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Duck And Cover
But the cute little black and white kitten wasn't shredded to a soft furry pulp that day and so lived to see another sunrise.
The lanky man was not a predator, at least this appeared to be the case, and so the kitten ventured out one afternoon from under the relative safety of a New Orleans dance hall and into the trash heap in front of lanky man's house.
Lanky man would have been moved to a moment of eye moistened sentimentality if he had seen the kitten's wide-eyed wild stare, framed as it was by the random debris of urban renovation just outside the door of his modest dwelling. Instead, it was another one of those blink of an eye moments when what one sees is the result of an action one sets forth, and which can't be stopped: in this case the half empty cup of soft drink arching towards the exact spot where lay hidden the watchful feline, its cuteness at once and forever in rapid retreat into the bowels of debris.
Consider The Kitten
When last month the people from the Pentecostal church did the human bush hog number to the vacant lot next to me so they could park eight bus loads worth of Pentecostal brethren for the big, super, grandaddy, Mardi Gras parade known as Endymion, they dislocated a kitten I've had my eye on.
The Pentecostal property does a twenty foot L behind my property and the big pile of debris they removed and 'hid" in the L looks similar to the big pile I had accumulated clearing my lot last year, and later with some considerable effort relocated to a dumpster in the front. I'm thinking the Pentecostals have forgotten the big tree limb laden weed pile because its not like its in their back yard; the church is actually two blocks away. "Bastards" is what I would call them if they weren't such a reputable church going group of people. I'm not talking about your East Texas Snake Handling Pentecostal Orthodoxy here. This is a more mellow, and biracial, bunch, although I would have to accept the invitation to one of their Saturday men's prayer breakfasts to prove that point.
Kittens are cute, even if you're a psychopath>speaking of cute.
"I'll give you an extra ten if you scoop up the dead cat over there on the side and throw it over there by the dance hall," is what I told the man I hired today, and only bring up now to illustrate a high feline mortality rate.
I'd see the kitten periodically after the great mowing and parking spectacle so I started thinking of it as a survivor, and even knowing it would grow into another sad, dingy, mewing, flea-bitten excuse for a mousetrap, I was still struck by it's black and white cuteness.
But the Tom I call BigHead is also black and white, and the obvious patriarch of this small piece of feline drama that surrounds the 200 block of Rocheblave, and he's a bad sumbitch is what he thinks but he surely does know a thing or two about pecking order which is why he spent an hour of his day today beating up the kitten: chewing on it's neck, and throttling it with battering hind paws.
Corner News
Now this might be taking the acclimation in the hood thing a bit far, but leaving Rocheblave a few minutes ago I approached the Bienville intersection with some cautious aggression, in front of the man getting ready to cross in front of me, and then nosed out with a little pump of acceleration (because sometimes at intersections the truck's transmission won't catch), and then did a hard brake in deference to the young man on the bicycle traveling in the left lane of Bienville at dusk--I'm the only white boy in this scene--and I nod vaguely to the kid on the bicycle while looking left up Bienville at the same time the kid says to the man who has now crossed behind me and is heading towards Broad on the easterly sidewalk--"whatsup m'nigger."
Now the movement of my nodding to the kid is timed so that me and the kid both know this ain't right: the white boy responding to the affectionate vernacular, so the kid, God bless him with the quickest mind, bails us out by raising up his head just so slightly and saying a quiet "whatsup" to me but for the benefit of us all.
It's been about a month, or a little less, since sixteen-year-old Shelton Jackson was thrown from this house on Dumaine out into the urban abyss of the New Orleans Sixth Ward. M made the arrangements for his relocation to a local chapter of Boys Town because even the allure of his SSI stipend was not enough, in the end, to entice any of his many blood relatives to take him in, and while he appeared to go with the flow of this, at the last minute when the social workers actually showed up, he flew. So in a sense he is a wanted man, or rather, young boy.
Those who grew up here on Dumaine cannot seem to leave the sense of home it gives them so I see Shelton on a pretty regular basis. He does makes a concerted effort to stay from the sight of M because it was she he disappointed the most with his frequent misguided attempts at manhood.
