Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery (27 page)

But then something happened. My head became disoriented, and I felt the edge of my mind becoming blurry with one of those visions. It was faint, but it was there for me to experience.

Not now, I thought. Not now, not now, goddamnit.

Had I been drunk, I might have seen everything, smelled the stink of their indiscretions, but I caught enough to make me pull back. I didn’t know if it were my imagination or a true vision, but it was enough to push me back.

Her eyes widened when she saw the look on my face. In that instant, I saw her face not as it had been on that day by the lake but cracked with drug use, sliding down a man’s chest beyond his gut, kissing him every few inches, and then disappearing so that the top of her head was all that was visible.

I flinched. “What?” she said, reaching back to where she had been holding me.

I pushed her hand away. The image in my head was gone, but the silhouette of it remained with me, and I felt sick. “I can’t,” I said.

She leaned back, her face a question mark.

I got up, and I went into the bedroom and picked up an old Stephen King paperback, lying on the bed and letting my eyes go over the words, even if I had no idea what it was I was reading. Several minutes later, I heard a sob as loud as a dog's bark and then the opening and slamming of the front door. The junker Van was driving groaned to life, and she went squealing off into the night.

Fine. Just fine. That was her MO. I just hoped she wasn't going out to get high, and I spent the rest of the night wondering where she was.

It wasn’t until I went into the bathroom to start a shower that I found a silver coin lying face up on the sink. On one side was a prayer for serenity -
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
- and on the other the words “one day.” I found another one on the nightstand on the side of the bed where I normally slept when we were together. She’d meant for me to see them, to give me a hint, I think I might have reacted differently had I seen them first.

*  *  *

"You believe in voodoo, Deuce?" I asked him outright. We were leaning against the bar, under the faint, orange glow of the neon signs. The smell of beer was so strong it was like it was being pumped in through the vents.

But that didn't mean it was unpleasant, either. A bar's smell is often agreeable if you have spent enough time in them, particularly in the afternoon. I don't know if that's sad or not, but it probably is.

"Not any more than a normal man, I suppose, old buddy," he replied. Then his face changed. "Wait a minute. I thought you were supposed to be the one to disregard all that spiritual nonsense."

It was early evening - too early, even, for the street lights to flicker on - and yet the bar was half-full. If I didn't know any better, I'd have thought there was something heavy in the air. People seemed restless. That, and the pulpwooders were noticeably absent, their normal places now manned by a couple of strangers in dingy work shirts.

"You say that," I said, "but I'm sitting on a stool in a bar and I don't even have the
urge
order a beer. Have you ever known me to do that?"

Deuce took a drink and placed his frosted mug back in its spot, rested his arms on the rail. "It doesn't have anything to do with your scheduled appearance in court tomorrow, does it?"

There was a hint of disapproval in his voice, but only a hint. I mean, he
was
sitting here with me, after all.

"No," I said, though I hadn't thought of it in quite that way. It sort of shocked me. "At least I don't think so. I think it has to do with something out of the ordinary."

"Would you get the cotton out of your mouth, Rol? You're talking nonsense."

"Janita Laveau's uncle."

"The old voodoo man."

"Yeah.” I saw two kids, maybe not even twenty-one, necking in the corner. My heart did a weird two step and then went back to normal. “He gave me some godawful drink the other day, and, well, I don't know. Something happened."

"He gave you anti-drinking juice?” Deuce smiled wryly. “The people at Budweiser would shit themselves if they knew that existed."

"Don't be patronizing. What he gave me tasted like it had been scraped from the bottom of the Okefenokee. Called it a cure-all."

Deuce shook his head and groaned absently. He wasn't focused on me. He had become infatuated with a sliver of frost, using a fingernail to push it around the surface of the glass. "And you drank it? That old man handed you a cup full of chum, and you went and you drank it?"

"I was trying to get in his good graces. I wanted some information out of him, and, I don't know, I guess I thought drinking that mess might help me. Goddamn folk magic."

"Magic doesn't even begin to describe voodoo."

"How would you know?"

"I was in the NFL, buddy," he said. "Nobody in this world is more superstitious than a professional athlete,
especially
a football player."

"Really? Even in the pros?"

"Think about it. Football is regimented like no other sport. It follows very specific rules repetitively. As a football player, you get caught up in the repetition. You practice the same game plan, the same plays, the same
movements
, until there's not much more you can perfect. It's easy to become fixated on the little things.”

“I guess that makes sense,” I said.

“That's how players get caught up in believing superstition. Coaches tell them from a very young age, 'It's about the little things. Do the little things right, and you
will
win football games.' Now, that mentality transfers over. The player begins to think the way he brushes his teeth or what he keeps in his locker will have an impact on the game. As long as you're winning, people don't say anything. People, all people, begin to believe these superstitions themselves."

"That's insane. They can't all believe that."

"This coming from the very same person who thought it completely understandable to elicit information about the afterlife from a suicidal hillbilly high on meth-amphetamines."

I scratched my chin, wondering if I should relate my bad dreams to Deuce. "I have my reasons."

But he had already moved back to thinking about his days in the NFL. I could see him thinking about something, hesitating. Finally, he said, "One teammate of mine - and no matter whether you believe me or not, this is no shit - but one of them, a perpetual Pro Bowler, had his own personal mojo man."

"I would have thought that crazy a month ago. Hell, weeks ago. It doesn't sound so bad now."

