Gunslingers Don't Sing or Dance by Mike Marino (any book recommendations txt) 📕

the ancient dragon Meng Zhang as they lay prone on the floor as their minds soared to the pinnacle of Minya Konka, sacred to the monks of Tibet.

 

A few hours of blissful peace, I was ready to begin my search for the mysterious Isadora and her magic spells and out of focus hocus pocus sense of spirituality. I was decidedly refreshed after my journey to the other world, but now it was time to immerse myself in the tawdry lewdness of The French Quarter. If voodoo was a reality in this land of Creoles and superstition, I might get the information I needed on locating Isadora and one half of the map to find treasure and hopefully my future.

 

In New Orleans you go the Quarter for three things. To drink, gamble and have sex with a Cajun of questionable morals in one the city’s Red Light District brothels on Basin Street. A wonderland for  prostitution, gambling and entertainment including music in the bordellos.  If you are a visitor not a local, they have  guidebooks of prostitution for visitors  including  house descriptions, prices, services, and the "stock" each house offered.

I chose Madam Hattie’s “21” House where I obtained the services of a young lady, part Seminole, part French for a romp after a half-bottle of questionable whiskey. When we finished our business I sat down and spoke to Madam Hattie to see if she could guide me to the voodoo vortex of this magnificent city of Red Light delights. I mentioned Isadora as Madam Hattie seemed the type who would know every dirty secret and every person on the fringe of society in this boisterous city of carnal pleasures and magic. She did.

She told me if I was looking for a young  woman who speaks to the spirit world and dances with the undead and gave me an address on St. Anne Street. She also corrected me….Isadora was not a Creole. She was a Quadroon which is a person of African, Indian and Caucasian blood, the Caucasian in this case was French.  I can’t keep it all straight...one man’s Creole is another man’s Cajun...now I was now faced with the  linguistic quandary the Quadroon.

Chapter 5 - Three Days of Petit Angel

 

The Three Days of Le Petit Angel

Personal Journal Entry - July 28, 1867

Baxter Dooley

 

I decided not to wait until the morning sun explodes on the horizon to make my way into a heretofore unexplored region of the unholy undead.

 

Voodoo! The word has all the charm of a venereal disease and gave me  chills deep inside, probably the same feeling when the hanging judge, Judge Parker pronounces the old death by hanging sentence to a homicidal desperado who for some unknown reason took the lives of a local ranch family recently near Buffalo, Wyoming  for no other purpose than to get his  hands on a few greenbacks tucked away in a jar in the kitchen and a platter of fresh apple pie made for the county fair competition the next day. There would be no ribbons awarded this time for first prize to Maddie Hanson whose pie it was that was eaten by a man who was judge, jury and executioner of the entire Hanson family who lived five dusty dirt road wagon rut miles out of town.

 

Voodoo! I was looking for the address that would unlock the door to riches, the kind of wealth Conquistidors and grizzled old prospectors dream about as they search relentlessly for elusive dreams that never come true. The Seven Cities of Gold, Cibola illusions, elusive and never found

 

I came upon the home of Isadora and before I could knock on the door it opened slowly and Isadora stood there and bid me enter, not only to her home, but as I would find out, to another realm a new dimension most of us  unfamiliar with.  

 

“I am Isadora, may I help you?”

 

I was frightened. How in hell did she know I was coming? There must be something to this voodoo and the spirit world. I guess the look of wild eyed fright gave my thoughts away.

 

“Aha. I can see from your face what you must be thinking. No, I didn’t know you were coming until 10 minutes ago. Madam Hattie sent a young boy ahead to tell me you were coming. Nothing mysterious. Just our way down here. We look out for each other. Please come in.”

 

She was a bronze Venus de Milo, except she had arms. Legs? They were stairways to the clouds.  Her eyes a violet color that bore through your very soul.   Her face was a bronze Quadroon beauty you find only in works of art in the finest galleries of Europe. Her  voice was deep, raspy, and sexy as she spoke with a Louisiana Creole French patois I was beginning to enjoy having been  immersed in it ever since I set foot on the wooden docks in the New Orleans harbor.

 

She offered me wine, rich, red and thick, imported from France where wine making is an art. I accepted gratefully with a smile. “I’m here to make you a proposition. One that I hope you will embrace, but all I’ve heard all day is about voodoo, spirits and black and white magic. Is this on the level or merely parlor tricks?”

