by Paul Volponi
We got to the door and that smell socked me hard in the gut. I felt the vomit shoot up into my throat and choked it back down. I put one foot inside and saw the used crack vials in a yellow pool of piss on the floor. But I couldn’t go in any farther. My stomach wasn’t strong enough for it, and neither was Pop’s.
The stink followed us everywhere, and you could smell it creeping up on the whole Superdome. Pop and me passed a side staircase, leading down to the lobby. There was a wet patch at the base of the wall where people had already pissed. So Pop undid his pants quick.
“This is how it’s gotta be, like we’re animals,” he said.
Pop stood facing the wall with both hands on his crotch when a woman walked over with a boy in diapers. She pulled the diaper off and shook the loose shit down the stairs. The boy’s eyes were opened wide, staring straight at me. The woman wiped his behind and cleaned his diaper with a napkin—all with Pop pissing five feet from them. Then she put the used diaper back on the boy and pulled him away by the hand. Only his head was turned back around to me, with his eyes glued to mine. I waited till they got out of sight. Then I took Pop’s place at the wall.
We got back to our section, and Uncle Roy was sitting with some older guy who’d moved his stuff in with ours.
“Fess!” Pop called out, throwing both arms around him.
The guy was drenched to the bone. Even the blanket he was wrapped up in was dripping. And when Pop finally turned him loose, there was a big wet cross going down Pop’s chest and stretching through his arms.
“This is my son, Miles,” Pop said, and I shook the guy’s cold hand.
“Miles—that’s a strong name,” he said back.
The man had a bruise under his right eye and looked like he’d had half the stuffing knocked out of him.
“Son, this is Lonnie Easterly—the sweetest clarinet player anywhere. Cats call him ‘Professor’ out of respect. But we’re closer than that, and to me and your uncle he’s just Fess.”
“You been in a fight, mister?” I asked.
“We all got our asses kicked today by that bitch Katrina,” he answered. “I ain’t no different. I just hung on longer than most and wouldn’t leave my place, ’cause I’m stubborn as a mule. Then the floodwater rose up so high, I had to chop a hole in the roof for the Coast Guard to come and take me out.”
That’s when Pop and me saw the tears in Uncle Roy’s eyes.
“So how bad is it?” Pop said real serious, like he was asking after somebody in the hospital on life support.
I guess Uncle Roy already had the news because he dropped his head and turned away.
“Parts of this city are gone, Doc—blown to hell,” Fess said. “It’s hit-or-miss. Some of the clubs are still standin’, and others look like piles of matchsticks. Either way, we lost plenty. I don’t know where we’re gonna play our gigs, or who’s gonna be there to listen anymore.”
Pop looked like he’d been stabbed in the heart. His legs folded underneath him and he slid down into a seat.
I didn’t know why, but it hit me hard, too. Maybe it was from seeing Pop so shook. But I felt like something got robbed from deep inside me. Only it wasn’t something you could replace so easy, like a stolen football.
Fess grabbed a bottle of brown whisky from his bag. He took a quick swallow and passed it over to Pop.
“That damn she-wolf,” said Uncle Roy. “A lifetime of roots tore up in two days.”
Pop tilted the bottle all the way back, and I watched a lot of the whisky disappear. Then he pulled his gig book out of his pocket and turned slow through the yellowed pages of every place he’d ever played. He had the bottle tucked upright inside his arm, and I felt better when my uncle reached over and took it from him.
“Come on, Doc. Save some of this for the good times to come,” Uncle Roy said, taking small swig.
I stood right behind Pop, looking at the book over his shoulder. Only every page was the same to me. It was just a bunch of dates at the top, with chicken scratch for writing underneath. But I could see Pop running over every line in his head as if he knew it all by heart.
When Pop finally closed his gig book, he held it tight against his chest. I couldn’t remember the last time Pop had hugged me, and it started eating at me good. As bad as I felt for Pop, I wondered how far behind his music I really was.
