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The Old Man And The Alligator Boy 8.3.97
The killing slowed down quite a bit this week. Some corrections: last week I said three children had been wounded in the crossfire in the past month. That wasn't true last week (only two had been shot), but is true now. Also I said most of the killing was happening in the projects and in Eastern New Orleans but ten of the sixteen recent murders were in the Seventh Ward, a neighborhood of homes which begins about six blocks from here.
Shoot out of the week award goes to the four young men hiding behind a wall in the Seventh Ward who sprayed a passing car (and were sprayed upon) with automatic weapons. One dead, one wounded, one AK-47 left behind. Several homes were pierced. Police recovered fifty shell casings.
Monk buried his wife Friday and seems to be on the upswing.
Sunday: today I took four boys to Fontainbleau State Park on the North Shore near Mandeville. There is a swimming pool and the lakefront for swimming. The boys run for the pool with diving board and I walk to the lake. No one in sight, how nice. The water is calm, with barely a ripple to disturb it reflective quality. Puffy whites up above and a small cypress tree out in the lake to my left with wrist thin root tendrils running above and parallel to the surface before dipping back into the water closer to shore. Old support pilings spaced haphazardly rise a few feet above the water in more or less a straight line and then break into complete random order farther out. I walk into the shallow lake and aim myself for a log floating a hundred yards out. I look to the clouds and see no horses, crabs, or satanic symbols. I look back to the log and see alligator. Floating logs always look like alligators to me, especially since my East Texas oil exploration days where one day I shared a small pond with what I thought was two but turned out to be five or six young alligators. I stop walking and look harder at the log. Really amazing how the various forces of nature have conspired to carve this one living tree into the semblance of a living reptile. The way the back end looks like any old log but the front has that little raised ridge for the "eyebrows" followed by 12-14 inches of nothing then the upturned snout. I dip myself and float on my back for a minute before walking back to the shore. I sit and stare at the log for awhile trying to convince myself there might be a valid reason for a log to move across the current instead of with it. I've almost convinced myself when the log changes directions 180 degrees. And then the boys run up and want me to join them in a rollicking good time of water madness. Sure, but before we go in, see the alligator, and know where it is at all times, and don't go out as far as we did last week. The alligator snaps at a fish and Glynn says, no thank you, goodbye, and returns to the swimming pool. Fermin gets wet but comes out in a few minutes and goes back to the pool. Shelton is still at the pool. More people have arrived and are getting in the lake, we give them fair warning, the alligator has disappeared, the people think we're nuts, I float in, and Jacque thrashes, the water.
"You going back to the pool, Jacque."
"No, Mr. Jim."
"Why not?"
"Because…I am Alligator Boy."
"He was a fine young lad from New Orleans who went missing on the North Shore. Presumed dead by all who loved him. But little did they know he had chosen a new life, wandering the stagnated, mosquito infested waters thought to be his burial ground. He was Alligator Boy."
"Yesss…I am Alligator Boy…and you are…The Old Man."
(Ah kids, you really don't have to love them). "Yes, the old man he found living on the edge of the swamp in a shack made of alligator bones tied together with rat tails. The old man who fed him and soon demanded to be fed himself." I look over at a group of children playing off to our left. "Alligator Boy, I need food, bring me a white child."
"Say no more Old Man," and Jacque thrashes through the waist high water to confront the first white child he sees. "Give me your hat."
"What?" the boy says.
"I want your hat," Jacque says in a high pitched raspy voice.
The boy begins moving faster towards the shore while explaining that it is not really a hat he is carrying and also it does not belong to him…but Jacque quickly bores of this banter and moves off to confront the group of children I had originally been looking at. One from this group had earlier thrown a clam at me. Pay back time.
"I am Alligator Boy," Jacque roars.
No one from this group seems too disturbed by this admission except the teenage girl who jumps and says, "oh!"
"Did I scare you?" Jacque says.
"No, I just didn't know you were there," the girl replies. "Did you really see an alligator? How big was it? What did you do when you saw it? Did you run back to shore?"
"It was big," Jacque says. "And I won't lie to you, I ran from it."
"What did he do?" the girl says, pointing over at me.
