Roots of Misfortune

by Seth Pevey

  “The dead, I presume?” Felix asked.

  “Yes, the dead.”

  “You can see them? Hear them?”

  “It is not really that different, young man. You pray to Jesus. Do you see Jesus? Do you hear him? Instead of Jesus, I pray to my ancestors. They are there for me.” She paused, watched Tomás stroke the dog’s chin.

  “To answer you: no, I do not see them. The same way you do not see the bottom of the sea when you sail on a ship. And yet you know for certain it is there. For me. I have a personal relationship with the dead. The spirits move everything. I can talk to them and give them gifts and hold conversations with them.”

  “So…these Lwa?” Melancon pressed. “Are they violent?”

  Her top lip curled, just slightly. “I want to know what this is for exactly. I mean, when a Christian person gets murdered, do you start your investigation by asking other Christians to explain Jesus to you? As I’ve said before, it is a peaceful religion with peaceful tenets. Your Hollywood fantasies of blood and cannibalism are nothing but an old, racist cartoon. To think that this has anything to do with…”

  She stopped mid-sentence. The room froze. As she’d been talking, Melancon had pulled out the little red bag from the Korean girl’s bedroom. In front of the woman’s widening eyes he unwrapped it and laid out the two, tiny brown roots into his outstretched palm. She dropped her cigarette in the glass and bent towards the roots and with a stricken silence.

  Terrible tubers, bad bulbs, Felix thought nervously.

  “My partner and I have reason to believe these little roots have something to do with this,” Melancon was saying. “They were not only found on the dead girl, in her very palms, but we located these in the room of the missing Korean young lady as well. We are still waiting on the police to identify just what in the hell this is, but I’m willing to bet it is not a simple cooking ingredient. And, judging by that look on your face, Ms. Azor, I’ve got the feeling you can save us a whole lot of waiting right here and right now.”

  “John the Conqueror,” the woman whispered reverently, not taking her eyes off of the roots.

  “What was that?” Melancon said, his eyes scrunching up.

  “John the Conqueror.”

  “Now why does that sound so familiar?” Melancon asked the room. He stood up, scratched his head, began moving backwards. Over by his desk he took a quick, reflective sip from his bottle and then began to rifle through a shoebox full of cassette tapes.

  “Felix, fire up the computer.”

  But he found it before Felix could do that.

  “What do you mean by John the Conqueror?” Melancon asked her, across the room.

  But she was silent.

  “Nevermind, I do have the tape. Here we go,” he said, and slid it into the ancient boom box he kept by the window.

  Ms. Azor leaned in close to Felix. “You may be in trouble,” she said, in a low voice, just between them. She looked at him with a strange intensity. “The Lwa know you Felix. They speak of you. Your brother…he marches with them.”

  “What?”

  “In their parade.”

  “Who?”

  “Your Robert.”

  Felix felt a leap of the heart.

  “How do you know about my brother Ms. Azor? Did you read about it in the paper or something? Did Tomás tell you?”

  “I hear him,” she whispered, smiling now. “He dances with the Lwa. He drinks gin with them and smiles and rolls the dice of you each night. He sees you and he protects you.”

  Felix felt his bones shiver, if such a thing were possible—a light, fluttery feeling in the very scaffolding of his being. “How do you…?”

  But Melancon had cut him off now. An eerie voice filled the room. A long dead delta blues singer was belting out a song from the boom box. His sadness was pressing and sincere enough to stop the strange conversation between Felix and Ms. Azor.

  My sword is dull, I’m singing blues,

  But that root mean I just can’t lose.

  I hold that root, can’t be undone,

  The Devil’s race is goin’ be won.

  Jump in the game, not nay a quarter,

  Shake the walls, honey, rain the mortar.

  Lost my wife, and then my baby,

  John de Conquer, aint never lazy.

  Lord, I just rub my root,

  Dat John De Conquer Root.

  I tucks it in my funeral suit…

  “What the hell does that mean?” Felix asked, after they’d played it a third time and he had all the lyrics down on a yellow pad.

