IBO - Brian R. Lundin (100 books to read in a lifetime .txt) 📗

on his right leg and it jumped. The doctor put the needle back into its case and smiled.
“Your legs responded to the stimulation of the needle, that's a good sign,” he said still smiling.
“But I still did not feel anything, Malik said sadly.
“Hopefully, that will come. Soon a nurse will take you back to your room and I have ordered dinner for you. I’ll see you tomorrow, get some rest.”
Doctor Westbrook poured Malik a glass of water and held it for him while he drunk it out of a straw, after Malik finished drinking the water the doctor left. His hopes were high; maybe he would not be a cripple after all.

Chapter 11

In between naps Malik thought about Joyce while he waited for someone to take him back to his room. After the rape, Malik took Joyce back to the hospital as directed. After a short wait, Malik went into Doctor Ellis's office.
“Your little sister told me about your mother and she asked me to talk to you.”
“How is she doc?” Malik asked.
“Well, the examination revealed severe damage to her uterus, she may not be able to have children but we don't know yet.
I hope that as she gets older it will repair itself; she is young and strong. I would not tell her now; she is too young, wait and let’s see how she does, as she gets older. Here are some more antibiotics, make sure she takes them to avoid infections.”
Joyce and Malik took a cab home from the hospital
Malik went back to work being a hawker for Contact and he told him what had happened to Joyce and how no one had seen Paco or Lobo.
“I’m going to kill them muthafuckas,” he told Contact.
“I haven’t seen him either for a couple of days, but hold on my man, you killing him ain’t the way to go, I’ll set up a meeting for you with Pops,” Contact said proudly.

