American Voudou: Journey into a Hidden World

12: Crossing the Line

12 THE RELENTLESS RAIN that had dogged me had been no stranger to Atlanta, either. A curtain of gray steam, punctuated here and there by torrential cloudbursts, almost obscured the downtown skyline as I came in from Montgomery. The Georgia capital felt much better to me than had the one in Alabama. Here, blacks had moved into positions of real power, politically and socially. Legions ofunsolved problems remained, as they do in every American city, but on the whole, Atlanta was known as a progressive town, a magnet for ambitious young people,black and white. The colonial and antebellum gentility of the older parts of the city often segued into the upscale shopping villages and refurbished homes of the city's yuppie contingents in the north and east. Along with Dallas, Atlanta was the hot place to be in the New Plantation Economy. I had come to find two voudou priests. Not hoodoo men or root doctors. The real thing. I longed to be back among the true believers. I missed my conversations with Ava KayJones, priestess of Oya. I missed my visits with Lorita Mitchell, priestess of oshun. It was time to accelerate my movement into the true 156 CROSSING THE LINE - 157 world of the orisha. I wanted to know more of the complex Ifa divination system, its name derived from the god who bestowed it, of the ritual of voudou life and practice, of the intricacies of the theology. I missed the gods. The two priests I had come to see were cousins, Panamianbornbut U. S. residents for years. The older, Baba Oshun Kunle, was ababalawo, the highest priestly order in voudou, interpreter ofIfa.The other, Baba Tunde, was a priest ofObatala. I had originally met them in New Orleans, where they had flown in to give readings for a week-it is a common practice among priests to maintain a clientele in various cities. We'd had a pleasant conversation in the patio garden behind Ava Kay's botanica, Jambalaya, and they had offered to see me ifI ever got to Georgia. Approaching the southwestern Atlanta neighborhood where they lived, I thought I must have had the directions mixed up. A busy, ugly exit off the interstate descended pitilessly into a blighted tract of duplexes and apartments grisled with corner liquor stores and tough guys hanging out looking for action. It seemed to me the two priests had a good business and could have done better for themselves. And then I considered the nature of their business. Practicing voudou priests would be noticed, but in a bad area, nobody cared what you did for a living . Even the black middle class was a long way from accepting voudou as a valid option, and it would scare hell out of most New Age white people, who probablywouldn'tlive in integrated parts of town anyway. I turned right at the street name I'd marked on my map and the scenery got a little better. Weekly rentals with underpowered window units and beer bottles in the yards gave way to sturdy, almost stately wooden homes on sprawling lots full of moss-covered trees. Probably a turn-of-century neighborhood that had hit the skids and, looked at in the right way, might be rebounding. Then I spotted the spacious, robin's egg-blue twostory house Baba Tunde had described. 158 - AMERICAN VOUDOU Rear view, home of Baba Oshun Kunle and Baba Tunde, Atlanta, Georgia. I parked and walked under droopy oaks still dripping from the rain to the chain link fence gate at the side-"where the clients go." As soon as I saw the back yard I could see that the unassuming front really was a fa<1ade-the action was all in the opposite direction. How voudou-like. What you see is the reverse ofwhat you get. The yard was about a quarter of a football field deep, covered on each side by trees and fence. A driveway connecting to an alley ran the length ofthe left side. An old sedan was parked up close to a small concrete patio near the house. Most of the right half of the yard was given over to a garden, laden with vegetables and herbs, and a stock pen, filled with pigeons, chickens and goats. Everything was flooded. Breaching the gate, I stepped rock to rock through ankledeep puddles toward the two screen doors at the back of the house. The one on the right was at the top ofan exterior wooden staircase, and most likely led to the upstairs living area. The other seemed to be the entry to some sort ofbasement, perhaps CROSSING THE LINE - 159 Basement of Atlanta home. Marcus Garvey Centennial poster on wall. Ibeji likenesses on top shelf. Pies and pastries on table for bimbe. an office. I was pretty sure it was for me. The lower door was partly open, but I thought itbest not to justwalk in, so I knocked and waited. Presently I heard the mellifluous Caribbean tones of Baba Tunde. When he saw me he smiled broadly and, apologizing for the effects ofthe rain, showed me into a spartan waiting room. In Yoruba, "baba tunde" means "grandfather returns," and one thus born is considered to bear the