Authors: Lynda La Plante
He laughed, watching her, and then gulped down two big shots before he screwed back the cap. Lorraine took out her cigarette pack and, as she had forgotten her lighter, had to cross to him for a light. He struck a match, looking up into her face.
“Oh yes, you got nice eyes too, I like the way you look. Like the way you hold yourself, Mrs. Page, you are a classy lady, mmm, mmm.”
Lorraine returned to her precarious perch.
“You were married to Edith Corbello?”
“Close, but not quite right. I was married to her sister, Juda Salina.”
Lorraine chewed her lip. He dragged on his joint, his eyes mocking her as she tried to think how she should lead up to what she wanted to ask him, thrown slightly by the fact that Elizabeth Caley had given her incorrect information.
“So you are married to Juda Salina?”
“Yes, ma’am. We met on that movie, best money I ever earned in my life. They hired a whole bunch of us for bit parts. We was due to film for ‘bout a week, but it got to two and then three, man, I was sitting around for more’n a month. They paid for it, though, paid well. I got this bar outta the proceeds, I never earned such easy money.”
He chuckled again.
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“And Jiida and her sister?”
He nodded, his face almost obscured by thick smoke as he dragged again and a-gairi ‘on the joint.
“The Salina sisters was brought in because of the problems, you know, to kind of quiet things down. It was gettin’ outta hand, but I didn’t care, I was being p-aid. None of us had employment.”
He lay back, smiling at her.
“You know, it’s hard to believe but those two sisters were beautiful, man, they was glorious to look at. But then nature has its way, and they blow up and get so bloated it’s hard to believe that once they was a force. A beautiful force, -yess, yess, I didn’t know which to fuck first.”
He stared vacantly at a spot on his filthy, stained ceiling and sighed, rubbing himself.
“She was beautiful too, Elizabeth Seal,”
Lorraine said softly.
“No, Elizabeth Seal was just a pretty little thing. I used to feel for her, locals was against her, she was white and she was rich, and she was not Marie Lave au. Never could be, so they thought. Marie Laveau is a goddess, she is Avorshiped in these parts, and to get a pretty little white girl to play the part was creatin’ bad feelings. Real bad feelings.”
He curled up his legs and lay on his side.
“So they bring in the Salina sisters to kind of calm the waters, you know, to act as spiritual advisers, because folks here think they are related way back to Marie Laveau, and if they give their blessing, we’ll, it’s theirs to give.”
Fryer looked at the burning stub of his joint and dropped it into the filled ashtray at his bedside.
“I am getting very stoned. It’s age, takes less and less now. Do I have another drink? Yes, Wnnk so. You sure you won’t join me, Mrs. Page?”
He drani from his bottle again, and replaced the cap, then started to make anoth er joint.
“You know why Elizabeth Seal is crazy, Mrs. Page?”
he asked, h-is attention on his joint. Lorraine’s was on the bottle: she wanted a drink badly now.
“No, I don’t.”
“You want for me to tell you?”
“Yes.”
“Then come and sit near old Fryer, come on, sit close.”
“I’m fine where I am,”
she said.
“Are you. now? Well if you say so, but I have never had a woman cornplain. I may be old, but my snake never lets me down.”
“Tell me more about Elizabeth Seal,”
she interrupted him.
“Then will you sit by my side?”
Lorraine shrugged, wanting to get him to talk, not ramble.
“Maybe I will.” “Ohhh, then lemme think. Elizabeth Seal. Well, she was a girl with big hopes, big dreams, and they was all falling down because she was beginning to wonder if the film would ever get made. There was a whole lot of trouble, folks gettin’ drunk and not turnin’ up for work, an’ if an’ when they did they started fighting. Then Juda found out something about Elizabeth, don’t know how, but Juda could find out anything. Nobody ever had secrets from the Salina sisters.”
“Found out what?”
Fryer chuckled, taking much longer to roll up the joint, as his movements were so slow.
