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Short Answer
"Is it really that dangerous in New Orleans?" She came right out with it, intuiting better than I that ours would be a short conversation, and she wanted answers. It was a question to the point, or to my point at least, as I seem to be always telling stories of danger and death on the streets of New Orleans. I tried to convince her that while I wasn't making anything up, still, life goes on. It is not a threatening place to be, New Orleans. Not always anyway. Not everyday. I don't even know I'm doing it until I reread a string of ten or twelve and realize somebody dies violently in more than half of them. I'll never get over it. I'm going to keep telling it 'till it stops. I'm going to keep telling it. That's what I'm deciding right this minute. I had for awhile been thinking about it before she asked me is why it struck me so hard. I had the days previous been thinking about getting a new angle, one more kind and gentle, but I won't. Not as long as Eddie Green picks me up at the airport.
I was broke leaving New York and in Jersey City the ATM spit my card back telling me it was expired. Well, so it was. I wouldn't be taking a cab home. I called a friend. She said she would pick me up. When I called her from the New Orleans airport she was in the middle of a small crisis. Hunter had been picked up in front of the Dumaine house on a curfew violation. She sent Eddie Green, Hollis Price's high school teammate. Eddie chose football over basketball and attends Southern University in Baton Rouge on scholarship. He is a 6' 1" 230 pound Linebacker.
"Hi Eddie."
"Hey Mr. Jim."
"Jacque."
"Mr. Jim."
"Mr. Jim, this is Stacey. She stay next door," Eddie Green said. I remember that name. I had that name written on a piece of paper somewhere. I had a couple of years before met her younger sister, Brianna, and thought what a nice young girl. They had just bought the house next door on Dumaine. Brianna had told me they would be getting an alarm system installed. I told her they wouldn't need it. No one would mess with them. I had been told the same thing several years previous, and it had proved true.
"Hello Stacey."
"Hello," she said, turning to profile in the front seat.
"Eddie," I said, "In New York City a few hours ago I heard on the television," and I imitated an announcers voice, "Hollis Price leads the Oklahoma Sooners into the final four."
"Mr. Jim, I'll be on television someday."
"That's not necessary, Eddie."
The year after Hollis and Quannas left, Eddie hit a three pointer at the buzzer, winning by one point the last big game for St. Augustine. On their way to a sure state championship repeat, they were punished for a minor recruiting violation and had to forfeit that game. Now, two years later, Eddie's shot stands as the last great moment in St. Aug basketball, as they haven't even won their own district in the last two years.
Jacque Lewis and I in the backseat watched Eddie try to impress Stacey.
"I'm not about all that ghetto behavior," Stacey said at one point, explaining why she was never seen outside. Later she convincingly told Jacque about summer job opportunities.
Eddie took the 610 split, exiting at St. Bernard, passing the DeSaix/Gentilly right turn. I never take St. Bernard all the way to Broad, but Eddie does. At the corner I could see the MacDonalds and realized this was Eddie's old St. Aug neighborhood. Once a Purple Knight, always a Purple Knight. Eddie is 21. Stacey is 21. Three days before at this same corner:
"A 21-year-old man about to board an RTA bus near his 7th Ward home was ambushed and fatally shot Thursday morning as students sitting in the stopped bus looked on. William Jackson was standing at St Bernard Avenue and Broad Streets about 8 a.m. when the gunman came around the corner of St. Bernard Avenue and fired at least three shots at Jackson. The victim, who was hit in the head and neck, died about 2:30 p.m. at Charity Hospital." (New Orleans Times Picayune, 3.22.02)
Speculating about why the police were strictly enforcing curfew laws at Hunter's expense, I suggested the many recent First District murders perhaps was the reason. My friend thought it may have to do with the 9-year-old boy run over on the West Bank the week I was gone. He was hit by a car. The car stopped, occupants got out and moved the 9-year-old to the sidewalk, then drove away. The boy died.