Deuce finished off his beer. The amber liquid drained into his mouth, leaving only suds, and he placed the mug on the bar and burped. It was dainty and constrained for such a big man, and I nearly smiled. Meanwhile, I sipped on my Coca-Cola.

"Consulted with him before every. Single. Game."

"And what exactly is a 'mojo man?’"

"Think of that old Muddy Waters song, 'Got My Mojo Working.' Not much different than it sounds. Dude keeps little charms and things in a bag called a mojo. He don't do everything the voodoo men do, but he does some things. Kept a criminal's hand with him at all times."

"A
human
hand?"

Deuce nodded in a way that made me wonder if he was having me over. "Lopped off at the wrist. It was all shriveled and desiccated. Saw it for myself before a game against Carolina."

"What possible use could it serve?"

"Said it kept him outta jail. Said, and I'm just saying, but he said he ain't been locked up since he got that hand. What he
didn't
say was he'd given up bum wine, too, but I'm sure he didn't take that into account."

"You'd think he'd of just put himself under a spell, if he was so powerful."

Deuce motioned to the barkeep for another beer. "Logic and spirituality don't mix much. You should know that. Look at your situation. It isn't logical that dirt and grass mixed with water would make you stop drinking."

"I suspected he might have been up to something when he gave it to me, but I just figured that he'd be doing...different things."

"Well, voodoo ain't got nothing to do with sticking pins into dolls and chanting at midnight, either. That's where they get it wrong in the movies."

"The movies always seem to do that."

"Christianity influenced the voodoo practiced in the U.S., but what they believe doesn't have much to do with a man dying on a cross two thousand years ago. That's what the Pro Bowler's main guy told me, that voodoo, on its ear, just means 'contemplating the unknown.’ and damned if there ain't a lot of that going on."

"I never knew you had a grasp on all of this."

The bartender dropped a bottle of Bud in front of him, a napkin underneath, and Deuce took his time transferring the beer to the stein, tilting the glass and the bottle simultaneously. My mouth soured watching the bottle empty.

"What people don't realize is that voodoo is powerful because people believe it, like how believing in God makes people think they can pick up live snakes or drive planes into skyscrapers. There's power in that, good or bad, and you can't deny it.”

“True.”

He said, “ This is no different. Just because people in movies who doin’ voodoo look crazy as shithouse rats shouldn't shake the fact that a lot people do think it's very real. When that belief is there, nothing can displace it. Half the power of voodoo is believing in it yourself, and if you believe it as a priest, so will the people subjected to it."

The door opened and light flooded in, stomping out all the shadows. The spell of the bar was momentarily broken, and, as if the voodoo talk was somehow itself a trance, Deuce changed the subject.

"So, big day tomorrow."

"What is going to happen will happen,” I said distractedly. On top of everything else, I was worried about Vanessa now, too.

"You don't seem worried."

"I've got other things on my mind."

A loud racket emerged from the other side of the room. Buford McKibben, an old and not-quite-retired small engine repairman, slapped the video poker machine and let loose a series of curses only vaguely resembling English. His voice cut like a saw blade through the jangle of Willie Nelson's guitar.

When Buford finished his rant, Deuce's attention returned to me. His face was bathed in that orange light. He said, "Well, at the very least, you've got one day in county lock-up. That's just the rule. Don't you think the people who did this know that? If you take too long a nap, something's going to disappear, I can tell you that. Then you'll have the rest of your life for this to be on your mind, and I can guarantee you don't want that."

"I know. I reckon I'll have to make a big move in the next day or so."

"Big meaning stupid."

"Pretty much."

"What is driving you to do this?"

"’The sins of the father are visited upon the son,’ and, God help me, I was witness to something as a kid I was never meant to see, and I've been paying for it my entire life. Some part of me thinks helping the Laveau family will get some of the muck off my hands."

"All right," he said, trying to sound bewildered, though the look in his eyes told me different. "It's your dog you're putting in this fight. Just don't be surprised if you have to put him down afterwards."

*  *  *

Deuce left shortly thereafter, and I remained glued to my barstool, ordering Coke and staring blankly at the television. I thought about Emmitt Laveau the rest of the evening.

I still didn't have a sense of who he was, really. All I had to go on were the memories of friends and loved ones and a few supernatural dreams.

I knew a few things, though. He had given no one reason to harm him. He had attended Georgia Southern down in Statesboro for a couple of semesters before dropping out to wait tables in Savannah. After bumming around that city for a couple of years, he returned to Lumber Junction with a temporary teaching certificate in hand. Wanted to work with special needs children at the high school.

Two women I had spoken to broke down in tears talking about him. Lorreta Barnes had said, "I had never, until this whole situation, thought racism a problem in this city anymore. God help us all."

Was it, though? I wondered. Could I be certain racism was to blame, or were people hiding something about him and the Brickmeyer family? Jeffrey, especially, seemed weirded out when I mentioned Laveau around him.

Several possibilities emerged, but the most obvious to me was that he had moved back to the Junction to run away from something in Savannah. It made sense that he would come back home if he had run into some trouble down there. However, no mysterious strangers had been noticed snooping around town, and in Lumber Junction folks tend to notice unfamiliar people.

He and Jeffrey Brickmeyer both had had troubles down in Savannah, but they’d lived down there at slightly different times, so there was no real connection between them. Strike that from the investigation.