It Turns Black
The bloodstain by the debris pile on the Dumaine sidewalk was by noon the next day turning black. The stain was large. More blood turning black than I think I was prepared to see. The 17 year old boy it belonged to was in the morgue. He was cooling off now about 14 hours. He wasn't alone. His friend was with him, also refrigerated. I had not seen the second boy's bloodstain. I think he bled out in the grass of a lawn two houses down. I was worried it was some boys I might know but it was not. These two boys were Lafitte project exiles, and had survived last week's drive-by attempt, but not this one.
I was on the block two days previous delivering some furniture I had taken possession of 2 years ago, after the last big hurricane.
The furniture I was returning was coming from my house six blocks away and the person to whom I rent my place had very graciously allowed me and my party to stay there during our four day visit for Jazzfest, while she escaped to a Florida beach.
The person to whom I was delivering the furniture has been mentoring kids on that block of Dumaine for the last 13 years. I participated briefly for a couple of years back in the mid to late nineties. Some of the boys I knew are still around, in their early twenties now, and I got to see three of them, just long enough to say hi and shake hands or in the case of G, who is on at least a temporary probation from entering the property, just a wave.
F looked good, has cut off his long hair, I think in an attempt to distance himself somewhat from the street culture. He was imprisoned last year for a couple of months on a false murder charge.
L got out of jail a few months ago and also looked very good, and was carrying one of his babies.
S is doing two to five so I did not see him in person but did finally get to see the documentary my Dumaine friend helped produce and S is in it briefly, projecting a thug-like personality, but admitting he does not want to die on the street. And not wanting to may be enough but some of us fear it may not be. He could survive though because not all these kids die on the street and the fact that two were murdered on Sunday and a few blocks away two more on Saturday (with a third in critical condition) and the previous week 8 more were killed around town, in a city of barely 300,000, does not change the fact that people are surviving, while all around them blood stains slowly fade.
On Monday I returned the DVD of the documentary to Dumaine. It was there that this mentor person, who after losing count at five the number of murders on this block in the last 18 months, had said, yeah, the blood is still out there from last night. So that's why I looked for it when I left. It wasn't hard to see. There was so much of it.
Of the five boys sitting on the stoop behind the debris pile in front of which is the blood stain, two of them have guns in their pockets. How do I know this? I am a good guesser.
I'm afraid the New Orleans police force may be suffering from the few bad apple syndrome and that the pressure of keeping law in a lawless and broken town is taking its toll on that small percentage of the NOPD, and they are cracking up. Unfortunately, the community relations damage some of these officers are creating by beating up suspects and planting drugs and projecting a kiss my ass aggressive attitude, is moving the city farther away from real solutions, and losing the police that tenuous thread of support they may have once come almost close to attaining.
Jazzfest was fine, I went one day with Bernadette and our friends from NY, Jesse and Sparkle (and their new baby, whom I haven't made up a name for yet), and my friend from college days, Malcolm Gates. We took off Saturday and I did some work on my house while they drove around exploring the city 2.5 years after the flood. That night we all went to Tipitina's with my nephew (who is not a chef but plays one in the Superdome), and his wife, and we saw the gospel group Blind Boys of Alabama and it was pretty fine. They sang near the end a version of Amazing Grace to the tune of House of the Rising Sun. I felt lifted by the Spirit.
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