"Hey, Mr. Jim, " he yelled to me from across the street yesterday, as I was changing vehicles to go from the paying job to the Rocheblave job, "how you feeling?"
"I'm ok, hower you Shelton?" I said.
"I'm good," he said, and then I turned away from him and got into the car and started the engine. I did not know the older boy he was with.
As I'm looking right to merge from the curb to the corner of Broad which is only a hundred and fifty feet away but during certain times of the day can take a while to get to and Shelton is knocking on my window glass. I roll it down. He wants to shake hands.
"So how are you?" I said, again.
"I'm not doing anything illegal," he said.
"Good," I said. And then as afterthought, I instructed him. "You know, Shelton, if you're gonna tell stories like that you should write them down"
"Whatchu mean?"
"Like the one you told J's mom who told Miss S who told M, about how M has gone to the pipe and me pimping her out to Jermaine."
Shelton tried to explain to me how illogical that story was by saying how Jermaine hardly even hangs around this porch no more.
"Neither one of us are too worried about people thinking the stories are true, but it's bad business telling lies about people, or even about yourself."
"Whaddaya mean?"
"I mean you getting kicked out of here and trying to make it sound like you just had to leave a bad situation. You know I made it no secret I wasn't all that crazy about you staying here, but M was only trying to give you a safe place to hang out, you shouldn't disrespect her with lies that help you gain sympathy and favor from others. There's no shame or blame to any of this, a thing doesn't work out, and then you try something else. There's nothing wrong with the truth of who you are, where you come from, and where you're at. If you need to tell a story, the truth is the easiest one to tell, and the easiest one to defend," I directed into his glazed expression.
"All right, Mr. Jim." He shook my hand again and headed for the hoop and the company of those gathered in that small parking lot/transaction area which extends behind the Magnolia corner store, and the Impressive Designs haircutting establishment.
How Far To His Next Life?
I accepted the invitation of an avowed racist yesterday. When he said, "wanna burn one before you leave," I pantomined my arm behind my back.
Sure as the population of English Turn residents who are having houses built on man made (pond) "Bonita Bay" grows, so are we workers destined to smoke 'em when we got 'em.
So me and this guy, I'm not going to name him this time but I've named him before, if it matters, which I don't think it does, unless you value the recorded literal over interpretion, which is your prerogative, I got nothing to say about it, but me and him are sitting on buckets looking out over the pond, me staring at the reference point of the hard core hip hop rapper Cash Money residence, who for all his money will soon be not personally but specifically, if such a thing is possible, reduced to a term that won't leave us alone or leave our conciousness because 1) its a hateful term, and 2) because of who uses it and in what context, which is the more complicated issue, and therefore set aside for the dissecting by someone less simple than me, which is to say more smarter.
All I want to say is me and this guy are smoking marijuana, for which we will go straight to hell, kids, don't do it, it leads to degradation, and...TV watching, and he's a straight in your face racist, which is to say he just does not like non-white, but the "niggers," if truth be told, are his pet group. Me, I hate a lot of people but have "evolved" to a state where I don't delineate simply by race. I hate people of all creeds, colors, and affiliations. I guess the thing is, I have to meet the people first, or be otherwise presented with evidence which would cast a person into a mold worthy of hatred. But hatred is bad, kids, don't do it, it leads to degradation, and...TV watching.
So this guy is still working with us but has recently moved to the country (of central Louisiana), where, he had previously bragged, "they don't allow no niggers." What he's basically going on about is something I don't like either, so I'm sympathizing with him because I like him enough to do that. He moves to a small town where God is good and Good is god, and lo and behold this white nigger kid moves in next door and brings with him a full blown black nigger. And they listen to loud rap music, which goddamn it the town has an ordinance against, and besides, these kids are surely the ones broke into the store, everyone knows this and agrees, and as he describes this knowledge to me I can see how easy that rope was/is thrown over that tree limb.