traits of his ancestor. Baba Tunde hadbeenborn within twenty-four hours ofthe death ofBaba Kunle's grandfather, and in the same hospital. That not onlybound the two cousins, but, according to Tunde, accounted for his psychic sensibilities. He listed himself on his business card as both a priest and a "trance medium," although, strictly speaking, the latter wasn't voudou nomenclature. I think he thought it would be something clients could more easily comprehend . And "trance medium" sounded more professional than saying he was easily possessed by spirits of the dead. 160 - AMERICAN VOUDOU Water had collected in sloshy pools where the floor slanted down, but the second-hand sofa and coffee table were dry. Glancing around what reminded me, oddly, of a graduate student's living room, I noticed a statue of the Ibeji on a metal bookshelf. Also several earthen and wooden pots, and a sign that said, "Prosperity ." A shakeree lay on a chair. A discount stereo unit was tuned to a classical station. Among the wall posters was a Senegalese print celebrating the Marcus Garvey Centennial (1887-1987). Baba Tunde explained that he had to go back upstairs because he and Baba Kunle were seeing a client, a mortician from Alabama, who had been there all morning. Besides that, he said, tomorrow they were traveling to Jamaica and had to pack. He asked if! could wait, apologized again about the flooding , and excusedhimself. Anhourlater, whenhe returned, apologizing for the delay, he told me thathe and his cousinhad decided the best way to start our visit was for me to have a reading. It would cost $35. This was slightly unexpected, but I agreed. Later I would learn that an up-front reading with a stranger was virtually de rigeur among priests. It was, if nothing else, a way to screen unwelcome or untruthful visitors-cops, for example. Baba Tunde led me down a white hallway to a maze ofother rooms in the lower level. We passed several orisha altars before ducking under a white hanging drape into an all-white ceremonial chamber the size of a small bedroom. A white sheet had been stretched across one corner behind a slim white statue, stylized as an old man, representing Obatala, to whom the room was consecrated. Because the deity is revered for wisdom and intellect, his priests often become arrogant. But there is no justification for it in the religion itself. All the orisha have different qualities, and none is considered "superior" to the othersexcept Olorun, the supreme being. There wasn't much in the room other than the motif of purity. A low wooden table toward one side held a clear bowl, CROSSING THE LINE - 161 candles, a photograph of an unidentified man, and eight glasses of water. A plain mat of woven grass, the kind you can buy for the beach, was positioned opposite a single wicker chair. Between the chair and matwas a shallowbasketfor cowrie shells and next to that a smallbowl ofwater, some sea shells and small stones. BabaTunde offered me the chair, and sathimselfcross-legged on the mat at my feet. He began the reading by asking me to fold the $35 and hold it in my right hand. As I did, he began the invocation to the orisha, speaking in the Yoruba language. He then instructed me to put my money on a tray, and gave me a stone and a shell to shake in my cupped hands. After that I took one object in each hand and made a fist, enclosing each. Baba Tunde proceeded to throw the sixteen cowries-the principal divining instrument of a babalorisha, or iyalorisha, father or mother ofthe spirits, respectively, a senior priest one rung lower than a babalawo. According to legend, the cowrie secrets were obtained by Oshun through seduction of her husband, Ifa. She had complained that iyalorisha were not permitted to cast with the palm nuts (ikin) or chain (opele) used by male babalawos and thus could not share the secrets of divination. Ifa relented to her charms and imparted his secrets, but only ifshe restricted their use to the cowries (caracoles in santeria), leaving the opele and ikin exclusively for the powerful, cliquish, and territorial babalawos. In a way, Oshun became a feminist hero of voudou mythology. Baba Tunde made several throws. I could see by the expression on his face that the reading was not going well for me. He saw waves, he said; he saw difficulties. He marked the odu figures , determined by how many shells in each cast fell "face up" or "face down," in a spiral notebook, and then leaned back against the wall. Because he was also a trance medium, Baba Tunde frequently dropped into a possessed state. As though speaking from 162 - AMERICAN VOUDOU another body, as the psychic Margaret had done, he began to tell me of problems within my family about which I had told him nothing. He knew of this, he said, because of a spirit which had been speaking very strongly through the reading-the spirit of my father. Baba Tunde's eyelids opened as the trance'passed. Perusing his notebook, he returned to the exegesis