Nick

by Michael Farris Smith

22

  He gathered bottles and stuck candles in their necks like she had done in the theater attic and he searched for solace in the little flames in the coming nights. For days he stayed indoors. A kind of hiding. He only slept in brief intervals and in between he sat on the edge of the bed and held his hands and feet over the candles until he was able to calm his nervous breathing and trembling hand and sleep again. All through the night he heard others in the rooms around him stirring and sometimes yelling with disgust at their degenerate fate as if it were something that could be chased away with a rage.

  In his segments of sleep he was battered by dreams. The gunshots rang from everywhere. They came in clusters that flew across the heads of the men in trenches and pierced the mob of men killing in the fields and all those men screamed and panicked. The shots came from rifles and machine guns and planes and then grenades exploded in whitehot blasts and arms and hands flew into the air and he was crying and fighting and desperate for escape and on some nights he was a boy again and he raced across the battlefields and through the chaos to the wide lawns of his childhood, looking for the dead bodies that he knew were there but he only ran and ran and ran until he grew into a man and his feet were again in the mudcaked boots and his hands covered in blood. He cried out in these nightmares and tussled in the small bed and several times he woke after tumbling out of the bed and onto the floor to find his palms slapping at the floorplanks and his face wet with slobber.

  In another dream he was standing outside his door and the courtyard was filled with the hungry and the drunk and he heard the gunshots and he tried to get down the stairs but was blocked by a mob of bodies and he pushed and shoved and finally made his way down into the crowd. He tried to get through, to make it into the streets and escape the attack, but he was a toy among the desperate and they tossed him around as if he had no meaning to this world at all.

  And still in other moments there was no war. There was no blood. There was only a large house with many rooms sitting on the hillside of a darkened countryside. And he was standing at the open door, listening to the cry of an infant. Then he would go inside and try to find the child. The cry echoing and shifting from room to room in the great house and he could never find it, wanting to see the child and hold the child and rushing through the shadows and hearing the cry and he would grow rattled and shortbreathed and the cry would begin to fade as if floating away on some soulful wind and then he would be alone in the empty house and then he would wake alone. With his arms outstretched in the dark.

  23

  You do not need to stay there any longer. It is time to come home. We need to begin discussing your future.

  The telegram came from his father on his seventh day in New Orleans and Nick had not been surprised by any of the words. He imagined his father talking to his mother about where Nick was supposed to be and what he was supposed to be doing. His father shaking his head and complaining that time has been wasted. Nick tore the telegram into pieces and left it in an ashtray on a café table.

  He became part of the shuffle and wail of the city as Frenchtown was an America he never knew existed. Ceramic gutters lined the streets and washed away debris and animal droppings and the air was hazy from the smoke from coal and wood fires. Everyone, even some of the children, seemed to be smoking a cigarette or cigar or pipe. Streetcar and electric and telephone lines crossed overhead in no particular pattern as if they were not of function but instead some hectic web and lamps hung from the wires like electric piñatas. Spatterings of French and Italian and English came from faces of all shapes and colors in some convoluted dialect only a native could understand. In the early morning he watched the hustle of the vendors at the market, selling live seafood and alligator meat brought in from the swamps. Then he walked the river, stopping at the warehouse which separated Jackson Square from the wharf. In the commotion of exchange men sweated and labored and sometimes fought over their cargos of bananas and cotton and coffee and farther along the river, men moved up and down the ships with the random coordination of ants on a hill.

  In the night children disappeared and shop windows bolted shut. Smoke and music rolled out of the doors of the saloons and brothels. Cards hit the tables and shrieks and catcalls filled the night. The promise of a good time called from the redlipped mouths underneath the fluttering eyelashes that did nothing to conceal their specialties and those solicitations came not only in the cover of dark but they were there in the mornings and in the afternoons. The girls were always available and the liquor was always available. It was in the jar glasses in the saloons and in teacups of quaint lunch eateries and it was handed out in pint bottles to the men working at the wharf. Nick had stood at the river late at night and seen the boats and skiffs that nestled along the banks and he knew what they were unloading. He remembered the tall man on the train and his disgust with the approaching prohibition and Nick watched the preparation to keep the country wet, the trail of bootleg liquor sailing in from somewhere out in the Gulf and then being shuffled upriver and released into the heart of the country and shifted around the coastline and circling the southern tip of Florida and then up the East Coast and spreading into all the cracks and crevices of the national terrain.

  He walked during the day and he walked at night because it was free of the torture of the small room filled with bad dreams and he began to end up at the same place when he was ready to sit down and have a coffee and a cigarette. A whitewashed building in the middle of Burgundy Street. He would lean against a street lamp and stare into the establishment, with its doors opened wide and piano music spilling into the street. Flames danced in a fireplace toward the back of the room, close to the staircase where the shadows fell and vague figures climbed or descended in anticipation or resolution. The rail of the brass bar shined and the chandelier sprayed little spots of light and the young women with their bare necks sauntered between tables. Sitting on laps and lighting cigarettes and smiling and playing the game with casual ease.

