Not long ago, the woman that cleans our house on Fridays (let’s call her Maria to protect the innocent) gave us a beautiful agave cactus. It was potted and HUGE. It grew for a few months and it had some baby cacti that needed to be put in their own little pots. So, I started the process of getting the big cactus out of this HUGE pot and dividing them up. As I began pulling the big cactus and all of it’s baby cacti out of the big pot, I noticed there was something in the bottom of the pot. My first reaction was that it was “cactus food” of some sort and I would get to it later. So, I turned my attention to getting all the cacti (I like that word, can’t you tell) potted in their own little pots. Once I was satisfied that everyone was planted in a suitable pot, I turned my attention back to the original pot and the “cactus food.” It was then I made a crazy and horrible discovery…
It was actually a sealed Ball jar in the bottom of the cactus pot. In this jar was a crumpled “form” that looked wet and had a clammy looking texture to it. It almost looked like some sort of extremity from an animal – maybe a weird bird foot, or (please no, please no) a very small hand. Whatever it was had two red tips, two blue tips and a yellow tipped, larger “finger.” I could see other things in the jar; balled up paper, pins with different colored heads on them, a wad of hair tied together with a string… The more I looked, the uneasier I was getting.
I couldn’t bring myself to open the jar. I put it down and waited for Friday to ask Maria WTH.
Friday came and so did Maria. She took the jar and immediately, to my horrified self, opened it. She took out a REAL LIVE VOODOO DOLL. Complete with hate pins and hair and a written curse. You couldn’t read the curse, because there was a small amount of liquid in the jar and it had caused the ink to blur and the paper to rot. I don’t want to know what it said, anyway. Maria had a story to pinpoint the creation of the doll but I really didn’t care. I just wanted it away. Away from me and away from my wife and kids. Quick.
Now, I don’t really believe in voodoo or black magic but no one has ever been able to give me any good evidence about how Robert Johnson quickly learned to play guitar like he did so maybe, just maybe, this thing needed to be gone – and fast. Better safe than sorry, right? For instance, in my short life I have noticed many folks from the country can be a little more reserved about being in the woods at night than some, say, city folks. I think it probably stems from the thought that country folks know what really goes on in the woods. Stuff that never makes the papers, if you know what I mean. That being said, I am not all that comfortable in the woods at night…
So, the doll had to go.
