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Isaiah Jones vs. the Sea: A 21st Century Odyssey

A Brief History of Dead Eye Polly Ovejero: The Rise of the Albino & The Albino’s Judgment**

Present: January 27th, 2022

Flashback: The Year 1999

Twenty-three years ago, a 16-year-old Dead Eye Polly Ovejero made his move to take his late father’s place at the table with the crime lords of Cuba in Havana.

These are the stories as told by the survivors.

The Rise of the Albino

“Qué será, será”

Summer 1999

On a Saturday evening, 11 men and 2 women, traveling in 4 white Range Rovers with Louisiana license plates, parked in front of the finest gunroom of its kind outside of London, Holland & Holland.

“This shoppe is one of only two Holland & Holland stores. The original is in London; their lone satellite store is located here in Dallas, Texas, as their home in North America. We offer a full gunsmithing service, gun fitting, valuations, and histories,” the obese cowboy in a grey vest and slacks with snakeskin western boots smiled jovially at the gargantuan negro albino’s entourage.

“We did not travel all this way to get the company spiel from some no-name redneck,” Dead Eye Polly said as his companions entered the Dallas Holland & Holland gun store on Preston Ave. This being the only location for the esteemed weaponsmiths outside of London, he inquired about the largest pistols manufactured. He was 16 years old at the time and had just left his mother’s grave. She was the last woman executed in the electric chair in Louisiana. The pot-bellied white man behind the counter, Bobby Joe Robertson, was a local gunsmith, but they were here to see the company man, the one that stayed in the back of the store.

“Now, fetch me the Englishman, then piss off, boy.”

Bobby Joe looked at the humongous one-eyed albino, flanked by two veiled creole speaking women also dressed in white, before mumbling

“Yes, sir,” while pressing the button hidden beneath the counter. A moment later, a bespectacled, bearded old white man wearing a tweed vest with matching slacks, polished brown oxfords, and a translucent emerald visor atop his balding pate appeared from the rear of the shop. With a sweep of his hand, the towering albino gestured towards the pair of Holland & Holland’s ‘Noble’ over-and-under big game hunting rifles hanging in the glass display case on the far wall.

“Make those into a pair of pistols.” Polly said as the two ivory-veiled vodoun priestesses each gently placed a stainless-steel box containing the bones of his mother in one and his father in the other on the glass countertop. Mister Gerhard Pennington opened each box, peeking at its contents, before he looked up over the steel rims of his round spectacles.

“I understand. My condolences, Senor Ovejero,” his Boer accent was nearly imperceptible.

“Thank you, Ek kan aan jou aksent hoor dat jy nie van Engelse geboorte is nie, hè, schat?” Polly said with a smile.

“You have an excellent ear, sir. I was born in Pretoria,” Pennington continued. “This will require that I take the full measure for the holsters and bandolero, and I will need to take a measure of your hands as well, sir.” The little man, stooped with age, reached into his vest pocket and produced a yellow cloth tape measure, the type one would typically see used by tailors. “Remove your coat and armaments, sir, and will you be wearing body armor or Kevlar vestment of any kind?”

“No,” Polly replied, a knowing smile spread across the bearded face of the gunsmith.

“Excellent. All rites and rituals shall be observed. The conversion will take three weeks. They will be ready upon your return. Munitions?”

Polly gazed down at Gerhard with a pale blue eye and replied in a dulcet tone, “I will require a few additional cases of the .470 Nitro Express rounds with the order.” The diminutive Englishman adjusted his glasses, then quickly scribbled a few notes on a small notepad before returning it to one of his vest pockets.

“Might I inquire how you learned of my services?” Gerhard asked. The albino showed the aged, wrinkled gunsmith the ring on his left pinky.

“This was my father’s.”

“Ah, of course,” the old gunsmith said, nodding slowly as he fingered the Mason’s ring on his own left hand.

The Albino’s Judgment

September 1999, Havana, Cuba

The towering 6-foot 9-inch tall, 413-pound, one-eyed albino-negro looked around the large conference table and grinned.

“Right now,” he said in his adenoidal voice, the Latin equivalent of Truman Capote’s trill vocalizations, “you are in no position to betray me. So, now that you are all under mi bruja’s spell, the truth will be easy to detect.”