I'm high on his weed though, yet frankly have better things to be doing, off early on a Monday with a new home to finish, but sitting on an unfinished back porch overlooking a pond in an exclusive gated community is ok, and contrasts my deep in the New Orleans 'hood lifestyle in such a way that I can go with this flow, and besides it is my position I fear he treasures, the one who won't agree with him, and say, "yeah, fuckin' niggers," but still can find a way to verbally pat him on his thick little skull and say, 'now, now, there, there, everything's gonna be all right.'"
Still, I gotta laugh when I think of him thinking he can hide from himself by traveling those few 150 miles every weekend.
Bon Appetit
I'm the guy standing those awkward minutes in front of ten and twelve dollar belts at WalMart or Kmart trying to make a decision I know I'm never going to make, not if you look at it like today is the last day of the rest of your life. I'm not in love with any of those belts and for a guy who doesn't wear belts nothing short of love will suffice. I need something to hold up my work pants though, so everyday, for months now (I think I accidently threw away that one belt I own, the same way I threw away my keys I guess, but I retrieved those from the trash can out front a Dumaine), I pull a section of tape from any available roll, duct, or masking, and folding it into thirds into itself I run it through the two loops on either side of the fly and tie a knot. If there is some reason during the day I need to pull my pants down I slice the tape with the ubiquitous razor knife and after walking around pulling my pants up every few minutes I realize I really must make a new belt. It is a necessary Steppenwolf kind of moment getting in touch with that white trash part of yourself. And I feel even now a better piece of a man for it.
I am moved nightly at Rocheblave by the Louise Erdrich New Yorker story which chronicles hard life beautifully, and who am I to critique the ending (?). A short short story, it takes me several nights of reading two paragraphs before my sleep mistress seduces me with her sexily whispered promise of cessation and peace. But last night I stood her up and finished the story. While I write this the sun has set and Rocheblave has two windows unboarded and floors full of tools, which is a step in a direction I have chosen. There's a fresh New Yorker and a chicken sandwich on bun over there on the bed to my left just waiting for me to finish whatever it is I think so important that it would cause me to ignore them this long. "Come on, finish up your bullshit and let's go on over to that house you've been working on for two centuries," the two pieces of nourishment kid me.
"You guys are crazy, ha, 'two centuries,' I get it loud and clear. If that isn't a knee slapper, what is?"
I've been depressed. I saw too much in a blink. No way around it, payments come due. And if that's not ending, what is?
Yayah, bon appetit slim.
Shut Up
He comes around like a guy lost without his streetcorner, and talks loudly, belligerently, and profanely, projecting himself into my living room. I've called him the golden toothed gangster, Stink, and Eric McCormick, son of Nettie, brother to Glynn, and KaKa. His nomiker, spelled Stank, is etched up down the river side of Broad, between Esplanade and Orleans. I will have to move away from the nonfiction which includes too many named people other than me. I think I will. Its never seemed right. Sometimes it was justified as protection against going down darkly without leaving clues. Other times I considered it payment for services rendered. Mostly I know it just itsn't done, for legal and ethical reasons. But being too discreet kept me from writing for a lot of years. There's a journalistic gene going on with me that I'm trying to deal with. But I ramble. I only wanted to say this:
Eric McCormick, despite occasional appearances to the contrary, you are from good stock, and you are intelligent, and those are two things that can work for you. You don't need to be a blowhard. Just be what you are quietly. In short, shut the fuck (and grow) up.
Riding With Smokey
Finally I got picked up by Smokey in a beat Chevy and we headed southwest out of Los Angeles into the desert. At his trailer in the middle of that desert I didn't even get out of the car because Smokey just needed to stop briefly to get his gun, before taking us to Yuma, where he would search the jungle there and I would--at his recommendation--catch a Southern Pacific boxcar back to Texas.
The man I met in the yard at Yuma took me under his wing after first recommending that I get back on the highway because I was young and clean like the kind people wouldn't mind too much picking up and trainyards were for the old and dirty, or like in his case, the black.
We waited two days and nights in that Yuma train yard, which was famous for its friendly bulls, until a proper hotshot longhauler came through and then against his earlier teaching ("you don't jump a moving train, wait for them to stop, and then pick your car") we did jump a slow moving flatcar, and climbed onto the next car which was a tiered automobile carrier, three levels high with Camaros.
