King Cake

Sunday Sunrise

Anna was dreaming again. 

Cathedral music playing lightly in the distance.  A dove landed on the porch rail. Its right wing was tinged with red, and its small leg carried a stone tied with ribbon. She unwound the burden and held it to her chest. It cooed and pecked at her hand. It was hungry. She smiled and stroked it with her thumb. The place on its wing was not infected. She washed it and placed it in a cage for safekeeping. It began to rain. A deep gully washer over the steps and into the windows. The smell of clay poured through the old floorboards of the house. She went to the bed where Nich lay sleeping and noticed in his hand was a single white and black dye. The number it was on was 6. She roused him from sleep, and he dropped it...it skidded across the floor and stopped. The roll was 3. The skies cleared and the soft sounds of music returned. Off in the distance, she heard a baby cooing or maybe it was the bird. She shook her head in bewilderment and met Nich's soft eyes in the light. Then she felt herself wake. That jarring feeling like falling. Then,  she heard a thud in the kitchen. 

Nich had dropped his coffee press on the floor. The deep brown coffee was seeping out of the side of it like a wound and had made a very apparent stain on the linolium and wood floor around leading into the den. He was okay but she noticed that his palm had been bruised in the fall. A thick plum purple color. She put ice on his hand and instinctively called Jewel to check on the baby. 

She woke up groggily and said that they were all still asleep, Chief was on the couch and Je'sus was nestled in his crib with his stuffed lamb. She walked over to the crib and pulled back the yellow afgan his great grandma has made. He was kicking fitfully in his sleep. She picked him up and nestled him to her chest. About that time a loud knock was heard at the door. 

Chief jumped to his feet and pulled his handgun from the holster. He ambled to the door wiping sleep from his eyes. Who in the Devil was here at quarter to seven in the morning on a Sunday? He peaked through the keyhole into a gaunt red eye brimmed under a velvet black top hat. Braids hung loose off him and so did his jacket. It was that same man he had seen in the alleyway yesterday. He must be desperately thirsty to be hassling a children's home. He banged on the door in a rhythm. Almost hypnotic. Not "Shave and a Shoe Shine" something else. Something old and familiar, Jewel walked to the door and started humming the sound of the knocks. He recognized it as a dirge. "Oh Didn't He Ramble".  A song of life and warning. A song at his grandpa's funeral long ago. He gulped and waited for the sound to stop. It intensified. Then,  low scratchy voice spoke, "Bafoe gave me a promise. The gamblin man been ramblin down the graves. There is a sunny shelter for the babe in Buloxi but if you forget your elders..old snakes  will bring him down to the riverside... come Saturday."  Deep laughter and coughing. Chief's blood ran cold. What had Bafoe done.  

Nich held his hand gingerly. It stung like he had fallen on stones. He asked Anna as she paced back and forth why she was on hold. She asked quietly who was at the door. Nich shook his head when she asked why no one had opened it. The  sound of her voice was shaky as she told Anna that it was something mean. The look on her face as she processed the dream, Nich's fall and the stranger knocking she could hear over the phone was one of fear. Chief  looked into the peep hole again and saw nothing but some smoke wafting over the mat. There was an envelope with red writing on it. He opened the door and picked it up. As he closed the door he smelled a pipe tobacco he had not smelled in many years. Sickeningly sweet.  It blew over Jewel and she froze dropping the phone on the floor. It had triggered a memory for both of them. 

At nine years old, Jewel witnessed a crocodile kill a deer in the swamp. How it had thrashed until it drowned. In the underbrush she saw it smiling blood coated teeth looking at her. Its reptilian eyes gleaming as it swallowed that peaceful thing whole. Bafoe had told her never to go on the porch at night. He told her some things from the depths come calling. He had her light a candle to Marassa and felt sure she could sleep with his blessing now over the beads Namie had been saving for her.  But only to cleanse and heal her from the frightful vision. Just and innocent as she was this night.  But he would never let her sleep with them again. It was disrespectful and he did not want to anger the spirits. She remembered the feeling of the soft jazz music and soft stone beads in her hand as she drifted off to sleep. After that night he taught her the ways of the swamp and the beliefs she would call her own. She was ready to be initiated. 

Chief  remembered a conversation long ago. Namie had arrived at the house in the middle of the night covered in ink and candle wax. Her Orisha beads draped over her shoulders. She had a vision. She told him that one day they would protect the family and carry the candle safely home. She also warned him of those in her family that tried to use things to their own ends and worried that like crocodile smiles they may be met with something ancient and agitated along the way.  

He gingerly opened the envelope and inside was a set of dice. 

The baby screamed as Chief rolled them in his palm waiting for a sign.  What had Bafoe done that Namie had warned him of? What was being gambled now? 

Somewhere in a hotel room Horatio fell into fitful sleep and a quarter til 7 his heart skipped a beat. He woke up clutching his chest and walked to the corner of the lobby begging for a ride to the hospital. The ambulance came wailing to his rescue but as he passed the old cemetary he saw a couple standing in the road and they begged him to come their way. He walked out of the ambulance and into the waiting arms of his ancestors as the doctor on board shocked him with paddles. He woke but not for them. His lot had been cast. Sunday had come but  Saturday had won. The beacon was wavering in the balance.