Cry Havoc

child after candy.'

She leaned closer. Frank smelled the flowery bodega scent and sweat and the dust of dry places.

'My church is open,' she whispered. 'Come join us.'

The invitation was sensual and erotic, a lover's desire. Frank had an urge to get up and follow the Mother, to dance with her around a blood-red fire in a place where beasts still stirred beyond the pale. She wanted to cry at the moon then bow low to receive the warm sacrament. . .

Frank was surprised to hear herself say, 'Never.'

The Mother's wolfish eyes almost closed. In a voice like snakes slithering over each other, she warned, 'Don't be so sure, child. Never's a very long time.'

29

Darcy leaned in after the briefing.

'Can I talk to you?'

'Sure.'

He closed the door and perched on one of her chairs.

'Marguerite called last night. She says she's worried about you.'

'Me?'

He nodded.

'She says you don't know what you're into, but that it's bigger than you can handle. She wants you to go see her.'

'What for?'

Darcy shrugged.

'She says you need a cleansing and some serious protection. She sees bad juju all over you.'

'Bad juju, huh?'

Frank grinned, partly out of condescension and partly to convince herself the Mother's malevolence last night had been routine good guy-bad guy antagonism. Ignoring the reptilian voice asking, then why were you so scared, she concentrated on Darcy and how much money he made. She knew he couldn't foot too much for alimony and child support and wondered if Marguerite thought she had a fish on the line.

'How much she gonna charge me?'

'I don't know. That's irrelevant. The thing is, she wouldn't call like that unless she had a good reason. Marguerite's very selective about who she works with. New clients all have to be recommended by established clients. She doesn't deal with dabblers.'

Her logic crippled, Frank admitted, 'Look. I just don't get any of this hocus-pocus, mumbo-jumbo shit.'

Darcy shot back, 'You don't have to get it. It'll happen whether you believe in it or not.'

The only sign of Frank's annoyance was the slight jump in her jaw.

'What'll happen?'

'I mean if Marguerite sees the Mother's influence around you, then it's there. It's like radon. Just because we can't see it, that doesn't mean it's not there doing damage.'

'Everybody keeps saying you have to believe in this shit to make it work. How can the Mother hurt me if I don't believe in her?'

Darcy hunched forward. He was about to speak but stopped. Frank gave him the time he needed to pull his words together.

'Remember when you asked me if I believed in voodoo?'

The question wasn't rhetorical, so Frank nodded.

'And what did I say?'

'Somewhat.'

'And I told you not to underestimate the Mother, right?'

Frank tapped her watch.

'Where we going, Darcy?'

'To a place you don't know anything about. I know you've got no reason to believe me, but all I can tell you is that I've seen situations that defy practical explanation. Marguerite's cousin was my best friend. I practically lived with him and I spent a lot of time with his family. We used to stay out at his uncle's in Simmesport, go hunting and get drunk, just being boys. This was in the back country, where the old ways are still pretty common. Jeff had a couple, three-four aunts and uncles up there. Understand, the LaCourts had been there a long time. They were part of a pretty tightly knit community. A lot of the women called themselves root workers. Some were better at it than others because they had a talent for it. A gift. Jeff’s grandmother, Pearl LaCourt, she was one of those women. All the other root workers came to Pearl when they needed advice or couldn't help themselves. She was tremendously respected. And feared. Hell, even I was afraid of her, and I was too young and stupid to be afraid of anything.'

Frank tapped her fingers against the desk and Darcy said, 'I know. My point is I knew her fairly well. I didn't just hear stories about her or catch a glimpse of her on the porch now and then. I spent almost every weekend and half as many weekdays up to Jeff's and every Saturday evening we'd go to revival. It was out in a scythed field behind the church which was really just poles and a roof with hay bales and stumps for seats. I know that sounds like a strange way for two hell-loving, hormone-addled boys to spend a Saturday night, but for one thing, Marguerite was there.

'Even more importantly, I wanted to go. Jeff too. We only talked about it once, after the first time he took me, and then we never mentioned it again. Jeff couldn't explain what happened. It'd just always been that way. That was all. These people accepted that his seventy-year-old grandmother could suddenly jump up in the air and do somersaults like a girl a quarter her age. They accepted that a bite from a copperhead could cure arthritis. They accepted that Loula Tremaine's husband fell down a well and drowned while she was at the revival praying for God to wash his wife-beating sins away.

'Jeff had a cousin that liked little girls. No one did anything about it because he was a big, mean, son of a bitch and everyone was afraid of him. The last girl he raped started praying at the revivals for vengeance. The women would join in with her, crying and praying. A month after he'd raped her, a car punched out his backbone. He's a quadriplegic.'

Frank interrupted, 'That's coincidence.'

Darcy shook his head. 'That's the tip of the iceberg. Things like this happened routinely. It was a matter of course. No one thought anything of it. I could go on, Frank, but I know you don't want me to. The point is, not every question has an answer. When the bounds of coincidence and logic get stretched, one has to accept the inexplicable or go crazy trying to figure it out. Jeff's cousin didn't believe. Loula Tremaine's husband didn't believe. I can name a dozen other examples.'

Frank held up a hand.

'So Marguerite's a root worker too? I thought you said she was a priestess.'

'She grew up with root workers, in the hoodoo tradition, but it wasn't enough for her. She wanted to learn more and went to Haiti to study Vodun religion. That was when her talents really emerged.'

'Like being able to see the Mother's evil influence on me,' Frank mocked. 'Think she could tell if I'm going to meet a tall, handsome stranger?'

Darcy's answer was slow in coming.

'She knew there was something wrong with Gabby even before she was born. The doctors didn't pick up on it but Marguerite knew. She kept saying Gabby's lungs were heavy. She's got cystic fibrosis.'

Frank regretted her flippancy, but maintained a mother could intuit something wrong with an unborn child without being psychic. Sensing her doubt, Darcy added, 'It's not just Gabby. She sees a lot of things. She saw the Oklahoma bombing. She was seeing it for about a week before it happened. She had this picture in her head of the building blowing up and scores of people dying. It got stronger and clearer the closer it got to that day. She actually pegged the time of the explosion by an hour. It was that strong. Only she thought it was a building in L.A. She didn't realize where it was. Not that it would have mattered anyway. Who'd have believed her?'

'Did she tell you this post facto?”

'No. I was picking up Gabby the weekend before it happened, and she was pretty upset. It was hard for her to keep seeing it, knowing it was coming, and not being able to do anything about it. Then it happened that Wednesday.'