CLETUS AND THE GRIS-GRIS BAG
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
[A pirogue (which is pronounced "pee-roe") is a wide, shallow-bottomed boat, nearly like a raft. And the bag is pronounced "gree-gree."]
The bayou waters were still, only a breeze turning the sunlight into a million silver dollars gleaming beneath the golden ball of the sun. The rest of the place, the waters were a dull semi-tarnished silver color, broken only here and there by a patch of long, yellowing swampgrass. In this part of Louisiana, the bayou goes on and on, and there's nothing breaking up the water-and-grass for as far as the eye can see, because I was looking westwards, across the many riverlets of the Mississippi delta. Further away, there's a branch of the Mississippi River spilling out into the Gulf of Mexico a long ways further down. There's a powerful lot of water in the Mississippi, and it just spills all over the land and covers it all, some places you can stand in water only up to your ankles, one step further out, and it's over your head. Only a fool doesn't live on his pirogue or in his house built high on stilts in these days. All this water would soon be gone, as summer came on, but for now, the heat of late spring combined with the humidity of the water, to make your body stick to your clothes and your clothes stick to whatever else they were near.
I looked out at the setting sun, not to scald my eyes out of my head, but because a thin black line inserted itself at the horizon between the sun and the water, and in the middle of the line there was a man, his body made of long, smooth curves and gentle motions as he poled his pirogue about the bayou.
I couldn't quite make out Cletus, but I didn't need to, much, I knew his body well, knew that he would be shirtless out there on the waters, wearing only his ragged trousers cut off just below the knees, his body gleaming as it caught and threw back the sun with a hundred golden nuggets, turning him into a precious statue in easy, smooth motions, pushing his pirogue out to where he'd set his lines to catch the tastiest catfish.
As I watched him, I couldn't help but sigh.
Mammy was inside, talking to somebody, I hadn't noticed who. If I had noticed who'd come calling, I might have missed this sight. Cletus was just beginning his work of rolling in the days' catch, he'd slowly work his way nearer and nearer to our house, which was standing on what was a small hill in drier weather and now was a house standing on stilts in a shallow part of the bayou.
"I don't know what to make of the boy." Mammy said to her visitor, the same as she'd said to anybody who'd suffer to listen to her. "He moons about like he's been hoodoo'ed, I tell you. That's why I asked you here, can you take off the spell that's ailing my boy? He don't work, he don't eat, he don't do nothing but sit and gaze out at the water every day. It frets me something fearful. I can pay you, Granny Gossen, if you'll tell me your price."
Granny Gossen! I was startled to blazes. Mammy thinking I was ailing was fine, it meant she'd leave me alone, but if she was going to fetch that old swamp witch to put a counter-hex on me, I had to speak up.
And tell her what? Tell her that I hadn't been able to work or eat or sleep, because two weeks ago, Cletus had begun setting his trotlines for catfish outside our back door? That in the morning I got up early, before sunrise, so I could see him working the lines in the smooth fog of morning, bending and flexing his wide body as he brought in the catch of catfish, setting his new bait, then poling away back to his own home, to return again as the sun started going down? That all I could see, all I could think about, was how much I wanted to take him in my arms, have him take me in his, and just kiss those sweet pink lips of his all day long. I was caught up in the fever, the sweet fever of youth, it strikes us all at that age, and the tinder for my fire was Cletus James, who lived all by his ownsome in a cabin up the river a ways on the same side of the river as we were.
"Let me examine the boy." Granny Gossen said. I stood up, turned around, as she came out, her dark face blacker than night, her eyes darker than balls of pitch, her hands were darker than black spiders grasping her witching staff, a small yoke of cypress branch, and suspended on a string across the top in the middle was a single owl's feather.
She held up the yoke and peered at me through the owl's feather as if it were a lens into my very soul, and maybe it was. She smiled and put down the yoke and said to my Mammy, "You let the boy be. He'll be fine and there's no hex except for the one that every young'un goes through at his age. He'll get over it...one way or another...and he don't want no messin' with either way."
Relieved by her diagnosis, I said, "Uh...As long as you're already here, Granny Gossen...?" You don't need me to tell you the question I was about to ask her, knowing that Granny Gossen was the most powerful black-magic witch in these waters.
She didn't need me to ask her the question either, she never needed speech from the people she met, though she sometimes would let you say it, or make you say it, for her own reasons. So she understood just what I wanted, right in front of my uncomprehending Mammy. "Land, child! That's a powerful witching you're asking me for! What did that man ever do to you?"