of the shells. I was "very close" to Obatala, he said, and should consider his ways. "His pace is very slow. He takes care ofthings one at a time. You study the snail. It takes its time in its moves. Ifthere's going to be danger, the snail is going to stop. He's going to think before he makes a move. So that any time you make a move it's a sure move. Your reading is speaking strongly ofObatala. He is one of the forces that is close to you. "You have to thank Obatala for making it possible for you to be receptive, to be allowed in different houses and to meet the people that you have met. It's not a coincidence ... and it's very unusual. It's very seldom you see white folks seeking the knowledge . Somewhere back there your ancestors had some connection with this." He stopped, as ifsomething had come to him. "In some time another way back, in some incarnation, you was black. You understand? And it happened to be you came into this incarnation . That's why that spirit is there. It's speaking of a black female spirit that is there, that was into all of these things, a black woman, a black spirit. It could be many generations back, you was a black woman who used to deal in this, was a priest but used to deal in this. And you come into this existence as a white person and you don't understand the attraction and the pulling that you have for this whole thing." I told him my ancestors were all Welsh, German and Irish, which though not a bad pool for the spirit world, nevertheless were not African. Curiously, it was not the last time I would be told this, and the psychic association raised some fundamental questions about divination, especially subjective projection. Was CROSSING THE LINE - 163 it so unfathomable that a white man sought familiarity with an African religion that the only explanation was the presence of an African ancestral past? Or was there an ancestry ofwhich I was utterly unaware? Certainly there was nothing within memory ofrecent generations. But reincarnation did not necessarily follow strict family genealogy. In the world of voudou, a spirit waiting to be reborn petitions to Olorun, who then assigns it an earthly vessel oflife. Baba Tunde himselfis a reincarnation . In my case, perhaps a black woman from Nigeria had come back as a white boy born in Ohio and then reared in the South. I guess that would explain one or two quirks in my personality . But, if one accepts voudou theology, such a possibility is far from unusual, and no less strange than the idea of the Holy Ghost inhabiting the souls of preachers, prophets, warriors , or messiahs. Another possibility, raised later by someone else, was that the African spirit guiding me might belong to that of a person that someone in my genealogical family had helped at some time in the past-possibly a runaway slave. I was never able to corroborate that through any knowledge of family history. Baba Tunde also said I was giving offstrong indications of an American Indian background, another link of which I am unaware. The question oflineage became as pointed as it was crucial. How should I interpret divination which seemed as farfetched as a cross-racial background in the world ofmy ancestors? And yet that was what the odu had indicated to more than one babalorisha and babalawo. Of course, priests have been wrong-the odu have been interpreted incorrectly, and no, I don't think or presume that I am in any way or in any sense African-but why was I doing all this? Could I absolutely dismiss the possiblity of an African spirit in my past? Logically, I could not. To that extent, I could not notbelieve in Baba Tunde's intuition, nor anyone else's. 164 - AMERICAN VOUDOU As Tunde spoke, Baba Kunle quietly entered the room to sit cross-legged on the floor near us. Tall and elegant, like his younger cousin, he wore only a white caftan and sandals. He was more powerfullybuilt than Tunde, and his mid-forties voice much deeper, and although his air of authority intimidated me in a way that his cousin's more easygoing manner did not, in truth he was a kind man. He studied the sequence of odu in Tunde's notebook. He, too, saw a spirit guiding me, and said it might lead me to eventually want to undertake full voudou initiation rites. I knew that some of the most authoritative of the white voudou scholarsWilliam Bascom, Maya Deren, and Robert Farris Thompsonhad all been initiated in the course of their encounters with the religion, but I told Kunle I was not yet sure if I could take that step. "Anyway," he said, "you have a spirit about you that possibly welcomes you or makes it possible for you to enter certain quarters." He told me to guard against having my research used for disrespectful ends. Tunde, reviewing his own entries, interrupted: "Obatala is saying you have to organize your life. Everything is in the air, is like at a standstill. It's frustrating you, playing a mental thing with you, playing tricks with you. You have to be careful not