Dale held both hands over his head. “That’s a record, for sure.”
Butch gave him an overhead hand slap. “Too bad we can’t do that every day.”
Tim joined in on the hand smacking. “Who says we can’t?”
Jesse was doing the math in his head. “What say we split the seven fifty at one fifty per man and put the rest in the bank for expenses?”
As the band was agreeing to the deal and dividing up the money, The Wheelers thundered up on their motorcycles and stopped to say goodbye. They covered the band in dust and exhaust fumes.
Dupre shouted loud enough to be heard. “Where you guys playing next?”
“We’ll be in Gretna and Thibodaux and then at the Safari Club in about a month,” Rene yelled back.
“See you there.” Dupre waved and kicked his motorcycle into gear.
With that, thirty-three custom Harleys rumbled off and thundered down the road with enough ground-shaking power to ripple the bayou waters.
CHAPTER FOUR
CARMEN
Jesse decided not to tell even Amy about hearing the voice for the second time. She was busy looking for a teaching job. He didn’t want to trouble her. He felt superstition beginning to take control of his mind. Maybe there was a Voodoo doll somewhere with his name on it?
Was it even Voodoo he was encountering? He knew nothing about Voodoo, but there were many in New Orleans who claimed to be expert on the subject. They had shops on Bourbon Street that sold herbs and charms and amulets for healing or protection. They told fortunes for a fee. Most of them were con artists. One woman seemed to be the real deal. She was a tall, Creole woman of French descent who called herself Carmen. Months earlier, Jesse had been introduced to her by Ruthie the duck lady.
Ruthie was a French Quarter character: an older, white woman who constantly roamed the streets with one or two ducks on a string. She looked like a bag lady in the beat-up, plaid housecoat she always wore. She was either crazy or pretending to be. It didn’t matter. She knew The Quarter as well or better than anyone.
Ruthie brought Carmen to hear the band at Fritzel’s. Jesse paid attention. He was instinctively attracted to the woman with the aristocratic bearing. She held her chin up in a way that seemed more curious than snobby. She had red hair tied up in a bun on top of her head. Red lipstick made her fair skin look pale. Her blue eyes shined confidently, as though they could see through all pretense. Her prominent but graceful nose twitched occasionally as though she was experiencing the world through a dog’s highly elevated sense of smell.
Dutch, ever the gracious club owner, welcomed Ruthie and Carmen to Fritzel’s and brought them glasses of his best red wine. His bow to the local celebrities was so low and reverent his head nearly touched the floor.
Carmen was an accomplished flirt. “Thank you so much, Dutch. You know I love you.” He smiled broadly. The legends of The French Quarter knew each other well.
Dutch returned to tend his bar. Ruthie listened with pleasure as Jesse and Carmen became acquainted quickly and joyfully. They were eager to learn what they could about each other. Carmen was as interested in rock and roll as Jesse was in Voodoo. Their attraction was vaguely sexual at first, but morphed quickly into something far more intimate. Early in the conversation, Carmen put her hand up to Jesse’s flowing, white-boy Afro. “May I touch your hair?”
Jesse took her hand and guided it to the curls dangling down his chest. At the same time he put his other hand around her neck and touched the hair on the back of her head. “Only if I can touch yours.”
As they touched each other’s hair, Carmen took a deep breath. “You will need my help someday soon. Come to me for guidance and I will give it to you freely.”
It sounded like more than a ploy to get him to buy trinkets. She sounded like destiny calling. They didn’t spend as much time together on their first meeting as either one of them would have liked. Jesse had a set to play and Carmen had to get back to her shop.
Jesse hadn’t seen Carmen since their first meeting but he had often thought of her. Now that he needed to know more about Voodoo, she was the only one to consult.
He walked cautiously into Madame Carmen’s House of Voodoo, a small shop one block off Bourbon Street on Saint Ann Street. The place smelled like incense and lavender candles and patchouli oil. The walls were packed with masks and rattles and bracelets and beads and tarot cards and jewelry and Voodoo dolls with more accessories than Barbie.
An antique cash register rested quite officially on top of a glass jewelry case. No one seemed to be tending shop.
“Hello,” he called out.
A rustling behind the beaded curtain in back caught his attention just in time to see Carmen come gliding out to greet him. She was dressed in a red silk blouse and wearing more makeup than he remembered. Her lashes were so long that when she closed her eyes it looked like curtains dropping on a stage.
She offered her hand. “Hello, hello, I’ve been expecting you.”
Jesse kissed her hand self-consciously. “Do you even remember me?”
“Yes, yes, your name is Jesse and you used to play at Fritzel’s but now your band is too big for The Quarter.”
“How do you know that?”
“I am a Voodoo queen, a direct descendant of Marie Laveau. I know everything.”
“Come on,” Jesse said.
“Actually, Ruthie the duck lady keeps me posted.”
Jesse laughed at her honesty. “That’s more like it. So, who is this Marie Laveau you’re talking about?”
“Oh, you have so much to learn. Come in back with me.”
“What about customers?”
Carmen turned around to smile at him. “Not to worry. Did you not notice how the old floor creaks?”
She led him back into her lair.