"Nothing." I said bitterly. "Nothing at all." Cletus and I had talked one way or another a dozen times. He didn't even look at me. Didn't care to know me at all, though why should he when my talking to him was a bashful drone of half-spoken words murmured through shy lips that longed to kiss him.
"So leave it be." she said. "Things are arranged as they are for a reason, you don't go messing with it if you don't just have to. So you want something you can't have. Happens all the time. That fly up there wants you dead so he can suck out your juices as you rot, but he can't have that, either. He gets along just the same, and so will you."
"Please, Granny Gossen, just once." I begged her, shamelessly. "Just one time, one night. That's all I need. Just...just to know what it'd be like. Then I could sleep."
She looked at me, hard. "You want it that bad?" she asked me. "I want it that bad." I agreed.
"Then prove it to me." she said. "Fetch me the mixings, and if you can bring them, I'll do it for you."
I don't know which unnerved me more, gathering whatever it was she'd want, or having to go to her house. I knew where it was, mostly, inside the middle of a clump of cypress trees that never went under water, even in the highest years, when most of us would lose our houses down to the Gulf of Mexico and have to build them all over again, our belongings stuffed into our pirogues, swirling around and around in the brown muddy waters of the Mississippi atop the land that used to be where our homes were.
Then I looked out where Cletus was working his trotlines. He was closer now, I could see his broad white arms, saw how the sun glistened off his shoulders, so brown and clean, those shoulders, God, I could just taste those shoulders with their sheen of salty sweat and how my hands would slide upon them....
"You tell me what you want me to get, Granny Gossen." I said to her dark face. "I'll bring it, whatever it is."
She laughed. I felt the smile of the Devil in that laugh. But I didn't care, even as I shuddered. "Here's what we'll be needing for the magic you want," she began, and my blood froze as I listened.
I thought she'd want swamp slugs or bat wings or such. Instead, I had to fetch things of Cletus James'. That nearly drove my heart into my feet right then. And it was stuff I'd have to take right off of him, too!
But I did it. That very evening, near sundown, I poled my pirogue out to where he was laboring away and I said, "Howdy, Cletus."
"Evening." he said to me carelessly.
"You're working up a powerful sweat." I said. "Want a chug off'n my drinking jug? Spring water, nice and clean."
"Thank'ye kindly." He took it and drank.
"Here, better wipe off some of that sweat while you're at it." I said, handing him my bandanna. He took it, and wiped at his face and gave me back to me and I put it in my pocket. His sweat, that was part one.
"Got some apples here, too." I offered. "Want one of them?"
He took it and I watched as he bit into it. For a while I thought he might just hold onto it. But he bit that apple like any country boy does, three big chaws around the equator and a snuffle around the core a second time, and he was done. As he finished, I said, "Better give me the core, Mammy wants to plant some seeds for new trees."
"Can't grow apples around here." He judged. "Can't grow anything." But he handed me the apple. His spit, that was the second part.
I was stonkered now, though. How to get the third part. I didn't see how. The bandanna and the apple, that was simple enough, and he'd played right along. I now had two of his body's fluids, sweat and spit. But how to get another one? Blood? I couldn't bring myself to cut him in any way. My other obvious alternative, though, was just as unlikely. "Have some more water." I offered. "Hot day."
"Sure." He said and took another deep draught from it. As he did, I heard...I think I heard...Granny Gossen chuckle. He set it down and then hitched at his trousers. "Pardon me a moment." he said and turned away from me, fumbling at his crotch. Soon a yellow stream reached out from his body and entered the Mississippi mud-brown murk.
I gulped and shouted, "Cletus, look out!" He turned around, startled, stumbled, his cock (God, a glimpse of that organ, even soft, made me woozy) and he sprayed wildly. Granny Gossen must have had a hand in that, because that spurt went right over into my pirogue and landed in a leaf lying in there. A little...only a little...of his piss stayed in that leaf just like dew stays in a buttercup.
"What the hell were you yelling about?" Cletus demanded, naturally upset.
"A bird was swooping down at you. A big, ugly bird." I lied.
He scoffed and turned away from me. If he hadn't much cared for me earlier, now he was certain I was crazy.
But I had my three parts of him. I poled it all back with me, heading right for Granny Gossen's place. I wouldn't be there before sundown, but that was all right. Granny Gossen would need darkness for her black magic spells, I was sure. And my mission was dark, too. Somehow, I didn't care it was dark and spooky in that cypress grove, standing on dry land for the first time in weeks. I liked it, even, because tonight, the black magic was going to be working for me.