to feel that you're losing your mind. Strong Obatala here. He is the one who will help you to put this in order." He said my personal , emotional life was not being taken care of, a topic he'd addressed in his trances. I was alone too much, he said, and needed recreation-a woman. No kidding. "Your life seems to be going too much one way. My mother always says, 'Too much of one thing is good for nothing.''' Kunle nodded. It was now time for the parable, the symbolic tale to illustrate the cautions theyhad seeninmy reading. Known as apataki, parables are an intrinsic element of a true reading. They are both voluminous-thousands of them-and formal, eachparable linked to a specific odu pattern. Priests mustmemo- CROSSING THE LINE - 165 rize the stories in the parables as well as the proper pairing with the odu. Thus priests become not only diviners, but storytellers. Usually, the parables involve animals, or even plants, which act like humans, whether for good or ill. It wasn't much ofa stretch to re-see Uncle Remus (Br'er Rabbit, Br'er Fox, etc.), despite his "creation" by Joel Chandler Harris, a white author, as another footprint along the voudou trail. My own apataki was about a pig. "There is this farmer that raised pigs for slaughter," Kunle began, as though narrating a movie I couldn't see. "He would fatten up his pigs, pen them off and when it's time, the fattest one would go. And there's this one pig that is a little bit wiser that refused to eatbecause he sawall the fat pigs going for slaughter . In the meantime, he was being thin and not fat like the other pigs. He was digging a hole in the back of the corral so that he could sneak out and not be a candidate for slaughter." He paused to let me consider the tale. Now it was his duty to interpret it for me. "So the oracle is saying to you, number one, be careful where you eat, who feeds you.... Be very discreet about what you're doing. Let no one know what you're doing." I could tell that Kunle saw something in the casting of the shells that troubled him. "Your reading says osobo (a blockage). There is some loose ends, some waves in the path." I wasn't sure what that meant. He told me. "When there's osobo, we do ebo." I breathed in a little. So there it was. Baba Kunle picked up the shells and cast again. He wanted to determine the exact nature and cost of the sacrifice. In ancient Africa, the price was precisely denoted in terms ofcowrie shells-for monetary units, a larger kind than in divination. Now, like Latin Mass, the final tally is stated in the vernacular. I would require both sacrifice and a cleaning, and it would cost $150. 166 - AMERICAN VOUDOU I was asked to leave $60 as a deposit, with which they would purchase, with a substantial professional mark-up, the necessary ingredients: honey, palm oil, gin, and a rooster. Baba Kunle said to come back about nine that night. That would give them time to prepare forJamaica, and by then it would be dark. It was June 21, the summer solstice. Baba Tunde showed me out, but at the gate I walked right through the puddles, soaking my shoes and pants. -=Back in my motel, waiting, I tried meditating on the particulars of my reading, but mostly I was not wanting to think about the ebo. This was a line I had not crossed. Yet the more I considered it, the less itbothered me. It was something I had to do, and something I wanted to do. I felt drawn to it. Compelled. I had already stepped through the looking glass; of course I wanted to experience all the wonders. Not as a voyeur, though. That would never work. Whatever happened would happen. I knew sacrifice was holy, and I would accept it as such. I would cross the line and not look back. I packed up my suitcase and checked out of the motel. I had decided to drive on later that night to Athens, a college town about ninety miles east of Atlanta. Athens didn't have much to do with my voudou search-it was mostly a nostalgic detour, or so I thought at the time. I'd gone to high school there. There, too, I'd fallen into apostasy. I had beenbaptized at age twelve in a small sect called the Christian Church in Bryan, Texas, and, after moving to Georgia, had switched to the Methodist denomination along with my family. In Athens, for a couple ofyearsin high school, no less-I had turned evangelical. I kept a Bible by mybed and read from it each night, went to church and Methodist Youth Fellowship, tried to convert friends. Then I stopped. I can't pinpoint the moment, but I remember it had to do with segregation. I couldn't understand why blacks had to have CROSSING THE LINE - 167 their own churches, or schools, or drinking fountains. I couldn't understand why black students couldn't enroll at the University of Georgia, where my father taught. I couldn't understand why my minister and deacons let it be that way. Most of all, I couldn't understand why they insisted that the Bible itself believed in keeping the races apart. So I stopped believing in Christianity