Rock and Roll Voodoo

CHAPTER ONE MAGIC MUSHROOMS-2

“We should pick that guy up,” Casey shouted as he pointed. “He might know where the shrooms are.”

Jesse pulled over and stopped. Casey got out of the two-door car, flopped the front passenger seat forward, and helped the hitchhiker wedge himself into the back seat. The new passenger smelled like wet dog as he mumbled some kind of thank you in an indiscernible dialect.

“I knew it,” Casey said, reaching back to shake the man’s hand. “You’re Cajun, aren’t you? Say something in Cajun.”

The disheveled man, who looked to be in his mid-thirties, held out his hand and said, “Laissez les bons temps rouler.”

“Yes,” Casey said so loudly it made the man jump in his seat. “Let the good times roll. I know that one.”

The three men laughed together as Jesse got back on the road and shifted through four gears and up to highway speed. Harley still ran like a top, despite its battered appearance.

“We’re looking for magic mushrooms and Bayou Lafourche,” Casey said, wasting no time, getting to the point.

“I can take you there.”

“To the bayou or to the mushrooms?”

“Both.”

“No, you’re kidding. You really know where the shrooms are?”

“Ya, mon,” he said, sounding a little too Caribbean.

“What’s your name?” Jesse asked.

“Name Gabriel.”

“Nice to meet you, Gabriel. I’m Jesse. You’ll have to forgive me, here, but I’ve done some hitchhiking myself and I’d hate to think you’d let us drive you all the way to your house just because you say that’s where the mushrooms are.”

Gabriel laughed in a way that made him seem charmingly believable. “No, no. I wouldn’t do that. But the best mushroom fields do happen to be right near my house.”

“How far from here?” Jesse asked.

“Not far, maybe half an hour, maybe a little more.”

“What do you know about magic mushrooms?” Casey asked.

“I know the cows eat the mushroom spores and their body heat germinates the spores and they s**t them out and their manure fertilizes them,” the hitchhiker said. “After that, all it takes is heat and moisture. We’ve got both today. They don’t need sunlight.”

Casey looked at Jesse in triumph at having found the right man for the job.

“That’s good enough for me,” Jesse said. “How do you know the psychedelic mushrooms that are safe from the poisonous ones that can kill you?”

“The good ones have little purple rings around the stem,” Casey interrupted.

“I was asking Gabriel.”

“Yes,” Gabriel said. “Only eat ones with the purple. You be fine.”

The hitchhiker pointed out a road sign that said turn right for Raceland, Louisiana. “Okay, turn left. We don’t go to Raceland. This is Highway One. Turn left and it runs by Bayou Lafourche. On the west of the bayou is Highway One and on the east is Highway Three o’ Eight. The bayou is in the middle.”

“Man, this is some of the flattest country I’ve ever seen,” Jesse said as he made the turn. “I thought Indiana was flat. This place doesn’t even have a bump in the road.”

Jesse kept driving into the rain, past low-slung houses and shanties with wooden docks along some kind of canal.

“What kind of traffic goes down that waterway?” Casey asked.

Gabriel leaned forward between the seats. “Shrimp boats and tourist riverboats and pirogues.”

“What’s a pirogue?” Casey shifted into interview mode.

“It’s a small boat with a flat bottom so you can push-pole it through the shallow swamp,” Gabriel made the motion. “It’s a Cajun thing.”

“What is a Cajun, anyway?” Casey asked.

“It’s a mix of French Creoles who came down from Canada, Indians, blacks, and some English,” Gabriel said. “My momma says I’ve got a little of all of them in me.”

“Looks like you might have had a rough night last night,” Jesse said.

“It was a Fais do-do,” Gabriel said. “An all night party. I guess you can tell I haven’t been to bed yet.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Casey said. “You look fine. We’ve all been there.”

“What do you do for a living?” Jesse asked.

“There it is,” Gabriel pointed as a waterway came into view alongside the road. “Allow me to introduce you to Bayou Lafourche. It’s more than one hundred miles long from the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico. It be Main Street for Cajun country. Here you find real Cajun cooking and the Zydeco music. Do you know Zydeco?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jesse said. “I play in a band. We’ve got a fiddle player.”

“Do you have an accordion?” Gabriel asked.

“Not yet.”

“So, come down here and find you one,” Gabriel said. “Zydeco is Cajun folk music. It’s like country music only with an accordion.”

“I can’t believe we found Bayou Lafourche,” Casey said.

“Gabriel found it for us,” Jesse said. “If it hadn’t been for him, we would have driven right past it.”

Jesse was driving through a part of the waterway that was nearly overgrown with Chinese Tallow, Bald Cypress, and Willow trees when Gabriel said, “The bayou is so far south it makes New Orleans look like a northern city.”

