I was twelve the first time my dad took me to see the Voodoo Man. He wasn’t a voodoo man like you see in movies and television and certainly not like you see on Bourbon Street down in New Orleans. He didn’t practice magic spells or make dolls or anything. The Voodoo Man of Livingston Parish, Louisiana was the greatest living blues player west of the Mississippi River (or at least the greatest we’d ever heard) during the early eighties. There were so many rumors about him floating around that no one knew for sure what the truth was about him. Remy and the rest of my friends said he was a hobo looking for dope. But Miss Nancy, who owned the Mainline Café where he played most often, said she’d heard he wasn’t even a real man, just the spirit of the long dead Robert Johnson that traveled the railways in and out of towns, stopping to spread his sorrow and regret at such a short life. Now, to most kids, that story might present as a bit fanciful and exciting. But it terrified me. Growing up around tales of hauntings and real black magic, I came to take those things very seriously, and still do.
Anyway, the man wasn’t magic or any kind of hocus pocus, just a man who could turn a single Gibson Dot semi-hollow body guitar into a full band using nothing but his slide and a large helping of God-given talent and skill. The man worked up such a sweat that we thought he might drown in it one day. But I never heard such a smooth sound in all my life. I watched my dad, Walter Furtick, tap his foot and beat on the wooden table in the café along with half of Denham Springs. I remember him being so happy, and for the first time since Mom passed, he was enjoying himself.
Dad was the groundskeeper of the cemetery where Mom was buried. He worked during the day, cutting the grass, trimming the hedges, and picking up the dead flowers from the graves. When he started, after high school, he worked the night shift and his job was to chase off stray animals, possums, raccoons, and the occasional fox, nothing too serious. What his boss then didn’t tell him was that he would also be responsible for chasing off teenagers from doing séances, drinking and carrying on, and trying to have relations. He complained about that part a lot, but you could tell he enjoyed it. Anyway, he and Mom met when they were still in high school and after they graduated, they got married. She was the prettiest girl in the whole of Livingston Parish, Dad used to say. And I’d say it’s true since I’ve seen the yearbook photos. There’s one picture of her in the art room wearing a canvas apron splattered with paint. Her dark hair is pulled back into a bun the size of a donut and her hands are streaked with color, though you can’t tell which ones, being as the photo is black and white. She has the biggest smile, so big that her eyes are smiling too. In front of her is a half completed painting of an old woman at a Singer sewing machine.
People used to say she was going places, that she’d be a sure shot to get into a school like LSU or even one of the specialty art programs in California or New York. She could’ve done anything she wanted. But she decided to get married to a cemetery groundskeeper instead. Being as dad never talked about it much, I never knew exactly why she gave it all up, all the promise and prestige, to marry a blue-collar boy. I know the first chance I got, I was up and out of Denham quicker than polished steel. I suppose it may have been that real love that everyone says doesn’t exist anymore. But even if it was, it sure as hell didn’t last very long. See, I was born about a year after they got married. Mom was nineteen years old and Dad was a year ahead. At the time they were living in the small housing that the cemetery provided, the same house I grew up in. To most people, living on a cemetery is a strange and crazy thing, but truth be told, it was something I wouldn’t trade for anything. It gave me a different outlook on life. My favorite thing to do was to walk out there at night with a flashlight and look for ghosts and ghouls. I grew up around death, so why would I be afraid of it?
But Mom didn’t see it that way. She was probably the parish’s best artist at the time and for a person like that to be cooped up in a two-bedroom cabin at the back end of a graveyard, well, you might as well have sentenced them to exile. She still painted some, but never any people, just mundane objects like the stove or a pot, or a headstone. Our family wasn’t well received among the people of Denham Springs, so after I was born most folks stayed away from Mom, those that hadn’t gone off to school and such anyway. She used to cut out pictures of tropical islands from magazines and then tape them to the inside of the kitchen window. It wasn’t long before she had covered the whole window and part of the window over the sink. When the sun would come up, those greens and blues would ignite the kitchen and she used to just sit there, sometimes all day, and bask in the glow. But at night, the kitchen was the darkest room in the house and the trees and sand and water on those clippings looked more like ghosts than a vacation.
About a year afterwards, Dad found Mom at the kitchen table with an open bottle of sleeping pills when he came home from work. I don’t remember any of this being as I was so young, about two at that time. And Dad didn’t tell me about it until years later, after I graduated from high school. He sat me down and explained it to me between sips of Wild Turkey or Maker’s Mark (he did a lot of drinking after she died). Told me it didn’t have anything to do with me, that she was unhappy with him and the way things turned out. I know now that she wasn’t the kind to be contained like she was. She was a natural artist, and taking that away from a person is like taking the wings off a bird. I know Dad was trying to protect me, telling me her taking her own life wasn’t because of me, but I couldn’t help but think that maybe me being born had something to do with it. Whenever I get to thinking like that, though, I look at an old picture of her holding me and see her eyes smiling along with everything else. It makes me feel better.
