Old Drew Id
First Post
Interlude (continued)
-- 9:48 pm, Somewhere in the backwoods bayou near New Orleans –
“So just how f***in’ far is this place, Michael?”
Willie looked over at the kid in his passenger seat, who was trying to portray cool teenaged detachment as he smoked yet another of Willie’s Newports, but who Willie could read fear and discomfort from like a damn newspaper headline. What the hell was this little f***er’s problem?
“Yeah, we comin’ up on it, be ‘bout a mile or two”, Michael replied, blowing out smoke. Willie glared at him again after being given the same damn answer to the same damn question, which he had asked three damn times in the last forty-five damn minutes. He threw the kid that cold hard stare he had practiced so often, and got at least some satisfaction at seeing the boy’s discomfort increase.
“Really, dog! Chill da f*** out ah-ight? Dis da last turn and we be there ‘fore you know it”.
A minute later, the kid pointed out the turn, and they traveled deeper into the decrepit wooded swamp that Willie’s kinfolk called home. At last, they came to a raised clearing with a bunch of cars and a handful of shotgun shacks around. A bonfire was going, and the whole place was lit with Tiki-torches, and it smelled like someone was barbecuing.
Willie parked his ride, got out without bothering to wait for Michael, and began wading through all the people. Most of them were black or some Creole-mix, and a bunch of them were wearing some pretty far-fetched outfits. Caribbean rejects, Willie thought to himself with a smirk.
He ran into Auntie Ells, sitting in a lawn chair near the picnic tables with several other older black people, men and women. She introduced him, and several of the elders gave him hard, dubious stares until he stared just as hard back at them. Willie lit a Newport and slowly exhaled towards them like he didn’t have a care in the world, putting his practiced ‘who the f*** you lookin at’ stare on them.
One of them was a tattooed, virile-looking old man, probably at least in his sixties, who carried a strange walking stick. He was bare-chested except for a deep red vest, and he vigorously shook Willie’s hand with a grip like iron and let a booming laugh that sent chills of familiarity down Willie’s spine. “Oh, you got da backbone boy, starin’ down da Hongoun and da Mamaloa like dat… I tink I’m gonna like you much. Yah, ya just might do. Dey call me Papa Bey”. Willie squinted at him and wondered what he had been smoking. The old guy just smiled and continued, “Come, sit, share a drink and we share some stories, share some food.”
The began to eat, and have a few drinks, and Willie relaxed a little more as they asked him questions about his family, and as he shared rum and barbecue with Papa Bey and the others.
Later the tables were cleared, and the music and laughter increased. People were talking in a group nearby, maybe singing or chanting or something, like some revival meeting, but the conversation of the old people around him and the intense buzzing of too much rum in his head made Willie lose track of what all was being said. He felt, more than heard, the drums start up, with a tattoo of rhythm that felt right and familiar to him.
He took yet another drink from the rum bottle, heard Papa Bey’s laughter again, and felt himself being pulled swimmingly to his feet by a beautiful Creole woman, a woman who had to be half snake for the way her hips were moving, not that he could see much through the rum pulsing through his head. Willie felt his blood warm, things blurred, and swam, and the pressure in his head and other places drowned out the noise, then all he could see was the red of the bonfire, and the woman’s lips, then everything was darkness.
-- 8:55am, Chilton Arms motel, New Orleans –
Pounding. Drums. Pounding, pounding, pounding drums. Drums somewhere nearby were banging out a familiar rhythm, one that Willie knew he had never heard before, but somehow he recognized just the same. He needed to open his eyes…well, he needed to open at least one eye. Just one...
Oh damn, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.
He opened both eyes, struggled to the bathroom, and stood there naked, one hand on the wall. Where the hell were his clothes?
Willie couldn’t remember much, but he did remember Papa Bey, and the Creole woman (Did he sleep with her? Damn, he hoped so). He took a leak, one hand against the wall, tried to keep from wincing with every hammer blow of his pulse.
He finished with the can and started the shower and tried to put together his memories from last night. Well, Auntie Ells probably thought he was a stupid drunk or worse now, though he was vaguely unsure of why it should matter so much to him.
Then he glanced at himself in the mirror and saw the Tattoo.