5
And when this earthly weight’s too much to bear
Yes, when this weight’s too much to bear
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in
Monday August 29, 12:16 P.M.
A single shot rang out, and a voice screamed right on top of it. Then the whole Superdome got stone quiet, except for the sound of people reaching to pull their kids and family in close. Pop looked at me, and I looked back at him. It wasn’t a big space between us, but it felt like it was from one end of a football field to the other.
There weren’t any more shots, and after a few minutes, people went back to what they were doing before. But I kept thinking about that space between Pop and me.
It didn’t matter that it was after noon, the sky behind the holes in the dome was still pitch black. Katrina kept slapping at us, and the air was getting hotter and thicker with the smell of shit.
Pop, Uncle Roy, and Fess finished off the whisky, with Pop having more than his share. Then Fess pulled a small flask of gin from his pants pocket, and they started drinking that, too.
Other folks were talking, arguing, praying, and moving back and forth all around them, but those three had their eyes and ears on each other, like they were jamming onstage together.
“One year, when the basketball team played here— the New Orleans Jazz—I got paid to play in these stands with a Dixieland band,” said Fess, taking his clarinet out of its case.
“They moved that team to Utah and kept the name,” Uncle Roy said.
Then Pop broke out laughing in a voice twice as loud as I was used to hearing him. “The Utah Jazz—can you imagine that crap? What are there, twenty black folks in all of Utah? I’ll bet half of them are on that team!”
“Maybe we can go there to play, till they put this jigsaw puzzle here back together,” mocked Fess.
“The Superdome’s beat up, but it’s still standing,” I said. “Maybe you can play during halftime at a Saints game.”
The three of them just stared at me.
“Here’s to my son,” cracked Pop, raising the flask to make a pretend toast. “Everything’s football to him— the rest is all invisible.”
That felt the same as if Pop had slapped my face in front of everybody.
I knew he was half drunk, so I tried to forget it. But I was already bruised up on the inside.
“Miles,” my uncle said in a quiet voice, “there probably won’t be enough people livin’ here to go to football games.”
“You see that Saints football helmet painted on the field, Miles?” said Fess. “That flower symbol on the helmet’s a fleur de lis. The French Kings adopted that as their sign, but it really comes outta the Bible. It’s a flower that sprung up from the tears of Eve when God kicked her and Adam out of paradise.”
“And that’s what’s happenin’ now, son,” said Pop. “God’s kickin’ us out of our paradise.”
“Maybe I ain’t leavin’,” said Fess, raising his clarinet to his lips.
“You sure you wanna blow that here?” asked Uncle Roy. “When some of these animals start grabbing for what ain’t theirs, they’re gonna remember it.”
“And pass up on one last gig in N’awlins? Shiiiitt. In a house this big?” Fess came back, before he started to play.
Preacher Culver was walking Cyrus around the stands, I guess trying to get him tired enough to stay put. But Cyrus made a quick turn and headed straight for us.
“Listen to that licorice whip,” said Cyrus, snapping his fingers to Fess’s playing.
Then he stared at the flask till Pop passed it over to him.
“How ’bout you, preacher?” Pop asked, cutting off Cyrus cold. “You too holy for a drink?”
“Never have been, but this isn’t the time for it,” answered Culver.
That’s when a group of soldiers invaded our section. They were all wearing white masks, like doctors, and you’d think we had some kind of disease they could catch.
“Every one of you, put your hands on the backs of those seats,” barked the one with the captain’s bars on his shoulders. “We’re authorized to search for weapons, and that’s what we’re gonna do—the women, kids, everybody.”
The nameplate over the captain’s heart read HANCOCK, and I could see the outline of his face snarling beneath that mask.
The soldier with the sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve was named Scobie, and he came around to the front of us, pulling his own mask down to talk.
“I’m sorry, but we have to search your bags, too,” he said, nodding to the other soldiers, who started going through our stuff.
