The last application on the fifth night had to be delivered at exactly midnight and involved blowing graveyard dirt through the intended victim’s keyhole. A strict provision of this formula called for fresh grave dirt which was to be obtained from the final resting place of a woman who had given much grief to her husband.
Those who would pooh-pooh the efficaciousness of hoodoo practices may note here that on this exact day was buried Madm. Edith D’ardent Sousette, a well-known local harpy who is said to have tormented her poor husband to the grave three years before. Since the time of her husband’s passing she has become famous among New Orleans merchants and service people as one of the most vicious and bad-tempered shrews ever to don a skirt. Her burial was attended by no one save the parish priest and the grave diggers, who commented that, if possible, she would rise from her coffin and unleash at them a punishing fury of agitated directives.
Marie Laveau’s complex network of spies provided information regarding Madm. Sousette’s death and the exact location of her grave plot before this news reached a grateful public. As a result Marie II was well prepared when the time came to gather her final ingredient, and we set off from the house just after nine that evening to complete her mother’s work.
Along the way Marie told me it was very important that the intended victim be home at the time the dust entered through the keyhole. For this reason she thought it best to wait in hiding until the victim arrived, make a dash to Madm. Sousette’s plot, gather the necessary material and then return to administer the coup de grace.
We hid huddled together in a darkened alleyway until just past ten o’clock. The sounds of stumbling feet and some giggling alerted our attention to an obviously drunk Geek Baby Jem and his female companion—also drunk—who were arm in arm for mutual support and staggering up the front stairs of his house. “Neva seen that one before,” sneered Marie. Her eyes blazed at Geek Baby’s new girlfriend. “Well, you in for a disappointing time, sister. Jem gonna need splints from the doctor to make his man pay attention to you on ‘dis night.”
Once they were safely inside the house, Marie and I raced to St. Louis Cemetery #1 and weaved around tall, white-washed sepulchers on our way to the Sousette plot. In no time we came upon a mound of freshly turned earth with blades of the grave digger’s tools still lodged in the moist soil. In semi-frenzy, I grabbed one of the spades and began digging. Marie looked at me and flashed a gorgeous smile.
“Calm yourself down now, Richard. We don’t want to be meetin’ up with Edith Sousette tonight. We just need a little teaspoon or so of her dirt.” I leaned the tool against a nearby tree and Marie dropped to her knees and got serious.
She reached into her dress for several items and removed her long glass earrings. While still on her knees she carefully pinched a bit of dirt into a small jar and laid a coin on the grave. While doing this she leaned close to the soil and addressed the deceased: “Madame Edith Sousette, I ax for yo’ help in makin’ trouble fo’ a bad, bad man. Dis Geek Baby Jem been round-eyein’ five different wimmin at the same time, an’ you know that ain’t doin’ nobody right. I lay money down for your dirt, Edith Sousette, an’ want you to help me make his man act like a sick ol’ garden worm what ain’t got no strength.” Marie placed another coin on the grave and removed another pinch of dirt. “Edith Sousette, make dat Jem’s man soft as puddin’ an’ fall down his leg. I’m bringin’ your dirt to his place to make dat happin.”
Marie drew some signs in the fresh soil with her finger and then announced that we were finished. She stood, gave me a determined look and said, “Got to move with this hot batch and git de job done.”
Back outside Jem’s house, we carefully approached the window and peered inside. Our victim had by this time quit his regular street clothes and was now clad in only a scanty loin cloth that had been crudely hand-painted to resemble leopard’s skin. He was strutting around the room with a whiskey bottle in one hand and the other lasciviously rubbing the front of his brief.
His face was angled into the most preposterous grin one could possibly imagine and with each of his stylized steps he uttered the words, “Here come, here come.” Jem began circling his eager prey who had arranged her suggestively parted legs on a chez lounge so that her skirt was lifted to the ham area. She was unbuttoning her blouse to affect a shockingly low neckline as she sipped on her drink and watched Jem’s courtship dance from the corner of her eye.
