like fucking anymore.”
I went out, down the stairs, through the lobby. Going back outside felt like walking into a forest fire. Sweat burst out of every pore I had.
There were piles of garbage in plastic bags in the alley alongside the hotel. You could hear flies buzzing inside them, their sound amplified by the taut, membranelike plastic.
Chapter Six
W ALSH AND I FINALLY GOT TOGETHER FOR LUNCH that afternoon at Felix’s. He was standing at the bar just inside the door when I got there, staring at an oyster.
“Somehow I always expect them to scream right before they go in. You know, suddenly grow a little mouth in there, and cute little round eyes, like in Disney cartoons.”
He shrugged and downed it, his last, and we grabbed a table being vacated by two fortyish guys wearing tiny old earrings, shorts and not much else.
Both of us ordered po’boys and beer.
At some point during the meal, and for no particular reason, I asked Don about his father. He shrugged.
“Didn’t really know him much. Left, or my mother threw him out, or he got put away, whatever, when I was, I don’t know, nine or ten, maybe. What I do remember’s not good. Lots of hollering and being stood in corners or sent to bed, a few beatings—more, toward the end. Usual happy American childhood, right?”
“Close, anyway. Seems like it.”
I bit off a plug of hard bread, shredded lettuce, hot sauce, oysters. Chewed.
“Mine never touched me. Never said much, but you could see the world going on back there behind his eyes. Had this kind of private smile, mostly. I didn’t know him very well, either, not even what he did for a living. He’d go away for long periods, months sometimes. And he’d always be a little … I don’t know … different, when he came back. Nothing you could pin down, but different. Like whatever he’d been away doing had changed him. And so I had all these different fathers coming home every time. But I didn’t know any of them, not really.”
A drunk stumbled up on the street outside and pressed his face close to the glass. The black man in livery shucking oysters behind the bar gently shooed him away.
“I remember one time I was nine maybe. I’d done something pretty terrible—stolen dimes from a jar of them my mother kept in the closet, I guess. They were standing in the doorway to the room where both of us kids slept, and they must have thought I was asleep. ‘You’ve got to lay hands on him this time, George,’ she was telling him. And after a while my father just said, very quietly, ‘I will not bring violence into my home, Louise. I’ve lived by it too long.’ The next few times he left, he stayed away longer, then one of those times he didn’t come back at all. After a while Momma moved us in with relatives.”
“Jesus, Lew.”
“—has nothing to do with it, as Mae West said.” I finished up my beer and signaled for two more. “Anyhow, I made all that up. Nothing mysterious or dangerous about him. He was just an ordinary man.”
Don looked at me a long time. “Sometimes I think you just may be as crazy as everyone says you are.”
“I am. Sometimes.”
We drank our beers.
“Ordinary,” Don said. “I used to be that, I guess.”
“Well, good buddy, whatever else happens, at least you’re still white.”
“Yeah, there’s that.” And putting down the empty glass: “You want to get some air?”
We walked down Decatur to the French Market and trudged over the levee. A cool breeze eased in off the water. Due south along the river’s curve lay the city’s bulky torso, flanked by the wharf with its growth of ships, tugs, barges. The Canal Street ferry was just pulling out of its slip heading at an angle toward Algiers.
That camel’s hump of land over there, directly opposite oldest New Orleans and now the city’s fifth ward, is central to its history. At various times called Point Antoine, Point Marigny and Slaughter House Point, in the last days of French rule it
I went out, down the stairs, through the lobby. Going back outside felt like walking into a forest fire. Sweat burst out of every pore I had.
There were piles of garbage in plastic bags in the alley alongside the hotel. You could hear flies buzzing inside them, their sound amplified by the taut, membranelike plastic.
Chapter Six
W ALSH AND I FINALLY GOT TOGETHER FOR LUNCH that afternoon at Felix’s. He was standing at the bar just inside the door when I got there, staring at an oyster.
“Somehow I always expect them to scream right before they go in. You know, suddenly grow a little mouth in there, and cute little round eyes, like in Disney cartoons.”
He shrugged and downed it, his last, and we grabbed a table being vacated by two fortyish guys wearing tiny old earrings, shorts and not much else.
Both of us ordered po’boys and beer.
At some point during the meal, and for no particular reason, I asked Don about his father. He shrugged.
“Didn’t really know him much. Left, or my mother threw him out, or he got put away, whatever, when I was, I don’t know, nine or ten, maybe. What I do remember’s not good. Lots of hollering and being stood in corners or sent to bed, a few beatings—more, toward the end. Usual happy American childhood, right?”
“Close, anyway. Seems like it.”
I bit off a plug of hard bread, shredded lettuce, hot sauce, oysters. Chewed.
“Mine never touched me. Never said much, but you could see the world going on back there behind his eyes. Had this kind of private smile, mostly. I didn’t know him very well, either, not even what he did for a living. He’d go away for long periods, months sometimes. And he’d always be a little … I don’t know … different, when he came back. Nothing you could pin down, but different. Like whatever he’d been away doing had changed him. And so I had all these different fathers coming home every time. But I didn’t know any of them, not really.”
A drunk stumbled up on the street outside and pressed his face close to the glass. The black man in livery shucking oysters behind the bar gently shooed him away.
“I remember one time I was nine maybe. I’d done something pretty terrible—stolen dimes from a jar of them my mother kept in the closet, I guess. They were standing in the doorway to the room where both of us kids slept, and they must have thought I was asleep. ‘You’ve got to lay hands on him this time, George,’ she was telling him. And after a while my father just said, very quietly, ‘I will not bring violence into my home, Louise. I’ve lived by it too long.’ The next few times he left, he stayed away longer, then one of those times he didn’t come back at all. After a while Momma moved us in with relatives.”
“Jesus, Lew.”
“—has nothing to do with it, as Mae West said.” I finished up my beer and signaled for two more. “Anyhow, I made all that up. Nothing mysterious or dangerous about him. He was just an ordinary man.”
Don looked at me a long time. “Sometimes I think you just may be as crazy as everyone says you are.”
“I am. Sometimes.”
We drank our beers.
“Ordinary,” Don said. “I used to be that, I guess.”
“Well, good buddy, whatever else happens, at least you’re still white.”
“Yeah, there’s that.” And putting down the empty glass: “You want to get some air?”
We walked down Decatur to the French Market and trudged over the levee. A cool breeze eased in off the water. Due south along the river’s curve lay the city’s bulky torso, flanked by the wharf with its growth of ships, tugs, barges. The Canal Street ferry was just pulling out of its slip heading at an angle toward Algiers.
That camel’s hump of land over there, directly opposite oldest New Orleans and now the city’s fifth ward, is central to its history. At various times called Point Antoine, Point Marigny and Slaughter House Point, in the last days of French rule it
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