“Stand straight for me,” Hancock said, patting down Pop himself. “You smell like a damn drunk.”
That hit me harder than what Pop had said. I was burning inside and wanted to tackle Hancock on the spot. But I didn’t want to get arrested, and I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t start shooting. Then Hancock slid over behind me, and ran his hands up and down my sides. I looked over my shoulder to eye that bastard good, when I saw Cyrus sneaking off with the flask. He got all the way up the stairs before anybody noticed. One of the soldiers screamed, "Halt!” but Cyrus started running like the devil was chasing him.
Cyrus’s daughter tried to run after him, but a soldier grabbed her, twisting her arm back. That’s when Sergeant Scobie stepped in, turning her loose.
“Watch my kids!” she yelled to the preacher’s wife. Then she took off after her father, cursing the soldiers.
“I’ll help bring him back,” said Culver.
But Captain Hancock wouldn’t let him move.
“You keep your hands on that chair. That collar you’re wearin’ don’t hold any weight with me,” said Hancock, pointing to the bars on his uniform. “We’ll catch up to the old man. There’s no way outta here.”
Another soldier found Uncle Roy’s sack of candy and gave it over to Hancock.
“That’s mine,” said Uncle Roy. “That’s all our food.”
“Yeah? You smash up that candy machine in the corridor to get all this?” Hancock asked, like he already knew for sure.
“I don’t need to steal,” answered Uncle Roy. “I’m a musician, man.”
Then the soldiers pulled out the cases for Pop’s and Uncle Roy’s horns.
“Open those,” Hancock told the soldiers. “I want to see inside.”
They unbuckled the black cases and the two gold horns sat there shining inside the red velvet linings.
“Maybe machine guns were gonna be in those cases,” snapped Fess. “Like we was Al Capone and his gang.”
“There’s nothing else here, sir,” Scobie told Hancock.
“Trick or treat,” said Hancock, shoving the sack of candy into Uncle Roy’s chest for him to take.
As the soldiers left, Pop picked up his horn. His face turned angrier than I’d ever seen it. Then he ripped off a melody that sliced through the stinking air like a rampaging angel on wings. I knew it was just for Hancock to hear—to say, “I ain’t no drunk!”
To me, every one of those notes felt like a punch to Hancock’s head. And right then, I wanted to hear Pop play more than anything—fierce and hard.
The sweat was pouring down Pop’s face. When he was finished, I put my hand on his shoulder just to feel what it was inside him, and it was like another hurricane blowing in there.
An hour later, Cyrus’s daughter came back exhausted and said she couldn’t find her father anywhere. Uncle Roy went over to calm her down. And everybody knew Cyrus probably didn’t need any whisky in him to think about climbing through those holes in the top of the dome. If he could ever find a way up there.
Waves of new people kept coming in, and it wouldn’t stop. Only they were looking much worse, and it was like they got rescued from one nightmare to get dropped off in the middle of another.
There was a big fat woman, who couldn’t fit in a chair, lying flat on the floor. She was gasping for air, and the man sitting next to her face was moving his hand like a fan to get her more.
A guy in the corridor was doubled over, coughing up blood. His family finally found a doctor in a white hospital coat to help him. But there wasn’t anywhere close to the number of doctors people needed.
A woman even heard Pop get called “Doc” by Uncle Roy and Fess, and stopped to ask if he really was one.
“Findin’ a doctor’s like playing hide and go seek in this joint,” she said frustrated, tightening the bloody T-shirt tied around her cut forearm. “But it ain’t no kids’ game. It’s for real.”
Preacher Culver cleaned up the glass from the candy machine, and that part of the hall got turned into a clinic. There was an old woman in a wheelchair there who never opened her eyes once. I watched a nurse hang a clear bag over the sign with our section number—32H. Then she ran an IV from it into the woman’s arm. And if her eyes ever popped open, I figured she would have thought she’d died and got sent to hell.