This was January, and even so far south it was bitter cold at night so the scrap piece of rigid wire was nothing less than a gift from gods as it let us unlock a door, and as he knew their would be, retrieve from the glovebox the ignition key which cranked an engine and gave us heat, and, I'm complaining now, a rather cramped sleeping space.
In El Paso the man said it would be a felony to get caught in one of these cars so he said we had to jump, and catch something else out of the yard, which was patrolled by less than friendly, but not altogether unreasonable, bulls. He hadn't told me anything about jumping, and the train was moving faster than I care to remember, except it is one of the elapsed time periods of my life--the movement, the sound of metal clacking against metal, the two days in the El Paso train yard, dinner and sermon at the mission, the January cold, the mild concussion, the found and dispensed with bottle of tequila, the oranges, and the sardines--which I can transport to with an almost unreasonable clarity.
My feet hit first and then I was skidding along the side of my face along side a train track outside of a train yard in El Paso, Texas in January in what I guess would be the year 1980.
The two day waited for boxcar out of El Paso was boarded still, at night, with glowing cigarette butts the beacons of invitation by grisly greying bearded gentlemen.
In San Antonio sixteen hours of unaligned rocking later, the train began to slow, and I saw the Interstate, either 10, or 35, and it was my time to go. "Let yourself down slow, and get your feet running before you touch down," he told me, and I did what he said, and I was standing tall to receive his parting gesture, the upward thumb.
I was late for school by a couple of days, and as luck would have it so was this guy Dave, who had been a next door neighbor during summer school, and had scared me good n' plenty with a ride on the back of his Kawasaki 900, but was now in the more docile Volkswagen Beetle, heading north to Austin on I-35, when he saw me standing on the side of the road.
"Hey Dave."
"Hey Jim, what happened to your face?"
"Fell off a train, Dave." At the time everyone thought I was speaking euphemistically, and I did not insist otherwise.
It was nice that my roommates were gone away from the apartment on ninth street so I cleaned myself leisurely and I'm not sure why headed for the UT campus.
The flourescent glare and the studious multitudes reflected in glass at the undergraduate library were the last things I remember from that other world, from which, I did on that evening in January duly depart.
Not Yuma
Me and this guy Billy hitchhiked from Austin to Telluride for the Jazz Festival in August of 79. We had both attended summer school at the University hoping to shorten the amount of years actually spent in classrooms. It was a few months later that it came to me there was a better way to go about this but at the time I was only considering the way which had been laid out for me.
Telluride, Colorado, which is off the beaten track, and even then was being overrun by capitalistic hippies, was a destination well worth the effort getting there (The Tall Texan smoked Merits and issued many a "comeback" on that CB radio), and as if to underscore that we had arrived in a place different from what we knew Billy and I immediately found ourselves beckoned into the living room of a lovely and earthly young woman who hoped we could assist in her time of need, but for me it was more like a self guided tour, Billy behind or in front, who can remember?, but neither one of us were able to change the fact that the naked man in the bathtub was having a seizure, so we just noted whatever it was we each noted, and moved on, until we found ourselves outside, and back in motion, the smell of patchouli a sensory reference point.
Pat Metheney may have been the musical highlight, and I'm not clear who was on the afternoon blues stage but I'm thinking it was John Lee Hooker and/or Lightnin' Hopkins.
The trip changed both Billy and I, in ways we may ponder at length, and come early December he was talking about dropping out of school. I encouraged him to stay the course because it seemed like the thing to do, but I was restless too, and after a week in Dallas for Christmas break I lied to my parents saying I had a job to get back to in Austin. I then hitchhiked to Los Angeles and visited friend Mark Fitzpatrick on the USC campus. On the first night in town, or on the way out, I slept in the Rose Garden next to the Coliseum under a bed of yellow roses which I dedicated to my unrequited love. Must have been the way out because I was alone and I'm remembering now that I met a French Canadian raised in Georgia by the name of Rodney Gimberling on 290 West just outside of Austin after he had stolen some snacks from that roadside store, and we had made the trip west together. Some months later, back in Texas, Rodney would come back to haunt me and I would spend my first night in jail, for trying to beat a cab fare, in Dallas, which would then a couple of years later be the second to last jail I visited before becoming good, and honest, and wholesome, like I am now.