“Most of what I know about the bayou comes from the Hank Williams song, ‘Jambalaya,’” Jesse said.

“Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh,” Gabriel sang. “Me gotta push-pole the pirogue down the bayou.”

“That’s the one,” Jesse said.

“Hey Jambalaya, crawfish pie, filé gumbo,” Gabriel continued singing. Jesse joined in on the chorus and they sounded pretty good together as they finished the song. After a little instant harmony, Jesse felt he could trust Gabriel.

Casey turned around in his seat to ask Gabriel a direct question. “This is where the Voodoo comes from, right?”

“Ah, yes, the bayou has all the Voodoo you can imagine,” Gabriel’s eyes widened in Jesse’s rear mirror. “Some of it can haunt you.” He thrust his open hands into the front seat. “Some can protect you, even from yourself. It is the magic of the spirit world.” He clasped his hands together as if in prayer. “There is much magic here. Today, you will find much more than you are looking for.”

“What makes you say that?” Casey asked.

“I don’t know why I say it,” Gabriel said. “I just know it be true. Feel it in my bones.”

“So what about the magic mushrooms?” Casey asked, taking the talk back to the quest at hand. “How much farther? We’ve been driving almost fifty miles now.”

“Not much farther. See, here is Lockport. Next is Larose, where the Intracoastal Waterway intersects Bayou Lafourche. Between Lockport and Larose, that is where we go.”

“You mean that’s where you live,” Jesse said.

“Yes, yes,” Gabriel laughed his disarming laugh. “I do live there but that is where you will find the best mushrooms. You will see. I show you.”

A few miles past Lockport, the road left the bayou and meandered through a stretch of ranch land. Gabriel motioned for them to stop. Jesse parked Harley off the side of the road in front of a never-ending field. The three of them got out to stretch. The rain had stopped. Across the road was a long, white, cattle fence, four feet high.

“See that fence,” Gabriel said. “Climb it and walk a ways, and you find all the mushrooms you can carry.”

“Aren’t you coming with us?” Jesse asked.

“No, I don’t need any. They’re all for you. I had too much of everything last night. I need sleep. Thanks, you two, for the ride. Happy times. You have good hunting.”

With that, Gabriel began walking down the road. Casey got two paper grocery bags out of the car. He and Jesse crossed the road to climb the fence. Looking around to see if the coast was clear, Jesse realized Gabriel wasn’t on the road. He wasn’t on the side of the road or walking into a field. He was nowhere in sight.

Casey scanned the area from the top of the fence. “I don’t see where he could have gone.”

“He’s the mystery man,” Jesse said. “Come on. Let’s get over this fence and hope he wasn’t suckering us for a ride all the way to his house.”

They walked into the field far enough so as not to be seen from the road. A few cows grazed in the distance. Jesse felt his feet sinking in the sandy soil. The land was relentlessly flat. They crossed a dry creek bed with some shrub trees and began walking into fields of grass. Jesse smelled the piles of manure before he saw them. None had any mushrooms.

The search went on without luck for nearly an hour. The sun came out from behind the clouds. It got hot and steamy in a hurry. Jesse was feeling discouraged. The heat made him wonder why he hadn’t thought to bring any water. Everything looked the same. He could tell from Casey’s slumped shoulders that his friend was also losing hope in the hunt. He was about to give up the search when he decided it was time to take a leak. There were scattered bushes nearby but he didn’t bother to hide behind one since no one was around. He relieved himself in the open field and marveled at the yellow arc of his urine stream glowing in the sun.

The miracle began.

There, at the very end of his shining relief, was a mostly-dry pile of cow manure, covered in magic mushrooms. They looked like a colony of tiny aliens atop the cow pie. He changed his trajectory to avoid pissing on the treasure.

“Casey,” he yelled as he shook himself off and zipped up. “You’d better come see this right away. We have mushrooms, lots of them. I was taking a leak and there they were. Like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.”

By the time Casey arrived, Jesse had already picked his first mushroom out of the manure. It had the purplish ring around the stem.

“That’s the real deal,” Casey howled as he hopped up and down in a victory dance.

Jesse took a few steps to the right and looked down. “Here’s another one with even more.”

Suddenly, they were surrounded by a sea of magic mushrooms. Where once had been only sand and dry brush, there was now nothing but piles of cow manure, covered with magic mushrooms. They picked quickly but carefully, so as not to damage their sacred harvest. In minutes, they had half a grocery bag of what looked to be the finest magic mushrooms in all the land. They were big, some of them six inches long and three inches wide.

“Should we try one out?” Casey asked.

“Absolutely,” Jesse said as he stuffed a four-inch mushroom into his mouth and began chewing with a grimace.

Casey stifled his own gag reflex. “You’re not even going to wash it first?”