Florida Folk Magic Stories: Novels 1-3 by Malcolm R. Campbell

Author:Malcolm R. Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: southern fiction, magical realism, literary fiction, folklore, folk stories
Publisher: Thomas-Jacob Publishing, LLC
Published: 2018-10-14T00:00:00+00:00

Eight

WHEN THE SUN awoke, Eulalie shook open a rolled-up white towel and let the freshly washed possum bones fall into a three-cats wide circle. While the sun slept, she purified herself with rain water, purified the house with ammonia and chamber lye, and washed the bones in the creek. The bones rattled around a bit and when they finally came to rest, the song she was singing got stuck on one line like a broken record: “Won’t you smile down on me?”

She was singing about Lady Luck. She moved the bones once or twice with a twig off a pine tree, but the line from that song didn’t let up. Her frown scared me, but I knew from experience to wait quietly on the porch. Cats weren’t allowed inside the circle. The only things inside the circle were the bones, my conjure woman’s hand, the twig, and cook fire smoke.

One time I went up close and asked with thought-speech, “What happens if I go inside the circle?”

“I’ll shoo you back out and start over again,” she said. “I don’t need no distractions.”

Before she looked away, I asked, “If I can’t go inside the circle, why can’t I sleep?”

“You must watch for predators,” she said loudly enough to wake the dead.

Willie, who came over expecting breakfast, “CW, I thought that circle was supposed to protect you from harm.”

“This circle ain’t no magic wall. It’s a sanctified place to work. If a mean old bear came down from the mountain, he’d bite my ass.”

“I don’t see any mountains,” said Willie.

Eulalie ignored that and flung the bones down again. She glanced back at us with a look on her face that could only be divined to mean, “Y’all better shut up.” Willie’s stomach was growling louder than I could purr.

As I kept my eye out for bears, hearing “Won’t you smile down on me” over and over became more sleep-inducing than humans talking about the weather. Neither Willie nor I can divine how the bones work. Never in my life had I seen Eulalie stop and stare like she was staring now, and she was still too much the jook singer River Eden to intentionally break the beat of a blues song.

One time Willie asked, “Why do you sing when you read the bones?”

“Singin’ takes my mind away from the maybes inside the circle,” she said.

“You don’t reckon out what the bones are sayin’, do you?” he asked.

“Y’all need to shut up when I’m workin’ my circle.” She rolled the bones up in the white towel with a sprinkle of Florida Water so she could start over. “I don’t reckon nothin’. The bones don’t say nothin’. I sing your Bessie Smith or your Bill Weldon and listen to my mama and grandma say what’s what except when mouths on the couch try to chew my ears off.”

“We’ll be waitin’ here until hell freezes over,” Willie whispered

I thought that meant a long time, as the pocket watch inside his overalls pocket tracked time, letting humans know whether it was morning, noon, or night and whether anything important had frozen over.

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