives it away doesn’t it? You realize Garrett’s got TB, don’t you?”
“TB?”
“Yep, two bellies, a bad case,” Rikard said laughing. “Now these other dolls symbolize the crew you saw in the swamp. Yes sir, I was busy when you all went to the crabbing spit. Made the dolls and this coffin,” he said, pulling out a foot-long black coffin made from boards. Caught the sea scorpion too.”
Rikard took out the knife I had seen him sharpening and slit every doll belly open. Cameron’s flash captured it. As Rikard dusted flakes into Garrett’s doll, a strobe froze a snowstorm of cayenne pepper in the Lowcountry air.
“This here pepper will bring on stomach illness like Garrett’s never known. He’ll think he’s got food poisoning, the damn fool.”
Rikard took out a pen and a sheet of parchment, then stopped.
“Garrett has one ‘R’ and two ‘Ts’ or two ‘Rs’ and one ‘T,’ ” he asked.
“Both. It’s Garrett.”
Rikard wrote Garrett’s name onto the paper, then he put the doll into the coffin and placed the parchment beneath the doll.
“Now right here is when I seal his fate. I have some cursing to do.”
Uttering every son-of-a-bitch that ever walked beneath the sun, Rikard jabbed the nail with Garrett’s soul into the doll’s back, then out. He cursed Garrett as he lowered the coffin into the ground. He placed the sea scorpion into the hole, making sure its stinger pierced the slit cut into Garrett’s doll.
Cameron’s flash burst forth in rapid-fire succession, and strobes lit up the holes, hanging dolls, and swamp like some Vietnam war zone sure enough.
Cameron whispered to me.
“I’m opening up the camera and letting the flashes freeze Rikard. These photos will scare the hell out of your readers. It’ll look like Rikard’s still and moving at the same time. A man of mystery. You’ll love it.”
Rikard pulled a bottle of whiskey and, drawing on it, spat the hard liquor into the face of the black dolls, cursed them, then tossed them into the grave. He withdrew cheesecloth from the box, covered everything with it, and began to kick dirt into the hole with his boots. The Great Horned owl hooted twice.
Just when I thought Rikard was done, he reached into the box a final time withdrawing what looked like a lapel pin. I leaned in and Cameron moved in for a tight shot. When the flash popped I saw a black widow spider impaled on a needle. He stuck the needle into the center of the grave, then drove the nail into the grave right beside the spider. Cameron’s flash galvanized the grave, posterizing the night with a brilliant blue-black flash.
“Now, the spider she will poison anyone trying to turn back my trick. It’s sort of like insurance. Now, turn your back on the grave and curse Garrett. Call him a dead son-of-a-bitch three times and walk straight to the bateau. Don’t look back or the kill, she won’t take.” The owl hooted, then glided from the oak and vanished into the dark.
Picking up his box, Rikard waited for us to precede him. We returned to the bateau, calling Garrett a dead son-of-a-bitch, and it felt good. We pulled off, leaving Garrett’s fate beneath Old Man Oak at the killing grounds.
Upon arriving at the lodge, Rikard said he’d get us up early and we’d strike out for the village at first light.
I eased into bed with Tyler. It was my next to last night with her maybe, a bittersweet night, but one well-spent. Afterwards, I prayed Garrett’s death hex took hold, and it was a good prayer though I was out of practice. I hadn’t prayed since Brit had first lain in the hospital, but I had prayed and it was answered at last. I just hoped Rikard’s hurt worked.
When we awakened, Tyler and I found Rikard and Lorie in the galley, Lorie looking pale as though terribly ill.
“Morning sickness,” said Rikard. Tyler went to her and the two disappeared back into the far recesses of the tree house.
“We�
��ll head to the village toward dark,” said Rikard. “That means it’ll be tomorrow ’fore I can take you to camp, less you want to go late tonight.”
“Let’s see how it goes,” I said. “We’ll take it as it comes.”
***
Early in the evening, Cameron, Rikard, and I cruised well past the crabbing spit to an inlet of tall grasses where we hid the bateau, its camouflage blending it into the grasses such that it wasn’t there at all. If Garrett lurked somewhere, he’d have a hard time spotting our craft. Still, Garrett had a penchant for finding me and I was damn tired of it. We had stumbled onto him the day they butchered Cade and recycled him into the great cosmos but he had since found us twice.
