Hugo Cauldron is old.

 

How old?

 

Damn old.

 

Think on it.  How old a cauldron got to be before it get a name, any name, let alone a name like Hugo?

 

Yeah, that old.

 

But Hugo even older than that.  Take for instance how Hugo knows, whenever the old voodoo man tells him to fetch some of this or some of that, how Hugo knows where to get it.  How comes a cauldron on those kind of details?

 

Here’s a hint.

 

This world of ours, it didn’t just go pop one day and there it was all finished.  It didn’t do that anymore than your favorite dinner of lamb korma (a Indian style of curry with cream and raisins and other good stuff that you can look up in a cook book if you want to) just pops up on a plate with a big pile of basmati rice and nan bread and mango chutney.  No, this world of our, it first had to be cooked up.

 

All the bits and pieces of this world, steamed, sautéed, browned, broiled, par boiled, emulsified, seared, smoked, deep fried, roasted, or blanched, they all had to be prepared, cooked, and tossed in a big damn pot so they could stew up together.

 

A pot.  Like what they call a cauldron.

 

See where I’m goin?

 

In case you don’t see all that well, let me paint a picture a bit brighter.  Hugo Cauldron, could be he knows where every damn thing is because he cooked every damn thing at one time or another.  Got the taste of everythin in his big iron mouth does Hugo.

 

You don’t got to believe me if you don’t want to, but there it is.  An whether you believe it or not, there’s still the plain fact that when the old voodoo man says, Hugo, go fetch me the last livin breath of the thief to Christ’s left up on Calvry Hill, Hugo goes and fetches it.

 

So you tell me how he does it an I’ll shut up an you can tell the story.

 

Sayin that Hugo Cauldron is old.

 

Not sayin that the old voodoo man is as old as Hugo.  Cuz I know you’re thinkin that someone had to chop an dice and mince all them ingredients before puttin them in the cauldron, an they did, but it wasn’t the old voodoo man, that’s damn sure.

 

Yeah, he old.  He damn old, but he’s not that damn old.

 

Let me tell you somethin about that old voodoo man.  That fella, he’s mean.  Like you didn’t suss that out already.  But that’s not all.  He’s mean and he’s nasty.  More.  He’s mean and he’s nasty and he plays the violin. 

 

Didn’t see that comin.

 

Plays the violin as sweet as it ever been played.

 

Know who’s a sucker for sweet violin playin?  Yeah, that’s right.  Hugo Cauldron.  So if you were wonderin where all this was windin to, now you got the hint. 

 

Hugo Cauldron, he’s old.  And he knows things.  Things ain’t no one else ever known.  Well, one other know them, but only that one, and then Hugo.  Knowin things, that makes a person, or a cauldron, powerful.  You got a knowledge of things, you got a way to shape them, control them, possess them.  That kind of power, Hugo has it in spades.  But he ain’t the type to use it.  Not on his own. 

 

Hugo, he’s the kind of cauldron, he mostly wants to simmer over a fire with his belly full of a nice thick onion soup.  Leave all that power business up to some other people got the hunger for it.  But Hugo, he suck a wonder, he found his way into some stories, some legends, some rumors and tales.  And all those whispers, they found their way, year after year, into the ears of the old voodoo man.  Well, just into his left ear really, his right ear, it don’t hear so well.  Accident he had when he was a boy.  Well, not so much an accident as a case where his granny cut that ear off to use in a conjurin potion.  But that’s a long story.

 

But that good left ear, it heard plenty. 

 

An what it heard was that this knowin and powerful cauldron, it liked the violin.  So what does the voodoo man do? (an I call him the voodoo man her instead of the old voodoo man because he’d been around some by then but he wasn’t quite old by the standard of how old he got to be later) That voodoo man got himself taught how to play the violin as sweet as could be.

 

It was hard.

 

Sweetness was not somethin that came easy to the voodoo man.  Bein mean and nasty he could pull off at the drop of a hat.  First time he put bow to strings he could eke mean and nasty from that violin, but sweet sounds took him time.  Years.  A pile of years.  And then another pile.  Like fightin all of nature tryin to get that violin to sound sweet.  Wore out a hundred and seventy three violin teachers learnin to play sweet. 

 

By wore out what I mean is he killed most of em in some mean and nasty way or another when they couldn’t teach him proper what he wanted. 

 

Then he met someone special. 

 

But he don’t talk about her. 

 

No, I ain’t gonna tell you her name or what happened to her.  It comes later.  Nuff to say she taught him how to play sweet.  How?  Well, I’ll tell you this much.  Only way to learn what it is to be sweet is to have someone be sweet to you.  Then you maybe get some of that sweetness on you.  Then maybe you can rub it off elsewhere.  An if maybe the person who rubbed all theys sweetness on you up and dies of a sudden and leaves you alone, well maybe your sweetness gets seasoned with sadness.

 

An there ain’t nothin sweeter than that.

 

After that, whatever it was that happened to the old voodoo man (he was old by then) whatever it was that happened to him that I ain’t sayin, he could play that violin sweet like to make your teeth fall out.

 

In them years, an it took years, find him in every house wares and pot shop in the world, goin up an down the aisles, plain that violin as sweet as dyin in the arms of the one you love.

 

Playin and walkin and playin and listenin and playin some more.

 

Till he heard it, comin down a cluttered shelf of bric-a-brac in a rummage sale raisin money for a volunteer fire department in some small place with barely a name in some hills lost aways from the city.  Pausin between notes, lettin the last sweet one vibrate out of the air before the next could be bowed, he heard a sigh.  Delighted and content, the sigh of someone who enjoys a good cry now an again.  Someone who accepts the sour with the sweet.  Someone who knows a thing or three about seasonin.

 

How much? is all the old voodoo man asked the churchy ladies runnin the sale.

For that old thing? is what they answered.

 

And in the end the old voodoo man had him for six yankee dollars.

 

Hugo Cauldron, bargain basement, with all his knowin and all his power.

 

An Hugo got seasoned by the old voodoo man.  Around all that mean and nasty, Hugo got some of it hisself.  So that when Necrotic Culver was dropped on theys doorstep, all he could think to hisself was how yummy that baby might be in his tummy. 

 

But sweepin up the corners, already there for a few years, big enough now to keep things clean and tend to duckin out the way when the old voodoo man got mean and took a swipe at him, sweepin up in there was Shadding Lyttle.  One eye on that girl baby, one eye on the old voodoo man and Hugo.

 

Shad, he’d been figuring he needed to get out for some time from that place, had a plan just about finished, but when he saw tiny Necrotic Culver, he hung up his plan and put it to the side. 

 

Have to wait a few years it would, until that girl was old enough that he could take her out too. No was that boy leavin her behind with the old voodoo man and Hugo.

 

Then things got a little complicated.

 

-c

 

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