“Marie Laveau was a woman of mixed race, and Juda finds out that little Elizabeth Seal has black blood in her veins. Way back obviously, but it was there, like a sleeping cobra. So Juda gets paid a lot of money and she gets everyone together and says they got to stop the threats, stop the curses.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hell, they had been laying coffins and conjure balls outside her trailer, beatin’ the drums so she couldn’t get any rest, making that child’s life a nightmare with their chanting and their curses. It was rumored they’d even done some kind of sacrifice so that she’d be unable to walk or talk, or speak the shit-filled lines they was calling the script. And then one night a whole bunch of the motherfuckers took her out to the swamp, saying they was just wanting to show her rituals. Well, they done a lot more.”
“Like what?”
Fryer hesitated, taking yet another hit from the bottle, and Lorraine could see from his difficulty in screwing the cap back on that he was getting drunk as well as stoned. He rocked backward and forward for a moment, sucking his teeth.
“She was what they call a zombie, you understand what I am saying? They had scared her so bad she was wild-eyed and stiff, no life inside her. Scared the shit outta me, scared everyone that saw her, ‘cause they was supposed to be taking care of her. She was no more than fifteen, sixteen maybe, and it didn’t look like she could work no more. And … oh yeah, they got this big scene all set up and they was runnin’ this way an’ that, wonderin’ if they should get a doctor in to see her.”
“I don’t follow.”
Fryer licked his paper and rolled up another joint.
“Then they brought back the Salina sisters, and paid them even more money. Miss Seal was locked up with Juda for two days. Then Juda got to a meeting, well, all the black people, called us into an old church, and they locked them doors, and Juda stood up on the pulpit and she screams and she goes into a kind of fit, and she tells everyone they done a bad thing, a very bad thing. She
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says Elizabeth Seal had every right to be Marie Laveau because she was as much black as she was. And she held up her picture, and her voice went real quiet and she says …”
Lorraine had to wait as he puffed his joint alight.
“Look on the face of your Queen, look on her face and tell me if you don’t see the likeness.”
He began to chortle, curling his legs up again.
“I said to myself, I’m gonna have a piece of that beauty. She was so good, so powerful, an’ she shut every mouth up, made them get so scared. She says every hex laid at Elizabeth Seal’s door is gonna come back doublefold on them. They screamed and hollered, man, they screamed that church down. Like the windows shook from their yelling like crazies themselves.”
“Was it true? Was what Juda was saying the truth?”
He turned on her and his face suddenly became angry.
“Who knows what is truth and what ain’t? Those two sisters was being paid more’n me, more’n any of us, on the condition they got that film moving. I dunno what is true an’ what ain’t.”
He sighed.
“All I know is that the only scene in the film that’s any good is that little girl dancing with the snake. She sure as hell didn’t look white, didn’t act white, and from then on Juda and her sister stayed in her big fancy trailer until they finished the film.”
Fryer opened his bottle again and drank. His big black eyes were becoming unfocused. ť
“What do you think happened to Anna Louise Caley?”
He lifted his hands up.
“Hell, I don’t knovv^ but I’d say something bad. A girl don’t disappear around here unless thBfwant to, or something bad took place.”
^
Lorraine opened her briefcase.
“I want to show you something.”
He rubbed himself and leered at her.
“I’ll show you something if you come and sit by me.”
Lorraine took out the voodoo doll wrapped in a towel.
“I found this at Tilda Brown’s, she was a friend of Anna Louise’s. Do you know what it means? More important, do you know who would make something like this?”
Fryer stared at the doll nestled in the towel. He sniffed and sat back.
“Where you say you got this?”
“Tilda Brown, she committed suicide. This was hidden in her room.”
Again he sniffed, and then covered the doll up.
“Mrs. Page, I am not a believer but I don’t play with this kind of thing. You get it outta here, and you go with it. Go on, get out, get outl”
He sprang from the bed, scaring her, pointing his gnarled finger at her chest.
“Take that shit outta my place. I don’t believe, Mrs. Page, but that’s not to say that I don’t get un-easy, understand me? I don’t meddle with them, and they leave me alone.”
“No, I don’t understand.”
He leered at her.
“No, I don’t expect you do, no white does. You all try to take it apart, try an’ understand, but you never will. Just as black is black and white is white. You want some advice, throw that thing away, burn it because
“
“Because what, Mr. Fryer? Why don’t you tell me what this thing is?”