I pulled out my Landstat map. The island’s north end narrowed such that the village sat close to the sea with a lush expanse of swamp and marsh to its back. Access to the village by beach and surf was tempting but not an option. No map or satellite could reveal the path in—a narrow path of ground edging the marsh, sometimes nothing more than stepping-stone clumps of grass, forever flirting with muck and marshy swamp. One false step and you were in the muck. Rikard led the way. Like mountain climbers scaling a treacherous cliff, each placed his feet where his predecessor had gone.
Clouds of mosquitoes hovered just beyond our eyes complicating our pilgrimage into the Africa Nobody Knows. Plumes of smoke drifted up from fires where spits of antelope, I imagined, turned over flames. I half expected a line of unflinching Masai to rise from the marsh grasses. Women naked to the waists like National Geographic photographs wouldn’t have surprised me.
The treacherous path through the swampy marsh at last gave way to a well-worn path leading to the village, which from a hundred yards away looked much like photographs of villages in the Dark Continent. Sure enough smoke rose from thatched huts, and a bonfire in the middle of the village threw up leaping flames. Ancient songs floated over to us, brimming with energy.
As we neared the village, the heavy smell of smoke and fish saturated the air. Wide-eyed children scooted from hiding places to eye us with suspicion before flying away like crows, darting into huts, warning everyone. Intruders.
Like soldiers entering a Sioux village during the Old West’s riotous days, a white flag would have been diplomatic though a Mannlicher would have been more practical.
***
Now the music hit us full force. Hypnotic, rhythmic harmonies transported us to the Dark Continent. We were entering Sapelo’s Heart of Darkness where drumming lay beneath horns whose notes, rising and falling mesmerized us. Others played bamboo flutes, some clacked sticks, and all swayed to the rhythm. A mob of clapping, foot-stomping villagers surrounded the musicians, one of whom sent haunting metallic notes into the air from a long-necked lute, that legendary African instrument that found a path into American bluegrass music—the banjo.
“Of course, I’ve been here before, heard it before,” said Rikard. “I understand these people. That group of men singing over there. That’s an all-man band, brothers only. No women allowed. They’re all brothers—not from one family—but all brothers in one way or another. It’s a tradition. Can’t join the band less you’ve got brothers alongside you. The horns, they call ’ em ongos, they make from goat horns. Now this music is all ’bout family, social, and religious life. They always singing here in the village. There’s songs for work, hunting, and fishing, and special music for the great life cycle itself … marriage, birth, and death. The music’s beautiful, yes it is … just beautiful.”
I listened as a non-musician listens, with wonder and envy. Melodic patterns, various vocal timbres within the chorus, and individual notes hurled a throbbing, haunting melody into the village night.
The fire-lit village with its rustic cabins and palmetto-frond huts lay beautiful and true in the early night. The children with their stark white teeth, dark faces, and lean muscular bodies leaped like antelope. A few crept close, daring to touch our skin, then dashing away amid a gleeful chorus of Gullah ... I drank it in … beautiful noise, beautiful places, smiling faces, and so far, no spears.
We walked in, nearing a hut where young women sat threshing rice, tossing it from sweetgrass baskets, letting wind carry away the chaff.
A few huts beyond the women, a gang of children formed behind an aged man who strode toward us with a walking stick. He had the bearing of a chief.
Rikard stopped and turned to us.
“Y’all just hang back. I’ll do the talking. When I can I’ll translate for you. Me and this old fellow here, we’ve got to exchange knowledge and greet one another right. It’s strong, this tradition of African greetings. I got to let him know I respect his higher age and his status and that we come in peace.”
Rikard walked up to the old man, bowed, said something utterly indecipherable, then lay face-first upon the ground.
The old man raised his stick, turned to the children, and smiled. The children smiled back. A dozen warriors circled us with machetes.
The old man spoke in an odd mixture of English and Gullah, baffling but dignified.
“Oona should kno weh dey oona come from,” said the old man, whose demeanor suddenly turned hostile.
“Dey oona come from the big land,” said Rikard.
