A Free Man of Color - Barbara Hambly [90]
“I went down by Tia Hojie and got you this,” Mary went on. She produced a small bag of red flannel from the same pocket, put it around Hannibal’s neck on a long, dirty ribbon. “Don’t you open it,” she added, as he made a move to do so. “It’s healin’ juju—a black cat bone and mouse heads and I don’t know what all else. You just wear it and it’ll help you. I got a green candle to burn here, too.”
“Thank you,” said Hannibal, reaching out to take the woman’s hands. “That’s good of you, truly. What’ll Big Mag say about having a candle up here? She took away the lamp I had to read by,” he added to January. “When it gets dark, all I can do is lie here and listen to the fights downstairs.”
“I’ll put it in a glass jar,” promised Mary. “Besides, Big Mag gonna be busy tonight; she won’t know nuthin’. I’ll put the mark on your shoes and burn this here candle while you’re gone, and you feel better in the mornin’.”
Hannibal coughed, fighting the spasm, then managed a smile. “I’ll feel better knowing I can pay Mag her rent money,” he said. “Thank you.”
The woman collected the blood-crusted rags, checked to see there was water in the pitcher, and departed. Hannibal sank back on the mattress with the barely touched bowl of grits next to his hand and fell almost immediately to sleep. January shook his head, covered the bowl with the saucer, and descended the stairs. On a sudden thought he crossed the kitchen yard, to where Fat Mary was fussing around the kitchen once more. As he had suspected, there was a residue of brick dust on the kitchen steps, and a little smear of ochre on the doorsill.
“Maybe you can help me,” he said, and she turned, the baby on one hip again and a square black bottle of gin in her hand.
“Maybe I can,” she smiled.
“I hear there’s a new girl around this part of town; skinny Congo girl name of Sally. Runaway from one of the plantations. You know where she’d be, how I can talk to her?”
“Sally.” The woman frowned, searching her mind. She spoke English with a rough eastern accent, Virginia or the Carolinas, slow and drawling after the flat, clippy vowels of New Orleans speech. “Name don’t sound familiar, and I know most of the girls on the game roundabouts here.”
“She may not be on the game yet,” said January. “She ran off with a little bit of money. She’s got a new calico dress, new earbobs, maybe. She ran off with a man.”
“She runned off with a man, she end up on the game fast enough.” She refreshed herself with a swig of gin, and rocked her child gently, swaying on big, bare, pink-soled feet. “But I ain’t seen any of the men round about here—not the ones with money to go buyin’ calico and earbobs for a woman—with a new gal. I’ll ask around some, though.”
“Thank you, Mary.” He slipped an American fifty-cent piece onto the table where she could pick it up after he left. He saw her note it with her eye, but she made no comment. He wasn’t exactly sure what he thought Sally could tell him, but he was beginning to be very curious about exactly what Madeleine Trepagier had done Thursday night and in what state her clothing had been when she returned home.
Sally would know. And, if Sally were sufficiently resentful of her mistress to run away, Sally could probably be induced to talk. It would at least give him somewhere else to look, some other avenue to point out to Shaw.
“One other question? I’m trying to find a voodooienne name of Olympia. I don’t know what her second name is these days, but she’s about so tall, skinny, real dark, like me. She’s under Marie Laveau.”
“Everbody under Mamzelle Marie these days,” said Fat Mary, without animosity. “She make damn sure no other queen operatin’ on her own in this town. Olympia?” She frowned. “That’d be Olympia Corbier, over Customhouse Street—Olympia Snakebones, she called. She got big power, they say, but she crazy.” She shrugged.