Visiting Dumaine three successive days to update my archive and I see one of the boys, one who used to be good at algebra, but now is a young hustler clinging to the best available peer group. He calls across the street to an older boy, "you heard C got smoked?" The older boys responds with a barely perceptible nod, and walks on, towards Dorgenois. The next day I read this, same paper quoted up above:
"In Tuesday's shooting, one was killed and a second wounded in a drive-by shooting in the 9th Ward about 10:45 p.m. Corey Williams, 29, of Mid-City, died at Charity Hospital about 11:25 p.m. after receiveing four gunshot wounds to the head, chest, thigh, and arm, officials said."
My friend and I and another neighbor used to attend Nonpac meetings the first Tuesday of each month at the First District Police Station. Five or Six or Ten people would be an average number attending. You can at these meetings, if you choose to do so, voice your specific concerns regarding crime in your neighborhood. You can in this way get a small measure of special treatment. I don't go to the meetings anymore. My friend goes occasionally, and the neighbor goes somewhat regularly, partly because she dates cops. The neighbor said at the last meeting there were 70 people in attendance and they were all mad as hell. There has been recently a rather obvious spike in violent crime.
So it may be like my friend Bill said when I was telling him of the AKA query--Is New Orleans really that dangerous? Bill said, "the short answer is--'yes.'"
Reliving Cerviche At The Alias
I was seated between friends at the bar of the new Alias restaurant in New York City's Lower East Side situated on the front porch of a home in River Ridge, Louisiana, performing my duties as the dedicated housepainter, inside the vibrating buzzing world of a dual action sander, which was acting as facilitator to my duality.
My boss had missed me in my absence and had already warned me of the owner's professed experience with refinishing fine furniture, and how this owner had taken issue with the use of a DA sander on the cypress doors we were preparing for a natural finish. The door frames would be painted. My boss and I had discussed this at 6:30 in the morning which is when we start our work day and is an hour when we can cuss homeowners with impugnity. "Well, he can kiss my ass," I had said before removing the three dip stripped cypress doors from their frames, and taking them to the front porch for sanding.
I wasn't just inside a daydream, I was back in NYC, despite recorded information showing me gone from there two days previous. I was back at the restaurant seated at the bar, on Clinton St., actually living in the past. Successful transportation. The maitre d' was pouring wines all night long. I was drinking them--the reds, the whites, the desserts, the champagnes, I have no idea. It was a relaxing luxury, no one was sniffing corks or pausing between the taste and the pour. Brief consultations, bottles opened, bottles emptied. The tables behind us were covered in white tablecloth but the atmosphere was pleasantly devoid of pretense. Glasses were removed and replaced with appropriate counterparts without me knowing of the switch. Trust was involved, and rewarded.
Commuters converged from three different directions and departed for their own worlds but I was not with them. I was the early bird doing my job with the sander, spring had sprung, the air was warm. I would not leave this restaurant ever. I would not step out into the frigid air. I was frozen in time. I would not be aware of the homeowner lurking nearby, not until the last cork was extracted. I would not.
Bastard's not going away.
I could hear him before he spoke. My lack of focus proving both salvation and damnation. I turned the sander off and faced him. "Comments?" I said. I was already pissed. He has no idea how complex is the simple luxury. How far I've travelled to have this absolutely unneccessary conversation.
"Uh, yes, uh, don't you have one of those..." he pantomined an orbital palm sander. I am normally a polite person, but I could tell from the get go on this one, I wasn't going to be.
"No, I don't." If I kept it short, I reasoned, I could still make it back for another champagne, or hell, I could rewind to the backrub of mistaken identity, and the opening Guinness. "Hey, what's with that new bottle," I could have asked, even though I did not ask it at the time.