A sword, surrounded with some kind of scrollwork, in bright red ink, showing up surprisingly well on the dark brown skin on his left arm, just above the bicep. Son of a b****! Those mother-f***er’s tattooed him while he was passed out.
Willie rubbed over the tattoo, and immediately realized the strangeness of it. He felt no pain, there was no bandage or seeping blood… the tattoo was there like it had been there for a very long time, and a vague memory tugged at him from where he’d seen it before.
Papa Bey.
It was hard to suppress the cold chill he got with a headache that bad. Damn. Damn it all, just what he needed. Willie composed himself and went back into the bedroom. He found his clothes, cleaned and neatly folded on a chair. He got dressed in a hurry.
Time for some answers.
-- 9:25 am, Auntie Ell’s Fortunes and Charms, New Orleans French Quarter --
“Wille! How you feelin’ cher?” Auntie Ell’s voice contained amusement, and Willie thought he could even sense something else. Satisfaction? Or pride?
“Like someone been beatin’ on my head with a mallet”.
Auntie Ells laughed loudly, a rich sound that eased Willie’s pain instead of making it worse. “Here baby, drink dis, it taste beau coup bad but it make da head feel much more good”. He took the dark bottle, drank the foul stuff down sputtering, and was about to complain about the taste when he felt it spreading outward from his stomach, cooling and calming him. The drums in his head were nearly gone now, and he felt better than he had felt in months. What the hell was that stuff?
“Better now baby? I was worried ‘bout you for a bit dere” Auntie Ell crooned gently as she handed him a steaming cup of what appeared to be tea.
“What…the…HELL… happened… last night? And what the hell is this tattoo? What did…” Willie spat angrily.
Auntie Ells quickly cut him off just by leaning in with a pointing finger, suddenly and surprisingly menacing for such an old lady, and the room seemed to physically darken with her anger.
“Boy, doncha take dat tone wit ME! I buried me four husbands, five childrens, and seven grandchildrens in my life and ah know tings dat would straighten those silly braids right out was I to tell you!!!”.
Willie, abashed and somewhat embarrassed, found himself apologizing… and caught himself clasping his hands together to keep them from shaking with an unexpected mixture of fear, confusion, and the increasingly obsessive need to try to get a handle on the moment.
Auntie Ells continued, more gently. “Ah know dis is hard for you, Wilson, but give me a moment and ah will explain what ah can.”. She sat down close, took Willie’s shaking hands into hers, and he could feel a palpable sense of calm and confidence almost radiate from her, into him. She leveled a most serious and piercing gaze on him and took a deep breath, as if she were searching for the right words to say.
“You have been chosen, boy, for work I think you have been stumbling towards all your life. Remember when you brother died, how you anger and need to understand burned in ya like a volcano? How you ended up joining the Marines but not knowin’ exactly why?”
“And when in da place of sands, when dose bad men were using dose innocents to shield them from harm while they went ‘bout rainin’ the killin’ down on dose other marines? How ya wanted so bad to run, ta hide, but da anger took ya, and shook ya outta ya fear, and ya did things dat you still don’t know why ya did, and saved dose people?”
Willie’s heart grew cold. How could she know what he had seen in Kuwait? She continued before he could ask.
“How, when you worked for the lawmen, how when dey stepped in da way of justice and your need to move further, da rage took ya, made you do tings dat felt right but lost you ya job and ya woman?”
She could not know these things.
She continued even more softly now. “And when da zombie-men an dere mistress killed ya friend… ya saw Him dat time, didn’t you? You felt Him guide your hand?”, the last part with wonder creeping, uncontrolled, into her voice.
Willie felt his jaw hanging slack, his life laid bare. “How? How… you couldn’t have gotten all that… how did you… I don’t…”
She laid a warm, gentle hand on the side of his face, and squeezed the hand she still held in a grip like iron.
“A man may walk on his feet in life, but da path he took is laid out on his hands, Willie. I knew who you were, who you really were, when I touched you”.
“But… you said it wasn’t real, that it couldn’t be taught… “ Willie stammered.
