Gods of New Orleans

by AJ Sikes

  Aiden ran out the door. He held his lame arm in the sling tight against his stomach as he clattered down the steps. He tore through the alley, down to the end and onto the street. Aiden ran with all his might. He had to make sure he was far enough away. Far enough that none of his mother’s ghosts could snake out and touch him.

  Down the street and across to another alley. On and on, Aiden ran through the Irish Channel, hunting for safety wherever he could find it. Finally, he pulled up at a park and hid behind a thick tree trunk next to a little bench.

  “Mr-Mr. Brand?” he called to the night.

  Mr. Brand showed up quick, slipping out of the wall beside the cabin door.

  “You needed me?” Mr. Brand asked.

  “Yeah, I got a note to send.”

  “To who?”

  “To‌—‌” Aiden was about to say his ma’s name, but he remembered the way his mother had looked at him and the feeling he’d gotten, like she wanted nothing but to see every dark-skinned man or woman end up dead and gone, and him along with them. “To Hatred.”

  Mr. Brand nodded and stayed hush while Aiden told him what the note would say. When he was done, Mr. Brand put a hand on his pocket and nodded again. “It’s there. I’ll get it to . . . to her.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Brand.”

  “Of course. And, could . . . could you do me a favor, too? I know I shouldn’t ask, but . . .”

  “What is it?”

  “Remember me. Okay?”

  It was Aiden’s turn to nod and keep his face like a stone even while he felt all the tears he’d ever cried trying to get out at once.

  Chapter 33

  Eddie’s voice drifted out of the gatehouse and to Emma’s ears like it was buoyed by the revelry inside.

  “Must be ‘bout time they startin’,” Eddie said.

  Emma heard the gatehouse door slide in the dirt and then slide again. More laughter came from inside, and a little whooping and hollering, too. Emma followed the path around the hall and stopped at the corner of the gatehouse to listen again.

  From the crack in the main doors, she heard glass on glass and cheering. A drumroll started. Emma stepped around to the gatehouse’s side door and looked in through the window.

  She saw a chaperone she recognized, who was surrounded mostly by men with instruments. A few women speckled the crowd, their flapper haircuts and cloche hats making it easy to pick them out. White faces and dark faces filled the room in a ring around the chaperone, who stood much higher than anyone else. Emma thought at first it was because everyone was sitting, but then she saw the girl was standing on a small platform about two feet off the floor.

  The chaperone held a cigarette in one hand and a glass of hooch in her other. The drumroll kept up a pitter-patter-pitter-patter rhythm for another several beats and then stopped. The girl tipped back the hooch into her mouth and then flung the empty glass behind her. Emma heard it crash against something solid as the crowd roared.

  Emma spotted Eddie off in the side of the room, where he stood with another musician and a couple of women, who hovered by each man’s elbow.

  Eddie put his horn to his lips and blew: “Shave and a haircut.”

  Everyone laughed and the chaperone let herself fall forward to be caught by a white man, who lifted his hat as if to congratulate himself on the catch. Another woman hopped up to take the chaperone’s place and the mock auction repeated itself.

  Emma watched while three different women took their turns slamming back hooch and swaying into the arms of whichever Casanova came to the rescue. Finally, Eddie came close enough to the platform that it looked like he’d be playing the knight in shining armor next.

  Swallowing her heart, Emma turned around and followed the stone path back to the Rising Sun Hall. She left the scene behind and made her way through the neighborhood streets to the Vigilance‌—‌the only place of safety she truly had left in New Orleans.

  But when Emma got back to the ship, Lisette was gone and a mess of black feathers lay scattered around the street below the mooring deck.

  ~•~

  Emma flew home alone, worried sick about Lisette. She slept in the airship until the sun came up. With a heavy heart, she left the ship and made her way off the mooring deck to head back to her and Eddie’s place.

  When she saw Lisette hiding under the deck, Emma burst into tears and ran to give her a hug. She needed to hold on to someone she could trust, someone who knew what it was like to have your life eaten away in bits and pieces.

  Lisette’s son was with her, too. She held an arm around the boy and filled in Emma as they walked to the house.