“I’d need a lifetime, honey.”
Lorraine picked up the doll, rewrapping it carefully.
“I have only a few more days to try and trace Anna Louise Caley. I need all the help I can get.”
He pointed at the doll.
“Somebody is trying to frighten someone. Whoever gave that to that little girl wanted her to hurt long and bad, so bad that destroying it would make it worse. That is one bad, bad thing.”
She snapped her briefcase closed.
“Maybe that’s what it did, frightened a young eighteen-year-old girl into taking her own life.”
“I seen worse.”
“What could be worse?”
Fryer pulled the poster down from the wall.
“What they did to Elizabeth Caley, slave to the drums, slave to the drums.”
He sat down on his bed and picked up his trombone.
“You know, it’s all about being a slave. I am a slave to this instrument, it dominates my life, I am only a whole man when I am playing. Losing myself, feeling the sounds, like that little Elizabeth Caley feeling the earth beneath her feet and dancing herself into a trance until she felt the blood she had denied flowing like juices, and she could dance. Do you dance, Mrs. Page?”
“No, no, I don’t think so.”
“That’s sad. But then you have a sadness to you. I feel something from you, Mrs. Page, sit by me. Come on, now, share a drink with me.”
She did, not wanting to, but drawn to him and to the bottle. He unscrewed the cap, wiped the bottle neck with his sleeve and passed it to her, no longer being sexual toward her, just kindly. The bourbon hit hard on the back of her throat, warming her, and she smiled at him as she took another swig.
“You know when they brought the slaves here, they dragged them from their roots and their religion by their chains. They buried their dead in big open graves with cats and dogs. They were confused and frightened, seeing their loved ones without food and water to travel to the other side. They were fearful because they believed that if the dead did not have food and water for that journey, their souls would forever walk the earth. And superstition, brewed with fear, is a powerful weapon.” He replaced the cap on the bourbon and picked up his bartered trombone.
“You give that thing you brought here to someone who is not afraid, it means nothing but a bad smell. But if you give it to someone who believes, it burns the nostrils and it becomes a terrible thing, a curse. Do you understand what I am saying?”
She was trying to follow what he said, wondering if Tilda Brown would have known what it meant to receive such a hideous curse.
“Do you think that Juda or her sister could have made it?”
He stared at her, and she had to look away from his dark, unfathomable eyes.
“No, no, they would never abuse what they believe is a gift from the spirits. They do good work, Mrs. Page, not bad.”
He touched the center of her forehead.
“They have the sight right in there, they can see the past and the future.”
“But you don’t believe?”
she said softly.
He closed his eyes, his hands stroking his trombone.
“I have seen them working themselves up into trances, plucking out evil, healing pain. But I never wanted to be a part of it, because I could never be. I’m not like them, my soul is young, my soul lives in my music and I am a happy man. I never wanted all that pain, never could deal with it.”
He pursed his lips and blew two low blasts on his trombone. Then he looked at her with a smile, his gold teeth gleaming in th^faint light.
“Find the maker of the doll, Mrs. Page, and you’ll have the evil, or stay beside me and we’ll make sweet music.”
^
Lorraine smiled back, unafraid of him, lilBg him, and he knew it because he laughed.
“That’s my evil, I am a ladies’ man. I sure do love the ladies, and I can tell you, I have had many, and not one went away unhappy.”
She stood up, laughing with him.
“You sure about that?”
“No, I ain’t ever sure about anything but this.”
He held up his trombone. He didn’t look up when she walked out, but started to polish the instrument with the edge of his shirt, seeing his grizzled face looking back at himself. He knew he had said too much, but that was always the way with him when he was stoned. He rested back on his pillow, and frowned.
Something scratched at his neck and he slipped his hand beneath the pillow to feel the necklace. He hadn’t worn it since the boys had returned it covered in sticky blood. It had unnerved him, scared him a little, and he would never wear it again. But he sure as hell wanted it close when he slept because it could have been his throat those crazy kids had cut open. It had been given to him by Juda. She had loved him then and never wanted any harm to come to the man she cared about. She’d even warned him never to part with it, as it warded off any evil coming his way. So far he’d been lucky, unlike that poor limping son of a bitch.