Jackpot Blood: A Nick Herald Genealogical Mystery (28 page)

“Really. That’s amazing . . . a little sad. Genealogists must love to hear that statistic.”

“If these nameless ancient tribes are still around, where are they? They ought to be clamoring for recognition and their own casino.”

“I don’t mean they’re here in a physical sense. They’re hidden below layers of genetic and cultural mixing. Oh, we aren’t going to have the kind of definitive written evidence you work with all the time. But elements of customs, languages, and myths survived. The fun part about studying the Katogoula is tracing one of those cultural strands back to its origin. Take a look at this.”

She led Nick to a modern mural of an ancient scene. Black-robed Indians ministered to a body that had been removed from a sort of scaffold. The attendants were frightening figures enveloped in smoke, nightmarish, unkempt, their long hair concealing their faces and even their gender. Their fingernails were extraordinarily long.

“Looks like something from Goya’s late paintings,” Nick said.

“The Vulture Cult.” Holly stared at the illustration with the rapt excitement of the true student of history. “They were sort of combination undertaker and estate lawyer. There were male and female divisions. Each gender took care of its own, even down to acting as what we’d call a probate officer today. They let the body smoke for a few days, then they picked the flesh off with”—her face puckered in revulsion—“their long fingernails. Ewwwwww! A hereditary job. And they got a stipend, too.”

“Lawyers as vultures? Say it ain’t so!”

She laughed. “The tribe actually held them in great reverence, and it was an honor to marry into the cult families. At other times, they were unclean, outcasts. Couldn’t be around food or participate in war councils. They were also the preeminent artisans of the tribe; used their fingernails to do paintings, make pottery.”

With a more serious demeanor she continued: “There’s a theory that the Vulture Cult was born during the great epidemics after European contact, in the 16
^th
century. Smallpox and other diseases killed maybe 90% of the Indians in the Americas. There’s a lot of debate about the indigenous population of the pre-Columbian New World. Estimates range from 40 to 100 million. If you’re a ‘low counter’ or a ‘high counter,’ either way tens of millions died. No immunological defense, virgin-soil epidemics. It was like the Black Death in Europe—much worse, actually, in percentage terms. Bubonic plague has a mortality rate of about 40%. The Vulture Cult might have started out as sort of like the plague doctors of medieval and Renaissance Europe.”

Nick said: “But the dying continued, the cause unknowable to them. And all the hoped-for cures and praying brought no relief. So they morphed into these ritualistic morticians.”

“That’s the scholarly thinking, yes,” Holly continued. “Their society needed them to play a new role: to handle the public-health and
emotional threat posed by such mass mortality. Primitive peoples have a way of handling the contradictions of existence. For instance: water is life giving, but it can also drown you; the sun makes the corn grow, but it can also scorch; large predators are beautiful to watch, from a distance. Gods help out mortals, but they also trick them, kill them, cause disasters to come down on them. Everything has two sides, a healthy side and a deadly one. It was like that with the Vulture Cult.”

“Reminds me of the Jewish burial societies,” Nick said. “The body, as the former and future home of the soul, was entitled to great reverence. The parting ceremonies also helped the living, by getting the corpse away quickly. What happened to the Vulture Cult? Have you found any remnants, symbolic or behavioral?”

Holly shook her head. “Christianity and exposure to other Western ways did it in. There’s still some vague memory of the cult, as far as I can make out from a few of my interviews. I think it was active as late as the 1700s. What I find really interesting is where it came from. These elaborate burial practices weren’t originally Katogoula, from everything I know of their earlier history in Mississippi and Alabama. They picked this up during their wandering or from tribes already here. That’s what I was saying about a people disappearing. Tribal identities get buried, just like archaeological artifacts. But they’re never truly lost.”

“Until we stop looking for them,” Nick said.

He regarded the painted scene; something about it held his attention.

Hands. Beautiful hands, somehow connected with death. The hands of the Vulture Cult . . . picking bruised flesh from my battered bones!

He’d seen a brief flash of such hands on the stairwell the day before, when he looked up to see the trashcan hurtling toward him.

Where else, where else have I seen them?
. . .

His fall and the medication he was taking clouded his memory. Maybe the vivid image of hands was just a hallucination.

“Are you all right?” Holly touched the fingers of his free hand.

“Yeah, I’m . . . I’m fine. Just daydreaming, that’s all.”

She walked slowly beside him. He felt her worried scrutiny, but pretended he didn’t.
Being an invalid isn’t all bad
.

“Take a look at this Bible,” she said, leaning over a display case, stashing her hair behind her ears. “It’s in French. Probably given to a Katogoula by a missionary, but some front and back pages are missing so we can’t be sure about the date or the owner. Isn’t it remarkable?”

Nick saw a small Bible, about the size of an adult palm, held open to reveal two pages of Lamentations. The cover was frayed, once of lustrous blue velvet. There was a Plexiglas press that held some of the pages fanned. Too bad about the missing leaves, he thought. Families usually recorded crucial birth, baptismal, marriage, and death information in their Bibles.

“In ancient times,” Holly said, “the Vulture priests and priestesses created their own ritual art and implements. When Christianity came and made them pretty much unemployed, they dedicated their artistry to the new religion. See the fore-edge painting on the ends of the Bible pages? A Vulture Cult specialty. You have to look at it just right.” She stooped down, demonstrating the angle for viewing the intricate, hidden painting. “The gold edges disappear and the painting comes into view. These are very collectible.”