and in the church. I never went back. Nor had I ever been back to Athens. For the first time in years I thought it might be okay to return. -==Itwasn 't yet dark when I gotback to the home ofthe priests. In the indigo and burnt orange dusk I could see neighbors moving in adjacent yards and the occasional car pass down the alley. The chickens in the pen were pecking about for the final bits of grain before bedding down for the night. The lush summer garden glistened like green velvet. The rain had stopped and the evening was cool, fresh, alive. I might have been in a paintingby Rousseau. I didn't want to go back into the basement-it seemed too claustrophobic-but Baba Tunde instructed me to do so right away. He wanted me to take a few moments to write down the names of all the people I wished to influence or gain access to as a result ofthe sacrifice. The point ofthe ebo was to remove what was blocking me. I should therefore know who or what I wanted to find as the result of the cleared path. This wasn't a game. Somethingwould die for me in a few minutes and the gods would be asked to intervene for me. I'd better have a reason. As I wrote names on a blank piece of paper, I could hear African music from a stereo and the priests singing upstairs. Outside, the skies passed purple into opaque until night provided the requisite cover. When it was completely dark, Baba Tunde came downstairs. He said it was time. 168 - AMERICAN VOUDOU He led me outside past the patio to a tree at the edge of the yard. Kunle was already outside, leaning against the sedan in the driveway. Even in the dark, I could see the altar he had prepared for me at the base ofthe tree. Itwas a simple plate, adorned with candles and fruit, tucked in among altars and offerings for other clients and various gods-I recognized the conical, stylized head of Elegba next to my own prepared spot. I also saw a human skull, I think, but I really couldn't make out everything in detail because of the glutinous, yellowishorange residue that covered most of the tree trunk and entire altar collection. Oozing wax dripped from thousands of multicolored candles would have created the same visual effect, but what I was seeing was more accurately the accumulation of months worth ofdried blood (red), palm oil (orange-red), honey (yellow) and feathers. Soon I would add my own contribution. Baba Tunde told me to take offmy shoes and socks. When I did, I felt the cool wet mud rise through my toes. I took the remaining $90 for the ebo and wrapped it in a brown paper, folding it three times towards me, silently telling the ebo what I wanted. I gave the folded paper to Baba Kunle. He touched me with it on the forehead, used it to make the sign of the cross on my body, then put both the paper and the money in one of his pockets. When that was done, Kunle turned to his stock of ingredients on a nearby chair and seemed to be emptying something into his hand. He turned and opened his palm, revealing what looked like birdshot but were actually peppercorns-a total of sixteen, the same as the number of cowries used in divination. He told me to open my right hand and when I did he gently poured the peppercorns into the cup of my palm. "Chew them," he said, "but be careful not to swallow. Keep them in your mouth from now on. It's okay to swallow your spit." I ground them slowly with my molars. They were a little CROSSING THE LINE - 169 spicy but mostly just grainy. I salivated a lot and though I tried not to, I eventually swallowed most of the slush. Baba Tunde told me to face the altar and asked for the paper with the names-I had come up with about a dozen. As soon as I gave Tunde the paper, Baba Kunle put a small, gray-flecked rooster into my hands. I hadn't even seen the bird. Itwasn'tjust the darkness. So many things were happening so fast, and much ofit through the Yoruba tongue, that each new command seemed to come from nowhere. I was never sure which of the priests would speak next, or what they would ask of me. But I knew I would accede. I knew what that meant for the young rooster, trembling in my hands. I held it carefully, trapping its wings and feet so it couldn't get away, and continued to face the altar, silently repeating the favors I wanted from Elegba. I really did pray. When finished, I extended my arms to return the rooster. Baba Kunle accepted it, said a prayer in Yoruba, and moved up next to me. Taking the bird between his hands as though it were a chalice , he began to clean me, rubbing the perimeter of my head, then all down my body, just as Lorita had used pigeons on her clients. It seemed as though something were being drawn away from me. The bird was motionless as a feather duster. The two priests faced the altar and prayed in Yoruba to Elegba, Ogun, Obatala, Oshun and the other spirits. I turned to face the altar, too, thinking itbest.Just as I did, Baba Kunle held the rooster away from his chest with his left hand and with his right deftly