The Cracker Queen by Lauretta Hannon

Author:Lauretta Hannon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

You Put a Root on Me

African folk magic has been alive and well in Savannah since the first slaves brought it there in the eighteenth century. If you know what to look for, you can see it everywhere—on the porches, door frames, and windowsills painted Haint Blue, an unmistakable blue-green believed to block evil spirits—or haints—from entering. In wavy lines drawn on a dirt path. And in a downtown business that sells minerals and powders for use in spells and jinxes. Yes, there’s that much of a market for hoodoo in Savannah.

Occasionally, signs of hoodoo would emerge from details in the crime reports. I remember the account of a dead gentleman found nude in a bathtub, his mouth crammed with chicken parts. His body emptied of all blood. It was determined that he’d died a natural death. Never an explanation of who took the blood or how, just that the blood was drained and the mouth stuffed after he died. Hmmm . . .

Twice during my time in Savannah a severed human hand or foot was discovered. But when the rightful owner of said extremity was tracked down, he’d tell some cockamamie story.

“No, Officer, I don’t know how that foot of mine came off. Sure don’t . . . I can’t recall.”

What else could the police do? Case closed.

Professional hoodoo practitioners are sometimes referred to as root doctors or root workers because they use herbs for magical purposes. I’d heard of such people, of course, but never suspected one would ever “throw a root” on me. But that is what happened.

It was a Wednesday when the root was put on me. It worked fast, too. By that night “it” had begun: a strange series of accidents and near-death calamities.

We had been living in Savannah for six years, and I was still working at the university. In looking for that richer life I desired, I had become a part-time columnist for the town’s alternative newspaper. The editor let me cover whatever I wanted, and I delighted in ridiculing and railing against politicians and city policies. On that particular Wednesday my article criticizing a local senator hit the stands. Apparently in Savannah, this kind of thing not only gets you blackballed, it gets a black candle burned in your name.

That evening I took a run with my dog, a husky mix named Elsie. In a flash I tripped and slammed into the pavement. This triggered an innate Iditarod urge in Elsie and she bolted, dragging me a good ten feet.

I was still facedown on the blacktop when I felt the heat of headlights on my back; a runaway taxi almost flattened us.

I hobbled home bloody and burned and with a hole in my knee. Limping with red-streaked arms and legs, I wondered if I looked like a short stand-in for Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Minutes later I heard a deep growl coming from a bush: There stood a teeth-baring black dog, the ultimate symbol of bad mojo.

But I had no idea about the root at that time.

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