And he proceeded to tell me of his past with furniture, before his ascension into the world of digital cable sales. I nodded, impatiently. Is there any way I can communicate how totally uninterested I am in what you are about to say? Could we please avoid what is now the certainty of my imminent rudeness? Eventually I would bottom line with the question "do you want me to stop?" The guy was looking at a middle part of a process and deeming an unseen final product unacceptable. I wasn't getting back to New York. My heart rate was way too high now for such travel. Bastard. Like I get out all that much.
I had opened with a line I never imagined I would actually use in serious conversation.
"This ain't my first rodeo." He countered saying it wasn't his either.
Erlich and crew are burning down, slinging gourmet at all who come through the door. They are the proverbial purveyors of good taste. Everything I sampled was delicious, the shrimp, the pork, the trout, but it was the sea bass cerviche appetizer that rocked my world. I'm not there to see it or taste it, I'm only remembering it. I could have though. I was working up to reliving the cerviche, before the interruption. Late, an off duty chef comes in. He doesn't like the nickname so stop using it. Don't make me get rude about it.
I said, finally, deciding consciously to be plainly rude, "If I'm doing it, I'm using my methods and my tools." The tone I used implied a great many other words, none of which I use regularly in polite conversation. He threatened to tell my boss, cancel checks, etc. I smiled, I mean grimaced. He left me alone. Later that day his wife came and apologized, clearing the cloudy air with a few smiling words. I apologized to her, explaining in less detail than this, what he had interrupted. She understood. Women, you gotta love 'em.
What was almost lacking from that evening at the restaurant was not lacking. At some point very late in the evening I had the opportunity to look deep into myself to wonder just what the hell was happening in college basketball. March Madness. This being a rare year where I had a team moving close towards the final four. I had for a couple of years followed a Louisiana highschool team on their trips to the state playoffs and two players from that team, Hollis Price and Quannas White, play for the Oklahoma Sooners. But nobody in this group has any reason to give a holy hell about that. Except the kid. The kid might know. So I asked him. He did not know if Oklahoma won the previous night, but he knew of the Indiana upset over Duke. We made a simple bond. A bit later, leaving the restaurant, and the kid turned around from where he sat with his girlfriend and said, "Oklahoma." I said, "Hollis Price." He repeated it.
They got it going on down at the Alias.
Limestone Magnificence
I wasn't sure if the airport bus still ran from the corner of Tulane and Broad so I left my house three hours before my flight and walked up Rocheblave across Canal and zigged over to Dorgenois. There were a few little dudes hanging out in front of that store at the corner of Palmyra with whom I purposely made no eye contact or in anyway let on that I was aware of their presence lest they think I was hunting for drugs. I fit the profile.
This was nine o'clock in the morning and although it was an unreasonable thing for me to be thinking I still felt somewhat secure in my walking. The two recent murders in this five block stretch had not left a psychic residue that I could feel unless you suggest that this writing is proof to the contrary. Over the years dozens and dozens of people have been murdered in this area which surrounds the Courthouse/Parish Prison of New Orleans. The killings were happening when a young Louis Armstrong ran around this neighborhood and they continue to happen. That the situation hasn't improved in one hundred years is just a fact I am laying on the table like loose change. You can put the change in your pocket or you can toss it in a cup, where you forget about it and don't care all that much when your kids steal it.
Standing on the corner by the pay phone I waited for the bus I wasn't sure would come. The Chinese restaurant was to my back next to the bright yellow Bail Bond office next to the brand new Taco Bell/Pizza Hut. Straight across Tulane Ave. is an original 50's style MacDonalds. Caddy cornered from the corner on which I stand is the Courthouse rising up in all its soot covered limestone magnificence.
Some fellow riders approached and I asked one of them did the airport bus still stop here and she told me yes it did but I had better wave it down when it came or it might pass right by. It was only a few minutes later when the woman said "here it comes" and I was on my way. It cost a dollar fifty which I thought was a good deal considering a cab ride would be twenty dollars.
