Deep Fried and Pickled (Book One - The Rachael O'Brien Chronicles) (36 page)

“Hey,” I said, looking for the leprechaun who had lured me with his pot of gold. Unfortunately for me, he wasn’t available. He intimately shimmied with a Dolly Parton blow-up doll, and I didn’t have the heart to interrupt.

Floats move a lot faster than you think, and my leap to solid ground produced two skinned knees. Limping to the nearest sidewalk, I searched to find a familiar face, street, or building. An uh-oh, sickish feeling harbored inside my stomach, and a lightning bolt of panic struck my chest.

As the parade music drifted into the distance so did the dispersing crowds. Wandering along the sidewalk, only a handful of locals including a soulful clarinet player, mulled around wooden street barriers. Turning corners, I speed-walked in the direction I thought was Bourbon Street. Vertical iron bars jailed broken glass panes on abandoned shops, and empty bottles and wrappers loitered the crevasses’ of boarded doorways. Muggy air and suntan lotion beaded on my skin. Not seeing horse-drawn tour carriages, street magicians, or historical looking buildings, I realized I was directionally challenged.

Shadows stood in entryways, and hidden faces stared from behind screen doors. The street I walked wasn’t Louisiana’s finest. My eyes darted and I searched for a friendly face to ask directions. A man slight in stature with sullen cheeks leaned on the side of a one-story brick building. His shoe polish face didn’t have enough wrinkles to warrant his shoulder length gray hair and rubber-banded Santa Claus beard. He held a crumpled paper bag in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Rotating his head from left to right, he asked, “Where’s a thing like you headed?”

He stood too close to avoid, so I asked, “Can you tell me how to get to the French Quarter?”

His smile opened the tunnel to tobacco-stained teeth. “The French Quarter,” he repeated, as though he chewed marbles.

I tilted my ear, ready to head in the direction that he’d suggest. With a gruff laugh, Santa dropped his bag and watched liquid trickle from it. Instead of reaching for his spilled beverage he lunged for my arms. Pushing my back against the building, he licked his cracked lips and pierced his jagged nails into my forearms. In a troll voice, he growled, “Show me your tatties.”

Being scared shitless can paralyze. For me, it evoked a knee-jerk reaction, and I hooked my scabby right knee into Santa’s dilly pickles. He keeled to the ground, but gripped my wrists tight, toppling me with him. A cocktail combination of body odor, and cheap beer fermented from his sweaty pores, encircling me in a dizzying cloud. Temporarily I’d immobilized his reflexes, but not his abusive mouth. From a fetal position, he groaned, “Fucking cunt.”

Fighting to align my wits, I wangled from under his clutch and scampered my flip-flop feet as fast as I could. Something metal clattered off the pavement, close to my ankles. Seems Santa had a knife.

Not daring to look back, I turned corners and crossed deserted streets. Adrenaline pushed me forward. An occasional car passed, but their inhabitants didn’t look like the give-me-a-safe-lift type. Growing up, I’d watched Star Trek, and would’ve paid Scotty colossal money to beam me up.

A stucco wall, too high to climb, loomed along the street in front of me. A chunky lock, as big as my hand, held black iron gates together. One side tipped due to a broken hinge and a slight gap left a narrow center opening. Once I shimmied in, there was no mistaking where I’d landed. Stumbling on the uneven cobbles, my eyes focused on the raised cement tombs that dotted a snaking path.

Engineers did not build cemeteries. At least not this one. A maze expert had a field day with these plots. There was no geometric organization. A sick joke on the living. Once you were in, it wasn’t so easy to find your way out. A bigger worry, one that carried a gun, hovered on my mind. Survival-mode motored me deep into the grave yard. The more turns I took, the harder I would be to find.

Fear had sharpened my senses, and I listened to the noisy breeze dusting overgrown weeds and leafy shrubs. I didn’t want to be a victim. Not that anybody chooses. Since my family had gone down dysfunctional alley, my life wasn’t bad, as in horrible. It just wasn’t what I’d imagined. Lately, though, I’d started to get a handle. So what if Mom wanted to discover her prophecy powers, and Dad dated. They were on their own journeys, and I’d started mine. My to do list was still full. I wanted to sleep with Clay Sorenson, ride a zip-line through the rain forest, stay in a haunted English castle, eat a Cuban sandwich in Miami, and open my own art gallery--and no one, not this Santa creep, Bridget, or Nash was going to stop me.