Marie whispered in my ear, “Sabrina told me ‘bout him prancin’ around in dem leopard’s skin skivvies. Make de man look like a damn fool if you axe me.” She turned back toward the window with raised eyebrows and said, “Sister’s lookin’ pretty good tho.”
She tugged at my shirt and led me over to Jem’s front door. Marie drew a hollow reed from her dress, loaded it with the dirt from Madame Sousette’s grave and placed one end through the keyhole. She paused at this point as if waiting for a cue. After a moment we heard a voice from inside cooing, “Co’mon big cat, give your mama some of dat stuff.” And, “Ooo-Wee Jem stud, I’m burnin’ wet from your kisses and kaint wait no mo.”
When Marie heard a creaking sound from a chez lounge attempting to bear the couple’s weight, she let fly with a heroic blow into the reed and sent a load of Edith Sousette’s grave dirt into the room. Following Marie’s lead, I pressed my ear to the door and awaited the desired results. An unnerving silence followed and after a few moments in this atmosphere I became overcome with fear and a desire to cut and run.
Just then the quietude was broken by a sound only a woman can make when she has been wronged. “What the hell is that thing?” She shrieked. “What you think you gonna do with that? Man, git off me; an’ while yo at it go take off that leopard wash rag. You ain’t no cat, you nuthin’ underneath, you hear me? I’m a full woman what needs a full man, not some little … garden worm!”
Marie’s eyes widened with each invective and she nodded in absolute concurrence with the woman’s last observation. Then came a flurry of activity from within, including glass shattering against the wall and the clanging of pots and pans. Marie and I quickly moved to the side of the house. The front door flew open, a naked Geek Baby Jem appeared, promptly tripped across the threshold and tumbled down the front stairs into the street. His leopard skin underwear followed him out the door and fluttered to a crumpled landing on his backside.
“Oh baby, it don’t have nothin’ to do with you,” he moaned. “It’s some kind of damn hex or something.”
“Hex my ass, Jem. I believe you been doin’ somebody else an’ ain’t got nothin’ left for your nighttime woman. Don’t you go tryin’ to tumble me again, you drained snake!” With that she let fly a heavy iron skillet which found its mark with a ringing gong on the back of Jem’s head.
Marie and I slipped away from the house and walked briskly down a back street. There was a possibility that Jem actually was exhausted from an earlier assignation, but in my mind there is now compelling evidence concerning the authenticity of the two Maries’ hoodoo applications and the rapidity of their effects. None of this needed to be stated out loud. There was only the rumbling of thunder in the distance and the smell of rain hanging heavy in the air. Just as the first large drops began falling, Marie stopped in her tracks, felt for the lobes of her ears, and recalled that she had left something back at the graveyard.
“My earrings! They’re still on Edith Sousette’s grave, Richard. Ohh this is very bad, Richard. They must be removed at once before bad juju moves in on me. You saw dat Edith’s powers at work and I don’t want none of that on me. We got to fetch them back right now.” By the time we reached St. Louis Cemetery #1 we were both soaked to the bone and found our way through the driving rain and around the sepulchers by the illuminating flashes of lightning.
When we reached Madame Sousette’s grave, Marie dropped to all fours in the mud and began groping for the lost jewelry. The earrings were located at the next lightning flash, but when she attempted to stand up her foot caught the bottom o
f her skirt and ripped it away in front from where it was stitched to the top half of the dress.
Marie stood in the rain and mud with an exposed black triangle between her navel and the tops of her legs. She looked up at me, and with her free hand grabbed the top of the ripped skirt and tore it completely away from her body. The earrings were thrown into the night and she pulled me down on top of her by grabbing at my belt and pushing my legs out from under me. The lightning and thunder seemed to intensify as we rolled into the wet earth. My moment’s reverie of a week past at her mother’s house came to an ecstasy of reality on the muddy ground of St. Louis Cemetery #1. I now understood why I was allowed only a few seconds’ preview back on Bourbon St. for this was going to be no ordinary sexual experience. The intensity level surged to several peaks over a period well beyond the capacity of any normal male. I felt as if sensory feelings were being time and again sent close to an echelon where one may no longer be able to stand the effects.