Chapter 12

The Louisiana Bayou is a primal wilderness of unspoiled beauty where Spanish moss dangles from the branches of the live oak and cypress trees that are reflected in the murky waters where pirates and Indians once roamed. The bayous are a series of waterways winding across the land. The waterways are home to hundreds of birds and animals, with over 100 species of snakes alone, including the cottonmouth and other poisonous species. The Spanish moss decorated the bayou like grayest-green tinsel. According to legend, the Spanish moss came to be after a Spanish brute named Gorez Goz became hopelessly entangled in tree branches after climbing a tree to capture a young and beautiful Indian maiden he had purchased for a yard of braid and a bar of soap. The young girl, thankfully, escaped the embraces of her pursuer. By night, the moss brings an eerie atmosphere to the bayou. In voodoo ceremonies, the priest mixes the moss with Frankincense tears and a few other things. The priest would burn the moss, which controlled desires and carried prayers to the spirits.
In addition, many of the people believe that if spirits do live in this world, they dwell in the Louisiana bayous or “Sleeping Waters.”
Cinque Binnwa was born and raised in the Louisiana bayou, in a little town named Belair, which was south of New Orleans.
In the bayou his clan, the Binnwa’s were Cajuns and had been feuding with the Dupree clan for years and it was a blood feud.
Cinque’s grandparents had left the Florida Everglades to avoid the overcrowding and moved to the Louisiana Bayou after World War II. Cinque’s father Rosco Binnwa mother was a full-blood Seminole Indian. His wife Ruth was a Cajun and had been born and raised in these swamps. Cinque had two older sisters Mammie, fourteen, and Cassie, fifteen and an older brother Jean who was sixteen. The girls fussed over their younger brother and were like a second and third mother. The Binnwa’s had a small farm where they grew corn, cotton and sugar cane.
Lemont Dupree’s clan was considered white Creole and because of their mixed French and Spanish heritage looked down on the black Creoles and Cajuns who were of French and African heritage, American blacks and the poor whites who lived in the bayou. Lemont was dominant in the clan, which was comprised mainly of cousins, aunts and uncles and his word was law. In Creole society, it was an accepted custom for the head of the clan to have a mistress because marriages were usually business arrangements, not for love, but the men expected their wives to be passive and innocent lovers. Lemont’s mistress was a mulatto prostitute he sometimes visited in New Orleans, but he were a dutiful husband and indulged his four sons and one daughter. The more aristocratic Creoles who lived in the big cities took fencing lessons, went horseback riding or played dominoes or cards in the bars and dueling but Lemont and his clan were not members of the aristocracy. The other Creoles, not only in New Orleans, but also in the bayou, looked down upon and despised the Dupree’s.
The black Creoles believed in voodoo or Vsdum, a form of religion brought to the area by African slaves. It was a matriarchal institution giving much power to women and they believed that certain women could put curses on people. They could turn evil or mean people into zombies or arouse a love interest. On many nights during the voodoo ceremonies the priests or priestesses had tried to put a spell on the Dupree clan.
Lemont Dupree was a short, plump, very light skinned man with watery blue eyes. His features were bulbous and bloated and red spots pitted his face, the remnants of severe acne he had suffered during adolescence. He eyes were dark lifeless pools surrounded by fleshy lids above and enormous bags below. He looked like a leprechaun with his blue eyes and cherubic appearance. He was in his late forties and him and his four sons and twenty members of his clan terrorized and extorted the fishermen and sugar cane farmers who lived in the bayou, but Cinque father, Rosco, refused to pay them.
On an early spring morning in 1981, when Cinque was eight years old, the Dupree’s raided the family small farm in reprisal for their refusal to pay. The only thing that saved Cinque was that his father had hid him under an old log in the swamps. He watched as his father and older brother, Jean, were tied to a tree and the Dupree’s raped and sodomized his staked out mother and sisters. Jacque was the oldest at sixteen and had a ruddy pockmarked complexion and a face ready for old age. His hair was fine and the color of corn silk that kept falling into his eyes. Ralph was fifteen and twins, Jon and Leon were thirteen. Cinque watched in horror as Jacque raped his mother and forced his penis into his sister’s mouths while the other brothers raped them. All the while Lemont and the other men laughed and egged them on.
After the brothers had expended their sexual energy, the other clan members raped the women. Cinque with tears in his eyes watched as one of the men, a big hairy brute, mounted his sister Mammie and grabbed her by her long black hair and began sniffing and kissing the nape of her neck. The young girl was half naked and dazed. Her dress and chemise, torn off, exposed her budding young brown breasts. The blood from the bite wounds of the brothers had stained her skin. She had stopped crying and her eyes were lifeless as the man on top of her began moaning and grunting like a wild hog that Cinque had seen planting his shoat seed in a sow. She was lying perfectly still on the wet ground, the blood from her virgin vagina was now flowing rapidly as the sweating man drove his hot hard flesh in and out of her flaccid body.
Cinque closed his eyes as the other men began to circle the two other women, like a pack of wolves moving in for the kill. His mother and sisters staked out and naked were spread eagle on the ground. They did not scream or try to resist the men as they took their turns with them. As the sun began to set in the west, Cinque heard his father curse the men in his native language as Lemont cut the throats of his father and brother. Jacque then cut the throats of his sisters and mother and skinned them.
As he watched and heard the terrible screams of his family, he swore revenge. Cinque stayed hidden in the swamp for two days before his uncle, Claude Binnwa, the leader of the Binnwa clan, found him. Cinque was shaking and crying as he described what had happened to his uncle. Although Cinque was mentally and physically exhausted he helped his uncle bury his family. The carnage was permanently etched in his mind and he swore revenge, a blood feud.
Claude Binnwa was Rosco's younger brother and he was a bear of a man. He was well over six feet tall and weighted over two hundred fifty pounds. Like so many of the Binnwa clan, his Seminole blood had left him with wavy thick black hair, reddish- dark brown skin, high cheek bones and dark slanting eyes which gave him a fierce look when angry. A long scar ran half way down his right cheek and another long scar was on his neck. He had gotten these wounds years ago in a knife fight with Lemont Dupree.
Although Uncle Claude wasn’t a Catholic his grandparents were and when he was a young boy his grandfather had made him wear a cilice belt, a leather strap, studded with sharp metal barbs that cut into the flesh and was clasped around his left thigh for an hour every day until the blood flowed. The cilice his grandfather had told him would help him to endure pain and free him from the sins of the flesh. Cinque could never remember seeing his uncle smile; he sneered and had the same predatory look as the alligators he hunted. There were rumors, that he once killed a large gator by pulling his mouth apart. For the next ten years, Cinque lived with his uncle in the bayou. Uncle Claude taught Cinque how to use the bow and arrow and how to use and throw the “Arkansas Pig sticker,” a large knife that he could throw accurately with either hand and he also gave him the cilice, which he told Cinque could be used as a very effective weapon in hand–to-hand combat. He also taught Cinque about the meaning of family and how important it was to be protective and loyal to the family. Cinque spent many nights with his uncle and other remaining Binnwa clan members hunting alligators for food and their skins, which they sold. Somehow, he had developed a gum disease and his Uncle Claude had to pull out all of his teeth.
Nights came quickly in the bayou beyond the city lights of New Orleans. The darkness was thick and absolute and the air was hot and humid. The sounds of the night were everywhere; frogs croaked, crickets clicked and lightening bugs lit up the darkness.
In the distance, they heard