  Melancon regarded the pad. “Hell if I know kid. It is just some old blues song. I knew I had heard about John the Conqueror root someplace or other. In fact, I don’t think that is the only tune that features Mr. John. Just lucky I could remember this one in particular.”

  All three of the men looked at the young Haitian maid. “Start talking miss,” Melancon said.

  She looked from one to another, uncertainty showing on her face, in her eyes. Her hands trembled as she picked up the root from the coffee table and clutched it against her chest. “As I told you, my religion is a peaceful one. I can’t say more than that. I don’t know anything about this old blues man. This is a simple herb used in some…ceremonies. It’s like… a rabbit’s foot or something. Or, holy water, if you prefer.”

  “You want to say all that again, to the NOPD?”

  She trembled, looking to Tomás for some kind of succor. But the old man had crossed his arms. “I can’t help you Ms. Azor. This seems to be a very serious matter. If you are protecting someone I believe there can be criminal charges laid for the obstruction of…””

  She cursed to herself in French, put the root back on the table. “The spirits have told me that this will not end well.”

  Melancon knelt beside her. “A young woman’s life is in the balance here. We need to know what this is all about. This root. Where did it come from? How is it used? Because you are right, or the spirits are, if we don’t do our job then this might not end well.”

  “You know there is a shop just down the street from here. In that shop there is a woman. She knows everything there is to know about these herbs. You should go and talk to her. Not to me. Talk to Isadore…”

  “You mean the tourist trap?” Felix asked. “All due respect miss, I don’t think some old snake oil salesman is going to be much help. Shysters like that just tell you whatever they think you want to hear. I’m liable to really be chasing ghosts then.”

  Ms. Azor mumbled under her breath. She stared up at the ceiling and down at the floor, mute words passing over her lips.

  Felix tried another track. “Look, we know there are good people and bad people in every religion. Just like there are good and bad Christians. Christians that blow up abortion clinics, Muslims that highjack airplanes, Jews that...well, there are things that bad people do. They have their labels. Maybe we share that label in some kind of way with the bad people, but they don’t speak for us. We get that, miss.”

  She breathed deeply, her palms fluttering on the top of her lap. Some spell seemed to have been broken, and she looked at Felix in a new way.

  “I will tell you. But only because I see that you two are walking a dark road. You need my help. It is not because of the threats, or the good cop bad cop bullshit.”

  “We do need your help, Ms. Azor,” Melancon said. There was an edge to his voice now, losing that even keel that usually kept him so professional.

  “There has been a schism,” she finally said.

  “A schism?” Melancon walked to the window and peered down at Basin Street. “You mean your church split?”

  “I can speak no more. They have gone to Dead Possum Island. Seek your answers there.”

  “Where is that?” Melancon demanded, but Felix had already pulled out his phone and his mapping program. There were three islands named that in the United States, only one of which was in south Louisiana.

  “Got it,” he said to the room.
“Looks like it is in the middle of the Pearl River. Forested sand bar.” He turned back to the woman. “What are we going to find there?”

  She picked up one of the roots from the table again, turning it in her hand, examining it in the light. “The lwa are said to live in a drowned forest. I can only tell you. If I were you, I would not go. There is a hurt, a bad history, a wound that is festering from someplace deep and old. An insanity. Something broken. I can see it clear, can see that it may never heal.”

  She retreated into herself after that, and the answers stopped coming. Her face went blank and her words monosyllabic, uncooperative. She finally looked at Tomás, “I’m ready to go now.”

  There wasn’t much they could do to convince her to stay, so Tomás led her out in the hall and told her to wait. That he would drive her back. She looked at him with vitriol. You tricked me, she said with her eyes.

  The old man stepped back into the office and smiled at Felix. “Sorry about that. Anyway, it seems like you are doing a fine job as a young detective. Perhaps you are on to something here, Felix. Will you go to this Dead Possum Island?”