The experience was such that I sometimes felt positively crippled with ecstasy, yet coincidentally I was energized beyond normal limits. I have no idea of how long we were on the ground and wrapped around each other but when I began to regain my senses it had long since stopped raining and the clear skies were hosting a bright summer’s moon.
As we were dressing before venturing into the street, Marie told me how exhilarating it was for her to see Jem’s girlfriend on the chez lounge and how her posed body stimulated her womanhood to a boiling point. This goes a way towards proving my long-held suspicion concerning Sapphic arousal, tribidism, and the Eros of women brave enough to be excited by such sights. I continue to maintain that this form of stimulation can often produce the best reaction in women and advance heterosexual couplings as well. As proof, on this night The Captain was not only standing tall on deck as never before but energized and willing to springboard into the warm sea and bounce back on deck to do it again and again.
When we returned to the house, Marie Laveau was there to greet us at the door. She congratulated us immediately on effecting “the cure,” although I have no idea how she could have possibly known what had taken place across town only a few hours earlier. There was also an undeniable reference to the episode in the rainy graveyard. She could read the astonishment on my face and said, “I cautioned you that the powers of the mind are very commanding, Captain Burton, and that they can be moved by someone who is close.” She looked at her daughter and smiled. “And do not think that the mind’s eye cannot read a lover’s story that is frozen for an instant in the brilliance of a lightning flash.”
I slept for nearly all the next day, as an exhausted man should after a hard week’s journey and a Herculean conclusion. At five in the evening I was hosted for tea by the two Maries. “You have completed your portion of the bargain, Captain, and have made us very happy in the process.” Marie Laveau placed her arm across her daughter’s shoulders, “Very happy indeed. Now I am obliged to return the favour by asking Marie to escort you to the place where you may be reunited with your doctor friend from Switzerland. What you wish to do at that point is your option as a free man, and God only knows that the wishes of a free man in this country are something that needs to be respected.”
She turned and disappeared from the room without saying another word, leaving Marie II to take control of my ship. “Are you ready to leave, Richard?” I told her that I should take this opportunity to rejoin my companion whom I had not seen in almost a month. Marie looked at me carefully and said, “I understand. I know where to find him and I think we should leave for dat place now so’s we can meet up with him ‘fore it gits too late.”
I think I knew what she was getting at, so we left straightaway and headed for our destination, a place Marie called Congo Square. As we strolled through New Orleans town at sunset, Marie passed comments on a wide range of subjects, but it was the people of this city who commanded the majority of her attention. “Dese damn Keskydee’s.” (I later realized that she was referring to French speakers, who were always asking, Qu’est-ce qu’il dit? What did he say?) “Dey think a Negro woman jus’ dere for de takin’. Think dey can jus’ show-up at de Placage an’ take their pick. Negro woman jus’ as fussy as anybody else when it comes to pickin’ out her man, Damn Keskydee don’t even know dat.
“Another thing—white man thinks every Negro in New Orleans is his slave. We got mo’ free blacks here dan the whole rest of the South ever had, ever. Makes it hard for decent folk to git by in this town. At’s why hoodoo so important—ain’t no man black or white kin mess wit that. No sur, lay some hoodoo on people an’ dey start to know what it’s all ‘bout.”
22 Cease fire and end your routine. —Ed.
X
DIFFICULTIES AT THE DEBUTANTE BALL
I HAD HAD ENOUGH OF racial injustice and hoodoo for the time being and wished to change the subject. My thoughts were of rejoining Steinhaeuser and how soon before we would be at that place. I began asking her questions about Congo Square.
“Congo Square is where de’ culled folk go to have fun an’ be social with each other. We go dere to dance the calinda an’ the pile chactas”—Marie whirled around as she walked—“and the conunjallie, the bamboula, or the carabine, anything you wants to do. It’s where a man an’ a woman can git together and fool around…maybe have a little drink.”
I slowed my pace when I heard these last two words and put them together with thoughts of Steinhaeuser. I must have appeared rather distracted.
“Did I say something wrong, Richard?”