I'll spare you the details of what Granny Gossen did, other than to say that having some of Cletus' piss soaking up a bit of cloth inside the gris-gris bag she made for me was not the worst of the bag's contents; it held worse than that. She made me go outside and wait for part of it, anyway, so you'd only learn enough of the gris-gris bag to get yourself in trouble if you tried making one for your own self.
But I ended up with a gris-gris on my neck, mine for using on Cletus. Anytime he saw me, he was going to want me, Granny Gossen guaranteed it. Anyone wearing the gris-gris bag could have him whenever they wanted him. Anybody at all.
I wavered then. I held Cletus' fate in my hands, and it wasn't very fair. But then I remembered how he looked, standing there on the water in his pirogue, and I kept on poling towards his place.
It was well past midnight, heading towards morning, when I made it through the black waters and the mist to Cletus' place. I was quiet as a ghost the last hundred yards. The house creaked on its stilts anyway, Cletus had to be used to noises and the waters. I made it to his house and to the ladder that led into his front door, crept up it like a spider climbing its thread, slithered into his cabin like a large lizard, on all fours. I saw his bunkie, he was lying in a corner atop a moldy old mattress. My shirt was easy taken off, and so were my pants, and I felt nearly like I was floating as I got over to his bed, wearing only that raunchy-smelling gris-gris bag for clothing. It was all I needed.
His eyes were still closed, though I noticed his nose wrinkled up from the smell of the gris-gris bag, even in sleep. I didn't blame it. He stirred, and I couldn't bear the reason for his waking was to be that smelly bag of magic things. "Cletus." I said softly. "Cletus." his name was a symphony on my lips.
He opened his eyes, twin pearls gleaming in the dim light, wide open. "Monroe?" he said to me, in the same sort of whisper.
"I'm here." I said to him, soothingly.
"What's in that bag? It smells...It smells so...."
"It's a gris-gris bag." I said. "Granny Gossen made it up for me. Made it so I could come to you. I'm going to burn it come morning, I promise. But tonight...tonight, you belong to me." Suddenly I regretted coming so late, I had only an hour or so, no longer, to hold him in my arms as much as I wanted to. But I couldn't have waited another day, I just couldn't.
And I didn't have to. His body was limp and unprotesting as I reached out and I touched it, touched those strong breast muscles that wafted slowly up and down as he looked at me, as if hypnotized. Like a man in a spell. Which he was. So I felt his chest like I'd always wanted to, like I'd never dared to do any other time, my fingertips sunk into his skin a ways before encountering those hard muscles, and I stroked them, felt them out, God, they just felt like I'd imagined they would, all strong and firm and yet gently yielding to my fingers. I raised my hand, and stroked down again over that broad pectoral muscle and this time, Cletus made a sound, like a low groan, a sort of "uuuuuuhh!"
"You're mine tonight." I said again, stronger, and this time I reached down and my lips finally, hungrily, lusciously, feasted on the taste of his skin. So rich, so redolent of life and masculine musk, so firmly velvet upon my lips, so sturdily satin upon my tongue, and a flavor like the wild apples I picked from the higher ground in good years, sort of sour, sort of strong, but...filled with sheer raw energy. When I hit that button of his nipple with my tongue, I rolled it beneath my tongue-tip and again he let loose with that, "uuuuhh!" sound.
"Mine." I murmured. "All mine." And I laid my body down so that my head could rest upon his breast.
The magic was working on him now. His hands came up and they touched my shoulders, my arms, with gentleness that turned to firm as they gripped me and hauled me further into bed with him. My body lay alongside his now, and I felt his thick tool of manhood slap against my thighs and his lips touched mine, touched mine, kissing me, kissing me, God, yes, kissing me at last, that was his lips upon my own, that was his lips, that was his tongue now, touching my teeth, that was his tongue, that was his tongue, yes, God, yes, it was sliding into my mouth, into my mouth, that was his tongue sliding into my mouth, it was in me, fat, and dripping with saliva and soft and warm and fat and dripping, it tasted my own tongue, lifted it up and tasted it, his tongue tasted my tongue, God, yes, yes, God, yes, God, yes!
I shuddered, then, a big, hard, body-shaking shudder, and I felt it, then, I felt the magic working on us, working on us both, it was Cletus holding me, holding me because he wanted to, he was kissing me, kissing me because he wanted to, that gris-gris bag was working, it was working, I had Cletus now, I had Cletus, God, yes, yes, God, yes, yes! Yes!
