“And the boy next door,” Dora says with a shudder, “gets a puppy for Christmas.”
“Now, remember how Dora said Byron got everything he ever wanted?”
Pinky and I nod.
“But there’s one exception,” Ralph tells us. “Marie – she’s got the asthma, bad, and she can’t have no animals. Set her wheezin’, send her to the hospital, you know? So Byron couldn’t have no puppy or kitten, not even a hamster.”
“What happened is this,” Dora says. “Little Emory Boberg, the kid next door on the other side? He gets a puppy for Christmas, a little golden lab, cutest little thing. And he’s out walking this little pup past Byron’s trailer, and Bryon asks can he play with it.
“Emory doesn’t want to, but he’s scared of Byron – so he hands him the leash. Byron gave him some money, sent Emory down to the 7-Eleven to get Slurpees for the both of them. As soon as Emory’s out of sight, Byron digs a hole in the yard and buries the puppy up to its neck. Now, if I’d been here, maybe I coulda stopped it, but I was off to Lafayette at my sister’s.”
“Byron tried to explain this later,” Ralph says. “Some lame-ass story about how the pup keeps slippin’ his collar and puttin’ him in the ground is Byron’s way of keeping him from runnin’ off. While Byron does his chores. Like he couldn’t wait ten minutes for Emory to come back. Like anyone believes Marie really told him to mow the lawn – it’s December. Anyways, he gets the power mower from the shed and begins to cut the lawn.”
“Oh,” Dora says, putting her head in her hands as if she can’t even stand the memory. “Lord.”
“Little Emory comes back just in time to see Byron cut right over the puppy’s head. I’m down here when Emory lets out this horrible scream. And me and whoever else is around, we come running. It’s just a geyser of blood. You can’t imagine.”
“He mowed the dog’s head off?”
“So, Emory’s mother, she calls the police. And they come. And no one’s buying it when Byron insists it was just an accident.”
“He was charged with malicious mischief,” Dora adds.
“And what happened to him?”
“Nothing. He got off with counseling. The Bobergs moved away as soon as they could.”
“Word got out,” Ralph says. “That Boudreaux boy ain’t right. Got a screw loose, maybe more. Parents told their kids to stay away from him. The church wouldn’t let him preach no more.”
“A little while after that, Byron dropped out of school,” Dora says. “And that’s when he started hanging around down in Morgan City.” She stubs out her cigarette. “Hooked up with that nigger witch doctor.”
I’m so put off by the racism I want to leave. I stand up, but Pinky ignores me. “You got a name for this guy?”
“I already told you,” Dora replies. “How would I know something like that?”
“I think I know who it is,” Ralph says, “but I don’t know his name. You go down around that area in Morgan City and you ask, and somebody will tell you where to find him. Hell, folk come all the way from N’Awlins to see him, get a number or who’s gonna win the Final Four. He’s world-famous, that fella.”
“Just… uh… ask for ‘the witch doctor’?” Pinky says. “That gonna do it?”
“Well,” Ralph says. “They don’t exactly call themselves witch doctors. They got some voodoo name for it what I don’t remember. Higgan? Hungin?”
“Houngan,” Pinky says.
“That’s the one. And see, there’s more than one o’ these guys over there in the city. The guy Byron took up with after the puppy thing? Ask for the one with no upper lip.”
“Get outta here,” Pinky says.
“Swear to God,” Ralph tells him. “I seen him. Maybe it’s just some kind of voodoo jive – I don’t know the actual cause of the injury.” His face contorts into a look that’s half smile, half grimace. “What he says is – a zombie got pissed at him and bit it off.”
“Bit off his lip?” Dora gasps. She crosses herself in a surreptitious way, the motion so minimal as to be almost undetectable.
“Like this,” Ralph says, and makes a lunging, biting motion toward Dora, “like a snapping turtle.”
Dora lets out a yelp.
“One bite,” Ralph says. “That’s all it takes.”
CHAPTER 35
Pinky and I catch lunch at Katy’s, a ramshackle place on the Bayou Boeuf that offers a bait shack and boat launch along with sandwiches and drinks.
“Now, that’s a good po’boy,” Pinky says, taking a big swig of Coke to wash down the last bite. “Good as the food is in N’Awlins, it’s gettin’ harder and harder to find a top-drawer po’boy. My personal theory is that you got to get out into the countryside, because the places in town go an’ change the grease too often. What you think, Arthur?”
Arthur is the man behind the counter, apparently an old friend of Pinky’s. (“No one ever forgets me,” Pinky explained. “That’s for damn sure.”) Arthur’s dark face opens in a sweet gap-toothed smile. He shakes his head. “This a genuine compliment or you sayin’ my grease got whiskers?”
“No, I mean it,” Pinky insists. “It’s like aged beef. Young oil’s got no bouquet. It’s just neutral. Doesn’t add anything.”
“Ça s’adonne. Comme çi ça se fait ici? Not just for Arthur’s po’boys, no.”
“My ami here,” Pinky says, indicating me, with a slow doleful shake of head, “tout mauvais. Man stole his chirren.”
“No!” He looks at me with a shocked expression, then looks back to Pinky. “Vraiment?”
The two go back and forth in a patois I can’t understand, and then Pinky says, “Little boys, friend. Not but six years old. My friend breaking his head and heart tryin’ to find them. Afraid they goin’ come to harm, you know. Looking for the man who took them, the path brings him this way.”
“To Katy’s?” His eyes check over to me.
“No, not to Katy’s, not direct. The path takes him to Berwick, where the man we lookin’ for lived. Grew up in that place.”
“You hunt this man?”
“That’s right. Boute à boute.”
“He a black man?”
“No, he’s a white man” – a laugh – “although not as white as me. Crazy man, name of Byron Boudreaux. You know him?”
Arthur shakes his head. “Not me, no.”
“Here’s the thing. We hear this Byron took up with a houngan somewhere round Morgan City. This a while back, few years back.”
Arthur’s eyes widen. “You shittin’ me?”
“That’s what we hear. We’re looking to find this houngan, see if he can tell us anything about where Byron might be now – because we think if we find Byron, we find those little boys. All we know about the houngan: he missin’ his upper lip.”
“Ain?” Arthur holds his upper lip between his thumb and two fingers. “No top lip?”
Pinky nods. “That’s what I’m told.”
“I do hear of this man,” Arthur says. “They say zombie kiss him, take his lip. Man’s famous.”
“What’s his name?” I ask.
“Diment. He the houngan without the lip. Doctor Aristide Diment. Big bizango.”
“What’s a bizango?” I ask.
“A houngan – he’s a voodoo priest, yes? And the bizango, that’s kind of his congregation only they be real close, like a family,” Arthur explains.
“More like a secret society,” Pinky says.
“You got the sickness or problem in your life,” Arthur says, “or you need advice, you go to the houngan. The houngan know how to please the loa, know how to make the mojo – keep your marriage strong, or find you a sweetheart, or get your business goin’ on its way. Some of them know the dark ways, too. Some of them serve with both the hands.” Arthur casts his eyes down, and I see him make a tiny sign of the cross. “Doctor Diment – he one of these.”