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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.