He followed her example, until new aches made him stop. It looked to him like a primitive rendering of Lake Katogoula. “Nice to have a hobby to take your mind off picking flesh,” he said, straightening up, wondering if Grace Dusong, with her arthritis, felt this way all the time.

They strolled through the museum, examining other artifacts of more recent vintage. An apparently ancient, perfectly preserved pirogue sat in the middle of the walkway, amid cypress knees and lake reeds; the
late Carl Shawe had crafted it twenty years ago, using only traditional methods and tools.

The Katogoula had always excelled at beadwork and basketry. Nick marveled at the examples on display. The pine-needle baskets were so tightly woven they could carry water, the wall texts informed him.

An hour later they’d made a full circuit of the museum and ended up in front of the Vulture Cult mural.

“Something I forgot to mention,” Holly said. “There
was
one ritual artifact that outlived the cult’s function. I’ve seen photos from the 1880s of Katogoula with these long nails.” She held up her hands, measuring out phantom foot-long nails. “They became an upper-class fashion statement, exaggerated to impractical lengths, completely divorced from the religious and ceremonial aspect.”

“Photos at the Tadbulls’, right?” Nick asked. She nodded. “You’re still persona non grata over there. If I keep hanging around with you, I’ll never get to see this renowned collection.”

“Oh, that. It was a couple of years ago. Wooty—that’s the guy I dated—he can’t possibly still be angry.” She didn’t seem convinced. “Besides, it wasn’t all my fault. It was . . . oh, you don’t want to know.”

“Only if you want to tell me.”

“Let’s just drop it, okay.” Her voice had the rough edge of emotions still healing. When she spoke again, her chagrin seemed gone: “Look, I promise, I’ll bite the bullet and take you one day. It’s really something to see. The collection really ought to be here, in the museum. Grace and Irton and I’ve talked about it a lot. That’ll be my excuse for visiting, to ask them to donate some photos and paintings. I think most of them are in storage, anyway. Oh, look! We walked right past the Twins-Raccoon Bowl you saw on tape. Isn’t it fantastic?”

“I’d like it much better if it had lunch inside.”

It was a beautiful fall day, not overly cool, and the tall pine trees swayed and soughed with the wind that filled the upper branches. Sunlight softened by countless pine needles danced on the forest floor. Holding hands, they strolled along the Golden Trace, toward their picnic spot.

Nick felt like a boy with his first crush. But he came back down to earth, realizing he couldn’t recall even the name of the girl he’d given his young, fickle heart to, thirty years before.

Holly told Nick the story of the Golden Trace Treasure, and the circuitous journey it had made.

When the first highway was being constructed though this nearly impenetrable rural area, during the Depression, work crews leveled any Indian mounds in the way. One day, a crew hacked into a mound and uncovered a fabulous hoard of artifacts. The foreman took possession of the priceless items, later selling them. The artifacts passed through the ownership of private collectors, and then the archaeology departments of several colleges, before ending up at the Smithsonian. After a long court battle, the Katogoula finally brought the treasure back to Louisiana, where yet another vote-currying governor built the museum Nick and Holly had just visited.

Lookout Point commanded a striking view of the rolling, red Tchekalaya Hills of central Louisiana. Holly had brought a simple but ample lunch of sandwiches and salads.

“You can see for miles from up here,” Nick said. “Doesn’t look like the Louisiana I know. In the French Quarter, you’re below sea level. You
glance down a street toward the river, and you see these huge oceangoing ships towering over you. They seem to ride along on top of the levee, like Mardi Gras floats. It’s eerie.”

“This is the highest point in the state,” Holly said, between bites of her sandwich. “Something like four hundred feet.”

“A regular Mount Everest.”

“I don’t think we’ll see many ships,” she said, “but the Gulf did cover this area millions of years ago. We’re sitting on the sediment left by that inundation. Erosion from the runoff and rivers changing course carved these hills. Once, on a dig just over there”—she pointed to a thickly forested hill below them—“we found a Zeuglodon, an ancient whale. . . . God, I’m still starving! I could eat that whale. Where are the cookies?”

She rummaged through her backpack and found their dessert.

“What’s that?” Nick asked, pointing with his good arm to a man-made structure peeking over the tree line, about half a mile away.

“It’s an old fire tower. Nooj Chenerie lives there, believe it or not.”

“The Wildlife and Fisheries enforcement agent? Yeah, I believe it.”

“Um-hmm,” she responded, swallowing some of her cookie. “The Agriculture and Forestry Department relies on aircraft and satellites mostly now. Nooj is a loner, doesn’t like people very much, white or Indian. Perfect guy to keep vandals out of an unused tower and keep watch on the forest, too. Louisiana government’s really a big game show of brother-in-law deals.”

“He and Carl sound a lot alike,” Nick said.

“Carl I could take. Usually.” She looked at the tower as if it were going to stride over the trees and crush them. “Nooj gives me the creeps. He’s always showing up where you don’t expect him, quiet as a cat.” She shrugged and nibbled more cookie. “But who am I to criticize? He’s devoted to the tribe. Volunteers a lot of his time for tours and fairs
where the Katogoula have a booth. I don’t think he’s wild about the casino idea, but he’ll have to learn to like it, I suppose.”

Nick was sitting against a pine trunk. She scooted over to him and leaned against his chest, careful not to press too hard against his injuries.