  “I seen the Birdman come up the street while I was waitin’ on you, Miss Emma. So I ran out and made my way home to get my boy here. Julien, this is Miss Emma. She gon’ help us get your sister free and then we gon’ fly outta New Orleans.”

  The boy was about the same age as the Conroy kid, maybe a little older. He seemed ready to buy what his mother was telling him, but only just. He walked with one hand holding hers and the other resting over his heart, ready to snap it into place over his eyes.

  “My Julien, he a houseboy for a few years now. Says it’s all gettin’ messed around with Mama Bonvivant comin’ into town recent.”

  “Messed around how?” Emma asked when they reached her and Eddie’s place. She wished she could think of it differently, but it’d always be her and Eddie’s place. Until she left it behind anyway.

  Emma opened the door and led them inside. Lisette made to answer her question, but her son spoke up first.

  “They all talkin’ ‘bout Dove Conroy,” Julien said, and Emma whipped around to look at him, feeling the shock hit her face like a slap.

  “Conroy? You mean Aiden?”

  “Yeah. Dove Conroy what we all call him. Boy gotta be crazy. He run off from Mama Bonvivant’s place. He supposed to be cleanin’ a room and he just run off.”

  “Where’d you hear this?” Emma said.

  “Around the street, you know? Other houseboys all sayin’ it. Damn fool dove, I tried tellin’ him.”

  Emma sniffed at the boy’s use of the word dove, and just nodded in reply. She’d heard about the houseboys who came in after everything was over and done with, and cleaned up the gala houses so they’d be pretty for the next night’s singing and dancing and drinking.

  So Aiden Conroy had been keeping things tidy and clean for Bacchus’s krewe and the filthiest business Emma had ever heard of.

  She figured the Conroy kid didn’t know what was going on. He had to be working just to help him and his folks keep a roof over their heads and food on the board. But the way his folks were about Negroes . . .

  Brand gave me a letter for him. So he’ll be all right. He has to be.

  Emma let the worry slip aside. It wasn’t anywhere near as strong as the anger she still felt toward Eddie.

  “So what we doin’ now, Miss Emma?” Lisette asked, breaking into Emma’s thoughts about Aiden and his folks.

  “We get ready for tonight. We’ll fly like usual. I’ll pick up the girls and you’ll play chaperone since that’s how Bacchus wants to do it, right?”

  “But the Birdman after us, Miss Emma. I seen him on the street.”

  “And you’ve still got both your eyes and I have mine. If he’s after us, fine. He hasn’t found us yet. Right?”

  “That’s right,” Lisette said and looked at her son who still kept a hand at the ready. Lisette put her arm around him tighter and continued. “Mr. B, he said seein’ the auction’d be like to reminding me of how it would’ve been with me back then. We gonna go pick up your sister, Julien, sure we are. Then we gonna fly on outta New Orleans once we get them girls on board.”

  “But we need to get some things together first,” Emma said. “Clothing, whatever food we can take with us. Cans and jars. There’s a small icebox in the ship, but it’ll only hold two bottles of milk at best, and who knows when we’ll see ice again.”

  Emma went back to the kitchen
with Lisette and Julien following behind. They grabbed whatever they could and brought it back to the front parlor. Lisette and her son went back for more while Emma sorted out what they had.

  A few cans of beans, some jars of jam and mustard. A couple more of stewed corn and tomatoes. Emma made to head back to the kitchen for another armload when she heard a soft saxophone note from outside.

  She went to the window and looked down the street. There he was, holding his horn to his lips and half stumbling up the sidewalk. So Eddie’d made his way back home somehow, probably in a van with the others Emma had seen at the gatehouse. In that moment, Emma realized she’d truly given up caring about him. He could have died out there, or ended up a tramp like Brand, but it wouldn’t have mattered one bit to Emma.

  Then Eddie’s music found her memories and she fell onto the couch in a heap.

  Up the walk he came. She heard him stepping this way and that on the concrete, sometimes coughing and sometimes playing on his horn. He played notes running up and down, spinning in circles then drawing out. He played one tone, long and slow, then another. The haunting sounds moaned through the window to collect around Emma like so many tortured spirits.