OK Jacque, this is a test question. This is just a little girl and I have no need to impress her, but someday a similar scenario may be replayed before a more suitable damsel. Make me look good Jacque, make me look…heroic.
"Well…," Jacque begins real slow, and then he starts twirling his index finger and pointing to the side of his head. "He's a little…you know…in the head, and he has spent much of his time living in the water with alligators…"
So Jacque fails the test but makes me laugh, and goes to the head of the class.
Slapping The Bayou 8.10.97
Harold Armour's restaurant, bar, grocery store over on LaHarpe in the 7th Ward burned down last night. The establishment was 90 years old and was known by the original owner's name--Mule's (Mulay's). Harold and his brother co-owned it with members of that prodigious Ngyuen clan.
Things are sleepy and quiet on Dumaine. Temperatures are a little down but the air is too still and wet. Some of the boys playing football in the street. Sharon stabbed Greg today. The Saints are playing the Chiefs in the Superdome. I'll probably listen some on the radio.
I've been staying inside lately, pondering, stagnating, "resting." Reading a couple decent books--Richard Russo's, Straight Man, and some good detective fiction by a Boston writer named Robert Parker.
Mr. Dave, from around the corner on Dorgenois, died Wednesday, deserves something of an extended obit but I will have to confer with Jim Wolff, who sold the house next door (Esnard Villa), to Yolanda.
I'm going outside to see what happens.
Sunday: (I never did go outside last night. There was no place to sit what with all those kids and coloring books). Got up around 6:30 a.m., went to look for paper but it wasn't here yet. Came in, took a bath, made coffee and toast, loaded up the one hitter, and drove down to the Bayou, parking on Moss, just down from the corner of 3300 Dumaine. I sit at the first set of steps, the Dumaine bridge to my left and that church with the copper dome to my right. Early Sunday mornings are so fine in New Orleans; so quiet the sound of repentance. My coffee is good but I burnt the toast. I light a cigarette and bow my head in prayer. That fisherman two hundred yards away might be jealous of my trained fish, who glitter at sunrise, high above the water, before reaching the arc's pinnacle, where they lay flat and to the right (as per training), and come down slapping the water in high fashion. God, I love those fish.
Joggers, bikers, and dog walkers are making their appearances. More cautious than curious, they seem to carry with them an inherent understanding of the folly of running yourself healthy in a place so casual about killing. Reiterated too often in the news is that discouraging reality that no place in New Orleans is completely safe.
I set fire to the little morsel of weed in my pipe and suck it dry. A little dab will do me. I have to hold the smoke in my lungs longer than I like out of respect for that pedestrian who had sneaked up behind me. By the time I do exhale, very little smoke leaves my mouth. I guess I got all of that one.
I am completely alone on the Bayou when the church bells start clanging what soon becomes a brief melody. Just when I think I might be able to hum along, the notes begin breaking down, slow and easy, until the disintegration completes itself with a single wavering note. Silence.
It's 8:30 a.m. when I get back to 2600 and there are five boys waiting in front the house, ready to clean the street. Only four of them will fit in the Festiva.
So the four boys and I leave out of here, headed for Mississippi, with Michael crying in the rear view mirror.
A white family let the boys play with their nerf football. When I went to return it prior to our departure, the man said--"well you're very welcome, it looks like they're having fun." I'm not sure, but I don't think he was referring to the part where they were holding each other's heads under water, yelling--"stay down bitch, stay down."
Rapping With Miss T And Satan 8.13.97
The police just got though questioning Charles, owner of Expressive Hair Works, next to Jack's convenience store. They were showing him what looked like a wanted poster but Charles's body language stated he had never in his life seen said person. Yolanda came from out the front of her house and around to our side. M and I started jumping up and down and yelling--"flush the shit, flush the shit, and hide the guns." Her boy-man, James, sauntering across the street with cell-phone pressed to his ear.
G and KK's mom, Nanette, got out of jail this week. I guess she'll be staying at Mama D's for the short term, after that, who knows? It looks like she gained quite a bit of weight.
