Joey Cloudy online

Isaiah Jones vs the Sea (A 21st  Century Odyssey)

Book 2

Chapter: The Butcher of Baton Rouge

«В Новом Орлеане есть дом,

который называют Восходящим Солнцем,

и он погубил многих бедных мальчишек,

и, Боже, я знаю, что я один из них».

«V Novom Orleane yest’ dom,

kotoryy nazyvayut Voskhodyashchim Solntsem,

i on pogubil mnogikh bednykh mal’chishek,

i, Bozhe, ya znayu, chto ya odin iz nikh».

–The Animals

Before he was the boss of bosses, Dead Eye Polly Ovejo, the lord of the Caribbean criminal underworld, he was a Louisiana bayou boy who learned mathematics from his aunt while she kept the books of her whorehouse. Young Polly was born with albinism, a single azure eye, a good ear, and perfect pitch, which helped him not only understand music but pick up foreign tongues with preternatural speed. He grew up conversing with the girls in their native dialects speaking to them in Chinese, Russian, and Spanish as well as Creole French, and they adored the lisping albino Black boy who entertained them whenever things were slow and no customers were around, playing the old upright Steinway piano for them and singing Puccini arias. When puberty cracked his singing voice into a baritone inherited from his late father, they delighted even more, especially when he sang his favorite, Tosca.

Little Polly grew up fast, and like his father he grew into a very large young man. His aunt Ceecee kept him close to her at all times and homeschooled him with the help of the girls who worked for her, and he was allowed to study self-defense with the old-school gangsters and pimps in the family’s employ as muscle. By the time he was thirteen he stood six feet tall and weighed 300 pounds. That was the year he earned his blood stripes.

There were numerous Russian and Chinese girls working in Louisiana’s legendary brothels, but they all worked for the local syndicates, not the mobs of their homelands. The Russian and Chinese bosses saw all of the dollars their girls were making for the Yanks and declared a truce between their rival outfits long enough to make one joint mistake: believing they could easily take over Louisiana’s criminal empire from

“a few stupid, fathead, American hicks.”l

This was a grievous error, a miscalculation of mythic scale. Alongside “never invade Russia in winter,” one should add: never attack the criminal regime that has ruled the swamps of Louisiana for centuries. The powers running the New Orleans–to–Baton Rouge criminal underworld were the same organizations that ran the region under the French, under the Spanish, and, since the Louisiana Purchase, under the Americans. The U.S. government having long ago abandoned the fantasy of controlling the state; so long as taxes were paid and lip service was given to God and Constitution, Uncle Sam, like the Catholic Church, looked the other way.

Polly’s aunt Ceecee, referred to only by the elders of her family by her given name Circe, sent her young nephew, the gargantuan albino teen to accompany her assault team instructing him to personally teach the foreign invaders a lesson in respecting territorial boundaries. She set a perfect trap, followed the enemy after they lured one of her lieutenants, a greedy young pimp named Lover Boy, who betrayed the family for the promise of being able to run the Rising Sun as a reward for his treachery and now he too was marked for death.

“Do not kill the leaders, my Polly,” she wisely counseled as she applied cocoa butter to his ash-colored hair. “But instead of death, use their bodies to send a message. Make them understand the cost of war with us will be too high, one that they will never wish to pay. And tonight, you have permission to be seen.” Polly’s lone azure eye gleamed, and a rare smile landed on his lips as Ceecee continued, braiding his hair into cornrows. Do you understand my son?”

Oui maman?

 “Good, be sure the survivors see your message being written in their own blood before you, in your immense mercy, send them all home. And Polly…

Oui maman?

“Wear your white suit.”

The next evening Polly, dressed in his ivory Armani suit, stood in the center of the house’s parlor surrounded by women, all clad in white linen, as a veiled priestess, her hair in long braids, barefoot, waving burning sage offered a prayer to Shango in a language older than Chinese, older than Russian, older than Spanish, the only ones in the room who understood were she and the one eyed 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

48 hours later two large crates, half the size of a coffin arrived at the headquarters of the Russian and Chinese mobs. Inside of each crate was what remained of the lieutenants sent to take over Louisiana: the living torsos of limbless men, kept alive, connected with I V saline bags and intravenous lines so they would survive the trip from Baton Rouge.

Each survivor told the same horrific story of what happened after ambush was over and they were all zipped tied and, on their knees, awaiting death when he entered the warehouse. The albino black boy, 6 feet tall, 300, a single pale blue eye. Dressed in a white suit carrying a black leather doctor’s bag. He was polite, courteous to a fault, with an almost aristocratic air about him. It was clear to everyone there that this child is who was in charge here.

They told the story of the one-eyed ghost, the chalk-white, Black child who spoke in a lisping polyglot growl.

After injecting them with lidocaine with epinephrine he kept in his old-fashioned black leather doctor’s bag—a gift from Ceecee—he calmly laid out his instruments before proceeding to surgically remove their arms and legs with a butcher’s precision. He then carefully placed each severed limb neatly beside them in the crate. All the while he gently, a cappella, sang:

“I hope you do not mind a little music while I work. This is my mother’s favorite song,” Polly, ever the gentleman, asked in his Creole-accented English.

Que sera, sera.

一切順其自然吧。

未來並非我們所能預知。

Yīqiè shùn qí zìrán ba.

Wèilái bìngfēi wǒmen suǒ néng yùzhī.

Que sera, sera.

一切順其自然吧。

Yīqiè shùn qí zìrán ba.

They could smell the scent of burning flesh as he cauterized their wounds, but they felt no pain. And there was surprisingly little blood loss.

Before sealing the lid of the crate, he told them in flawless Russian and Mandarin:

“Tell your bosses: if they ever come to Louisiana, I’ll be waiting.”

“告訴你們的老闆：如果他們來路易斯安那州，我會在那裡等著。”

“Передайте своим начальникам, если они приедут в Луизиану, что я буду ждать.”

This was the first time Polly’s own men—those who had trained him—had seen him in action, they watched, muted into horrified silence. The silence smelled of Polly’s Johnson & Johnson’s baby-powder-doused body until he began to spray the ends of the severed limbs with acrylic varnish to seal the remaining blood but preserve the visual appearance of the gore, before carefully placing the limbs into the crates, with the feet on top next to the head and the hands on the bottom and the parts each on the wrong side. The end result looked as if someone had dropped a jigsaw puzzle made of human flesh.

The gangsters all watched in silence. From somewhere in the midst of the captive’s came the sound of muffled weeping.  The only other sound was Dead Eye Polly’s rich baritone as he sang his mother’s favorite song in Chinese and Russian while he worked. Even his own men were all repulsed, but none dared intervene. The Girard twins, Oscar and Hector, chain-smoked Newport 100s and averted their eyes from the gruesome spectacle of the surgery.

Antoine the Hammer, the most vicious enforcer in the family’s employ and Polly’s favorite martial arts teacher, projectile vomited on the warehouse floor, soaking his black and white Stacy Adams, when the boy removed the men’s genitals, stuffed them into their mouths, and sealed them shut with duct tape.

The student had surpassed the master. Antoine tortured marks with hammers; Polly’s vintage black leather doctor’s bag held surgical instruments—scalpels, tourniquets, bone saws.

The message worked. The Russian and Chinese mafias never again attempted to move on Louisiana territory. That night a legend was born, a story whispered in back rooms of bordellos and dive bars from Shanghai to St. Petersburg:

Dead Eye Polly:

The Butcher of Baton Rouge.

-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.