“‘Serve with both hands’?”
Arthur continues to look down. He shakes his head.
“That means the priest is a sorcerer,” Pinky says. “Got supernatural powers. Worship with one hand, do magic with the other.”
I nod. “So Diment is a magician. Now I understand Boudreaux’s interest.”
“Yes, but it’s not that simple,” Pinky says. “Voodoo is a very, very complex thing. You could spend a long time with it and never begin to understand. I only know the little bit I do because I had a case once. Supposed to be this woman died of a curse, but her relatives didn’t go for it. Came to me. Turned out she’d been murdered.”
“She poison?” Arthur asks.
Pinky nods. To me, he explains: “There are herbs that heal and potions that sicken. The houngans and manbos – that’s a female priest – study the remedies and poisons in the natural world. It’s part of their training.” He turns to Arthur. “Is that right?”
“That about right,” Arthur says, once again displaying his warm smile. “You might be sayin’ it’s the doctor part of the witch doctor.”
“Supposed to be,” Pinky says, “they only cure you of what’s got a supernatural origin.” He nods toward Arthur. “This Byron Boudreaux, Arthur – he poisoned his own daddy, got sent away for that.”
Arthur winces.
“Poison goes way back with voodoo,” Pinky says, tapping his glass against the tabletop. “Down in the Indies on the plantations, some of the slaves used slow-acting poisons against their masters. That’s what first got them worried down there about the religion of the slaves. Plus there were rumors of supernatural powers – to Christians, that was obviously the devil at work. Witchcraft. Between the poison and the magical powers – pretty soon the plantation owners running scared. You never knew where something bad might come from, who might put a curse on you or poison your food. That’s when the authorities really started trying to repress the religion.”
“Repress it?”
“Oh, they tried and they tried and they tried. Between the government and the church, they thought they could squeeze voodoo down. But what happened was repression just drove voodoo to hide itself. For the most part, it hid right in plain sight. See, the only way slaves could carry on their worship was to pretend they was Christian – which the masters encouraged. Eventually the voodoo got itself all mixed up with Christian practices. All the voodoo loa, the beings who rule the spirit world, have Christian figures or saints as counterparts. The loa Legba, for instance – he’s St. Peter.”
“I heard that once before.” I remember Scott telling me about the figure on the dime: Mercury, St. Peter, and also Legba.
“You see the point, right? Slaves could pretend they’re devout, worshiping St. Peter, and all the time it’s Legba. And then after a while – it’s both.” He turns to Arthur. “What’s another one?”
“The Virgin Mary, she’s Ezili. St. John the Baptist is Chango. St. Patrick, he’s Dambala Wedo. It go like that right down the line.”
I turn to Arthur. “What about Diment,” I ask, “you know him?”
“Jamais,” Arthur says. “Know of him, yes. He live near the cemetery in Morgan City. You go back on 182, get into Morgan City. I think it’s Myrtle street take you down toward the water. You cross over the railroad tracks, keep goin’ little way. They’s a place down there, Lasseigne’s, little corner store. You ask the man in there, Felix. Tell him I sent you. He know where to find Maître Diment.”
“Thanks, Arthur.”
“Yes,” I add, shaking the man’s hand. “Thank you very much.”
“Pas de quoi. Bonne chance.” He nods. “I hope you find your chirren.”
Felix is a small coffee-colored man. He and Pinky talk in an impenetrable Creole patois. Felix draws a crude map. And then we’re back in the Bimmer, driving past a bank thermometer that reads one hundred one. For a second, I wonder if that’s the temperature and the humidity.
“That thing about the lip,” Pinky says. “If you don’t happen to believe in zombies, they’s another explanation. Seen it before. That kind of mutilation can happen when a fellow gets caught fooling around with somebody’s daughter or wife. Father, husband – he mess up the man’s face, make him ugly so women stay away.”
“Well, at least that’s straightforward.”
At the Morgan City High School, someone is mowing the grass in the football stadium. A banner affixed to the fence advertises: OPENING GAME AUG 28. The man on the mower is bare-chested and gleaming with sweat. A bandana tied into a do-rag covers his head, and a little umbrella attached to the mower shades him as he rolls along. It’s hard to believe anybody would want to play football in this heat, but the opening game is less than a month away. Just past the school, a bunch of kids in practice jerseys stand outside a snow-cone stand that advertises SNEAUX BALLS.
“Felix said we should take a present to Diment,” Pinky says, turning a corner and pulling up in front of a liquor store. “Says the doctor has a fondness for rum.”
And then we’re on our way again until Pinky stops at a crossroads and consults the map. There’s a little wooden shack on the right, nearly swallowed up by the surrounding vegetation. The place looks as if it’s about to fall down – but there’s a bright red pickup out front and a new satellite dish protruding from the roof.
“Let’s see,” Pinky says. “I think here’s where we go to the right.”
A few more turns and we’re on a dirt road. After a mile or so, we pull up in front of a nondescript rectangular concrete building. The front yard is dirt, with a few patches of weeds and tire ruts full of standing water. One small window seems to have been added post-construction, crudely jammed into its space. The building would look like a storage shed, except for the “door,” which consists of strings of plastic beads. I’ve seen doors like this before in Africa. The beads let the air in but keep the flies out. More or less.
“This is it,” Pinky says, executing a little drumroll on the dash. “Chez Diment.”
“Right.”
We step out into the sledgehammer heat. Pinky hits a button on his key and the car lights flash.
There’s no place to knock on a beaded door, so Pinky pushes the beads aside and sticks his head in. “Hello?”
“Come in then,” a voice calls from some distance.
It’s dark inside and even hotter than it was outside. Stifling. Airless. Behind the smell of dust and eucalyptus oil is the olfactory funk of human bodies, a whiff of excrement, urine, and sweat. In the moments it takes my eyes to adjust, I become aware of sounds in the room, labored breathing, snuffling, and coughing. Someone moans. Then the dozen or so humps on the floor resolve themselves into people – mostly children from the size of them.
“I heard about this,” Pinky says. “It’s a clinic. A voodoo hospital, like.”
My immediate reaction – and I’m ashamed of it – is to breathe shallowly.
“This way,” a robust voice calls from the back of the room. I can just make out an open door, and through it, the twinkle of colored lights, the kind you string on a Christmas tree. I follow Pinky through the corridor between the patients, whose hospital beds consist of straw mats on the floor.
“This way, this way,” the voice says.