People were saying the mayor had come through, and saw how bad we had it inside the Superdome. They said he was so pissed off that he started to shake with anger.
“He was cursing, saying how he’d make a phone call to the president who’s on vacation and get us help here quick,” I heard a man sitting on a laundry bag tell somebody.
I didn’t even know the mayor’s name. All I knew about him was that he was a black dude. So I couldn’t see the president of the whole United States jumping too fast to answer his call.
Cyrus’s daughter and Uncle Roy had their eyes glued to the stands, looking for the old man. Every little while, one of them would take a walk, trying to find him, but they came back without him every time.
I was playing the “slap game” with Cyrus’s granddaughters. They took turns putting both hands out, palms-up in front of me, while the other minded the guinea pig. Then I’d lay my hands flat on top of theirs, and they’d try to smack me before I could pull my hands away. They’d laugh hysterically every time one of them would whack me, and I’d shake my hand in the air, like it stung so much I couldn’t stand it.
Pop had sobered up, and came over to do the “bullfrog” for those girls.
“That baby weasel you’re holdin’ don’t eat frogs, does he?” asked Pop, making his voice deep. “’Cause I’m part bullfrog.”
“He’s just a guinea pig. He can’t hurt you,” answered the one with the rainbow on her shirt.
So Pop put a finger over his lips to keep them closed. Then he puffed his cheeks and neck up with air, like when he blew his horn. His cheeks got so big you’d think they were going to burst. The two girls laughed like crazy, falling over each other.
That face was one of the first memories I had of Pop growing up. He’d probably made it for me staring down into my crib.
Then I thought about the times I missed out on with Pop when I was younger. And I wondered what kind of times we were going to share from here on, especially if we didn’t have anyplace left to live.
That’s when I heard Cyrus yelling from somewhere. I knew it was him because his daughter’s head was on a swivel, too, looking all around. He was screaming wild about something, and his voice got higher and higher. Then I heard lots of people gasp all at once, like when something terrible is about to happen on a movie screen.
There were shrieks, and I saw Cyrus fly from the top tier. He’d jumped. His body rocketed through the air, like he was shot straight down out of a cannon.
“God, no!” his daughter cried out, turning away from the field.
Both little girls were facing me and didn’t see it. So I let my hands drop quick onto the palms of the one who was holding them out flat. I heard Cyrus’s body crash onto the concrete floor under the football field. It was a sickening sound, like a bag of bones hitting the face of a sledgehammer.
I stood there frozen, and felt his granddaughter smack my hands, again and again.
6
Oh, when that rhythm starts to go
Oh, when that rhythm starts to go
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in
Monday August 29, 5:45 P.M.
None of us went running down to the football field. We just stayed put. We already knew there was no way Cyrus could have survived. His body was lying facedown on an empty part of the football field, with folks starting to gather around him.
Cyrus’s daughter collapsed to her knees, pounding the concrete steps with both fists.
“Why? Lord, why did we have to be here? Why?” she cried out in a tortured voice. “I need my babies! Lord, where are my two babies?”
Her little girls, who still didn’t know what happened, ran into her arms. And their mother hugged them so tight she nearly squeezed the life out of them.
Pop came over and stood as close to me as he could. I would have given anything to have Pop hug me like that. But I knew we had too many things in the way.
“Why’d it have to happen like this?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Pop answered. “It just did.”
After a while, Sergeant Scobie showed up and said how bad he felt, but that somebody had to identify Cyrus’s body, because they found no ID on him. Then I heard him tell Preacher Culver on the low, “It’s not a pretty sight to see.”
Cyrus’s daughter was too broken up to do it. Uncle Roy said he’d go, and so did Culver. I was shocked when Pop told my uncle to stay behind with Cyrus’s daughter—that he’d go with Culver instead. Pop had talked hard against getting involved with anybody else’s problems. But he’d just crossed his own line.