Me and Dad got along all right for several years. He kept watch over the grounds during the day and I started wandering out at night to catch ghosts and the like. I went to school like any normal kid would, but Dad didn’t get out much. He drank with another guy he worked with, Carter, but they never left the house. A lot of people like to throw around the mean drunk stereotype but Dad wasn’t like that. He was a sad drunk, someone who liked to drink and then remember all the most hurtful times he could. Whenever he’d get to being sad and crying, I’d take my flashlight and go out into the graveyard and just wander around for a few hours till Dad had made his way back to bed. After I turned twelve, though, all that changed.
It was a Thursday when we first heard that the Voodoo Man had come to town. Remy, my best friend growing up, told me about a crazy old black man who came to the Mainline Café the night before and made the whole crowd go silent with his playing. Back in those days, the café used to serve alcohol so the kids would get their Cokes and Sprites and the adults would get their Buds and Keystones. Anyway, Remy said the man played his guitar like nothing they’d ever heard before. So naturally, I went home and begged Dad to take us there the next night, partly because of Remy’s story and partly because I wanted to get out of that little cabin. He wasn’t keen on the idea at all and told me I could go with Remy and his dad, but it seemed wrong to me to do that. So for the next few days I begged and pleaded like I’d never done before for anything else. That Saturday night I had gone out into the graveyard to look for whatever I could find. I never went past Mom’s grave, though I always kept it in sight. I usually traveled about in a square around it, past the Dobbins, and the Lambeau’s and the Myers’ plots because those were the oldest. Well, I got back inside the house and Dad had already gone to bed. I got some water and sat at the kitchen table and stared out the window where Mom used to keep her tropical pictures. They were gone then, but you could still see the outline on the glass where they used to be. I was sitting there thinking about Fiji and other tropical places I’d learned about in school when I heard an awful shout from Dad’s room. I couldn’t tell what he was saying but he was saying it loud. I went back and cracked the door and he was throwing himself about the bed like he was possessed by something nasty. And then he stopped. At breakfast he looked more awake than I’d seen him in a while. He kept looking around the kitchen like it was the first time he’d ever been in it. He drank coffee without whiskey, which is something I couldn’t remember seeing him do. He said we should go see the Voodoo Man next time he came around.
After almost a week we got word that he was heading back to Denham on the next train. I got so excited that I couldn’t focus on anything at school. Most people were all buzzing about him. I was at the grocery store getting food for me and Dad and you could feel the air was charged with something, an anticipation I’ll never forget. The lady at the checkout, I forget her name now, she was humming a song I didn’t know at the time. When I got to the counter, she started singing under her breath, saying:
The Gypsy Woman told me that you your momma’s bad little child
You having a good time now, but there’ll be trouble after while.
When I got home, I put all the food up and waited for Dad to get off work. A few hours later we were both showered and ready to go. My friend Remy would be there. His dad and my dad knew each other from school days so when we got there, the four of us sat at a table. Remy and me got Cokes and Dad and Remy’s dad got one Bud a piece. Dad popped the caps off using the edge of the table and I looked around and saw there was people everywhere. The Mainline Café is not a large place, maybe a thirty foot by thirty foot building with room for a small bar. Every table was packed and the wall was lined with people from the town. I even saw the grocery check-out lady from earlier that day with some of her friends in the corner. There was a subtle whisper among the crowd, and Dad seemed to be growing restless. He kept looking around and had barely touched his beer. That’s when we saw him for the first time.
The back door swung open by the kitchen and a short, younger looking black man walked in carrying a guitar case with almost iridescent lettering across the front that read: The Voodoo Man. He was thin with a full beard, something you don’t often see on black folks. He wore a newsie cap and matching denim jeans and jacket. He kept his face pointed at the floor and leaned to one side when he walked, like the guitar weighed a thousand pounds. He took a seat in the corner where someone had already set up a chair for him. The room was silent. No one spoke or clapped or even coughed as the Voodoo Man sat down in the chair and opened his guitar case. As he settled in, the pearl inlays on the fret board caught the light from a lamp overhead and glittered. Then he played.
And did he play.
There were no speakers or microphones in the room but his Gibson sang like a chorus of singers. The high strings made you swoon and the low strings made your insides quake. Each pick was distinct from the next, like every note waited in line to be called up to sing. He scratched with his nails and slid a shot glass up and down until every chord moaned in pleasurable agony. Even the young children were quiet while the Voodoo Man stroked and caressed songs from the guitar. The apple red body of his guitar was worn at the edges, but the silver tuning pegs and the pearl inlay on the fret board shone like stars. The first song was over ten minutes long and no one in the crowd noticed. When he finished the first song, the Voodoo Man coughed once, set the shot glass he had been using as a slide on the floor, then started into another song. I looked over at Remy who held a glass bottle of Coke up to his lips as if in mid-sip. He never took a sip and he never set the bottle down, just held it there as the Voodoo Man picked and swayed in his chair. His voice, scratchy and solid, rumbled the chairs under us and made the floorboards croak:
Runnin’ down to the station, catch the first old mail train I see
I got the blues about Miss So-and-So and the child got the blues about me.
