"Cold tonight." I speak to the man gathering a bag from the overly full back seat of my '91 Cutlass. "You sure you don't want a jacket?" The purple on black suit he's wearing can't be warm enough for weather like this.
When he pulls his shoulders back from the inside and turns up to address me he flashes the electric smile again that convinced me to take him up when he offered me that first drink last night. "Nah cheri," that drawl didn't hurt either. "I'm gon' be just fine."
I follow him away from the spot where we'd parked. It was off the beaten path a bit, down a game trail I wouldn't have known was here before we pulled off the unpaved road. I realize I haven't been this far out of Denver in over a year.
Away from home.
Away from work.
The heavy crunch of gravel replaces the light crunch of snow underfoot when we emerge from the treeline. He waves a hand over one shoulder and beckons me follow. Something in my gut wakes for a moment with the thought
I just met this man.
I don't know him.
I'm in the middle of nowhere.
But there's no going back and I follow. The bag he's carrying is leather and flat bottomed, like the medical bag a doctor who makes housecalls might bring with him. It's old though and dirty from years of use. He walks with the sure steps of a man of control. He has it together, I think to myself. He isn't the basket case I am lately. Two weeks ago I lost my mother. Last week I lost my Boyfriend. Two days ago I lost my job. The man says he can turn that luck around.
He calls it bad juju.
I'm a desperate woman.
I believe him.
We stop at a place where one dirt road meets the other and he turns about dead in the center. All the way around, three hundred and sixty five degrees surveying slowly. He paces from one side to the other, seemingly examining the places where the road meets the white and crystal freeze of the grass. For what I could tell you. "This do fine, I suspect." He nods, smiles and continues, "stay back behind me, out the crossroad." I nod and follow the instructions stepping off the road slightly off to one side so I can see whatever it is he's doing over his shoulder.
He moves to his knees and removes a small wooden box from the top of the open bag. It's ebony with a strange shape carved into the top with an elaborate brass hinge along the back. He opens it, and befins placing items inside. Some weird black dirt, three cigars carefully removed from their own box, three glass tubes filled with something brown and thick. After that he begins humming as he places the bones of what I can only assume came from a cat but I force myself not to dwell on too long.
Then, the last things. The things he'd taken from me.
A hundred dollar bill he burns just above the box. The ash that doesn't fall in with the rest blows about his face and he doesn't even seem to notice.
My old debit card with the terrible photo of a nineteen year old me with a zit on my nose goes in the box with the rest.
Then I see the little piece of red ribbon come out of his inside pocket. This one I'd balked at. I mean, I spend a lot of money on my hair. At least I used to. I didn't want some stranger ruining it. But when he gave me the choice between that and ruining my manicure I acquiesced. After the ribbon and the hair it's tied around disappear into the box he slams it shut. The sound breaks through the night like a gunshot.
When he locks the box I swear I hear someone talking behind me. I turn to look back behind me. Just an open field and the treeline not far from there. I squint and make sure I don't see any light, or movement, or anything that might give me an idea of human intrusion on the quiet. But there isn't. Ghosts, I think to myself. The idea though is put out of my mind quickly. I might believe in bad juju but I don't believe in ghosts.
When i've turned back he's digging a white handled hunting knife into the ground. It only takes him a few more seconds to dig a hole for the small wooden box. He buries it even faster. He lightly taps one knee with his hand. Then again with the other. Then anouther a bit more quickly, this time his right hand crosses to slap harder on the top of his chest on the opposite side. Again, the opposite. The pattern increases in speed and intensity as he reapts it. By the end the sound of his chest is loud enough I can hear it where I'm standing. That is, anyway until he starts wailing low in a language I don't understand. After that the blood rushing in my ears and the sound of my heartbeat drown out both.
He stands and turns about. The silence that follows the song is palpable for a moment before the wind kicks up. It smells like a tomb, i'd swear it. I'm reminded of a childhood trip to Stonehenge with my family, why I don't know. I give aquick look around when I think Ihear the whispers again. He's smiling now, his head cocked slightly upward like he's adressing someone much taller. "There you are." I'm getting the creeps suddenly I've never wanted to back out of anything so badly in my life. I shouldn't be here. I want to go home.
I want my mom.
"Brought you a deal. You can catch this one when it come across the shadow but she wanna get that good luck dance an' she need your mojo t'do it. I'mma front you, D'accord?" He turns and nods in my direction. Not smiling now, I think. Why'd he stop smiling? He reaches into his left pocket with his right hand and his right pocket with the left at once. In one hand he holds a black rabbit's foot, in the other a circle of wood carved to look like some kind of coin. He holds both out in front of him atop open palms. I swaer the coin shimmers like silver in what must be the moon. The blue glow off the wood must be that. It must be. The man's chest ulluates and that wailing chan starts again. The whisper wind kicks up again and I swear his face flashed twice like I was seeing his skull beneath in another trick of that moonlight.
Then he sighs, his neck dropping as if some weight had just been placed in the back of his head.
And then it's over. A few deliberate steps to pick up the knife and place it gingerly in the bag and we're leaving, heading back toward the car. "You gon' want this, ma cheri." He hands me something softand warm. The rabbit's foot.
I sigh, shoving it in my pocket, suddenly feeling foolish. Coming all the way out here on a cold and cloudy night so some stranger can burn a hundred dollars I won't make back in the freezing cold so some stranger can give me a fucking rabbit's foot. Thank god Travis can't see this. He'd never let me live down getting fooled by this bullshit.