  He watched the men drink and then drink again and sometimes reach for places they were not allowed to reach until the deal was struck and then their hands shrank back to the glass that would be filled again. There was something about this place that seemed different to Nick. As if it were a stage designed to capture the beauty of the Frenchtown decadence. The art on the walls and the china plates and crystal glasses. The longlimbed girls and their black stockings. The bottles that never seemed to run dry. And in the midst of it all was its director, the woman with the high cheekbones and thick hair gathered on the top of her head as she moved behind the bar and between the tables. The woman who the men spoke to when they came in and who the girls checked with before they took a customer toward the staircase. The confident woman with the blacklined eyes but a touch of something sad in her expression when she slipped behind the bar to pour a drink or roll a cigarette, when she paused as though she did not believe that anyone was watching her. Something fell from her in those moments. Something that Nick recognized. He leaned on the street lamp and watched this stage and he picked out the place where he would sit when he finally decided to cross the street and go inside. The stool at the end of the bar, closest to the spot where she would slip away when her eyes fell. And each time when he returned to his small and stale room he began to imagine how it would go when he finally walked in and sat down. What he would say to her. What she would say to him. Or would participating ruin it all.

  24

  Some of the girls called her madam and some of them called her Miss Colette. For three days Nick came at dusk and sat down at the end of the bar next to a lit candle and for three days he drank coffee and declined offers for liquor and flesh and waited on Miss Colette to engage him in some way. But she had given him a queer look in the first moments he declined any offers of pleasure and then she regarded him not at all as he sat there with his journal and pencil and took up space. When she moved behind the bar he kept his eyes on her, waiting on her to meet his stare and offer some kind of exchan
ge but she only poured wine or moved cash in and out of the register or hiked up her breasts or licked her lips in the mirror. All of which kept him dreaming of who she was and what she might be.

  On the fourth day he went in the afternoon. Sat in the same spot. Tapped his finger on the bartop to the rhythm of the piano. Didn’t even have time to turn his head when a soft hand landed in the center of his back and when the girl recognized his profile she only said it’s you again before sliding her hand away and moving toward the stairs where three other girls lazed across the steps like languid felines.

  Outside in the street a handful of boys and girls played stickball. Vegetable carts knocked past on the cobblestones. A watchmaker leaned in the doorway of his shop and smoked a pipe. Nick opened his journal and began to scribble, adding to the pages of scribbling he had created the previous three times he sat there. No words. Only circles and loops and crisscrosses in dulled pencil strokes. Behind the bar Miss Colette pulled a jug from beneath and poured two shots of moonshine. She picked up a shot and knocked it back. And then she slid the other shot toward Nick and said you either pay for that and drink it or get your ass up and go somewhere else. She stood and watched as he set down the pencil and journal and reached for the shot glass but then they were interrupted by a bearlike roar from the staircase followed by a rumble of heavy footfalls and the breaking of glass. The girls on the stairs came alive and moved out of the way as the shards of the champagne glass clicked to the bottom and a big man leaned heavy on the rail to hold himself upright. Then he let out a deep belch. Stroked his beard. Adjusted his suspenders. Pulled at his zipper. He continued on down the stairs. Apologizing for the broken glass and patting at his round belly and ending up at the end of the bar opposite of Nick where Colette was waiting on him.

  “Are you done?” she asked him.

  He belched again. Wiped his mouth. Pulled cash from his pocket.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m done. It’s a shame.”

  He counted three bills down onto the bartop.

  “More than that,” she said.

  He laid down another. She tapped her finger on the bartop. He laid down one more.

  “It’s a shame, all right,” he said again.

  “What’s a shame?”

  His coat hung on a coatrack and he moved over and grabbed it and wrestled it onto his burly frame. Then he nodded to the girls and to Colette and he walked out, slapping Nick on the shoulder as he moved out into the street and began to sing in a deep and drunken voice.

  Colette mumbled something to herself and then she picked up the cash and folded it. She then looked again to Nick to see if he had touched the moonshine but Nick’s eyes were out into the street where the stickball game had paused and the kids all stood still, staring up into the sky.

  “Hey,” Colette said.

  Nick looked back to her.

  “A drink or a girl or get out.”

  In the street two old women and a butcher holding a knife had gathered with the kids. All of them staring above Colette’s building. Nick picked up the shot glass but put it down again when Colette came from around the bar and walked outside to see what they were looking at. Nick followed her.

  There was the methodical rise of smoke above the brothel roof, a lazy gray wafting that blended easily with the other trails of smoke exuding from the rooftop stovepipes. As they watched the smoke began to thicken into a deeper shade of gray and a girl with her head covered with a scarf hurried down the stairs and out of the brothel and along the street unnoticed. The smokecloud blossomed and more gathered to watch and Colette stood with her arms folded. She had taken two steps to go back inside and see what the hell was going on when there was a loud crack and the roof fell into the third floor and high streaks of yellow and orange leapt into the sky as if reaching for redemption. First there were screams and shouts and then the rumble of feet on the upper floors and down the staircase and then another crack and sparks exploded against the dustblue sky. Some streetgoers gawked as if watching an impromptu street play while others grabbed the hands of children and hustled away.

