Rue d'Âmes Perdues

A red light burns off Basin Street
2 blocks over, up two flights
over Mac’s Saloon, where I
sipped my bourbon late one night

where old Mac, bow tied and thin
rightly guessed me new in town;
and (as it was just he and I)
set off to lay his story down.

“Antebellum Alabama, son,
is where she was conceived,
an owner and a slave girl
on a howling Hallow’s eve

born onto a kitchen floor
her mamma in distress,
they wasn’t let to dig her grave
‘til someone cleaned the mess.

Her daddy wouldn’t sell her
and he couldn’t make her work,
so she growed up in the shadows
and she studied how to lurk

with the old folk and the cripples
that come over on the ships,
and she learned the scars from fetters
from the ones made by the whips

and she learned about the Voodoo
and the goddess of the waters,
how you got to have Queen Mothers
what to raise up priestess daughters.

She’d steal into the cotton fields
and found her back was sturdy
and her mind bore like a weevil
as she flowered full and purty.

Then on her thirteenth birthday
she saw fit to take her leave
so she slipped from that plantation
like a possum through the sheaves

she wandered down to Mobile
and then into Mississip
and she took to mixing venom
with the honey from her lip

she rode that mighty river
Baton Rouge to old Saint Paul,
spinning like a paddle-wheel,
a purser, shark and moll

and when the mood would strike her
she would disappear for weeks
traipsing through the woods and marshes
to live off the land and creeks

but when the Union took New Orleans
in the spring of ‘62
she stepped off the boats forever
and she called herself LaRoux.

Now they thought they’d seen it all
in this ol’ town of iron lace
but they never seen such hard eyes
set in such a silky face

and they never seen a lady
what they’d be afraid to tussle;
kept a razor in her corset
and a pistol in her bustle.

She opened up a brothel
couple blocks off Basin street
with an altar in the basement
and a lock from Jean Lafitte

the whiskey flowed like water
every night was a soiree;
Madam LaRoux, she soon became
the belle of Vieux Carré

but the rumors started spreading
there was evil at her door,
that her girls must be witches
for the gris-gris that they wore

and how they’d mix up potions
what to cast their spells and hexes,
for to drown unfaithful husbands
or grant wishes by three X’s.

Can’t say it seemed to matter;
she collected wealth and fame,
swellin’ like her reputation
deep and wide as Pontchartrain.

Then one night ol’ Scratch hisself
strode in, top hat & tails
to procure a little comfort,
take his mind off his travails

he bought the bottles off the shelf
and kept the ivories hoppin’ -
the boy knew how to make some friends
and kept them duckets droppin’

and when the house was good and high
he settled on a gal,
a copper skinned contessa,
a Creole femme fatale

but when he tried to settle
Miss LaRoux just shook her head,
said he’s free to shine a barstool
but he wouldn’t foul a bed;

said the girls were all her daughters
and she wouldn’t lose a one
to the dalliance and damnation
of perdition’s seventh son.

When his coaxing turned to quarrel
she just flat spurned his demands
as a ransom poured like pittance
from his hot and sallow hands

he seethed she’d best get out his way,
and glaring, eye to eye,
she squared herself, through gritted teeth,
scowled go ahead an’ try.

The story goes they fought all night
some say was two or three;
he couldn’t never take her
and she wouldn’t let him free

until he got so blind with rage
he let loose such a shriek
that it busted out her eardrum
as he vanished like a streak.

But the devil ain’t no quitter, son,
he can’t stand not to win;
he’d slither ‘round from time to time
and they’s start in again

and so it’s been, that day to this -
her ghost still walks the halls
of a dark deserted cathouse
holdin’ vigil, keen to brawl.

There’s a light comes on upstairs
when that ol’ boy’s about,
might hear a thump, or something break,
or someone cuss and shout

and that’s the devil and LaRoux
still scrappin’ for a soul
she still ain’t gonna sell him
and he still aims to control.”

I thanked him for the story
as I spun around to leave,
said I found it fine and fitting
for that howling Hallow’s eve

and I thought I heard him snicker
as I stumbled to the street;
heard a church bell toll for midnight
as the wind whipped at my feet

and I caught a little flicker
coming on, a crimson dim
in the window up above me
and I looked back on a whim

and I froze where I was standing
as the gale and laughter grew
when I saw the windows boarded
like the door I’d just walked through;

the sign for Mac’s Saloon was gone
and hanging on the wall
were three X’s dripping scarlet
in a high and hasty scrawl

and I didn’t hear the thunder
and I couldn’t feel the rain
as a desperate, hopeless terror
drug me somewhere south of sane;

Two blocks off of Basin Street
beneath a pale and haunted light
is where I lost my soul, when I
consoled the devil late one night.