  Felix nodded his head. “I suppose I have to.”

  “I would bid you to be careful my boy,” Tomás said, and gave him a warm embrace. “It doesn’t sound like the kind of place you’d build a summer home.”

  As they said their farewells downstairs, Ms. Azor waited in the car. Felix stopped his old friend on the threshold. “Tomás…what did you tell her…about Robert?”

  A blank expression. So much dignity and gravitas there. An offence had been given. There was a subtle code of honor with Tomás, and you had to watch and listen for all the things he would not say. The space in between his words. The raising of his head against affronts to his pride. But his face now could hold no lies, not when it came to Robert, who he had loved just like a son, and lost just like a child of his own.

  “I said nothing, Felix.”

  They exchanged an awkward nod.

  “Then how the hell….”

  “I’m proud of you my boy,” he interrupted. “And if I may, some words of advice. Always be a bastion of truth, Felix. That is what you are fighting for. Is it not? You are helping people who have terrible questions. If you’re giving them the true answers, then this is God’s work you are doing here on Basin Street.”

  Over their final embrace, Felix could see Detective Melancon giving him a knowing look from the banister.

  “You are a champion of truth, my dear boy,” Tomás said, his chest swelling with pride.

  Seven

  It was a short drive east to Slidell, and then out to the end of the highway where it terminated against the Pearl River. Felix, after measuring how much was left in the new bottle of scotch Melancon had somehow produced that morning, was trying to drive the El Camino. Like most city-bred young men of his generation, he had little experience with manual transmission, and it was going somewhat poorly.

  But the old detective was far too preoccupied with the new developments to play back seat driver. Melancon played the blues song again and again, on an endless loop, listening.

  My sword is dull…

  “Lead Liver Jackson,” Melancon was saying. “He grew up in the piney woods of East Texas, up by Shreveport. Not very well-known at all. I believe he died down here though…from alcohol poisoning.”

  I hold that root, can’t be undone….

  “Lead liver indeed,” Felix said, pumping the clutch to try and get out of a gear far too low for his current speed.

  “I don’t know kid. Maybe we are overthinking this. In fact, I’m sure I’ve heard mention of John the Conqueror in a lot of other blues songs before. It seems to be some kind of calling card.”

  Felix had a troubled, tired look on his face as he struggled with the metal beast.

  “Maybe we should go see that Voodoo woman down the street. Google sure as hell doesn’t seem to know much about all this stuff,” Melancon said. “Information superhighway my ass.”

  The dog sat in the back seat of the car, panting. Felix had insisted, quite vehemently. In case of danger, he had said. Ever since the dog had helped to save them from the mugging, it was hard to get him out the door without the mutt. If hard-pressed, Melancon would be forced to admit that he wasn’t entirely against having the dog along, either. After all, whatever was waiting on this island might not welcome them with open arms and a cup of hot cocoa. In that case, Scrappy, as they were now calling the creature, would be just the thing. He’d proven himself to be worthy of his name, after all.

  In any case, Melancon discreetly checked the six chambers of his thirty-eight special as they rode the highway. A dog was good but lead was better. Unless it was in your liver, of course.

  Lord, I just rub my root. Dat John De Conquer Root. I tucks it in my funeral suit…

  Soon the land began to wash out around them. Lawns turned into waving fields of saw palmettos, their scaly fingers beckoning in the wind. Black and green water appeared in larger and larger pockets, and the dark tunnels of ancient cypress obscured more and more daylight.

  “The problem is that the GPS route ends here,” Felix was saying, “Obviously there isn’t a way to drive out to a forested sand bar in the middle of the river.”

  “We’re going to rent a boat,” Melancon said. “Or you are, anyway, Mr. Moneybags.”

  The road they were on ended abruptly, and a few orange cones stood between them and further progress. The black water was all around them now, and they were just elevated above the mire by a mere two feet of clay. The rusty bridge that would have allowed them to drive further was elevated up into the air, maybe fifty feet. A small shrimping boat was just passing under it, no doubt headed toward the bounty of the Gulf.