Sunday, there was a record release party for a couple of local rap groups over in the 2400 block of St. Philip, across from Rodgers Elementary School. Some of the neighborhood kids were there until the shooting and hand to hand combat started. Fermin ran home to Mama E's house on Orleans where E and M were sucking down brewski's. "Where's
(cousin from Slidell) Joe," E wanted to know. "I don't know mom. I just ran when the shooting started," Fermin told her. M went around the corner with Julia who found Joe up on Dumaine. First hand accounts vary as to whether or not there was actually gunfire. Probably just a bunch of seriously bad brothers scaring up the place.
M and a bunch of kids on the front porch and Jacque says, "Miss M?"
"What Jacque?"
"Mr. Jim, He think he black."
"What makes you say that?" M asks and Jacque proceeds to tell her the Alligator Boy story, which M has already heard from me.
"And he told me to get a white child," Jacque explains.
"Jacque, that was Jim making a joke (to himself obviously), and he's just trying to say he doesn't care much about color so he changes things around to make a funny picture.
"Ohhh, I see," Jacques says, real skeptical like.
JD's helper, Mark, is a semi-reformed Neo Nazi, tattooed, recorded punk rock playing, Satanist, who has taken to doing little favors for me at the workplace. After each one, he smiles, and says, "You've got Satan in your corner now pal."
I've made him hip to the Pat Boone classic, Cross and the Switchblade, so I respond--"God loves you Nicky."
The Friends Of Benign Intelligence 7.31.97
If it's fair to say M is a depravity magnet it is also fair to say I attract lunatics. The Heretic of English Turn showed up at the job site in Muirfield Place the other day. It was his day off and he wanted to see if I would be interested in having a meeting of minds at Dumaine. I said I was working late at a second job for the next two days and the two days after that I had a friend from Austin coming in town for a conference and that I would probably be spending some time with this friend in the evenings. The Heretic looked confused, and perhaps forlorn by this news so I relented and said if he wanted to meet as late as eight, I would be home and he could bring whomever he wanted into this ghetto. But don't bring anyone who is likely to be scared of this environment. He told me one of his psychic co-workers would like to meet me before I left for the day and I'm hot and tired and cranky and I said--"If she want's to read my aura before she will come to my house, the answer is no. I need to get to my second job on the other side of town." My aura is probably black anyway.
The Heretic has a Born Again Christian brother who lives in a cornfield in Indiana and has just published one of those Christian books. I think the Heretic is feeling a little pressured now to bring all his "God Is A Myth" ideas to fruition and get them into a publishable manuscript. I had told him long ago that I would be his devil's advocate meaning if I thought he was talking with a mouth full of shit, I would tell him so. Lord knows I could use such an advocate. Arkansas Julie Smith once told me I was being bombastic and I have liked her ever since.
The Heretic comes over and brings his 36-year-old daughter who, frankly, talks a little too much but is otherwise delightful, and has a rather interesting spin on life, and The Heretic reads a few thought provoking passages from some books he brought, and the evening is pleasantly uneventful. The Psychic nor the Theologian were able to make it this time. I'm have all these people back though. I think we could all use a break from the Death and Depravity.
Death And Diet Tips 8.15.97
I have often noticed an almost sinisterly interesting layout of your news stories and editorials. For example, the way a front page metro section news story might relate to an editorial, or a letter, in the back pages. I have to reckon you do this on purpose to stimulate interest, and even response, to various crises that afflict this fine city.
In this case, I refer to the Metro headline Aug. 15 which reads--4 killed within hours in N.O. What an outright drag for the mayor you chose this same day to publish one of his finer pieces of puffery--Bon appetit from mayor, wherein the mayor delivers to his adoring public--diet tips? Violent Death and Diet Tips all in one section of the newspaper? I do feel compelled to respond. Or rather, question, the mayor.
In your letter Mr. Mayor you suggest that "[we] enjoy the food of New Orleans in moderation and take a long walk on the streets and avenues to stay in shape…" When you say "streets and avenues" does that include Magazine Street, where on Aug. 14 "[a] teenager was ambushed in a hail of nearly a dozen bullets…," or how about 2700 St. Ann, a block from my home, where a young man was shot three times, "…once in the head…" When you say "streets and avenues," do you mean to include the 1500 block of Conti, which I believe is pretty close to the corner of Claiborne, a major thorough-fare many of us travel everyday, where a man "…walking around with a sawed off shotgun…" killed a young man in the Iberville courtyard. Mr. Mayor, did you realize there were 15 murders in one week in July? Are we all ignoring this because we imagine that none of the dead were registered voters, or because it seems like a cost effective way to eliminate the bad elements in our city? I would very much like to take a walk around the city with you, Mr. Mayor, but I'm not always sure you and I are living in the same one.