  Colette ran back inside as the flames ducked into the building and stretched out of the open windows of the third floor and then more screams and men with drinks in hand danced from their barstools to the exit and looked up and saw the fire and then hastily walked away. Colette screamed up the stairs and halfdressed girls and their halfdressed customers hurried and stumbled and got up again and made it into the street where they all began pointing and yelling and then the street shook itself alive as the fire spread quickly across the third floor and fell into the second floor. The smoke rolled down the staircase and filled the bar and Colette became vague as she ducked behind the bar and grabbed cash and called out for others as horrific screams came from the second floor and a man with his pants around his knees and his hair and shirt on fire leapt out of the window and a naked girl came out after him with her burning skin and they landed on the sidewalk and twisted and wrenched and screamed as people in the street began to run for help and beat on doors of neighboring buildings.

  All Nick could hear was help me help me help me and he ran into the building after Colette. Inside was entirely filled with smoke and others crashed into him as they ran blind through the smoke and then he felt someone and he grabbed the arm and began to pull and the arm jerked away and Colette’s hard voice said get your goddamn hands off of me. The smoke filled his eyes and his lungs and he almost immediately dropped down to his knees. Began to crawl. The heat coming on now and the cracks and breaks of the building frame as the fire began to roar like some pitdwelling beast and in the small backrooms of the brothel opiumfilled bodies never woke and were consumed without knowledge that today was the day they would become ash.

  Nick made it into the street crawling on his hands and knees. Coughing and hacking. Someone grabbed him and helped him to his feet and he hobbled to the other side of the street. Held on to the same lamppost he had held on to for days while he watched her. A panicked street and sirens as the fire quickly destroyed the upper floors. Out in the street the girls gathered, some holding bottles of whiskey and some holding clothes and photographs. They called for Miss Colette again and again until she finally appeared from the smoke, wobbly and with the bottom of her dress on fire and two girls grabbed her and took her to the ground and beat the fire from her clothes. Another body came from a third floor window, burning and writhing on the sidewalk next to the other two bodies that were now still and smoldering and some fled and some stared in horror at their burning housemates on the sidewalk and the brilliant reds and yellows and blues of the feeding fire illuminating the Frenchtown sky and now reaching to the neighboring buildings without prejudice.

  Nick coughed. Wiped at his mouth and eyes. Began to move along the street and away from the spectacle and when he was a block away he stopped. Caught his breath. Looked back at the fire and felt as if there was something he should do but this fight was lost. The roar of the flames and the screams of its victims pierced the evening and Nick went down to a knee and his hand began to shake violently. He made a fist, beat it against his leg. Unfolded his fingers and clenched them and hammered once more. He heard German voices and he felt the weight of the dead against him and his hand shook and his breaths came quick and he tucked his hand under his arm and squeezed and it tremored still and he said in a hard and loud voice I can’t help you. I can’t help you. I can’t help. Firewatchers next to him looked when he spoke but he only got up from his knee and screamed at them. I can’t help you! He jerked his hand from under his arm and held it toward them. Look at it, he screamed. Look at it! His flapping hand and his crazed eyes and he screamed there’s nothing I can do and then he shoved past them all and hurried away.

  25

  Three blocks away from the fire he stopped. He told himself he was safe. He told himself he did not do anything wrong. He let himself be and his hand became still. In the distance he heard the commotion of the burning block but he ignored it an
d continued on in the opposite direction and that’s when he came upon the crippled old man. He was hunched and struggling along with a cane, an oversized black coat draped across his shoulders. The old man stopped and let out a raw, vicious series of coughs. Nick paused and waited for the man to gather himself before he stepped around. But the cough kept on and the man seemed to coil and then he pulled out a handkerchief just as the blood spewed from his mouth. He dropped his cane and Nick reached to help him as the old man pressed the handkerchief to his mouth. Nick held him upright and he noticed the scarred neck and then he looked at the man’s hands and saw the scarred hands and wrists. These were the hands and scars of others he knew, so he held on and waited.

  After a minute, the man removed the handkerchief and the bleeding had stopped. He said I got it and Nick let go of his arm and bent down and picked up the cane. The man took it and nodded in thanks. He sniffed and wiped at his eyes and then he folded the bloodspotted cloth and stuck it into his coat pocket. A rubbery, quartermoon scar framed his left eye and he touched it as if to make sure it was still there. He bent over and spit and Nick asked him if he needed something. A doctor or a taxi.

  He raised and was out of breath and while Nick had thought that he was helping an old man, he could see now that he wasn’t. He looked closely at the man’s eyes and face and saw that the man was no older than himself.

  “I need you to walk me back,” he said.

  “Back where?”

  “My place,” he said and he fought to get himself together. Nick waited and when he said he was ready he told Nick to hold him by the arm and come on.

  It was a slow, cautious three blocks. Two men passed and called the broken man Judah but he didn’t reply. A grayhaired woman wrapped in a shawl walked with them for half a block with her hand on Judah’s shoulder and spoke to him with concern and empathy but he never responded until she finally stopped and watched them walk on. At the corner of Bourbon and St. Philip, Judah raised his cane and pointed at the saloon.