Dead Eye Polly Ovejero lisped, “That is the beauty of mi brujas’ craft; it softens the will, making the mind more… pliable. You have no secrets from me while you are under her control.”

Dead Eye Polly Ovejero slowly walked to the man seated opposite him at the head of the big table, puffing on his Cohiba, his hand casually caressing the back of the necks and shoulders of the half dozen of the dozen men seated on this side of the table, unable to move without the witch’s permission as he walked by. He stopped when he was behind the bigger chair at the head of the table, puffing a few more times to get the cherry on the Havana red-hot before leaning over the old man’s shoulder and slowly pushing the tip towards the man’s eyeball. Unable to move, Polly extinguished his burning cigar in his uncle Luis’ left eye socket.

The old man did not resist or cry out in pain, but sat there motionless, aware but unable to respond of his own will as the albino incinerated his eyeball, the liquid boiling in the socket and bubbling out of his skull around the burning Havana. His uncle Luis sat at the head of the table, his left eye a smoldering ruin as the black viscous remnants of his eye ran down his cheek like a single black teardrop. Polly grabbed the man by his neck lifted him from his chair then hurled his body like a rag doll, sending him sliding on his back across the long conference table, as the other bosses sat, unable to move or look away.

The girl in the corner rolling their cigars was his own bruja, Ceecee, 10 years his senior. Circe was his mother’s prize student and the youngest of her sisters. The “negrita” in a white cotton dress rolling the cigars stood with the bone-handled leaf-shaped obsidian blade she had been using to cut the tobacco leaves.

The ivory-clad dark-skinned black woman with long braids in her hair rose to her bare feet, stepped up, with her nephew’s help, onto the top of the table, and walked to the center of the long table where her former brother-in-law lay unable to move. She straddled the body of the man lying on his back in the middle of the table, the sheer white fabric showing the curves of her body beneath the sundress, nude. Circe hiked the long dress up immodestly, tying the fabric into a loose knot just above her hip. The girl reached into the canvas bag hanging across her shoulders to retrieve her instruments.

The girl paused for a moment tilting her head like a lizard in the sun on a warm stone as she contemplated the face of the man beneath her. She stood there for a long moment before she swung her blade in a wide are slashing through his cheeks to prevent him from cursing her charge with his last breath. Circe then stuffed a large black candle, the diameter of a Coke can, into his mouth, knocking out his front teeth.

She lit the black candle with a wooden match then kneeled, straddling his body, as he, along with the rest of the bosses, watched her undress Luis, first removing his necktie, then carefully unbuttoning his white dress shirt, finally cutting open the wife-beater with the obsidian blade before delicately sliding the tip of the black stone blade beneath his ribcage. Ceecee began making the first incisions, precisely following the line of the bones in a V shape until she could lift the separated abdominal muscles from the upper half of his chest, upper torso, and ribcage.

As she finished, she carefully maneuvered the blade through the hypodermis at the proper depth and angle, avoiding the major veins and arteries so as not to kill him just yet; she glanced at his intestines and internal organs freely cascading out of the wound, his warm intestines tumbling out of his body down the sides of the table becoming a pool of bloody entrails onto the cool white marble floors.

Ceecee could then see the bottom of the beating heart now that she had removed all of the outer abdominal muscles and connecting tissues. It was hard work, especially in the tropical Cuban heat, but she was proud of her labors thus far. She paused for a moment to wipe the perspiration from her brow with the back of her hand and smiled before she set about cutting Luis’s heart out as he lay on the table, still very much alive. The black candle continued to burn, the molten black wax now running down its sides began to fill Luis’s mouth and bubbling nostrils as it cooled against his face.

As she completed the grim work with the Floripondio enthralled bosses watching in dumbfounded horror, Circe had rolled Angels Trumpet into their cigars. They all stared, gagging on the horror, unable to move or turn their heads away without her permission. As Luis looked on in mute horror while Ceecee held his warm beating heart aloft and offered a prayer to Shango in a language older than Spanish, the only ones in the room who understood were she and the Albino.

[“Negrita Prayer to Shango for Justice

Bɔ mpae kyerɛ Shango sɛ Ɔmma Atɛntrenee]

Atɛntenenee Mpaebɔ

“Shango, aprannaa ne atɛntrenee Orisha tumfoɔ,

Mede ahobrɛaseɛ koma ba w’anim, hwehwɛ wo ɔsoro de ne ho gye mu.