His body was alive, now, it burned against me, pressing against me, touching me all the way up and down except for that one spot on my breast, where the gris-gris bag lay, it was touching him instead there, while he kissed me, while his tongue went into my mouth again and swirling my tongue like a swizzle-stick in a fancy drink stirring up the ice cubes, utter folly and complete redolent luxury, that drink, swirling my tongue around and around like he did, and he rolled me over and came up on top of me.
"You're mine now." I said to him as I looked up into him, his face intent upon mine, his body strong and muscled and between my legs, upon my stomach, his hands were beside me on either side and his groin rested upon top of mine, his cock burned against my own, his cock burned, it was burning my own cock, I could feel it, feel the heat of his cock against my own cock, it was burning me, burning!
"Come on, fuck me, now, Cletus." I said to him. "You're mine, now, tonight, and I want you to fuck me, you understand? Fuck me so good I can live with just the memory of it for the rest of my life. Fuck me that good, you understand me?"
"Yeah." was his one-word response and he lifted my legs up. I hadn't thought about anything other than taking him inside of me, but he did, he got my legs up on his shoulders, my legs were on his shoulders, on his shoulders, my legs rested on his shoulders, and he began to hawk spit into his hand and he rubbed it on his cock. "Got to lube it up." He said to me.
"Lube it up, yeah, Cletus, lube it up." I said, panting, my world whirling, I was lost, I was whirling, everything was whirling around, only Cletus was still, Cletus and me, we were still but the world whirled around us, him spitting into his palm and oiling up his prick until it shone like a huge piece of catfish bait while the world spun around us.
Then he lifted my legs up higher, my ass rose up with joy, with rapture, my ass rose up with pleasure and his slicked-up dong kissed my anus, kissed the warm wrinkle of flesh, kissed my bunghole, kissed my asshole, kissed it and then pressed in, pressed in hard, pressing into me, his cock pressed in and as it did, I felt a wondrous sense of completion, I was whole now, I was complete, I could live and die right now and I wouldn't care, for I was whole at last, complete now, finally, totally complete.
This was where I belonged. Here under Cletus. I knew right then I would never burn this gris-gris bag, I'd keep it for the rest of my life, Cletus would never be free of me, I wouldn't let him go, not now, not that I had his cock in my ass, not now that I'd felt it, felt his arms around me, felt his cock burning against my own, felt it now slipping deeper and deeper into my warm wet space inside, a space I'd never known I had until Cletus' pud went inside and told me all about it, from the feel of his pud inside me. I'd never let him go, never!
Cletus' prong was now buried in me to the very hilt, the totality of it was inside me, I had it all now, I could feel it all inside me, I wanted him to keep it there, keep it all inside me, I was full, I was complete, I could live like this forever. "Keep it in me forever." I murmured.
Cletus smiled. "Can't do that." He said. "Got to pull it out some so I can fuck you."
"Then fuck me." I said. "Fuck me enough to last me forever."
"Yeah." He said again, that simple affirmative, and I knew he would do just that.
He began with smooth, lithe motions of his buttocks, his dong slipped in and out of me smoothly, evenly, without any bucking or dimpling of my flesh, it was like a smooth rod slid in and out of me without any friction or catching, and it was his cock, his magnificent prick, it slid in and out of me as his hips thrust back and forth in smooth, even motions.
His face was looking so serious, now, like a man intent on urgent business, and I knew it was because he was giving me the best fuck he knew how to give, he was concentrating so much on fucking me that he didn't have anything left to use to give his face expression. And his hips moved, his cock was a rod sliding in and out of me, smooth and even, and it sent gentle waves of pleasure rippling through my body like the ripples of the waters of the bayou as the wind played over it, and turned the sun into a million silver dollars shining on the dull waters as Cletus poled his pirogue along it.
"Ohhhh, yeahhh!" I breathed. "That's good, that's really good. Just like that." I urged him. "Fuck me just like that."
He smiled now, and said, "You ain't seen nothing yet." and he now began to add what I can only call some style to it. Before, his body had moved with solid, slow grace, with even motions, and now he turned it into almost a dance upon my body. Now his cock plunged into me, but now each thrust was different, each pulsing prod into my body was like a new entrance, now it was like a hot poker sliding along the top of my bowels, now it was a firm driver slipping along my spine, now it wriggled like a hot snake back and forth, now it landed as delicately as a dancer at the end of a jump into the air, now it landed hard like a stone cast onto the river bank, sinking into the soft earth, now.... "Oh, God!" I groaned. My cock was on fire, it burned me, burned with life. "God, I'm going to come!" I gasped out. "I'm going to come!"