twisted the rooster's neck. In another quick motion he pulled off its head. He dropped the head to the ground and held the body over the altar. Blood dripped across the god of the crossroads like rain on dry land. Then Kunle passed the decapitated torso over the paper with the names I'd provided. I watched blood slide across something I'd written. I felt an unwanted smile on my 170 - AMERICAN VOUDOU face, but then, I always laugh when I'm really frightened. Both priests continued to pray. Kunle fell silent, turned, and stood directly in front of me, the headless rooster in his left hand. He brought the body up in front of my face and dipped the middle finger of his right hand into the neck socket. In the African way, Kunle placed his bloody fingertips to the middle ofmybrow, and traced a line to the back ofmy head. He then anointed his finger in the blood again, knelt at my feet, and marked dots ofblood on both my big toes. He rose, stepped over to the altar, and lay the carcass at its base, offering more prayers to the spirits. He pinched out some feathers and scattered them across the offering, then retrieved the bottle of gin-a favorite drink of Elegba-from his sack of ingredients on the chair. He took a mouthful and spewed it out over the headless ebo. Baba Tunde did the same. Then Kunle spewed another mist on my bare feet and the top of my head. It was cool, astringent, its juniper odor refreshing amid the sweet smell ofblood and the tartness of my own sweat. Baba Tunde knelt to wash his hands in a small container of water. Floating inside were four coconut shells-the obi, the divination implements I had encountered in what seemed light years ago in the French Quarter. Before casting the husks, Tunde cleaned me with them, as Kunle had done with the rooster. The first throw came up all black-husk side up. Oyekun: Danger. Of the five possible variables, oyekun was the worst-the ultimate negative. Both priests fell silent a moment. They exchanged what sounded to me like dour intonations in Yoruba. Baba Kunle went immediately into the house. Tunde prayed. I just stood there. Baba Kunle returned with three white candles. After cleaning me with one, he told me to hold it in my right hand. They lit the other two and planted them in the sticky mud around the altar. Tunde again cast the obi, several times. CROSSING THE LINE - 17 I I couldn't see which configurations came up, but on one cast, one of the shells flipped up against the ebo carcass, making the reading two black, two white-ejife, a very good sign. But because the husk had fallen against the ebo, the reading apparently was compromised. I could see the two priests were now even more bothered. Kunle bent down to pull more feathers from the ebo and throw them against the Elegba. Baba Tunde cast again. I couldn't make out what it was, but it must have been at least a little more favorable. Neither priest spoke. As if something had finally been settled, Kunle leaned down to pick up the rooster's head and then its carcass, and put them in a brown paper bag. Instead of folding it shut, however, he set it on the ground, then poured palm oil and honey allover the remains of the ebo inside. When finished, he spewed out another mouthful of gin. He picked up the sack and brought it to me. He told me to spit everything from my mouth into the bag. Then he handed me the bag and told me to seal it shut. While I did that, Kunle reached down for a gallon plastic jug-one I hadn't noticed before-filled with a thick, grayish liquid. I knew it wasn't palm oil. I took it in my free hand while Kunle gave me instructions for the completion ofthe ritual. Once I had left their house, I was to go directly back to my room and shower, then clean myselfby pouring the liquid from the jug all over my naked body. I was not to wash it off until morning. Meanwhile, I was to throwaway the paper bag containing the ebo. I was to leave the line of blood on my head until I showered . That was it. I looked at Baba Tunde-Kunle seemed too distant to approach. That didn't make me feel very serene. What about the four black shells, I asked. What did that mean? Tunde said, "You may be taking your R&R sooner than you had planned." He said I was overtaxed-this was the warning of the ebo. In 172 - AMERICAN VOUDOU such condition I could make a mistake. Take some days offright away, he said, preferably near an ocean. I was planning to drive toward Oyotunji, a voudou community along the South Carolina seashore, after visting Athens, but I wasn't sure if this was a warning to skip Athens and head to the sea without delay. Baba Tunde shrugged, as if to say he'd said all he could. He told me goodbye and walked towards the house after Baba Kunle, who had left in complete silence. I carried my jug of cleaning potion through the puddles and out to my car. I leaned against the bumper and put on my socks and shoes. I eased into the driver's seat and, while the interior light was on, glanced at