  Instead of the warm skies and hotter nights Eddie’s music once inspired, Emma felt only decay, a rot that infected and spread faster than wildfire through tenement shacks.

  Eddie played a fast string of notes again, a melody she knew from the first time she’d heard him play. She shook and sobbed and let the music assault her now, push her back against the cushions and hold her there, frozen and broken and chained.

  The playing stopped and the front door opened. She heard him shuffle in and close the door. Then Lisette came from the kitchen with her son, and Eddie seemed to figure he was in the wrong house.

  Emma put him straight. She stood up and stormed toward him with her fists at her sides and tears pouring from her eyes.

  “Lovebird? What’s the matter?”

  “You knew!” she screamed, and flung herself against him, shoving him back outside. She beat her fists on his chest, but the anger and fire went out of her the minute she saw his face. Her blows wanted to be a hurricane and landed as nothing more than droplets.

  Eddie pushed her hands away and backed up a step.

  “The hell’s got into you, woman? What happened?”

  “What happened, Eddie? What happened?” she said through tears that simply wouldn’t stop, no matter how hard she tried to pull them in. “You knew, that’s what happened. You knew and you went along with it. This ain’t Storyville, but it’s only different in name. You knew and you told me it would be okay. But you didn’t tell me the score, Eddie Collins. You didn’t tell me what the krewe bosses and house mothers were doing to those girls.

  “You knew all along and you pulled me into it to help them do it. Damn you!” she said, finally summoning the strength to swipe a hand at his face. The slap hit him as a glancing blow because she’d moved so slow he’d seen it coming, and Emma hadn’t put enough into it anyway.

  “Settle yourself down now, girl,” he said, putting a hand up like he’d give it back to her.

  “Why? You going to hit me, too, Eddie? How many of those girls have been hit? How many of them have been beat because they wouldn’t do what the krewe boss or the house mothers told them to? Because no girl, not anybody, nobody should be sold like a slave!”

  Emma turned aside and buried her face in her hands. She felt him come up behind her. His hands on her, pulling her to lean back against him.

  “Lovebird, I‌—‌”

  “No,” she said, pushing away and spinning to face him with all the fire she could muster. “I’m leaving New Orleans, Eddie. You can stay here for all I care. Play your horn for them, so those girls will dance the way they’ve been taught. Shimmy and shake for the ones who came down from New York to buy them up. That’s what you’ve been helping make happen, Eddie. And you knew. Goddamit, Eddie Collins, you knew!”

  ~•~

  While Lisette’s boy, Julien, stayed downstairs and packed up the foodstuffs they’d collected from the kitchen, Emma and Lisette gathered up the warmest clothes she had. If they managed to get any of the girls out, she’d have to be sure they could keep warm. It’d be colder the farther north they went, and none of her passengers would have any time to prepare for this trip.

  Not much different from the last time.

  Emma put thoughts of her flight from Chicago City out of her mind. Now wasn’t the time to get nostalgic. And memories of Eddie’s voice weren’t helping much.

  “You every kind of crazy there is, Emma. Why don’t you settle yourself down, girl? Settle down, and let’s talk about this. C’mon.”

  But she’d had as much as she would take from him or any other man who tried to change her mind. She’d shoved Eddie back out the door and slammed it in his face, then went back to packing. She’d spared a look out the window at him, though, and she let her face tell him good-bye. He waited on the stoop for a full minute of silence, then stumbled away into the morning with his horn.

  Emma stood still in their room now, waiting for the sound of Eddie’s horn to come again. It didn’t, so she tightened her jaw and got back to work. In the closet, she snatched up the hat and coat the gypsies had given her in Chicago City. Lisette had the rest of her heaviest clothes in a suitcase already.

  “We ought to be thinking about taking them dresses, don’t you think, Miss Emma?”

  Emma looked at them, the pretty dresses and their frills and lace and tassels. Beside them was the heavy fur coat Bacchus had given her that other night. Hatboxes were piled on the shelf above. She couldn’t bring herself to take any of it. Taking the luggage that Bacchus’s money had provided was hard enough.