"Yeahhh." Cletus chuckled. "Shoot it for me, while I fuck you some more."
"Oh, oh, oh!" I couldn't help myself, I knew it was too quick, too fast, but I couldn't help myself, I groaned and I spurted my load into the air and onto my belly, I spurted my load and I couldn't help myself, I was just too turned on, too caught up in being fucked by Cletus, too turned on by his wonderful dancing prick. It felt just as wonderful as I'd dreamed it would be, and I spurted my load onto my belly, it landing with heavy splats.
And still Cletus fucked me. Even when I was gasping, panting for air, finished with my climax, I still Cletus fucking me, he continued to press his dong in and out of me, he kept on fucking my ass, he kept on thrusting his hips back and forth in that wonderful never-ending, always changing dance. "Just as wonderful as I dreamed." I sighed as he continued to ply that magnificent rod in and out of me. "Fuck me, Cletus, fuck me until dawn."
He didn't last that long, but he kept it up a long, long, wonderful time, until I felt like I'd been lying here on this sweat-stained mattress forever, with Cletus' prick inside of me. I lurched and seethed to my second orgasm, and I spurted a second, weaker load onto my stomach to join the first, and then, finally, oh, finally, wonder of wonders, Cletus' thrusts took on a more urgent tone, his grunts filled and became groans, his panting became the roaring of a beast, and his cock, his wonderful cock, grew hard as a stone, hot as a poker in a winter fire, hard, hard, hard, he fucked me hard and fast and his cock grew hard, hard, and then he was spasming about like in a fever fit, and his cock sprouted salty sprays of jism like so many petals on a blossom, and I felt a huge clump of his jizz build up inside of me just ahead of his plunging, pulsing cock, staying where it was, building up into a lump, a huge mass of it right there, just head of his cock at the deepest point, and he was depositing it all there, and I felt it, I felt it there like a huge plug.
Done, he lay gasping on top of me and I looked at his face, all sweaty and worn out, tired from pleasing me, and I kissed it gently, like a mother kisses her child, gently loving.
"Thank you, Cletus." I said to him. "Thank you for this one night. You were just as good as I always knew you'd be."
He lay on the bed as I got up and pulled on my pants. Before I picked up my shirt, I took off the gris-gris bag and I handed it to him. "Here." I said. "You can burn this yourself, so you'll know it's gone and can never hurt you again, ever." Then I picked up my shirt and went out the door and down the ladder to my pirogue, hurrying to leave him so he wouldn't see my tears.
I'd done wrong, I knew that. I sat on the back porch as the sun came up. Cletus should have been by already checking his lines, but he wasn't. Maybe he'd never come for those lines.
Mammy came out and I looked up at her, first time in days I'd looked her in the eyes. I saw the worry and the fear and I said, "Don't worry, Mammy, it's all over now. I'll get to working again. Tomorrow. I'll go find a job again tomorrow."
Mammy still didn't know what had happened, only that I'd gone to Granny Gossen and she'd made magic for me, but she saw it was all over. "You're a good boy, Monroe." she said to me.
I nodded and went back to looking at the waters. Saying good-bye to that sweet fever which had gripped me. I still wanted Cletus, wanted him bad, but I'd had him now, and I could at least have memories now instead of dreams to live on. That's enough to break the fever of love's grip on you.
"Hello!" came a voice at my feet and I jumped. Looked down at the foot of our house, and the pirogue there and...
"Hello, Cletus." I said to him.
"Late getting my lines up." he said to me.
"Yeah." I said.
He looked down, and then up at me again. "I could use some help with them, if you don't mind. I'll give you part of the catch if you will."
"Uh...sure." I said and skedaddled down the ladder and into his pirogue. He poled us out onto the water, his long body moving with slow, even grace.
When we were well away from the house, and as private as anyone can be on the bayou when the water's high and covers everything, I cleared my throat noisily and said, in the way of kind of starting to apologize, "I guess you burned the gris-gris bag, huh?"
"Yep." he said to me and his body was a smooth harmony of muscles as he worked the pole. Then he looked at me and grinned. "Why don't you try it again tonight without the bag?"
THE END
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