The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (74 page)

The people found in the Americas that the spirits did not quite behave in the same manner as they had in Africa. In Africa the spirits had been predictable and generous. Ogoun, the Ironmaker, had been a gentleman-warrior and doctor back in Africa. The slave-hunting and the death on the ocean’s crossing had changed everything. The Africans had been changed by the journey just as Ogoun, Eurzulie, and Damballah themselves had been transformed by the slaughter in the Americas. Ogoun was no gentleman-warrior here; Ogoun was the guerrilla warrior of hit-and-run scorched earth and no prisoners.

Clinton wanted to make his point about the spirits. Not because he was some kind of missionary twisting people’s arms and reaching
into their pockets. Clinton didn’t care about the religion part. Clinton just wanted black people to know the spirits of their ancestors were still with them right there in the United States.

Clinton remembered those old granny women sitting with their pipes or chew, talking in low, steady voices about in-laws and all the branches of the family. The branch of the family that was Indian always bragged they were the
first
black Indians. The old women had chuckled over this claim; they had only meant they were first black Indians in Tennessee, someone had joked; that made more sense. In the old days Tennessee had been nothing but trees and Indians anyway. The black Indians of the family went so far as to paint a black Indian in a warbonnet on the front wall of their house. The black Indians of the family had stories about the very first black Indians.

The first black Indians had lived in high mountain strongholds where they launched raids on the plantations and settlements below. Some said the first black Indian medicine man had been a Jamaican who wandered Haiti, calling himself Boukman; this Boukman of course was working for Don Petro’s spirit family. On an August night, Boukman, the black Indian, had performed a ceremony. A terrible hurricane came up during the ceremony, and then suddenly, an old woman appeared who danced wildly then killed a black pig. Everyone there drank the blood of the pig and swore to follow Boukman, whose name meant “spirit priest.” Ouidambala, Great Ocean serpent, was consulted about undertaking war. The storm winds and floods had struck a terrible blow to the Europeans and gave the slaves advantages they sorely needed to launch their revolution.

Right then the difference between the spirits’ behavior in Africa and the spirits’ behavior in the Americas had been clear: Don Petro’s mean old wife, Martinette, had come dancing up a storm, and she did not care if the winds blew away everyone’s things. Don Petro’s family was like that, harsh even with family members, harsh even with one another. In Africa the spirits behaved much more gently and peacefully.

On American soil these spirits had been nurtured on bitterness and blood spilled since the Europeans had arrived. To judge from the ferocity of Don Petro’s family, the spirits had tasted blood even before the white man came. Some nights when Clinton had felt the most desperate in his own mind or in his heart, he had squatted in a corner of the homeless-shelter shower room and read himself notes he had taken on African religion. Sometimes Clinton had nightmares about Africans and American
Indians chasing him. The first nightmares had come after Clinton had been evicted from his room because of the rotting food on his shrine to Ogou.

Clinton was able to interpret his own dreams the way doctors did. Anyone would have had dreams of terror if they had slept on the street. The same dream night after night had become less frightening. Finally Clinton had dreamed the feathered tribal warriors were not chasing him to do harm, but only to bring him a message. The spirits were talking to dreamers all over the world. Awake, people did not even realize the spirits had been instructing them. It was perfect. People would not know why their feet were marching them north; people would not understand the joy they felt walking together side by side. Clinton knew what work was cut out for him and for Rambo-Roy and the others.

The old grannies had been sisters or sisters’ cousins, and they had constantly argued about the branches of the family. French colonials, terrified of poisonings and slave uprisings, but more terrified of the spirits, had asked the black Indians to lead the great opening Mardi Gras parade to acknowledge the people who had been in that place the longest. The white man needed the black Indians to quiet the anger of the spirits. The old grannies used to laugh. White man didn’t do enough for the spirits because the next thing they know there’s the Civil War and the old spirits drink up rivers of white man’s blood while the slaves run free.

EVEN BLACK STUDIES CLASS got boring sometimes, especially once European conquerors showed up in Africa. The early history in Africa was great because the African kings had built great empires and African metallurgists had created great works in iron. In the North, African mathematicians created the zero, key to higher mathematics, while African astronomers charted the planets and stars.

But Clinton had always got a sick feeling in his stomach as the days in class passed and the terrible, fateful day approached; the day was
when the first European slave-traders had appeared at African slave markets and not at the slave markets in France and England. The semester assignment had been to collect old folks’ talk about their memories of the past. Black studies had been a good class for Clinton in that respect: he had gone to talk with one of the last of the old grannies right before he got sent to Vietnam. She had talked about the spirits watching over Clinton. She saw them. Later in Vietnam when he woke up alive with the knife and its shattered handle, Clinton had known for sure the spirits were watching over him.

Clinton remembered the old grannies arguing among themselves to pass time. The older they got, the more they had talked about the past; and they had sung songs in languages Clinton didn’t recognize, and when he had asked the grannies, they said they didn’t understand the language either, because it was spirits’ language that only the dead or servants of the spirits could understand.

Clinton had only taken notes on particular details that had interested him. A lot of the African-American studies classes had been bullshit honkie sociology or psychology. Having a black professor didn’t make it the gospel. Clinton only took notes on the subjects that excited him, such as the black Indians or the spirits and African people.