She smiled. “I didn’t lie to you Willie… Voudoun cant be taught. It has to be a part of you, something that comes from you, from inside ya heart and ya soul. All da trappings just focus what da Loa want ta do through you. I wanted you to feel bettah… my Loa worked through me to make it so. Dat vial held nothing but a common folk remedy for da hangover, but my will, da will of da Loa, made it do tings dat normally cant be done. So I didn’t lie… Voudoun and it’s trappings don’t hold da power, dey only help you to find it in ya self. And for you… da Loa Ogoun has chosen you.”
She lightly touched his new tattoo.
“Marked you, even. Many priests and priestesses might sometime be possessed for a while, by da Loa, and not remember it, but some special people, like you, da Loa is always wit you, always tryin’ to work through you. Ogoun is a harsh spirit to share a body wit… and only you can figure out what dat means for you and what you can do now. But you are Awake now, and you can work wit it if you got da Strength.”
Willie could only respond with stunned silence while it all sank in. He was finally making all of the connections.
The laughing man, the man in the red coat. Willie knew him. He had always been there. He had always been a part of Willie. Well, he might be trying to come out, but Willie would be damned if he was gonna let Ogoun control him.
“And dat is how you got to feel, boy, if ya wanna keep control of ya own head! Strength, determination, heart, it is… a good start.” she burst into his thoughts cheerfully, slapping his knee, while Willie just sat there, mouth hanging open in stunned silence. Again.
Auntie Ells rummaged around the shop for a moment, then came up with a familiar-looking walking stick. “Papa Bey wanted ya to have dis. He left us last night for da other side, to da rest he deserves. It is his Fwet kash, for him, his walking stick. A… focus of sorts.”
“He’s dead? But he seemed so vibrant, so… robust… how did he… what happened...” Willie stammered, yet again feeling his hold on the moment slipping away.
“Baby, havin’ da Loa work through you takes it’s toll, and he was jus’ waiting for you dese last twenty years, boy. I knew him since he was a boy, and a hundred an’ fifty some-odd years is a long time for a man to work without a rest…”
Willie just sat there in silence. And then the drums started again, and the laughter from somewhere in the back of his mind, and he wondered if there would ever be any silence again.
-- 9:48 pm, Somewhere in the backwoods bayou near New Orleans –
“So just how f***in’ far is this place, Michael?”
Willie looked over at the kid in his passenger seat, who was trying to portray cool teenaged detachment as he smoked yet another of Willie’s Newports, but who Willie could read fear and discomfort from like a damn newspaper headline. What the hell was this little f***er’s problem?
“Yeah, we comin’ up on it, be ‘bout a mile or two”, Michael replied, blowing out smoke. Willie glared at him again after being given the same damn answer to the same damn question, which he had asked three damn times in the last forty-five damn minutes. He threw the kid that cold hard stare he had practiced so often, and got at least some satisfaction at seeing the boy’s discomfort increase.
“Really, dog! Chill da f*** out ah-ight? Dis da last turn and we be there ‘fore you know it”.
A minute later, the kid pointed out the turn, and they traveled deeper into the decrepit wooded swamp that Willie’s kinfolk called home. At last, they came to a raised clearing with a bunch of cars and a handful of shotgun shacks around. A bonfire was going, and the whole place was lit with Tiki-torches, and it smelled like someone was barbecuing.
Willie parked his ride, got out without bothering to wait for Michael, and began wading through all the people. Most of them were black or some Creole-mix, and a bunch of them were wearing some pretty far-fetched outfits. Caribbean rejects, Willie thought to himself with a smirk.
He ran into Auntie Ells, sitting in a lawn chair near the picnic tables with several other older black people, men and women. She introduced him, and several of the elders gave him hard, dubious stares until he stared just as hard back at them. Willie lit a Newport and slowly exhaled towards them like he didn’t have a care in the world, putting his practiced ‘who the f*** you lookin at’ stare on them.
One of them was a tattooed, virile-looking old man, probably at least in his sixties, who carried a strange walking stick. He was bare-chested except for a deep red vest, and he vigorously shook Willie’s hand with a grip like iron and let a booming laugh that sent chills of familiarity down Willie’s spine. “Oh, you got da backbone boy, starin’ down da Hongoun and da Mamaloa like dat… I tink I’m gonna like you much. Yah, ya just might do. Dey call me Papa Bey”. Willie squinted at him and wondered what he had been smoking. The old guy just smiled and continued, “Come, sit, share a drink and we share some stories, share some food.”