Jesse expected to see a crystal ball on a table, but he was ushered into a large office, packed with books and charts and a modern typewriter and telephone. There were two wooden chairs, one on either side of a massive, hand-carved, mahogany desk.
Carmen sat in the large chair. “Come, sit with me. Don’t worry, I’m not charging you. I remember my promise. I made it not so long ago. This is not about money. This is about you and me. So, how can I help you?”
Jesse took his seat obediently. “Let me get right to it. I need to learn about Voodoo. What is it? What can it do? Where does it come from?”
Carmen reached across the desk and held his hands in hers. She closed her eyes and said nothing. Her hands were rough but not callused. Jesse could smell her lavender hand soap along with hints of jasmine perfume and peppermint body oil. Her fragrance was fresh and exotic.
“I feel you,” she said after a pause of at least one full minute. “You have a dark reason for asking these questions. Let me shed light on your questions and then we’ll talk about why you ask them.”
Jesse nodded resolutely. He was completely taken with this woman and her amazing memory, not to mention her intuition.
She smiled in a way that let Jesse know she enjoyed his attitude. “Let me think where to begin on your Voodoo education.” She closed her eyes again for a long moment. “All right, how about this? Marie Laveau brought Voodoo to New Orleans after the terrible times of the Civil War. She was the daughter of a free Creole woman and a white man who happened to be the fifth mayor of New Orleans. She was a charismatic who became a political force. Her brand of Voodoo got big fast, as though it had a mind of its own. By eighteen seventy-four, crowds of ten thousand blacks and whites came to watch the blazing fires of her healing rituals on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, just north of the city.”
“Blacks and whites?” Jesse asked.
“Voodoo was bringing the races together a hundred years before Motown started doing it with soul music.”
“So, what is Voodoo?” Jesse asked.
“Voodoo is the way we open the gate between the spirit world and the material world of humans. We invite spirits down to possess or protect or even to punish
earthly souls.”
“Wow,” was all Jesse could muster as he and Carmen let go of each other’s hands.
“Wow, indeed,” Carmen said. “Now, what’s really on your mind?”
Jesse poured out his story of the mystery man and the magic mushrooms and the Voodoo cow skull from the bayou and the mysterious voice. Carmen listened carefully and nodded occasionally. She laughed when he told about the image of the skull in his mind the night the lights went out at Fritzel’s.
“Yes, we heard about the police pulling your plug,” she said. “That probably had more to do with cops being paid by rival club owners. There wasn’t anything Voodoo about it.”
Jesse rubbed his fingers against his temples. “But why would I see the cow skull flashing in my mind when I closed my eyes?”
“I cannot answer that at this point.”
Carmen reached behind her and pulled out a large volume from the bookshelf. “I’m looking into the mystical powers of psilocybin mushrooms.” She put on reading glasses and looked sternly over them at Jesse. “You do know you are playing with fire?”
Jesse let his fingers slide down the side of his face and wove them together as a resting place for his chin. “I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
“I’m not talking about just the mushrooms. I’m talking about the music as well. Music plays a powerful roll in Voodoo. It connects us to the spirit world. I’m sure you’ve noticed how a song can take you back in time?”
Carmen let the question sink in. “Music transcends time. Music is powerful magic. It flows through time.”
“Like an old song makes you feel young again?” Jesse asked.
“It breaks through the illusion of time. Time is an invention of the material mind to make sure everything doesn’t happen all at once.”
Jesse laughed. What she was saying made sense although he wasn’t sure why.
She went on. “Music is more than memory. And it does more than make people sing and dance and fall in love.”
“That sounds like enough.”
Carmen smiled at him again. “Music connects people to each other. But more than that, it liberates our self from the bondage of the five senses and connects us to the oneness of the universe. You can call it God or Jesus or Buddha or whatever you want. The oneness is hidden from us by the material world. The power of music helps lift the veil off the world of the senses. In a way, the magic mushrooms do the same thing.”
“I definitely understand that.”
“Yes, I am sure you do. But you might not understand why or how this voice you hear is coming to you. I say you are playing with fire because you have added the power of hallucination to the power of music and Voodoo. It is like throwing gasoline and oil onto a bonfire.”
Jesse thought the Voodoo priestess was making more sense than anybody he’d ever met. Carmen pulled out more books and charts and continued reading, alternately shaking her head up and down or side to side.
Finally, Jesse couldn’t take it anymore. “What I need to know, is the voice real or is it some kind of hallucination?”
Carmen looked over the top of her reading glasses, more sternly this time. “Oh, it’s real all right. Nothing happens by accident on Bayou Lafourche, or anywhere else for that matter.”
“So, why me? Why am I the only one hearing this voice?”
Carmen sighed deeply. “You are a fortunate man. The spirit is here to guide you. Do not be afraid of it. I do not know why the voice has chosen you. Or why you have chosen to hear the voice.”
“What do you mean, I chose to hear it?”
“The spirit world is always there. It is all around us. People are blinded to it. We think it does not exist if we can’t see it or hear it.”
“But I did hear it.”
Carmen waved her hands at him. “Not with your ears. The only sound the spirit makes is inside your soul.”