Nobody in the cafe had clapped or anything for a second. Then, after the third song, as if on cue, the entire café went wilder than a hog in heat, whistles and claps and stomps and all. The Voodoo Man gave a small wave and sat his guitar on top of the case and walked out of the back door.
I turned to say something to Remy and when I did, I caught a glimpse of my dad smiling to Remy’s dad and I froze a little. I hadn’t seen him smile unless he was in between drinking and drunk. I heard him say to Remy’s dad, “That son of a bitch must have eight fingers on the one hand,” and they both laughed. And then Remy and I laughed, without really understanding why. The whole café seemed to be buzzing, people talking and moving about the place. Ms. Nancy seemed to be throwing drinks at people, they were ordering them so fast. I don’t think she’d seen that much business and probably, not since either. We were all waiting anxiously for the Voodoo Man to come back, seeing as he left his guitar there on the floor. After about ten minutes, he walked back through the door, gave a small wave and sat back down and played again.
He played on for about thirty minutes. He played and sang Crossroads, Hoochie Coochie Man, and a few others that I learned the names of later on. I watched my dad tap his foot and sway as the picking and the sliding and the vibrato went on into the late night hours. After the last song, he packed up his guitar and walked out from the door he came in, not saying anything to anybody. When he left for good that night, one of the old timers said, “he’s got vibrato you can throw a cat through.” I never was one to believe in magic till then, but if there was such a thing, that man had it. I won’t ever forget seeing the smile on my dad’s face when we left that night. He was humming and singing all the way back to our cabin in the cemetery. He’d finished four or five beers that night so he went straight to bed, still singing. I’d had two Cokes so I was pretty awake.
I took my flashlight and headed out into the graveyard like I always did when I was that age. It was a summer night, round about September, and everywhere you went fireflies would spark and then disappear then spark again. I usually walked through with no real aim, just in between headstones and up the rows past the mausoleum until I got tired and went back home. But that night I had a rhythm in me that brought movement down to my feet and kept me whistling most of the night. That was the first time I wanted a guitar, a big bright shiny red one that looked like hell and sounded like angels singing to each other.
As I was planning out my next concert in my head, I heard a singing coming from the edge of the graveyard. It wasn’t a pleasant singing, more of a hollering mixed with a moaning sound. After all the craziness I’d seen that night, I’ll admit I was a bit afraid. I walked through the sticky air to where the singing was coming from, and when I saw the Voodoo Man slumped down in front of a gravestone I near about panicked. He was hard to make out in the dark, on account of his dark complexion, but the letters on his guitar case seemed to glow next to him. He was singing, but not the way he had been earlier that night. Instead of a smooth and smoky blues voice, he sounded like a chicken being grabbed by the neck. His chin was buried in his chest and he was just gurgling a song that I couldn’t make out. The closer I got to him I saw the front of his shirt was stained brown like he’d thrown up on himself and I wouldn’t have ever seen the glass pipe lying next to him if it hadn’t caught the light from the stars. There was a lighter in his hand and two empty plastic bags next to him. He lifted his head when I was about ten feet away and mumbled something, but I couldn’t hear what.
“What’re you doing here?” I asked him.
He squinted at me and said, “You come to kill me, boy?”
“No,” I said. “I saw you play tonight.”
“Oh you did, did you?” He smiled and leaned his head all the way back against the headstone.
I pointed to the pipe amongst the plastic bags. “What’s all that?”
He laughed. “That’s the Voodoo Man’s magic medicine,” son. He tried to stand up but couldn’t lift himself. He slouched back down and let out a long breath. “You the night watch?”
“My daddy works here,” I said. “I come out here to find ghosts and such.”
He laughed and then coughed like a dying man would cough. “Better not go looking for boogers. I tell you right now, if you can see them, they can see you, for sure. Best to leave what’s lying to lie right where it is.” He looked up at me and smiled again and I saw his teeth were yellowed and his beard was stained brown down his chin. He started laughing again and I turned and started running back to the cabin. I passed by Mom’s grave, and instead of looking like I normally do, I kept running, the image of the Voodoo Man’s stained face running through my brain.
In the morning, Dad and I were sitting at the table for breakfast, and I never heard him talk so much in my life. He even woke up a little earlier than normal. We sat at the table for a good while, him just going on about last night and the amazing things that we all heard. He told me about a concert he went to when he and mom were still dating, a Willie Nelson show, back before he got real big. Then he paused and said he had a dream about her the other night. That she came and talked to him for a while, then left on a cloud. He sat still for a bit then got up and kissed the top of my head and went to get ready for work.
I never told him about what I’d seen the night before. After seeing him so excited and talkative it didn’t seem right to ruin that. So I kept it to myself, even until he died a few years ago. It just didn’t seem right and he seemed so happy. Every now and again I like to look through pictures of him and Mom when they were dating. And I see that same smile on his face when he’s standing next to her as what I remember that morning after we saw the Voodoo Man.
—-
Kyler Campbell is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Converse College. His work has appeared in The Mountain Laurel, and was nominated for the 2012 Iron Horse Literary Review’s Discovered Voices prize. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina with his wife and their cat.