  “You’re welcome to ‘em,” she said and turned to leave. In the corner of her eye, she saw Lisette lift the coat and four of the dresses off the closet rod and drape them over her arm.

  In the doorway, Emma looked back at the room she’d shared with Eddie for almost a month. The dark wood of the bed and vanity gleamed in the early morning light from the window. Her shadow extended across the bed and the wall behind it like a ghost, hovering there like a question.

  “What happened, Eddie?”

  ~•~

  The suitcase sagged against Emma’s hip as she walked, but she forced her feet to keep a steady pace. Lisette trailed a bit behind her, burdened with the heavy coat and dresses she’d insisted on taking. Her son hauled a box in his arms and another one behind him on a rope. The box scraped along the concrete like a rasp across Emma’s ears, but she forced herself to let it be.

  The airship hung above the silent deck. Emma trudged up the stairs, banging the suitcase against each step. Lisette and her son struggled behind her with the coat and dresses. It took two more trips to haul up the foodstuffs to the deck.

  Emma moved to the deck’s switchboard to get the gearboxes up and running. The machines clattered to life and shuffled a metallic step down to the mooring winches. Emma paused when she heard a rustle and coughing from the street below. She went to the rail at the edge of the deck and looked over.

  A lone figure in a white suit stood beneath the deck smoking a cigar and clutching the dark, struggling mass of a rooster that crowed against the man’s restraining hands. The man’s pale brown face seemed to glow in a halo of burning light.

  The bird’s screech cut Emma’s ears and she flung herself away from the railing, staggering back a step to lean against the switchboard for support. To her left, Lisette and her son huddled in the gearboxes’ little shed. One of the gearboxes drew up and stopped in its tracks. The other kept moving and posted beside the mooring winch at the airship’s tail end. Lisette hissed at her from where she and her son hid and shielded their faces with half-raised hands.

  “That the Birdman, Miss Emma. That’s him down there, I bet my life on it.”

  Emma whirled around and worked the lever to call back the one gearbox and reset its command cycle. As the
automaton retraced its steps, Emma cast frantic eyes around the deck. She didn’t dare look below it again, not with the Birdman down there. She still heard the feathers, rustling like sheets of cold, dry paper moving in the midday breeze.

  “Go on,” she said to Lisette and her boy. “Get in the ship and throw down the sheets from the bunkroom. Make a rope so we can haul these things up.”

  Lisette nodded. She and her boy hustled across the deck and up the ladder. Emma waited for the gearbox to get back into position and cast a wary glance in every direction she could. She spun on her heel and did her damnedest to keep quiet enough so she could hear the bird or its owner. Not for the first time, and she figured not the last, Emma wished she had a gun in her hand.

  Finally, the gearbox reset and marched down the deck. With it posted by the nose winch, Emma searched the deck and listened for movement. After heaving a breath into her lungs, she stepped away from the switchboard, grabbed her suitcase by the handle, and lugged it to the ladder where she kicked loose the airship’s retaining pins just as Lisette dropped down a tangle of bedsheets all knotted together.

  Emma tied the sheets to the suitcase and Lisette and Julien hauled it up. Emma kept darting her eyes this way and that, fearing any second that the Birdman would come out of nowhere.

  When the sheets came down again and touched her on the cheek, Emma jumped and shrieked. She caught her breath and tied a sling around the box Julien had carried. The boy hauled it up on his own while Lisette whispered down to Emma.

  “C’mon, Miss Emma. Get yourself up here now. Birdman around. C’mon, please.”

  Emma grabbed the rope attached to the last box and made to climb the ladder. But the rope slipped from her hands and the box tumbled off the side of the deck. She heard the shattering of glass and the metallic clatter of cans and jars.

  Throwing a fast curse at the mess below, Emma went up the ladder, hand over hand, one foot up, then the next one to follow. She got into the cabin and when no attack came, no wild rooster out of nowhere to screech at her and claw away her eyesight, Emma let herself relax enough to just sit and breathe on the floor. Lisette and Julien sat together at Brand’s desk.