Before I was on my way, before any fellow riders had approached, I was standing alone. The three lanes of traffic between me and the median are travelling north. Stopped at the red light protecting Broad St. is a red high end SUV. The clean cut well dressed young man in the driver's seat is bobbing his head to loud rap music vibrating from his car stereo. An attractive young woman moving towards me in the crosswalk pauses in front of the young man's car and does a little dance. He just looks at her. She smiles at him. The light is staying red longer than I thought was normal.
The woman said, "you heard your friend was killed?"
"Who?"
"Cal."
"No, when?"
"Two days ago, in his driveway."
"I haven't been seeing him much," the man said.
"Yeah, he's dead," the woman said, moving towards me now on the curb. The light turned green and the young woman waved at the young man but he did not wave back.
What You Don't Know
The boy finally pled guilty, was given credit for time served, was told to stay away from the victim, was given a bunch of hours doing community service, was told he must re-enroll in highschool, and was assigned a probation officer. During his time in he would call collect from the jail to any number he had memorized, including that of the victim, and beg for help. Everyone had heard it all before and began to let their machines screen calls. The recordings on the machine were prefaced by a pre-recorded message from the parish prison that indentified the call as coming from the prison and allowed a blank in which the inmate could say his name. The boy was always one to think outside the box and having grown up around it enough to know how people are when being bugged by inmates he took advantage of the blank to say more than his name. Instead of saying like most this is Bill Bill Bill, or John John John, or Jeff Jeff Jeff, he would say who he was and then threaten to kill his 2-year-old nephew. This was the type of frustratingly hurtful outburst he had previously in his 17 years saved for quiet moments with a cherished cousin or niece, perhaps having them in a clinch, or after letting their heads come up from under the water. There have been bestselling books written about winning through intimidation. The boy was the anti-poster child for such a book. He redefined the concept. He disallowed any positive connotation for such gibberish. Though if you met the kid you'd be drawn to him. You would even come to trust him. He knows more about trust than you do. And you get the feeling he knows more about everything, without being able to quote a single line. He is the challenge that amounts to everyday facing that everything you know is wrong. And he is free.
God Frowns
I was on my way to dinner at the home of a former girlfriend, carrying a tabloid of some repute which was however printed on cheap paper with cheaper ink. I hoped to spy the object of a crush, the roommate of this former girlfriend. It was a hot, sultry, summer day, and I sweated profusely as I walked the distance, switching the paper from one hand to the other. I would occasionally wipe the sweat from my brow.
How lucky am I to be greeted at the door by the object of my crush, whom upon inspecting me, somewhat rudely I thought, burst out laughing? God, was she pretty. It seems the cheap ink from the cheap paper had melted onto my sweaty hands, and everytime I had wiped my brow it had made a black streak across my face. She offered me a paper towel before retreating, with snickers, to finish her preparations for that evening's date. At one point she came out rubbing baby oil along the length of her thin arms and I could of cried. A German fellow from her economics class had asked her out and as he had no transportation of his own, would be paying for her bus fare, as well as her dinner. So it was all about confidence I was being prompted to learn that night.
Later, long after the night of her laughter, I heard she married a man who mistreated her. It was, at best, unreliable information, and I chose to disbelieve it. Later still, I heard of this man, or the one after him, I really don't know, who, walking the walk of the big dog through the developing development of his design, was pissed on from above by an unaware construction worker. God smiled. The worker was fired.
Watchdog Backfire
My neighbor has a watchdog. I once worked on a ranch near Bridgeport, Texas. If you have to ask, it is probably a backfire.
The watchdog is not a pet, it is a watchdog. The watchdog is not an animal you show love for no good reason; you show love only to give the watchdog hope and encouragement so that the watchdog will perform duties admirably. The duty of the watchdog is to watch, listen, smell, and bark. The watchdog is always on a chain and is fed well and treated well within the parameters of its profession. A good watchdog will not bark at cats but the cats around here know the limits of her chain and tease watchdog, so I don't blame her that barking. Me and the watchdog sleep only a few feet away from each other.
