Only Fools Walk Free - Sandra R Neeley Page 0,17

became stained, and the weeds grew up its sides.

But it mattered not. Samuel had no way to do anything about it, and the only two people he’d ever loved were no more. A few more years passed, and he grew bored. So bored his very sanity was threatened. He began to try to communicate with the believers who still visited his Maman’s resting place. He was not able to speak with them, but he found he could flick little pebbles at them, causing them to run screeching from his home — his prison. He could lift the notes begging for favors and throw them back at the people leaving them there.

And then best of all, he found that he could grasp the iron gate, shaking it violently to cause a deafening rattle. He entertained himself with these things until one day, a young girl wandered into his field of vision. She walked right up to his gate, smiling brightly. “What a lonely gravesite, Mother! Can we restore this one?”

Her mother walked up beside her, looking at the marble structure behind him. “It is a grand one,” she said, seeing beneath the damage the ages and the worshipers had done to it, “or at least it once was.”

“I like it. Can we make this one our project?”

“We can ask. Let’s find the caretaker and see if he’ll give us permission.”

Ten minutes later the little girl, her mother and a burly gentleman in work clothes approached Samuel’s crypt again.

“You sure you want to clean this one up, lady? It’s looking kind’a rough. And this is the one all the rumors swirl about. Those damn heathens won’t leave it alone — always spray painting symbols and words on it. Leaving offerings, they call it.”

“Why are they leaving offerings,” the girl’s mother asked, concerned.

“Dupont is the family name of one of the most famous voodoo queens of New Orleans. She’s buried in there. Maman ‘Vangeline they called her. Those that still believe in such things sneak in and leave their requests on cards and scraps of paper, along with little offerings as payment. Those I don’t mind so much, truth be told. It’s the ones that paint on the crypt and dirty it up that get me — they don’t have no respect at all.”

“Well, that’s why it needs us to clean it,” the little girl said.

“Word is it’s haunted, too. Rocks getting thrown at people, the gate rattling at all hours. Most people steer clear of it.”

“Claire, maybe we should look for another for you to restore, so you can earn your service hours for school. One that’s not such a challenge,” her mother said.

Claire looked at the large, imposing crypt behind her, now covered in spray-painted graffiti, Voodoo dolls, handwritten notes and small gris-gris bags littering its grasses and weeds, where they grew up sparsely within the confines of its fencing. She stepped forward, wrapping her small, light-brown hand around one of the rusted wrought-iron bars. “No. I want this one. It needs me, Mom. I can feel it, can’t you?”

Samuel squatted down to really look at the little girl — Claire — her mother had called her. She was no more than 11 or 12 years of age. She was wearing a bright blue shirt with happy, smiling, yellow creatures all over it. Some had one large eye, others wore a pair of goggles. They all wore blue overalls and had large black eyes with silly smiles. Her hair was curly and black, parted and braided into dozens and dozens of braids, with small, brightly-colored barrettes holding the braids secure at each end. She had skin much the same color as his, but her eyes — her eyes were not the luminescent green his were. They were the same bright blue of his Clarice.

“Can you hear me?” she said.

Samuel’s brow furrowed — it couldn’t be, he thought.

“I’m going to make your home pretty again, so you won’t have to be angry or sad anymore.”

Samuel canted his head to the side, trying to see more deeply into her soul. He hesitantly touched her fingers with his, and gently curled them around her small hands where they clung to the rusted gate post.

Right away she lit up, smiling and looking at her hand. Her eyes scanned the area within the burial plot, but didn’t register him. Instead she nodded and spoke aloud again. “I’ll be back in a little bit. We have to go get some stuff to start cleaning with. But you