Dead-ended in the far corner of the cemetery, I stopped next to an apartment of stacked tombs that backed up against a stucco wall. There wasn’t saliva in my mouth to swallow, and I held my palm on my chest to keep my heart from escaping. I hadn’t brought money or worn a watch, and didn’t know how long I’d been gone. Beyond my noisy heartbeat and heaving breath, I listened for the crunch of gravel, or a foot treading the tangle of undergrowth. Too tired to run anymore, I squatted between the high-tower tombs and a smaller building, like an outhouse, with a sealed, knobless door. Overgrown weeds framed a cemented plate stamped Marie Laveau, 1782-1881. Mardi Gras beads, a tube of mascara, coins, and a plastic snake cluttered the step in front of the enclosed tomb. Three-X’s were randomly marked on the exterior walls of Marie’s final resting cottage.

“
Ma fille. Vous n'avez pas l'air bien êtes-vous perdus
?” A woman’s voice spoke from beyond, and I gasped.

I didn’t believe in ghosts, apparitions, or hocus-pocus, but the voice scared the crap out of me and I wondered if I was about to become a believer. A nearby dog erupted in a quick series of howls, drawing my attention to a portion of the stucco wall that had collapsed. Beyond it, a dirt path with high grass on either side led to a porch. A blue-tick hound sounded an alert. Adorning a full-length wrap, a mocha-skinned woman rocked a high-back chair and shushed the dog. Next to her an oscillating fan flapped a screen and a candle danced inside a lantern.

Shaken but grateful I’d spotted an earthly being, I stepped over the crumbled wall and approached. At the bottom of the porch stairs, I stared at the woman whose age seemed timeless. Her hands rested on faded chestnut varnish, and her fingertips contoured into indentations that I imagined had been worn into the arm rails over generations. She gathered her streaked graying hair in a French twist on the back of her head. Still rocking, she stretched her lips in a welcoming smile.

“I’m lost. Can you tell me the way to the French Quarter?”

She motioned to a bench. “
Vraiment
?
Asseyez-vous et reposez-vous un moment
.” I guessed her words signaled an invitation to sit.

I perched on the edge of a metal glider. This wasn’t right, my being here. What was I thinking, following that leprechaun? I bumbled, “
Je ne parle pas Français
--I do not speak French,” silently cursing myself for being unable to articulate more conversation from the elective I’d taken in high school.

The woman in the rocker gazed toward the cemetery. Touching a lace fan to her chest, she met my eyes. “Ezora.”

Like an international tourist, I nodded then replied, “RACH-AEL.” The next best thing to speaking French in New Orleans had to be loud English. “I’m-lost. May-I-use-your-telephone?”

Ezora stood and motioned me toward the door. “
Vous, les filles sont trop maigres, vous avez besoin de manger
.” Her accent was thick, and I didn’t hear the word telephone in that sentence. I wondered if telephone sounded like telephone in Cajun-French.

“Telephone?” I asked again. She held the door open. “
Venir à l'intérieur
.” Her words I recognized. Come inside.

Hesitating, I weighed options. Inside this house, she could have jars of formaldehyde with floating stuff she’d retrieved from the graveyard. On the other hand, a healthy population of poisonous spiders and slithering reptiles were at home in the hidden nooks of the crypts. And Santa lurked somewhere beyond the shadows, waiting for me. My odds were better inside.

The kitchen sink light bulb threw a glow on the narrow hallways faded carpet runner. The hand loomed design, I guessed to be original to the terrace row house. Her decorating style I’d categorized as island-bright. Caribbean blues and yellows washed her walls. Ceramic trinkets and handmade figurines covered flat surfaces. A wood bench with carved symbols stretched the length of the hallway she led me through. Piled on it were newspapers, magazines, jars and covered cans.

Ezora’s ballet-slippered feet silently glided into a dining room. I followed her, mindful of the creaking floorboards below my flip-flops. She tapped the back of a chair at a table draped in an antique lace cloth. Opening a china cupboard, she selected two plates with a dainty posy pattern around the edge. Inside a drawer, she retrieved polished silver forks, spoons and knives. The stems of the scroll flatware were engraved EL.