On the ranch in the passenger seat of the jeep roaring down the rocky dirt road after that renegade dog--Buck shouted, "get em Jeeuhm," and so caught up in the moment of consensus revenge I casually pointed the 12 gauge shotgun in the dog's direction and pulled the trigger. It was a hit but the dog kept moving and so did we. I felt like me and the dog might get a reprieve but on the return trip the dog was dead along side the road. The ranch was nine or fourteen hundred acres; we were replacing four strand sagging wooden post barbed wire fencing with taut five strand metal t-post fencing, even across Rattlesnake Hill. The dogs we were chasing were deer dogs. Area hunters would release a pack of five or seven dogs under a fence and the dogs were trained to find and corral deer and bark in unison so the hunter could follow the sound and sneak over to shoot him one. Every so often a deer would just die of fright. The rancher I worked for did not shoot deer, only doves. Sometimes the rancher's registered Hereford heiffers got mixed up in this deer corralling and became very upset. The possibility that they would hurt themselves was high. This is why Buck and I were locked and loaded. Bad dogs.
I read something recently where the author commented that people in urban areas would hear gunshots and try to convince themselves it was just a car backfire. This may have been in Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow, him describing Chicago. My truck politely backfires on occasion, and earlier today I heard a backfire, and I thought about a few months previous a visiting friend asking was that loud report a gunshot? At some point around here in New Orleans after the current police chief (who just lost his bid to be mayor) implemented more severe penalties for public gun firing and concerned groups made concerted efforts to educate the public about the hazards of falling bullets, the gun firing became less noticeable. Especially on New Years Eve, but also day to day. These days people just aren't firing guns unless they really need to. Still, occasionally, and especially at night when you can listen better, you will hear that sound that is not a backfire and you tend to feel very different about it, compared to how you feel when you hear that other sound, the one that makes you ask the question was that a gunshot(?). One feeling is like fear, the other is closer to curiosity.
I felt bad about killing that dog on the ranch but Buck told me not to worry about it. Buck drowned unwanted kittens in a burlap sack in the stock pond. Buck was a hard working earnest country boy, maybe 55 years-old. He chain smoked, had bright, crystalline blue eyes, one of them squiggy, and dripped saliva through the gaping holes in his rotten choppers when he worked bent over something. His face was craggy. He drove a Ford. At breakfast and dinner he had a fondness for canned biscuits thickly smeared with margarine (smeared thick as cream cheese on a bagel), and drenched in real mapel syrup from a plastic bottle with a red push/pull cap.
Watchdog is very sensitive. She does not like cats, free dogs, crackheads, teenagers, people who block my driveway with their cars, or in general anyone casting off the odors of a malingerer. Which on occasion includes me. There is a 12 foot space between my house and the six foot cyclone fence behind which watchdog stays. I call this my side yard. It is shaded almost all day long, and would be a good place for a summer barbecue if I ever got a grill and some meat and lighter fluid, and matches. Watchdog's backyard is one of six that belong to four houses that orient themselves perpendicular to this one and front Bienville Street.
On the ranch after I killed that dog and Buck and I had put a godalmighty scare into the rest of that pack, one of the group showed up lingering around the pens where Duke and the other bird dogs were kept. These bird dogs were trained like watchdog and were not pets. You did not really pet them, or talk to them silly like you might do a dog who has seen the inside of a house. You cleaned their shit from their cages and added fresh hay to their bedding. They were like horses in this sense. Beasts of burden. They seemed happy when they were let out, briefly, to run free, but otherwise their demeanors were described by adjectives like polite, jittery, hopeful, and patient. The lost dog, the one from the deer hunting pack, was goofy. I have a penchant for goofy. So I petted the dog (Buck told me not to) and the dog, never before petted, became mine. At some point Buck let me know that it was my chore to deal with and as I did not think I could get the dog into a burlap sack and I was done with shooting for awhile I coaxed dog up into the cab of my truck and drove him a few miles up the road to Paradise. There, at a cemetary, I let him run free. I drove away, unencumbered at least by dog.