  Off to the side of the bridge, built up on more red clay and oyster shells, there was a parking lot and a building. The shack was made of wood sodden to a state of blackness, and was built high into the air on pier logs. A few men stood out in front of the place, cleaning catfish out of the back of a pickup truck. They used fierce looking filet knives and were bloody to their wrists.

  Melancon pointed and Felix pulled in beside them.

  “Excuse me gentlemen,” Melancon said to the back of them. Only one turned around—a stocky, furry man wearing overalls without a shirt. He had fair skin with freckles, high cheekbones and a black eye, and was already pulling off his glove, which was covered in gore and bits of blue and white skin.

  “Shooo that is a sweet ride y’all got dere.”

  “Thanks,” Melancon said. “It don’t run worth a shit though.”

  The man laughed, and his rough face suddenly looked less intimidating. He peered in at Felix and smiled, wiping his hands on his overalls. The other two men kept gutting fish and paid them no mind.

  “I’m wondering if you can tell me when this bridge goes back down so we can cross?”

  “Dat bridge, she don’t go down no more, her. Not since da storm. Not enough traffic here. De operator ain’t der no more. A good thing too, you close dat bridge down this whole little area gets trapped in da swamp and can’t get out to da main river. Pain in da ass for us fisherman. Calling dat damn bridge operator every time we want some slabs. But not now.”

  “I see.”

  The man stood still a minute watching them, a tinge of uncertainty entering his green eyes. Now his brow twitched a bit like maybe he was thinking about something troubling.

  “Say, you fellas wouldn’t be da police now, you?”

  “We are private detectives.”

  “Oh lawd,” the man said turning to his fish fellows. “Dick Tracy and his podna done come to put us in da pokey boys. Don’t go counting my cats now. I swanny there was more of us fishing here earlier. We in da limit.”

  The other fishermen ignored this exchange, but their talk grew noticeably quieter.

  Melancon did his best attempt to smile. “We are trying to get to a place called Dead Possum Island.”

  The man put his hand on
the car door and looked bug eyed at the two detectives.

  “What you say?”

  “Dead Possum Island, how do we get there?” Felix asked.

  “Oooo,” was the sound the man made. It was some kind of deep whistle from the belly. An old owl sound that contained a strange mix of derision and respect—the kind of avuncular sound one might make in response to a child’s big claims.

  A few turtles slid off a nearby log, and the cypress trees echoed the strange sound.

  “Why in da hell you want to go der fellas? Dat just some old sand bar out in da swamp. Ain’t got nothing but wet trees and coons and hogs there. And you fellas don’t look like you come out to hunt nothing, you. Cept maybe a whole lot of trouble…Say, you got guns with you podna?”

  Melancon nodded at the man. He always had a hard time reading Cajuns, unassailable folk that they were, and that was making him deeply uncomfortable. Just as the swamp did. Just as with all things unknowable. His experiences out in the bayous and swamps had seldom been positive ones.

  He felt Felix tap him on the shoulder, and turned to look at his young partner. The boy had ten, hundred-dollar bills rolled up with a rubber band around them. He placed them into Melancon’s open palm. The Cajun saw it happen, watched the roll getting closer, just as the dog would watch his ball.

  “You ain’t no detectives,” the man laughed. “If you is I’s fixing to go sign up to be one too, me.”

  Melancon cleared his throat, did his best to look at the man soberly. “Let’s just say my young partner has some family resources. Now, a girl is missing in New Orleans and it is very important we get out to Dead Possum Island. Now, can you take us there or not? I don’t know how long it will take but it will damn sure make you more money than catching those catfish will.”

  The man’s brow took on that uncertain squint again. “Listen Dick Tracey. I’m no couyon, me. Dat ain’t no kind of place to be.”

  “What the matter with it?” Felix asked.

  “I’m scared of dat island. Don’t know why. Just get me a bad feeling from it. Down in my gut.”