Jesse leaned forward and raised his eyebrows. “Is this spirit coming back from the dead?”
“Ah,” she said. “The world of the living and the world of the dead are the same world. The spirit will teach you that.”
“Is the voice coming from the cow skull?”
Carmen thought about the question for a moment. “I’m not sure. But I would guess the voice and the skull are the same thing coming to you on different levels so you might better understand.”
“Better understand what?”
“Better understand what you must do with your music.”
“What do you mean?” Jesse asked.
“I can say no more. I do not know. You must learn for yourself.”
He sat quietly for a long moment, pondering all she had said. Carmen smiled big enough to show her perfect teeth as she saw him struggling with the notion that he might have a duty to the music, instead of the other way around.
Jesse smiled back and changed the topic. “What does the voice mean when it says, ‘You got to keep running’?”
“What does that mean to you?”
Jesse thought about the underground railroad and how people had to keep moving to avoid capture. “It sounds like I’m a runaway slave.”
“Remember this. Words, and signs in general have no intrinsic meaning. They do not mean the same thing to every person. The value is in the interpretation, not in the words themselves.”
“I don’t feel like a runaway slave.”
Carmen looked over the top of her glasses again, this time with a discernible twinkle in her eye. “We are all running away from many things and we are all slaves to many masters.”
“I’m not afraid of anything or anybody.” Jesse realized it wasn’t true even before he was finished saying it.
Carmen threw her hands over her head. “You are whistling through the graveyard.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Carmen sighed again. “You are pretending to be unafraid. That is a fool’s game. You cannot be brave until you admit your fears and face them.”
“What are my fears?”
“Ah,” she said. “I see we are making progress.”
Jesse had to marvel at how skillful she was with her game of mirrors.
“So what should I do now?” he asked.
“First, you must learn the way of Voodoo. It will help you understand and appreciate what the voice is trying to teach you.”
“Where do we start?”
“I will take you to the grave of Marie Laveau in the St. Louis Cemetery here in the city. It must be only you and me. We will see if the voice of Voodoo speaks to you there. I will conduct a ceremony to welcome the spirit of Marie. Then, you will see where it takes you.”
Jesse’s tone turned suspicious. “This is starting to sound like a haunted tour.”
Carmen waved her hand like she was shooing away a fly. She became stern. “You must do it with me.”
Jesse leaned in toward her. “I wouldn’t do it without you.”
Carmen smiled at Jesse. “Fine. Then I will tell you one more thing. One more thing you must remember about the voice you hear.”
“What?”
The room became eerily still as the space between them filled with the smell of a lavender candle, cleanly snuffed at the wick by an invisible pinch.
Finally, she lowered her voice and looked him in the eye. “Remember this. You do not have to do everything the voice tells you to do.”
Voodoo wasn’t the only strange thing happening in Jesse’s life.
The Gay scene in New Orleans was second only to the Castro District of San Francisco. Men from all over the country flocked to New Orleans to flee the homosexual repression that darkened North America in the 1970’s. They came out of the closet with a vengeance once they hit New Orleans and realized the coast was clear. Labor Day became their special celebration.
Hundreds of cross dressers, transsexuals and liberated gay men and women frolicked down the streets for an event known as The Southern Decadence Parade. The revelers did their best to insure the event lived up to i
ts name. Even in the city of parades, this march of crimes was a mocking and a shocking to the stocking.
Devils in orange-flame capes wore overgrown horns on their heads. Queens with giant crowns had flowing, topless gowns with long, golden gloves. The peacock-feathered man was naked except for a red jock strap. His bare ass was as red as his jock from getting spanked by anyone who felt the urge.
All five members of The Divebomberz entered the parade, led by Dale in his bright blue jump suit and tambourine. After two Hurricane rum drinks at Pat O’Brien’s Bar, it didn’t matter if you were gay or straight. The Decadence Parade was a giant, irresistible conga line. Jesse marveled at the brass bands, dancing troupes, clowns of all kinds, and Cadillac convertibles overflowing with bearded men in lingerie. The customary and mandatory parade beads were tossed to the crowds of horny, gay men shouting from balconies and flaunting their newfound sexual freedom. The streets were flooded with testosterone. Police and city officials were remarkably tolerant of what always turned out to be a peaceful demonstration. It was Mardi Gras with a gay twist.
Rene came up from the bayou for the occasion. Jesse and Amy joined the street party as well. They did circle dances with Butch and Tim until they were dizzy. Dale danced from one provocative embrace to the next. Everybody was loaded to the gills on booze and whatever drugs they could get their hands on.
It took several hours and quite a few miles, but The Divebomberz party, including Dale, eventually became exhausted and spun out of the parade. They walked through Jackson Square to kick back in the French Market at Café Du Monde with beignets and chicory coffee. And water, lots of water.
Everybody was still in a festive spirit when Rene asked Dale, during a lull in the conversation, “What’s it like to be gay?”
His question hit Jesse like a bucket of cold water. It wasn’t a question he had asked Dale, even though they’d been friends for years. Jesse looked around the table. Nobody gasped out loud but they all turned to see how Dale would react.
“I mean is it always this much fun?” Rene tried to cover as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
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