The began to eat, and have a few drinks, and Willie relaxed a little more as they asked him questions about his family, and as he shared rum and barbecue with Papa Bey and the others.
Later the tables were cleared, and the music and laughter increased. People were talking in a group nearby, maybe singing or chanting or something, like some revival meeting, but the conversation of the old people around him and the intense buzzing of too much rum in his head made Willie lose track of what all was being said. He felt, more than heard, the drums start up, with a tattoo of rhythm that felt right and familiar to him.
He took yet another drink from the rum bottle, heard Papa Bey’s laughter again, and felt himself being pulled swimmingly to his feet by a beautiful Creole woman, a woman who had to be half snake for the way her hips were moving, not that he could see much through the rum pulsing through his head. Willie felt his blood warm, things blurred, and swam, and the pressure in his head and other places drowned out the noise, then all he could see was the red of the bonfire, and the woman’s lips, then everything was darkness.
-- 8:55am, Chilton Arms motel, New Orleans –
Pounding. Drums. Pounding, pounding, pounding drums. Drums somewhere nearby were banging out a familiar rhythm, one that Willie knew he had never heard before, but somehow he recognized just the same. He needed to open his eyes…well, he needed to open at least one eye. Just one...
Oh damn, maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.
He opened both eyes, struggled to the bathroom, and stood there naked, one hand on the wall. Where the hell were his clothes?
Willie couldn’t remember much, but he did remember Papa Bey, and the Creole woman (Did he sleep with her? Damn, he hoped so). He took a leak, one hand against the wall, tried to keep from wincing with every hammer blow of his pulse.
He finished with the can and started the shower and tried to put together his memories from last night. Well, Auntie Ells probably thought he was a stupid drunk or worse now, though he was vaguely unsure of why it should matter so much to him.
Then he glanced at himself in the mirror and saw the Tattoo.
A sword, surrounded with some kind of scrollwork, in bright red ink, showing up surprisingly well on the dark brown skin on his left arm, just above the bicep. Son of a b****! Those mother-f***er’s tattooed him while he was passed out.
Willie rubbed over the tattoo, and immediately realized the strangeness of it. He felt no pain, there was no bandage or seeping blood… the tattoo was there like it had been there for a very long time, and a vague memory tugged at him from where he’d seen it before.
Papa Bey.
It was hard to suppress the cold chill he got with a headache that bad. Damn. Damn it all, just what he needed. Willie composed himself and went back into the bedroom. He found his clothes, cleaned and neatly folded on a chair. He got dressed in a hurry.
Time for some answers.
-- 9:25 am, Auntie Ell’s Fortunes and Charms, New Orleans French Quarter --
“Wille! How you feelin’ cher?” Auntie Ell’s voice contained amusement, and Willie thought he could even sense something else. Satisfaction? Or pride?
“Like someone been beatin’ on my head with a mallet”.
Auntie Ells laughed loudly, a rich sound that eased Willie’s pain instead of making it worse. “Here baby, drink dis, it taste beau coup bad but it make da head feel much more good”. He took the dark bottle, drank the foul stuff down sputtering, and was about to complain about the taste when he felt it spreading outward from his stomach, cooling and calming him. The drums in his head were nearly gone now, and he felt better than he had felt in months. What the hell was that stuff?
“Better now baby? I was worried ‘bout you for a bit dere” Auntie Ell crooned gently as she handed him a steaming cup of what appeared to be tea.
“What…the…HELL… happened… last night? And what the hell is this tattoo? What did…” Willie spat angrily.
Auntie Ells quickly cut him off just by leaning in with a pointing finger, suddenly and surprisingly menacing for such an old lady, and the room seemed to physically darken with her anger.
“Boy, doncha take dat tone wit ME! I buried me four husbands, five childrens, and seven grandchildrens in my life and ah know tings dat would straighten those silly braids right out was I to tell you!!!”.