Helping set the table, I pondered recent events--a leprechaun led me astray and a creep disguised as drunken Santa had assaulted me. Now Ezora was going to poison me, so she could pack me into a crate and send me down the Mississippi. I considered bolting out the door, but if I backtracked through the cemetery, there was a high probability that I’d rest there permanently.

From the kitchen, Ezora hummed in a deep alto and I imagined she could belt out an
Amazing Grace
. She returned holding two cast iron pots. Adjusting potholders against the handles, she placed the cookware on silver trivets. Steam escaped the outer edges of the lids, filling the air with an aromatic blend of onion, garlic and the sweet smell of fish. “
Riz et etouffee
,” she said.

I’d seen
etoufee
on the menu at the hotel restaurant. It was a seafood stew. She scooped red rice onto my plate then smothered it in a dark brown sauce with flecks of green onion, herbs and shrimp. I held a spoonful in front of my mouth and lightly blew.

My mother was a remarkable cook, and when I tasted that first spicy bite, I wished she were here. Ezora’s etouffee was gourmet goodness. Mom would not have left until she had this recipe. As Ezora savored a spoonful, a shrill ring echoed from the hallway. “Telephone,” I said, and she waved it off, signaling me to concentrate on the meal. As much as I wanted to dial 911, it would’ve been rude to let this home-cooked meal go cold, so I waited.

Ezora’s French was as thick as my English, and we struggled with conversation. I pointed to the EL engraving on the spoon. “Ezora Laveau,” she said. I recognized Laveau. The name was etched in front of the tomb I hid beside.

“Marie Laveau?” I asked, and she nodded a look of sorrow and pride. I thought it odd, and at the same time honorable, that she kept a daily watch on her deceased relative’s eternity.

When we finished I stood to help clear the dishes, but she pushed my hand away, and pointed at the hallway bench where I’d heard the ringing.

The house clutter was one empty soup can away from hoarding. Prodding around boxes of newspapers, and clothes piled on the black mahogany bench, I found a wall plate with a phone plugged in. I traced the plastic-coated cord until I rested my hand on the receiver of an old-fashioned rotary phone. Without money, or a phone book, I couldn’t exactly call the hotel or a taxi. Stuffing my hand into the shorts pocket that I’d worn the first night, I pulled out a business card. Lucky’s Art Consortium.

Sherbet pinks and oranges had settled in the sky before the sun bid goodnight. A four-door sedan pulled in front of Ezora’s house. Squeezing my hand, she motioned for me to wait. Retrieving a key from her apron pocket, she moved to a corner of the room where a small wood box rested on a shelf. I heard the click of the lock, and when she returned, she dropped a trinket in the palm of my hand and closed my fingers over it. I hugged her. “Thank you for saving me.”

“
Etre sûr et vivre long
,” she said.

I ran outside and got into Lucky Jack’s idling Cadillac Deville.

NOTE TO SELF

Men dressed in green spandex pretending to be leprechauns will lead you astray.

Southern hospitality continues to amaze me.

35

F
ake
I
n
T
he
G
rass

L-Jack
drove me to his art gallery, a few miles from Ezora’s house. The brick walls of Lucky’s Art Consortium were the only thing original inside the historical building. Glass pendant lights hung from the exposed twenty-foot ceiling, and eight-foot walls painted bright white divided the gallery into alcove spaces to display artwork.

Wrestling out of a drunk’s arms, dodging a knife, and racing through a cemetery in the New Orleans humidity had turned my shoulder length hair into a poof ball. I ran water over my hands from the small bathroom’s faucet, and pressed my palms against my frizzy waves that escaped my ponytail. I’d begun decompressing in the safety of Lucky Jack’s car, suppressing the possibility that my last breath could have been in the New Orleans Delta. I’d never been so glad to see someone I recognized, and LJ was flattered to have rescued me.

My story about a leprechaun and a demented Santa was out there. I hoped he didn’t think it a ploy for sympathy sex because I had no intention of remembering him as, “The One.” As soon as my heart stopped hyper-beating, I’d say a warm-felt thank you and recover back at the hotel. 

Customers moseyed around his gallery, and he answered a question about a local sculptor. Seeing me handle a glazed ceramic three-dimensional amulet, no bigger than an inch, he asked, “What do you have?”

Cupping the piece in my palm, I showed it to him. “Ezora gave it to me.”

Lucky Jack put on a pair of black framed glasses. “Ezora Laveau is something of a local Voodoo maven. May I?”