(So I confess I am no great admirer of Mr. Morial's public image, but at the same time I must begrudgingly admit that, as mayors go, we could probably do a lot worse. As the son of a former political consultant, I would like to make this one time offer of free advice--Mark, to assure re-election a year or so from now, lower your public profile to a point just shy of nonexistence. And please, no more diet tips. I will look forward to the next four or five years of your inspiring leadership).
Going For The Gold 7.27.97
Five more murders last night, makes twelve in five days. One of the murders happened right across the street from Harold Armour's bar in the Seventh Ward. Harold is the Neighborhood Watch cop for this district. Phillis was over this evening giving Mandy some Night Out Against Crime paraphenalia. Party over at Mama D's in a couple of weeks. Barbecue chicken, and whiskey, maybe deviled eggs. Anyway, Phillis said Harold heard the shots and when he went outside there was no one there--except for this young man lying on the sidewalk with the top half of his head missing. Last time there were this many murders in one week, the citizens marched on City Hall. I went with down with Mandy and Phillis. My brother, Alex, was in town and he came too. Our smarmy mayor had set up an image control team outside on the grounds. Had a stage, some inspirational speakers, maybe even a little gospel music. Then we all rushed for the chambers. Again, the mayor had the fix in and the chamber was filled mostly with city employees and lackeys. But there were enough piss off screaming citizens that it was quite a show to behold. The mayor never did show up though. Safety concerns. Unlike this week, that week's murder count included three white people (employees of the Pizza Kitchen in the Quarter. The young killers used potatoes for silencers on their guns). This week, as the boys at work might say, is just a bunch of niggers killing niggers. Punks and gangsters who aren't productive members of society so fuck 'em. This is our last favor to the young urban black as a society. To let them die without too much fuss. We have not been able to help them without making them weaker, we are not educating them, and we can't relate to them as being anything but a problem. It's the least we can do really, to let them die quietly, to let the young bad boys kill each other off, to accept their demise as an efficiency, not to disgrace them with our concern after the fact.
Monk's wife would not respond to calls from her sister today so her sister called emergency services and they busted the door down. His wife had been living with cancer for awhile and it killed her today.
It's ten o'clock Friday night and The Magnolia closes at eight so I walked over to Kim's on N. Broad, near the corner of St. Ann. I wanted a 22-ounce Heineken. Monk was standing in front of the iron gates that Kim puts up late at night. I gave him a feeble wave as I approached. We shook hands and he told me what I already knew and I told him how sorry I was. He had a lot of gin in him and he was looking for more. He had been married for 33 years. He walked off with a man I didn't recognize in search of something I cannot imagine.
Happiness is the absence of intellectual thought.
Saturday: Three more dead last night but one of those might be a repeat in the count so let's just say 14 in six days. One more day to go. Murder cannot continue at this pace but if it did the toll would top 600 for the year. The per capita equivalent in NYC would be 12,000. The actual count in NYC is closer to 1,200 for a year.
But overall the murder rate is down for the year, and all crime in our district is down, and the 2600 block of Dumaine is pretty quiet, so maybe I should just cheer up. There is no TV here and if I didn't read the newspaper I wouldn't even know any of this was happening. I wonder if ignorance is an option at this point?
Sunday: Some punk shot his lawyer last night and that makes fifteen.
Shelton's Birthday 6.27.97
Shelton was teaching me to play a card game called pity pat tonight. I had a question in the middle of one of his explanations and he paused and said, real gentle like--"OK, I'm gonna break it down real slow for you."
Saturday: Shelton makes 13 today. He came over early and we drove over to McDonalds for some "food" and went down to the Bayou and ate. I told him I needed some new cheap sunglasses so we headed for the French Market/Flea Market over by Elysian Fields. We travelled along the Bayou on Moss and turned right at Esplanade. On the first or second block after we turned on Esplanade we passed a large church on the right and Shelton asked me if I had ever drunk holy water. "I don't think I have, Shelton, have you?"
"Yeah, in that church right there, on Fourth of July."
