her life choices so far.
Dauphine seemed to have intuited that this was not the best time for calling up a baby, so she just handed her the bowl, saying, “Keep this in the room where you sleep. When you are ready, we will do what is needed to bring the child. Until then, La Sirene will care for you.”
Right this minute, though, the La Sirene bowl was missing, and so was Joe. He had taken it for his own rituals. The lady would be staring out of the water at him tonight, when he poured steaming water over purifying herbs and dipped his hands for cleansing. Her bowl would sit on the ground in front of Joe’s crossed legs while he sat beside his ceremonial fire and communed with the dead girl’s soul.
Faye wondered how she could have forgotten that Joe would do this lovely thing. She’d seen his ceremony for the dead before, and she should have known that she’d see it again tonight.
Joe’s parents had never taught him Creek ways, so he’d cobbled together his own spirituality, learning what he could from an assortment of Native American tribes, then putting his own stamp on their religious practices. If a soul could be ushered into peace after all this time alone, then Joe could do it.
Faye crept to the window. She could see Joe, lit by the flickering firelight. He was motionless, alone with his thoughts and with a spirit that had waited with its drowned body until someone like Joe found her and set her free.
It hadn’t occurred to Faye that Joe wouldn’t be alone. Dauphine moved in and out of the shadows around him, dancing with a loose-limbed and aggressive freedom. Perhaps this was a voodoo mambo’s version of his ceremony for the dead.
She leapt and crouched and swung her hips to imaginary music. Her shoulders undulated as she shimmied past Joe, leaning forward as if to brush her large breasts against his back, then pulling away. If he noticed any of this, Faye couldn’t tell.
Dauphine’s quavering voice soared high. It was rough with passion, so rough that it didn’t sound like Dauphine at all. The lyrics of her song made Faye cold in the marrow of her bones.
Seven stabs of the knife, of the dagger
Seven stabs of the knife, of the dagger
Lend me the basin, I must vomit my blood
Lend me the basin, I must vomit my blood
My blood pours down
Come, Lady…
Dauphine’s right hand reached high above her head then, in rhythm, swung down toward the ground. She was clutching something in that hand—gazing at it, singing to it, caressing it—but it was a dark blur until she moved nearer to the fire. She raised it up again into the moonlight, and Faye got a better look at this thing that had passed so close to Joe’s head, time and again.
It was a knife.
Excerpt from The Floodgates of Hell by Louie Godtschalk
I want to tell you the story of a city that has thrived in a spot where no city should ever be. How do you start a story like this one?
Fortunately, when you’ve studied history as long as I have, you realize that someone has already said the very thing that you want to say, and they’ve said it better than you possibly could. So I will reach back a century or two or three and let some grand old gentlemen explain their life’s work: helping an irreplaceable city stay alive.
I have become rather attached to the men—and engineering in those days was the purview of men—who were gracious enough to write down their stories. When I pick up a memoir or diary, it is as though the writer still lives. He has merely been waiting, asleep, for the hundred or more years it has taken me to seek his companionship. Even his friendship.
Of all those gentlemen, my favorite is Colonel James McGonohan. We are such kindred souls in this timeless friendship that I have used…stolen…borrowed…okay, we’ll say that I appropriated the title of his memoirs. He and I are telling two facets of one tale—the parting of endless waters to make way for a magical city. What better title could either of us
Dauphine seemed to have intuited that this was not the best time for calling up a baby, so she just handed her the bowl, saying, “Keep this in the room where you sleep. When you are ready, we will do what is needed to bring the child. Until then, La Sirene will care for you.”
Right this minute, though, the La Sirene bowl was missing, and so was Joe. He had taken it for his own rituals. The lady would be staring out of the water at him tonight, when he poured steaming water over purifying herbs and dipped his hands for cleansing. Her bowl would sit on the ground in front of Joe’s crossed legs while he sat beside his ceremonial fire and communed with the dead girl’s soul.
Faye wondered how she could have forgotten that Joe would do this lovely thing. She’d seen his ceremony for the dead before, and she should have known that she’d see it again tonight.
Joe’s parents had never taught him Creek ways, so he’d cobbled together his own spirituality, learning what he could from an assortment of Native American tribes, then putting his own stamp on their religious practices. If a soul could be ushered into peace after all this time alone, then Joe could do it.
Faye crept to the window. She could see Joe, lit by the flickering firelight. He was motionless, alone with his thoughts and with a spirit that had waited with its drowned body until someone like Joe found her and set her free.
It hadn’t occurred to Faye that Joe wouldn’t be alone. Dauphine moved in and out of the shadows around him, dancing with a loose-limbed and aggressive freedom. Perhaps this was a voodoo mambo’s version of his ceremony for the dead.
She leapt and crouched and swung her hips to imaginary music. Her shoulders undulated as she shimmied past Joe, leaning forward as if to brush her large breasts against his back, then pulling away. If he noticed any of this, Faye couldn’t tell.
Dauphine’s quavering voice soared high. It was rough with passion, so rough that it didn’t sound like Dauphine at all. The lyrics of her song made Faye cold in the marrow of her bones.
Seven stabs of the knife, of the dagger
Seven stabs of the knife, of the dagger
Lend me the basin, I must vomit my blood
Lend me the basin, I must vomit my blood
My blood pours down
Come, Lady…
Dauphine’s right hand reached high above her head then, in rhythm, swung down toward the ground. She was clutching something in that hand—gazing at it, singing to it, caressing it—but it was a dark blur until she moved nearer to the fire. She raised it up again into the moonlight, and Faye got a better look at this thing that had passed so close to Joe’s head, time and again.
It was a knife.
Excerpt from The Floodgates of Hell by Louie Godtschalk
I want to tell you the story of a city that has thrived in a spot where no city should ever be. How do you start a story like this one?
Fortunately, when you’ve studied history as long as I have, you realize that someone has already said the very thing that you want to say, and they’ve said it better than you possibly could. So I will reach back a century or two or three and let some grand old gentlemen explain their life’s work: helping an irreplaceable city stay alive.
I have become rather attached to the men—and engineering in those days was the purview of men—who were gracious enough to write down their stories. When I pick up a memoir or diary, it is as though the writer still lives. He has merely been waiting, asleep, for the hundred or more years it has taken me to seek his companionship. Even his friendship.
Of all those gentlemen, my favorite is Colonel James McGonohan. We are such kindred souls in this timeless friendship that I have used…stolen…borrowed…okay, we’ll say that I appropriated the title of his memoirs. He and I are telling two facets of one tale—the parting of endless waters to make way for a magical city. What better title could either of us
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