Not a Haiku
So what happened to that kid you used to write about, you know the one?
He's in jail.
Why?
He'd been breaking into my friend's house, stealing things; she caught him in the act coming through a window; he ran away; eventually cops found him because he doesn't hide very well; she's pressing charges; he won't cop a plea thinking she will drop charges; she won't.
Is that a dangerous situation?
I think it may be.
For whom?
For everyone.
What will happen?
I am not fond of my thinking on this issue.
What does he need?
I think he needs his parents.
Where are they?
In jail.
Heroin
As I purport not to make things up I would like to offer a correction to a recent post wherein I stated that a specific local murder had to do with anger when in fact I had no idea if anger was an issue or not. Also, I said the victim was shot three times point blank in the head. I made that up. I have no idea in which part of his anatomy the man was shot, the one found lying dead in the middle of 2500 Palmyra Street, New Orleans. Three times point blank was from another area murder that I have not mentioned, one which was suggested to be a revenge murder. Or I'm making that up too.
It is my idea that revenge murders, and intimidation murders, the latter being when people are silenced to keep them or their family members from testifying, are often carried out with particularly violent affect, multiple head shots and whatnot, to send a message, and one that is mostly very effective as very few people will testify against these unimaginably violent street killers. One intimidation killing can go a long way in suppressing the civic-mindedness of even the most upstanding member of any given neighborhood. This may be all wrong. I am making it all up. But as they are only my thoughts I make up I hope to plead to a lesser charge than the one I am guilty of when I blatantly change or make up facts.
It was two guys, young heroin junkies, that killed the man on Palmyra, and it wasn't out of anger but for the the man's late model Ford F150 pickup truck. The victim was 68-years-old.
I've been thinking about violent crime a lot lately because it is locally on the rise. Law enforcement seems less visible than it was for a few years. Crack cocaine is less the scourge of our neighborhoods (not because it is less in use but because the users are co-existing more comfortably with non-users) as heroin cycles back into the picture to be the drug of choice among the young, reckless children of forty-something crackheads. I've been watching particular young heroin addicts for a few years now but ignoring it, and news reports that call heroin the new threat I ignore too. Paying attention to facts is hard and sometimes ungratifying. Times were a little rough here during the economic grandness of the nineties. Now with recession the Iines at the food bank are spiking the graph. The poor are getting poorer. And with that anti-crack, heroin, making new dedicated customers by the day the face of local drug dealing changes, and its like we have to start over with the rudimentary stages of the greed and power struggle.
There are also some positive things happening here in this great New Orleans gumbo and someday I hope to relay to you a few of those things as well. If I can see my way to it.
Dead Kitty
That was a mean and thoughtless thing to do--naming that kitten Notyetded, is what I'm thinking as I approach my driveway to see a little lifeless black and white ball of fur curled up on the grabble (tm) apron, with a small piece of intestine protruding from the young belly. As this is perhaps the fifth or sixth dead cat on my property since I moved here I have to say I really don't know if people dump them specifically by me or if the deaths themselves occur here. A pretty good pack of dogs worked this neighborhood for about three days recently and after this kitten showed up in the driveway the dogs have not been seen. So maybe it was the dogs. I left it there overnight and in the morning scooped the rain soaked stiff carcass onto a shovel blade and transported the dead kitty to a clump of weeds on the Pentecostal property. The little left paw was curled at the wrist, covering the nose. I don't know what happens but after about a year if I go look for remains, there will be none. Like I said, I've done this five or six times now, but you'd never know it to search the Pentecostal property.
Well, a couple of days later I see Notyetded crawl from under the "cat gap" I left under the NO EXIT sign which boards up the side entrance to the dance hall. I'm thinking about calling him Frank as there is that slight resemblance to my boyhood cat. But Frank was a warrior cat and this little one is not that, I think. I probably won't call him anything.