“Dey tek’e foot een ’e han. E tru mout. B’fo’ day clean. Study yuh head. Don’t pit mout’ on me,” he said, striking the ground with his staff. His anger fired up the children and the music ceased. The warriors stepped closer.
Rikard bowed to the old man and came over to the three of us.
“He wanted to know where you come from. I told him the mainland. He says you should think hard about staying here because he doesn’t want you to bring him bad luck. He said if he kills you, he kills the bad luck too.”
“I’m all for leaving. Just tell him we came to get Mal.”
Rikard walked over to the chief and a mystifying-but-musical discourse filled the air. Every so often “Mal” and “Oleander” floated over to us.
Rikard came to us again.
“He didn’t want to turn the professor over to us but I told him Mal was bad medicine. That he’d bring Petro to the village. Mal is ours. He said some other bad medicine—Oleander—is gone for good.”
“Why is Oleander gone?” I asked.
“The chief said Garrett’s got him.”
The chief came over to where we were talking and plucked at my shirtsleeve.
“Lemme bresh muh mout.”
Rikard turned to me.
“He wants to bless his mouth. You have any Southern Comfort?”
“In the boat, a bottle’s in my bag.”
“Don’t make him wait.”
Cameron and I hustled to the bateau and back ever careful of falling into the muck. Rikard took the Comfort and handed it to the old man, who swigged upon the bottle at once. Rikard and the chief resumed their banter.
Rikard came over again.
The old man’s feeling good now that he’s got him a drink. Let’s get Mal and leave now before he turns his men on us.”
“Tell him we’ll leave with Mal and take the bad spirits away.”
Rikard talked to the old man who was tipping the bottle up hard. He wiped his mouth, looked at me, and made a hand motion … “Go away.”
Rikard held his hand up in the traditional peace unto you gesture.
“Tuta onana tena,” Rikard said. “Until we meet again.”
We went for Mal, heading to the far end of the village near the beach. Past the bonfire, a view of the other side of the village opened up revealing a white man chained to a post lying in the sand. Mal looked just like his brother, except that his legs had muscles.
He was filthy and wore nothing but shorts and some thin loafers. A heavy lock secured the chain to the post; a lighter lock held the chain around his neck, where sores festered.
“Mallory, Mallory Quarles. Your brother, Murphy, sent me to find you.”
His eyes opened and darted around. They were big and round, protruding as if he
had some iodine deficiency. He stood, tugging at a messy beard.
“Are you on the curriculum committee?”
“No. Your brother sent me here to take you back to Atlanta.”
“Have you analyzed textbook prices per page when changing from the quarter system to the semester system?”
“Listen, I work with your brother in Atlanta. He sent me to get you.”
“Do you know the history behind the mortar board?”
Cameron had been watching this exchange with a wry smile.
“Forget the mortar board,” he said, “studies prove that if you wear a beret when you teach, grade point ratios increase. But it must be a black beret.”
Mal pondered Cameron’s declaration, then, scratching at his beard, grabbed Cameron by the arm.
“Algorithms hold the key to the universe. Do you understand that?”
A muscular black man placed his feet on Mal and opened the lock. Mal clutched the man’s legs, and the man, kicking at Mal, tossed the rope to me.
I tied the rope around Mal’s neck and led him through the village. Children mobbed us, amused by the professor being led away like a dumb animal. We left the village, and as we entered the high grass, Rikard cut loose.
“Professor. Got a problem for you to solve,” Rikard said, eyes sparkling. “Straight outta ancient literature. What I caught, I threw away. What I could not catch, I kept. Comprende?”
Mal looked at Rikard with glazed eyes, scratched his head, tugged at his beard, then bent over and picked at his knee.
“Don’t keep the professor in suspense,” I said.
“Fleas, my friend, fleas. I caught fish and threw ’em back. I caught fleas but couldn’t catch ’em. So I kept ’em and they bit like hell. That they did.” The old Mullet Man laughed and gave me a wink.
I had doubts about giving Mal one dollar, much less $50,000. Still, he was Murphy’s brother and Murphy was cunning. Did Mal live on insanity’s edge in a world all his own, or was he crazy like a fox?