Wɔ ntɛnkyea anim no, mefrɛ mo ahoɔden ne atɛntrenee.

Kye m’anammɔn ne me nsɛm kwan bere a merefa ɔkwan a ɛyɛ den yi so,

Na ma wo nyansa nhyerɛn nokware a ɛda ahintaw no so.

Fa wo agyan a tumi wom no twa nnaadaa ne atosɛm no mu,

Pa nokwasɛm no ho ntama na fa nea ɛteɛ na ɛteɛ no da adi.

Ma me akokoduru sɛ mengyina pintinn wɔ amanehunu anim,

Ne ahoɔden a mede bɛkɔ so ako ama nea ɛteɛ na ɛyɛ nokware.

Wɔ saa bere a ɛho hia yi mu no, mede me ho to w’ahoɔden a enhinhim so,

Sɛ wode gyinaesi a ɛteɛ na ɛyɛ pɛ bɛba.

Shango, mede me gyidie hyɛ wo nsa, nim sɛ wohunu ne nyinaa na wode akoma pa bu atɛn.

Meda wo ase, Shango, wɔ w’ahobammɔ, akwankyerɛ, ne atɛntrenee a wode bɛma no ho.* -AP

Once the holy words were spoken, she offered the first bite to Polly, then took her turn. They looked at the men remaining at the table, blood dripping from their mouths down thier chins onto the white clothing of the Albino and the priestess.

“This will be simple,” the Albino said, his lips crimson, fresh blood still dripping from his chin. “Those of you who plan to be loyal to me will take a bite, and those of you who plan to betray me or murder me will not be able to take a bite in your state. As I said, you have no secrets. Bon appétit.”

Of the twelve remaining bosses, only seven were alive after the test was over. Polly looked at the bodies of the dead men, then at his uncle. He sighed as he took his seat at the head of the table.

“Your way feels so… unsportsmanlike,” the Albino lamented, his voice touched with a melancholic tone. “I dreamed of blowing his goddamned head off for the last ten years, and now it feels… anticlimactic.”

He sighed again as he drew his weapons from his shoulder holsters, Santo Padre and Reverenda Madre, the twin Holland & Holland elephant rifles he had custom-made into a pair of pistols, whose handles were inlaid with the bones of his mother and father. He aimed the barrels of both platforms at Luis’s corpse and pulled the triggers, leaving nothing but a bloody stump of flesh and shattered bone where his head should have been.

“I feel better now,” Polly grinned. “Every time I dreamed of his funeral, the casket was closed.”

Circe took her place and stood by his side at his seat at the head of the table. She reached out to take hold of the Albino’s head with both her bloody hands and pulled his pale face to hers; she rested her forehead to his, then placed a bloody kiss lovingly on her nephew’s cheek.

“Come,” she said, “there is much work still left to do.” The bruja reminded him as the two left the conference room, heading down the hallway towards the 4 centuries old Spanish villa’s exit.

Polly and Ceecee left arm in arm as his new men, formerly Luis old men, cleaned up the mess and took their bloody-mouthed bosses home to wait for the witch’s spell effects to wear off.

Cuba was secure. Now, he could get work on the rest of the islands in the Caribbean. As they entered the zinc-white Range Rover, he looked back at the villa. He detested Spanish architecture, he thought as their car exited the villa’s driveway; he always preferred the French, particularly Louis XIV’s decadent decor.

He wiped the perspiration from his brow with a handkerchief, then wiped the leather band inside of the Panama hat. He decided he would raze this gaudy Spanish abomination and erect his own French chateau on its grave. Polly was happy listening as his aunt hummed his mother’s favorite song. He began to sing along with her. His high adenoidal voice deepened as his throat opened whenever he laughed or sang, revealing his father’s rich baritone as they sang together, as they had done in better times when they were children.

“When I was just a little boy

I asked my mother, “What will I be?”

“Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?”

Here’s what she said to me:

“Que será, será

Whatever will be, will be.

The future’s not ours to see,

Que será, será,

What will be, will be.”

—Doris Day

Naomi finished her story and sighed as she looked at Isaiah.

“And that, my young friend, is the word on the street concerning our Señor Polly.”

About the Author

JD Cloudy’s poetry has appeared in literary journals such as Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, TX.