I think Rodney headed for San Francisco while I headed back to Texas to start my fifth semester at the University. It's hard to hitchhike out of Los Angeles. I have so far never been harmed by another in my travels but I can't help but remember the candor of what I consider the representative Los Angelian in regards to hitchhiking--after waiting four hours in one spot for a ride and a car stops and I get in and the driver accelerates onto the highway while casually inquiring "do you mind if I jack you off while I drive?" Under reacting to such a situation is a safe way to go and so a reponse like "you can let me off at the next exit" was all the defense I ever needed. I've told this story a hundred times and it bores me now to rewrite it, but I keep hoping there's some gratifying truth I can make use of by the remembering, the recounting, the recitation of it all. I have to move on now, this here as good a place as any, although I thought I'd stick it out tonight until I memoired the Yuma to San Antonio leg of this trip, but I''ve been wrong before and the experience of being wrong is maybe as good as a person gets.
Batons And Flashlights
During part of that period I wasn't scripting I ran with a Rasta from Trinidad. He was showing me some ropes of lifestyle that for all the diversity of the university's curriculum, were not offered in any of its classrooms. This was in Austin, TX during those late seventies into early eighties when disco was getting pummeled by punk, and middle class kids from wholesome families were creating a thing coined later as slackerdom.
I'm going to skip that period again except to refer to an old times sake job we did together. I was his chauffeur, and I can't really say what he did as I wasn't paying attention, except to my own business which was to drive us around in his two door Maverick, not to be confused with my four door Maverick which sits under a shed not really out of the weather, in Bushy Fork, North Carolina.
This piece is about revolution, inspired by the dismantling of Napster, which is an evil anti-capitalistic device which must be smothered, or reconfigured so that it can make millions and millions for millions. Disagreeing makes you a pinko fag, so think carefully before you think out loud. Once branded, only long sleeve shirts can hide your secret.
My Rasta friend and mentor was being uncharacteristically generous this day we met by chance after a year's separation, on that busy lane across from the UT campus known as the Drag which was an artery for deviates and academics. He was offering me tickets and a sum of money to drive him to a cow pasture north of Austin where the Police and UB-40 were performing. "No other obligations, bigtimer, " he assured me. Except for the very real threat of a hard prison term, which had in effect ended our partnership, we'd had some good times together, so my playing hard to get was really more just to extend the marvelous thing which was Rastaman almost begging me to do this thing for him. I don't enjoy being begged, but I am a little queer for the uncharacteristic behavior, and I guess it was just nice to see that Rasta was missing me.
Here's the thing. At this concert I drank beers and therefore subsequently had to pee, and badly you know. We are in a friggin cow pasture with acres and acres of border between the barbed wire fence and the mass of people oogling Sting, but they actually had security enforcing the no free pee rule (you had to walk a quarter mile and stand in a line behind fifty other weak bladders). The security forces were like the Ninth District Court, not to be trifled with, serious business and no joke.
I can't abide. I'm standing on this little mohill looking around without appearing to look around, trying to do the 180 as if I'd read all the Casteneda's, and it happens in a way, that I do "see" what it is there is to see. And that is that to my left and to my right there are a good many of us men with bulging bladders looking for a break, and so it is I, somewhat uncharacteristically, who looks to the man on my left some twenty feet away, and said, or in truth yelled, "let's charge the fence," and we did, me and this guy still twenty feet apart on the fence line, to hell with the Court, we peed freely, and luxuriously.
The thing is, if it had just been me and this other dude the security forces would have come over with their batons and flashlights, and after making fun of our penises, would have punished us for this crime against fence posts. But here's the beauty of it: by the time I was jiggling the last drops away, there were no less than one hundred men, shoulder to shoulder, watering the fence line, and what had moments before been something that couldn't be done was now a done deal.
I'm pressed for time, camping at Rocheblave tonite, forget the analogy, long live Napster.