"Was it good?" I asked. "Did it make you feel different?"
"It was better than that Mississippi water. I don't know if it made me feel different though. Maybe a little tingly."
We drove on and I parked where I usually park and Shelton asked me why I always park here and I said because it's easy and besides, it's only a two block walk, you're a young man, come on let's go.
I let Shelton pick out the sunglasses for me (two pair for seven dollars) and then we took off for the burbs. Near the Metairie/Kenner line we stopped at the Sports Authority and Shelton picked out a football with tee. He wanted some wide receiver gloves but I thought $34 was too much money for something like that. We went to WalMart to see if we could find some cheaper gloves but whereas they had golfing gloves, batting gloves, racquetball gloves, they did not have wide receiver gloves. And then Shelton saw the BB guns and his eyes lit up. He dragged me by the arm to stand in front of the locked case with BB pistols that resembled .38's, and.45's, an 9mm's. "The answer is no, Shelton."
"Please, Mr. Jim."
"Shelton, you know kids your age are carrying real guns in our neighborhood. I will not have you killed because some punk doesn't realize you just playin.'"
"I'll only shoot it in the backyard."
Oh the old "I'll only shoot it in the backyard" ploy. I used it myself as a boy. "Shelton," I say, "let me tell you a story. When I was just your age there was nothing in the world I wanted more than a BB gun. Every year for two or three years when my mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday and Christmas, I would give her the same answer. 'I want a BB gun, mom.' And every year she would respond with the same tired old question. 'But where will you shoot it, ' she would say, and I would say, 'only in the backyard, mom.' Now Shelton, you know and I know that I was lying to my mom. If she had given me the BB gun I wanted I would have been prowling the neighborhood, shooting everything in sight--busting windows, shooting my friends in the butt when they weren't looking, luring birds into our alley with bread crumbs and then popping them where they lay, maybe having to watch them suffer because I wasn't a very good shot."
"You talking like you really did all them things, Mr. Jim."
"Don't interrupt me Shelton, I'm on a roll. The thing is, after a couple of years I realized my mom was never going to get me a BB gun. So what I did Shelton, I took matters into my own hands. I was maybe fourteen and I had saved a few dollars and I snuck down to Sears on my bike and bought my own BB gun. A nice one too. It was a rifle and it shot both BB's and pellets, and you could pump it up to shoot soft or really hard. I snuck it into the house and up to my room and there it stayed hidden for many years. Sometimes, when my parents were gone I would bring it out and shoot stuff off the top of my antique dresser, until one day I missed and put a BB hole in the beaded molding that runs along the top of the dresser, and I have felt bad about that since."
"Is there a point to this story, Mr. Jim?"
"Truth be told Shelton, no. Except to say I'm my mother's son and I've learned a few things by that. The short version to the story is--'can you have a BB gun? No, no, and no.' So look for something else and let's get out of here."
Shelton tried on a pair of inexpensive rollerblades, rolled up and down the aisles a few times, and decided they would do nicely. I had worked a side job this week and had a few extra bucks so why not spend some of it? These turned out to be the only gifts he got, but still, when we got home I walked across the street with him where Mama D was sitting on her steps and after listening to her say this was nice of me, I told her, in front of Shelton, that if he lorded this over the other kids and tried to make them feel bad we might just take his stuff away from him. Mama D agreed and said, "That's right, Shelton, nobody has to know nothing about nothing." Happy Birthday Shelton.
The Adopted Father Of Dumaine 6.15.97
Fun projects for the kids: An empty 20-ounce coke bottle becomes a macabre, lifeless, terrarium, in this easy-to-do project for children ages 6 to 12. Simply put two live chameleon lizards, with or without tails, in bottle. Make sure to screw cap on and don't puncture bottle as any breach in the plastic will extend the life of your lizards. Pass bottle between children, lettting each child torture these fascinating and harmless creatures to their satisfaction. Slick and gooey with bloody contusions, your lizards will soon stick to each other in a myriad of real life positions. Marvel as your children learn to recognize the everyday predicaments of life in an airless vacuum. --Look at 'em making love. --that one on the bottom look none too happy. --Look at 'em fight. --that one on the bottom look none too happy. --I think they dead. --that one on the bottom look none too happy. As an added fun feature to this project, witness your children as they explore the applications of Darwinian theory. Yes, stronger children really can hold down weaker children and place pulverized lizard parts on their heads…
Note: the lizards were already dead by the time I came to witness this little science project. I did not interfere with their fun until they began exploring the sewage line access at the front of the property. It has an eight inch square cast iron lid with the address of a Rampart Street plumber from 100 years ago and is about ten inches deep. A four inch ceramic pipe can be seen at one edge of the hole disappearing under the sidewalk.