myselfin the rearview mirror. Theblood on myheadwas vivid-abright, wide stripe ofred. I didn't know who was looking back, and yet I did. He came from some time that found its door in the mists ofthe spray ofgin from a priest's mouth. He was a spirit, a spectre, a demon and a holy man, a blooded creature that felt at one with the heavens and with the flesh. He was invincible. He had dilated pupils and a smile. I started the car, wheeled around in the street and peeled away back out onto the boulevard of liquor stores and desperadoes . They didn't faze me. They had no idea where 1'd been. Near the freeway entrance I spotted a dumpster next to, what else, a fast food chicken outlet. I threw in the bag with the ebo. Alive, the rooster had been a kind ofspiritual sponge, a conduit whose life would gain the most meaning through service to the gods. Now, its own spirit had gone to the gods, and lived in them the way any food becomes part of those who eat it, or as communion crackers convey the spirit ofJesus into Christians. Now the rooster's carcass was just a toxic container filled with all my bad energy. I felt no more for it than for a dead chicken at Safeway. I was glad to be rid of it. I headed towards Athens. I didn't see why I couldn't go to the oceanlater. As I drove through the upscale enclaves ofnortheast Atlanta and out into the green, hilly, gorgeous and unre- CROSSING THE LINE - 173 pentant Dixie that was rural Georgia, I rebelled against the undue caution ofthe two priests. I didn't feel that strung out. Maybe they just weren't used to seeing writers on a long assignment. You get wired in this kind ofwork; it's not unusual. But maybe itwas unusual to them. Theyhad probablyjust subjectivelyprojected their feelings onto me. East of Atlanta the vicious heat-storms of summer came again. Fierce this time, as they'd been in Mississippi. Ground lightning popped around me until I could barely see to drive. Then, from the front ofthe car, Ibeganhearing a rhythmic clunka -clunk, growing ever louder, ever more grinding. I knew it was bad. I just wanted to make it to Athens. I had blood on my forehead and a gallon of mysterious liquid to pour over me and it was nearly midnight and it wouldn't be good to stop anywhere broken down. I asked the spirits to keep me going, and tomorrow 1'd take time to fix a lot of things. I reached Athens, and spent an uneasy half hour trying to find a motel. Rooms everywhere were filled because of a convention at the University of Georgia. I settled for a seedy inn whose spotlit marquee advertisedbudget rates and XXX in-room cable. The parking lot was filled with muddy pickups and old clunkers. I checked in, forgetting the blood on my head. The clerk didn't say anything. I wasn't sleepy, so I went to the tavern next to the motel and drank a couple ofbeers. I guess I must have looked odd, or maybe smelled pungent, because nobody sat anywhere near me. I went upstairs to my room. I stripped down. Actually, rain and perspiration had cleared most of the blood from my brow, but my big toes were stillbrightly marked. I carried the jug ofBaba Kunle's cleaning potion into the bathroom and put it on the toilet seat. I got in the shower and turned the water hot as I could stand it. Lorita had said not to let anyone put anything on me. Yeah, well. 174 - AMERICAN VOUDOU When I'd washed off the blood and sweat of the night, I turned off the water, reached out around the mildewed shower curtain and grabbed the jug. I had no idea what was inside, but it smelled sweet, like apple juice. I turned off the shower, then held the jug over my head and poured. Mostly, it was cold. But my flesh warmed the mixture fast. I watched it trickle down my shoulders, my chest and stomach, over my groin, down my thighs, across my toes. It was graybrown , filled with chunks ofvarious herbs. I examined myselfin the mirror. Bark and seed pods all over me, my whole torso light gray, as if I'd evolved from the mud. I waited a few minutes for the mix to dry, then sat naked and shivering on a towel on my bed. I turned on the TV. Satellite soft-core. I watched. I don't know for how long. I fell asleep. In the morning, the sheets were damp and tacky and my head was still wet. I showered again, as I had been instructed to do, then dressed. I checked out, leaving the empty jug in the motel room trash can. I went to get my car fixed. CV joints out, about $300. While waiting, I caught a city bus into downtown Athens and walked past myoId haunts alongside the UGA campus . I ate something. Then I took the busback to the repair shop and headed for the nearest coast -Savannah, a half day to the east. On the way storms blew in so fiercely the traffic on the interstate came to a complete stop, and then my muffler burned out. Another $120. I got the message. I backed off. I found a nice Savannah motel. I went to the clubs along the river and listened to music and ate oysters. I spent a day at the beach. I saw Batman. ...