“Oh, not really, Marie. It’s just that past experiences sometimes give me reason for pause. I’m sure it’s nothing, let’s just carry on.” It was well past sundown when we reached Congo Square, and already there were groups of people congregating about in lots of fives and tens. That is save for a mass of activity involving perhaps sixty or seventy people located near the center of the grounds.
As we approached, the sounds of wild hand-drumming and laughter became louder and louder, and it was apparent that the participants, who were all writhing in synchronized contractions to the music, were near beyond themselves in an ecstasy of rapturous delight. The carrying-on was infectious and we found ourselves being drawn towards the celebrants and their music. On closer inspection, it was clear that the excitable gathering was arranged in a large circle around the object of their uncontained enjoyment.
Marie and I weaved through the crowd of dancers and peered over the shoulder of one of the sweaty participants to catch a glimpse of the main attraction. It was Steinhaeuser, hopping and shaking his body around in awkward response to the rhythm of the drums and violins. John’s efforts to dance were positively spasmodic. His head jerked up and down in defiance to the beat, and only the Creator knows whether his step was a hyper-activated nervous reaction or some sped up and grossly modified Germanic folk dance.
In any case, Steinhaeuser’s bizarre gyrations, however inappropriate, seemed to delight the crowd to the extent that different women fought to enter the circle and pair themselves with this pale dervish. In front of the madly dancing physician and all around him, the girls displayed their best moves and strained every nerve to outdo one another in an attempt to capture his attention. The drumming and clapping increased to a fever pitch when one of the largest women I have ever seen danced into the circle and began to jig towards John. She was uncommonly tall and were it not for her womanly clothing, hips and bust line I would have thought an exceptionally well-conditioned male athlete had entered the contest. She began swinging her powerful arms about according to the music and moving in rhythm towards a seemingly mesmerized John Steinhaeuser.
Upon reaching her target she reached up, pulled her blouse down from off the sides of her shoulders and while quivering in place, stuffed Steinhaeuser’s head between her massive breasts. She then flung her arms out to their full extent and began shaking her hands and upper body. Her head fell back and she uttered a deep, masculine “Ha ha ha” before she leapt up and locked
her mighty legs around the small of his back. Steinhaeuser began staggering about the circle. His head was completely buried in flesh with only a shock of wiry hair erupting from the twin mounds and reaching just below the woman’s chin. I fully expected his knees to buckle under the weight of his Amazon cargo, but somehow John managed to remain upright and keep dancing.
“Take a ride, Billiette. Ride de man down, Billiette,” shouted members of the delighted audience. And ride Billiette did. Steinhaeuser wobbled her to one side of the circle and back to another. Women screamed and covered their faces as the couple approached their position and others stiffened their arms in anticipation of a bone-jarring collision. At last Billiette’s great mass bested poor John, and the two of them crashed to the ground, with Steinhaeuser flat on his back and his face still lodged between her breasts.
He began thrashing his legs about and there was a muffled attempt at communication coming from beneath Billiette’s chest.
Marie and I rushed into the center of the circle, recovered Steinhaeuser’s body from the wreckage, and got him to his feet. His face was covered in perspiration and although he was mumbling something about not being able to breathe he wore a cockeyed look of supreme satisfaction across his face. It was a moment or two before he turned and recognized his rescuer, and when he did his eyes widened and he began to chuckle. “Dick! My God, man, I thought you were dead. Where the devil have you been?” His laboured breath was heavy with the smell of alcohol.
Steinhaeuser began to describe the lengths to which he had gone to try and locate me. When he reached the part about recruiting a hoodoo priestess, he did a double-take and fixed his eyes on Marie II. “My God, Burton, however do you come up with such exquisite women companions? Don’t we know each other my dear?” He groped in her direction for an introductory handshake, and then in a fit of jealous rage Billiette rushed up, clamped her arms around John, and pinned his appendages to his side. She leaned her head down and began kissing him on the side of his mouth. I explained that this was the daughter of the woman he had hired to find me, and, for the benefit of the imposing Billiette, I hastened to add that Marie and I were enjoying a splendid relationship, thank you, and that we have been staying together on Bourbon Street.
Ruffian Dick Page 14