Willie, abashed and somewhat embarrassed, found himself apologizing… and caught himself clasping his hands together to keep them from shaking with an unexpected mixture of fear, confusion, and the increasingly obsessive need to try to get a handle on the moment.
Auntie Ells continued, more gently. “Ah know dis is hard for you, Wilson, but give me a moment and ah will explain what ah can.”. She sat down close, took Willie’s shaking hands into hers, and he could feel a palpable sense of calm and confidence almost radiate from her, into him. She leveled a most serious and piercing gaze on him and took a deep breath, as if she were searching for the right words to say.
“You have been chosen, boy, for work I think you have been stumbling towards all your life. Remember when you brother died, how you anger and need to understand burned in ya like a volcano? How you ended up joining the Marines but not knowin’ exactly why?”
“And when in da place of sands, when dose bad men were using dose innocents to shield them from harm while they went ‘bout rainin’ the killin’ down on dose other marines? How ya wanted so bad to run, ta hide, but da anger took ya, and shook ya outta ya fear, and ya did things dat you still don’t know why ya did, and saved dose people?”
Willie’s heart grew cold. How could she know what he had seen in Kuwait? She continued before he could ask.
“How, when you worked for the lawmen, how when dey stepped in da way of justice and your need to move further, da rage took ya, made you do tings dat felt right but lost you ya job and ya woman?”
She could not know these things.
She continued even more softly now. “And when da zombie-men an dere mistress killed ya friend… ya saw Him dat time, didn’t you? You felt Him guide your hand?”, the last part with wonder creeping, uncontrolled, into her voice.
Willie felt his jaw hanging slack, his life laid bare. “How? How… you couldn’t have gotten all that… how did you… I don’t…”
She laid a warm, gentle hand on the side of his face, and squeezed the hand she still held in a grip like iron.
“A man may walk on his feet in life, but da path he took is laid out on his hands, Willie. I knew who you were, who you really were, when I touched you”.
“But… you said it wasn’t real, that it couldn’t be taught… “ Willie stammered.
She smiled. “I didn’t lie to you Willie… Voudoun cant be taught. It has to be a part of you, something that comes from you, from inside ya heart and ya soul. All da trappings just focus what da Loa want ta do through you. I wanted you to feel bettah… my Loa worked through me to make it so. Dat vial held nothing but a common folk remedy for da hangover, but my will, da will of da Loa, made it do tings dat normally cant be done. So I didn’t lie… Voudoun and it’s trappings don’t hold da power, dey only help you to find it in ya self. And for you… da Loa Ogoun has chosen you.”
She lightly touched his new tattoo.
“Marked you, even. Many priests and priestesses might sometime be possessed for a while, by da Loa, and not remember it, but some special people, like you, da Loa is always wit you, always tryin’ to work through you. Ogoun is a harsh spirit to share a body wit… and only you can figure out what dat means for you and what you can do now. But you are Awake now, and you can work wit it if you got da Strength.”
Willie could only respond with stunned silence while it all sank in. He was finally making all of the connections.
The laughing man, the man in the red coat. Willie knew him. He had always been there. He had always been a part of Willie. Well, he might be trying to come out, but Willie would be damned if he was gonna let Ogoun control him.
“And dat is how you got to feel, boy, if ya wanna keep control of ya own head! Strength, determination, heart, it is… a good start.” she burst into his thoughts cheerfully, slapping his knee, while Willie just sat there, mouth hanging open in stunned silence. Again.
Auntie Ells rummaged around the shop for a moment, then came up with a familiar-looking walking stick. “Papa Bey wanted ya to have dis. He left us last night for da other side, to da rest he deserves. It is his Fwet kash, for him, his walking stick. A… focus of sorts.”
“He’s dead? But he seemed so vibrant, so… robust… how did he… what happened...” Willie stammered, yet again feeling his hold on the moment slipping away.
“Baby, havin’ da Loa work through you takes it’s toll, and he was jus’ waiting for you dese last twenty years, boy. I knew him since he was a boy, and a hundred an’ fifty some-odd years is a long time for a man to work without a rest…”
Willie just sat there in silence. And then the drums started again, and the laughter from somewhere in the back of his mind, and he wondered if there would ever be any silence again.
