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It's His Coma
There is a theory that all these children around here don't really exist but are simply my alter egos manifested inside a coma dream.
I was lurking online climbing branches at the tree when Mandy came in and asked was there any chance I would drive Glynn fifteen blocks up Dumaine to where he stay on that one way Roosevelt with his Grandma, practically across the street from that American Can Company renovation. I was drinking a quart of ice cold budweiser, a quart because the Magnolia got its liquor license revoked and is only selling the residual stock from its sad and lonely looking nearly empty beer shelves to premium customers, lucky me. Freddy's wife imitated Schulz from Hogan's Heroes, "you know nothing," and I agreed wholeheartedly, saying, "that's very true, and I can prove it just by opening my mouth."
Mandy said she had already drunk a beer and a half and did not want to drive and I always encourage the good judgement of others. "Yeah, I'll take him," I said. Glynn had earlier driven his bike into the pole that supports the Magnolia sign at the corner of Dumaine and Broad and given himself--I am not a doctor making 200k a year--a mild concussion.
As I was driving up Orleans, instead of Dumaine, it occurred to me that all the children that are making up the alter egos inhabiting my coma dream, and who used to live either exactly in the 2600 block of Dumaine, or pretty close, now live scattered to the wind, but still find their way to this block almost every day.
Hunter snuck up on me at the Rocheblave job today (I paid him six dollars an hour to help me one day last week so he could go to the SuperFair at the Dome), and he said he just wanted to see what I was doing. I told him, "nothing really," and asked him did he come to work. He said he was on his way home. I thought he still lived around the corner from 2600 Dumaine, on Dorgenois, but no, he living with his grandmother on Bienville and Roman. I admitted I did not know that, and offered him work on Tuesday.
And Lance, who is here everyday, lives way out in the east with Sandra, the nurse his dad Billy had taken up with just before he got busted selling marijuana with that illegal weapon. Lance has brothers living lives elsewhere and one of them was murdered in New Mexico this past week.
Heather (and big sister, Kizzy, with children Raticia, Shadrica, and little Corey, and mom Barbara), lives on Iberville, near Galvez, not too far from the Rocheblave house.
Fermin, and his sister Julia (15 and pregnant), live with mom Evelyn on Touro, several blocks on the river side of Claiborne, a good distance from 2600 Dumaine. Michael Harris lives near there too.
Jacque, Nettie, Tiesha, Roshona, and mom Ramona Lewis still live on Rocheblave, at Orleans, in the Lafitte Projects.
Bryan Henry still lives across the street, and his cousin Irving visits occasionally.
After Mama D died many stopped coming to Dumaine. For instance, I haven't seen Shentrell in almost a year.
Kojak (Clifford Lewis), out of lockup, was playing dominoes on the porch recently, but I haven't seen Clifford Junior in a good while.
Erica Lewis I don't see very often but I think Ba(y) Ba(y) and Lulu are taking good care of her over on Claiborne, near Frenchman. Lulu (17-18) is pregnant.
And as I may have mentioned before, Shelton Ray Jackson is living inside this house, and we are recently trying to be nice to each other.
My new Rocheblave neighbors across the street are a woman named Mebo? and her husband, nice people, she's a sculpter, and I'm not sure yet what he does, but she was offering I don't know what today, condolences? about my break-ins, and I was speaking unguarded, big mistake, and she was offering me advice (all good, and all things I have considered), but I felt this childish competiveness and kept saying things like, "I know what's up," and "Dumaine and Broad make this block look like a daycare center," and she was thinking "what an asshole," who can blame her, but the thing is she kept irritating me with placations to my condemnations, saying things that were supposed to make me pause and consider the hardships of my fellow men, like--"everyone's got a story," and me wanting to grab this cloistered artist living behind the locked iron gates and theories of her urban domicile and scream, "no fucking shit?"