The players: Shelton Jackson 12, Jacque Lewis 11, Bryan Henry 9, Marqin Lewis 8, and Erica Lewis 3. All players are now huddled around this hole when Shelton says, "Mr Jim, come see."
Grumbling, I step down from the front porch and stand over the hole. I see the tops of five children's heads.
"You seem "em Mr. Jim."
"No."
Erica squeals, "lookit Mr. Jim, lookit." Erica, the sweet dark angel of Dumaine--father unknown, mother 17, is hiding in California to avoid a local warrant--is now squatting over the hole to get a closer look at…
…"Oh how nice, baby rats." And as I watch these children open and close the iron lid, banging on it with sticks and then opening it again to see what affect they are having on newborn rat babies, I wonder what is going through people's minds when they query me as to why I have no children of my own.
"Shelton! Do not torture those rat babies!
"I won't Mr. Jim."
"I mean it, Shelton. I didn't come out here to watch a bunch of pyscho kiddies torture animals."
"I know that Mr. Jim. Ya'll cut out all that banging."
"And don't poke them with sticks."
Shelton slaps his cousin, Marqin, across his head. Marqin says,
"Why you hit me, Shelton.?"
"Mr Jim don't want us torturing them babies."
"That right Mr. Jim?"
"That's right Marqin."
"We can look at 'em Mr. Jim."
"Just look at 'em Marqin."
And I'm trying to figure when I'll have the opportunity to throw some rat dope in that hole to kill the bitch rat. Fuck a bunch of rat babies.
Don't Pull Out Your Penises In The Park 6.2.97
I proposed a few months ago to some of the neighborhood boy children (ages 6-12) that if they would clean the street on Sundays I would take them on road trips: to Audubon Park (where I say--come on guys, don't pull out your dicks and pee off the jungle gym, go behind a tree or something. Or they call each other "motherfuckin' nigger" in front of the rich white children), or to the New Orleans lakefront where I supervise their illegal swimming until the park police come and bust them, or to that suspect strip of beach in Waveland, Mississippi where a carload of good ole boys drives by yelling out--"hey you niggers," or to an Uptown music festival where Shelton, 12, punches out Eric, 10, or this weekend to a festival in the French Quarter where Mandy and I went with three boys and came back with only one. Even knowing that all these boys roam the Quarters on their own and that they can walk or bike the distance faster than you can drive it didn't relieve me of guilt for leaving the two boys (after waiting several hours in one prearranged spot, which only one of the boys bothered coming back to) behind. And they know I don't mind, would even expect them to stray to Bourbon Street, to ogle outside the titty bars, as long as they check in once in awhile. So while Fermin hung close, got an outlandish balloon hat from a clown (who wouldn't accept my money but took everyone elses), got his face painted (also for free), and shared a po-boy with us, also a special treat because I normally require Mama D provide their baloney on white bread sustenance, Shelton and Eric disappeared to do god only knows what. When Fermin tells us he needs to be home to take medicine, we drive home, I drop him and Mandy, pick up two more boys, Glynn and Michael, and head back to the Quarters to at least make the pretense of a search. I centrally locate myself, next to that damn clown again, and send boys off into the Quarters. They go to the River, the French Market, Bourbon Street and back, get free balloon hats each (the most extravagant that clown made all day), and I say so you guys looked for Shelton and Eric to which they respond, oh yes, and we head back home. Shelton and Eric are there, leaning against the iron railing at Dumaine, and knowing I'll be mad try to sucker punch me with "why did you leave us down there," at which point I yell some grown up stuff at them (although not once did I call them motherfuckin' bitches as their guardians sometimes do), and banished them from the next Sunday's activities. To which they responded--what about the Sunday after that? I guess I showed them.
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.