When he pulls his shoulders back from the inside and turns up to address me he flashes the electric smile again that convinced me to take him up when he offered me that first drink last night. "Nah cheri," that drawl didn't hurt either. "I'm gon' be just fine."
I follow him away from the spot where we'd parked. It was off the beaten path a bit, down a game trail I wouldn't have known was here before we pulled off the unpaved road. I realize I haven't been this far out of Denver in over a year.
Away from home.
Away from work.
The heavy crunch of gravel replaces the light crunch of snow underfoot when we emerge from the treeline. He waves a hand over one shoulder and beckons me follow. Something in my gut wakes for a moment with the thought
I just met this man.
I don't know him.
I'm in the middle of nowhere.
But there's no going back and I follow. The bag he's carrying is leather and flat bottomed, like the medical bag a doctor who makes housecalls might bring with him. It's old though and dirty from years of use. He walks with the sure steps of a man of control. He has it together, I think to myself. He isn't the basket case I am lately. Two weeks ago I lost my mother. Last week I lost my Boyfriend. Two days ago I lost my job. The man says he can turn that luck around.
He calls it bad juju.
I'm a desperate woman.
I believe him.
We stop at a place where one dirt road meets the other and he turns about dead in the center. All the way around, three hundred and sixty five degrees surveying slowly. He paces from one side to the other, seemingly examining the places where the road meets the white and crystal freeze of the grass. For what I could tell you. "This do fine, I suspect." He nods, smiles and continues, "stay back behind me, out the crossroad." I nod and follow the instructions stepping off the road slightly off to one side so I can see whatever it is he's doing over his shoulder.
He moves to his knees and removes a small wooden box from the top of the open bag. It's ebony with a strange shape carved into the top with an elaborate brass hinge along the back. He opens it, and befins placing items inside. Some weird black dirt, three cigars carefully removed from their own box, three glass tubes filled with something brown and thick. After that he begins humming as he places the bones of what I can only assume came from a cat but I force myself not to dwell on too long.
Then, the last things. The things he'd taken from me.
A hundred dollar bill he burns just above the box. The ash that doesn't fall in with the rest blows about his face and he doesn't even seem to notice.
My old debit card with the terrible photo of a nineteen year old me with a zit on my nose goes in the box with the rest.
Then I see the little piece of red ribbon come out of his inside pocket. This one I'd balked at. I mean, I spend a lot of money on my hair. At least I used to. I didn't want some stranger ruining it. But when he gave me the choice between that and ruining my manicure I acquiesced. After the ribbon and the hair it's tied around disappear into the box he slams it shut. The sound breaks through the night like a gunshot.
When he locks the box I swear I hear someone talking behind me. I turn to look back behind me. Just an open field and the treeline not far from there. I squint and make sure I don't see any light, or movement, or anything that might give me an idea of human intrusion on the quiet. But there isn't. Ghosts, I think to myself. The idea though is put out of my mind quickly. I might believe in bad juju but I don't believe in ghosts.
When i've turned back he's digging a white handled hunting knife into the ground. It only takes him a few more seconds to dig a hole for the small wooden box. He buries it even faster. He lightly taps one knee with his hand. Then again with the other. Then anouther a bit more quickly, this time his right hand crosses to slap harder on the top of his chest on the opposite side. Again, the opposite. The pattern increases in speed and intensity as he reapts it. By the end the sound of his chest is loud enough I can hear it where I'm standing. That is, anyway until he starts wailing low in a language I don't understand. After that the blood rushing in my ears and the sound of my heartbeat drown out both.
He stands and turns about. The silence that follows the song is palpable for a moment before the wind kicks up. It smells like a tomb, i'd swear it. I'm reminded of a childhood trip to Stonehenge with my family, why I don't know. I give aquick look around when I think Ihear the whispers again. He's smiling now, his head cocked slightly upward like he's adressing someone much taller. "There you are." I'm getting the creeps suddenly I've never wanted to back out of anything so badly in my life. I shouldn't be here. I want to go home.
I want my mom.
"Brought you a deal. You can catch this one when it come across the shadow but she wanna get that good luck dance an' she need your mojo t'do it. I'mma front you, D'accord?" He turns and nods in my direction. Not smiling now, I think. Why'd he stop smiling? He reaches into his left pocket with his right hand and his right pocket with the left at once. In one hand he holds a black rabbit's foot, in the other a circle of wood carved to look like some kind of coin. He holds both out in front of him atop open palms. I swaer the coin shimmers like silver in what must be the moon. The blue glow off the wood must be that. It must be. The man's chest ulluates and that wailing chan starts again. The whisper wind kicks up again and I swear his face flashed twice like I was seeing his skull beneath in another trick of that moonlight.
Then he sighs, his neck dropping as if some weight had just been placed in the back of his head.
And then it's over. A few deliberate steps to pick up the knife and place it gingerly in the bag and we're leaving, heading back toward the car. "You gon' want this, ma cheri." He hands me something softand warm. The rabbit's foot.
I sigh, shoving it in my pocket, suddenly feeling foolish. Coming all the way out here on a cold and cloudy night so some stranger can burn a hundred dollars I won't make back in the freezing cold so some stranger can give me a fucking rabbit's foot. Thank god Travis can't see this. He'd never let me live down getting fooled by this bullshit.