 

She threw her head back,  laughter bursting  forth with the impact of a stampede of longhorns. “If you mean zombies and spells, let me tell you. Then you decide. In voodoo we have the great spirit. Just as you whites have your Jesus and God, we have Li Grand Zombi He is our great spirit and is a snake. He is responsible for zombies.  You must understand. We believe the living body is home to two angels. One Petit and one known as the Grand Angel. When you die your Grand Angel goes immediately to heaven. The Petit angel waits for three days to leave. Much like your Jesus rose from the dead after three days. Should your Petit angel not leave, you might turn into a zombie. My duty is to help the Petit angel to escape before that happens. There is one spirit, Ghede who is the one who wants to rule over zombies, he is like your Christian Satan, or devil, but Ghede is an alcoholic and for a bottle of whiskey or rum he will give up the Petit angel to heaven. That and a few spells cast in his direction.”

 

This was hard to absorb all at once. “A zombie is a snake?”

“In symbolic form yes as a spirit, but human when it walks the earth. What is so hard to understand? Did not your God create a serpent in the Garden of Eden to lead Adam and Eve into this physical world we all dwell in? You must remember, voodoo was born of Catholicism and in the Caribbean as here, it is natural for us who practice voodoo to know our French Catholic roots along with our African beliefs. We are blended.”

 

I had no argument. She was making more sense than I cared to admit.

 

“This is a lot to take in. May I have another drink please?” I asked visibly shaken.

 

“Of course you may. You re not Ghede the Alcoholic are you?”

 

Now I had to laugh “No, I am not an evil spirit or Satan himself here to collect a herd of zombies, nor am I an alcoholic, but I do have something to talk to you about that may interest you.”

 

She poured more wine into my glass. “Oh you mean that damned map!”

 

I gulped the wine in one swallow, my eyes wide in wonder.  “Yes, that damned map.How in hell did you know that?”

 

“That,” she said, “IS voodoo!”

 

I was in shock waiting for my Grand angel to leave my body while my Petit angel and I started slithering as snakes looking for the nearest saloon and whorehouse where female zombies would lead us into good old fashioned Catholic-Voodoo temptation as I would begin my trail ride walking the earth for the next hundred years as one of the undead hobnobbing with hobgoblins…

Chapter 6 - Cajun Voodoo and Jamaican Ganja

 

Cajun Voodoo and Jamaican Ganja

Personal Journal Entry July 28, 1867

Baxter Dooley

A violent determined knock on the front door startled me back from from a half dream of an astral plane the thick red wine and the somewhat Catholic cloud of incense were beginning  to transport me too. Isadora rose from her wicker throne like chair gracefully floating on air or so it seemed due to her long colorful floor length gown of symbols. In her raspy voice that dripped with sensuality she announced in the voice of a prophet…”He’s here.”

 

When the door opened, HE was here. Bathed in the faint full moonlight on the brick porch stood Monty Debauchery. Resplendent in city wear including a bowler hat that would look out of place in Montana, he tipped his topper and introduced himself to my new found voodoo friend. Always wise to have few a few aces from a marked deck and a black magic spell or two to ward off evil up your sleeve. You never know when they’ll come in handy.

 

“Well,” he exclaimed in a loud projecting voice suitable for the theatrical stage production of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” at a school for the deaf, “Baxter, it nice to see you. On two feet that is. I see we have the same intentions for being here so I won’t waste my time nor Isadora’s on small talk.”

 

“I owe you one Monty. My head is still throbbing, but then maybe it’s the wine.”

 

“So, you are Mr. Debauchery,” Isadora interjected feigning surprise. “You have wasted a trip. I haven’t changed my mind. I am not interested in selling, donating or giving up my father’s half of the map, considering the whole map was his in the first place.”

 

Monty smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I must say you are direct. I can’t buy it from you and you don’t want to be partners. That leaves me one option. An unpleasant one I admit. but under the circumstances, it is my only alternative.”

 

In a split second he produced a silver inlaid Remington derringer.  I wasn’t about to argue. I had my Colt in a shoulder holster making a quick draw near impossible and my death certain. Sometimes retreat is the only option.

 

“I feel you are making a big mistake,” Isadora