From Clinton’s Notebook
Black Indians at Mardi Gras

Black Indian guards and scouts walk ahead of the Mardi Gras parade. The tribal queen is very black, but her face is painted intricately and she wears the feathers of the Kushada Indians. The medicine man strides beside her. Black Indian marchers in tribal costume and feathers are everywhere. “Wild creatures” are dressed in animal skins, and grass aprons with headdresses of horns and antlers. They wear huge cattle rings in their noses. “Wild creatures” dance by jumping up and down, and screeching and spitting. “Wild creatures” have been enraged since time immemorial, over human behavior, but now especially, they reserve special fury for white people along the parade route. They sing:

The black Indian tribes call themselves Little Red, Little Blue, and Little Yellow Eagles. The Golden Blades do battle to see who’s chief each year. Wild Squatoulas and the Creole Wild Wests (cowboys from Opelousas) sing:

Get out the dishes,

get out the pans!

Here comes all the Indian mans!

Black Indians dance with wild abandon. The dances are tribal.

No outsider knows where Africa ends or America begins.

A huge snake of pearls writhes on the black Indian queen’s gold-lamé cape. An immense spider of silver beads crawls over the flame-red satin of the queen’s dress. The cacique priest has chosen the pure white of crystal beads, snowy-egret feathers, white velvet, white satin trimmed in miniature roses of white rhinestone and crystal sequins.

The black Indians march, tribe by tribe, leading the Mardi Gras parade. Tribes sing their songs of arrogance:

Oh, the Little Reds, Whites, Blues,

and Little Yellow Eagles,

Bravest in the land.

They are on the march today

If you should get in their way

Be prepared to die!

In 1933, a policeman was injured by a war spear thrown by some rival tribes in battle. After that, the tribes agreed to act friendly in the Mardi Gras parade. They sang this song:

Shootin’ don’t make it no no mo no!

Shootin’ don’t make it no no mo no!

Shootin’ don’t make it no no mo no!

If you see you a man sitting in a bush

Knock him in the head and give him a push.

’Cause shooting don’t make it no no mo no—

Shooting don’t make it no no mo no!

Along the parade route young girls and boys act as spies for rival tribes waiting down the street, reporting the boasts and challenges that have just been made to give rival tribes and individuals enough time to make up songs in reply.

To a challenge from another black Indian woman, the black Indian queen answers:

Shoot! She don’t look so hot to me!

She don’t have no life in her!

Man! She’s got to have it like I have it!

Use it like I do! Do it like I do it!

Like a tribal queen! Like a tribal queen!

Here the queen darts her tongue out like a snake’s, and her hips and stomach writhe like a snake’s because black Indians still keep in touch with the serpent spirits Damballah and Simbi.

Chief Brother Tillman, leader of the Creole Wild West Indians, is dressed in simple buckskin with black fringe and black feathers. Late as 1947, white people of New Orleans feared the black Indians from the Wild West and tried to avoid them. Still the braves leaped on the trucks of white maskers and yelled, “Mardi Gras! Mardi Gras! Chew the straw! Run away and tell a lie!”

The notes Clinton had made on the black Indians never failed to make Clinton feel somehow hopeful and proud. Clinton especially enjoyed how rowdy and frightening the black Indians had been to whites. Clinton loved to imagine the exhilaration, the feeling of power, the Wild West Indians must have felt. But after 1947, black Indians had no longer appeared in the Mardi Gras parades. The black Indians were outlawed from the parade because changes were already in the wind in 1947. Blacks who had defended the U.S. overseas had come home to demand civil rights.

The black Indians had been part of the white Mardi Gras parades since the days wealthy Indians had owned slaves like the whites. The black Indians had been allowed in the parade because they were American Indians. Clinton felt proud the black Indians had shown the white people whose side they were on even if all the black Indians did get kicked out of the parade. The Negro Mardi Gras was held on March
19 in New Orleans, and he wondered if the Negro Mardi Gras parade had invited the outlawed black Indians to march in their parade. That would have been the right gesture for black people to make to their Indian brothers, but Clinton knew black people and Indians had not always been free to make the appropriate “gestures.” Clinton was no fool. He could remember how his old aunties and grannies had loved to sit smoking their pipes, teasing about one another’s lineage. Indians were Indians, even if they looked black. The black Indians didn’t get invited to any more parades, certainly not to the Negro Mardi Gras parade. Because the black Indians were troublemakers, and trouble had been the last thing the Negro middle class of New Orleans needed.

The old grannies and aunties used to say the people who had first come from Africa had been shocked by what they had found in the Americas. Even the African gods they had found in America had been toughened-up by their experience on this continent. Except of course for the pure-hearted Damballah, gentle but distant, who did not concern himself with worldly things; Damballah had not been affected. But right away it was clear that in America, the African gods were short-tempered. What the African slaves had met face-to-face in this land was Death. Death roamed freely night and day in America; in Africa, Death only went about late at night.

SPIRITS DIDN’T FRIGHTEN CLINTON. He knew how to talk to them silently; he had ordinary conversations with them unless they had come to Clinton with a message. Clinton had not always believed. Then he got hit in Vietnam, and the knife changed everything. Vietnam had been full of Vietnamese spirits. Vietnamese people spent the better part of their time, and money, on incense, candy, liquor, and flowers for the spirits. The example the Vietnamese set had been inspiration for Clinton, and luckily, he had begun to “feed” his knife a little rum every morning, and every night. A month later, the knife had saved his life.