City of Refuge

by Tom Piazza

  He found the Krewe of St. Anne in Jackson Square, a mob of life-sized walking African dolls, harlequins, people in bird masks, women in pink ballet skirts with home-made moth wings attached to their backs. Several members had wrought ingenious variations on the ubiquitous blue tarpaulin theme, and one man walked in a suit, his entire body, flesh and clothing alike, painted silver from head to foot. There were nuns, there were Catholic schoolgirls, there were nurses in fishnet stockings, there were cowboys, and men with curly green wigs on, and everyone was smiling and laughing. Two people had dressed themselves up like matching bottles of Tabasco Sauce, and three people calling themselves the Krewe of Pew had dressed as moldy refrigerators. Others wore hazmat suits and respirators in homage to the mold specialists and disaster relief personnel.

  After a while, Craig cut through Jackson Square and down Decatur Street to Rosie’s to see if any of his reporter buddies were there. As he walked in, he heard—astonishing—the voice, admonishing someone, hilarity, hollers; music outside, people crowding to get a drink, on line for the bathroom, and the voice, saying “This is the Tap Root. We inhabit a bottomless well of scotch that descends to the deepest precincts of creation…” Serge sat at the bar in a purple satin jester’s outfit, complete with three-pointed cap and sparkles on his face, surrounded by three women in ballet skirts and a guy wearing a gas mask.

  “Shit!” the gas mask guy said, pointing to Craig, “that’s the scariest costume I’ve seen all day.”

  “Craik!” Serge said. “This isn’t a come-as-you-are party!”

  “It is this year,” Craig said, smiling.

  “You might scare some little kids with that mask you got on,” Dave said, pulling off the gas mask.

  “I got to tell you,” Craig said, “I saw you guys on the news up in Chicago, sitting here.”

  “We never left Rosie’s,” Serge said. “I was going to run out and grab one of those mules so that I would have transportation but they put a lariat on me and made me sign a release form and so I was bereft of my steed.”

  “That wasn’t a lariat,” Dave said. “That reporter was grabbing for your nuts.”

  “Dave is still haffing a midlife crisis and his mind secretes these fantasies the way your auditory canal secretes ear wax.”

  “That’s disgusting,” one of the ballet skirts said.

  “Not really,” Serge said, looking at Craig. “She thinks she is in love with me.”

  Nobody asked him about his house or his plans, and that was just fine with Craig. Music was playing and everyone was drinking, and this had once been his life, too. He stood there, warmed by it all, for perhaps twenty minutes, until he felt a sadness settling on him and he left as quietly as he could and started walking up Decatur Street again. He wanted to touch all of this and stay in it; he didn’t want to leave town, these streets that had been his for all these years, all this life. The sand was running out of the hourglass.

  He walked past the end of the French Market and up toward Café Du Monde in the distance and finally back into Jackson Square, feeling, stupidly, as if he were looking at it through a glass wall. Knowing that he was leaving was driving a wedge between him and experience. That, and not having Alice and Annie, and Malcolm…

  In Jackson Square he checked the time—2:30—and thought he might try calling Alice; she ought to be picking Annie up at school right about then. He found a bench near the statue of Andrew Jackson, sat down and punched in the number.

  “Hey,” came Alice’s voice. “How’s it going?”

  How’s it going? Craig thought. How is it going?

  “It’s Mardi Gras time in Old New Orleans,” he said.

  “I know, I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

  That was nice to hear.

  “Somebody wants to talk to you. Here, sweetie,” she said, her mouth away from the phone, and then he heard the voice that he loved most in all the world.

  “Daddy! I got an A on my painting!”

  “That’s great, sweetie,” he said. He heard Alice saying something in the background.

  “Mommy says How’s Mardi Gras?”

  “It’s great. I wish you were down here.”

  “Did you see the Wild Magnolias?” She always pronounced every syllable in their name; it tore his heart out—Mag-no-lee-uhs…

  “Yep, they were out there right by H&R Bar. They came out of a U-Haul truck.” Annie was saying something to Alice. “I got you a Zulu coconut,” he said.

  “Yay,” Annie said. “Are you coming home tomorrow?”

  Craig took a deep breath from his stomach. “I’ll head up tomorrow but it’ll take me two days, so I’ll see you on Thursday.”

  “I want you to see my painting.”

  “I can’t wait,” he said. “I’m proud of you.”

  “I miss you,” Annie said. “What…? Mommy wants to say bye.”

  “Bye, sweetie,” Craig said. In front of him two men dressed as Laurel and Hardy passed.

  “Are you okay?” Alice asked.

  “It’s really fucking sad being down here without you guys,” he said.

  “I know,” Alice said. “I’ve been thinking about you all day. I didn’t want to call because I didn’t know if you wanted to be in it, if it would be an interruption…”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Craig.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I wish we were down there, too. We’ll do it next year.”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise.”

  “Okay,” he said. Three people dressed up like bags of M&Ms walked past.

  “We’re going to work it out,” she said. “In the meantime, can you just try and be there today? This day means so much to you. Don’t waste it.”

  He looked around, at the Pontalba Apartments, at Andrew Jackson’s horse rearing up, at the cathedral, and he nodded as if she could see. “I’m doing my best,” he said.

  “It’s a promise, right? Remember ‘Next year in Jerusalem, I mean the Ninth Ward…’?”

  Craig remembered this, but, “Who said that, again?”

  “Doug, that year he dressed like the Hassid and Connie dressed in the Arab robes?”

  “Oh, God,” Craig said, and even managed a laugh. “Yeah. ‘Next year at the Saturn Bar.’”

  “There you go,” she said.

  “Thank you, Alice,” he said.

  “Go on and eat a pork chop sandwich someplace,” she said. “Call me later. Or earlier. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  After they hung up and Craig put the phone back in his pocket he sat on the bench for a while, and then he made his way up toward Rampart Street. When he got there he heard a band in the distance, and he kept walking across to Basin Street, where the last stragglers of the Zulu foot parade were following the procession toward the Treme. Craig noticed one man in the middle of a group of people, dancing wildly and waving what looked like sticks in the air. He moved closer and saw that it was a man in his thirties or forties, obviously missing one leg, dancing, balancing himself and thrusting a crutch up in the air in time to the distant music.

  Craig watched him dance off along with the rest of them into the distance. What a spirit, he thought. What defiance. What human beauty. How can I leave this? What am I doing? And as soon as he thought this, an answering thought came—perhaps some spirit had passed into him from the dancer on the crutches—but Craig heard himself think, What are you talking about, man? Most of these people lost everything, and they are dancing.

  The last few stragglers passed him, black and white, holding beer cans in the air, most of them doing steps in time to the barely audible music, while he stood there with his face hanging out.

  What’s wrong, man? The day won’t last forever, so you don’t want to play? He watched everyone heading off into the distance, dancing exactly because the day wouldn’t last forever. Hadn’t he learned anything during his time in New Orleans? You’re supposed to dance while you have the chance. Because it won’t last fore
ver. Like them. Like you are supposed to be.

  Run.

  And with his heart leaping Craig took off, running, toward the sound of the band, to join in while it lasted.

  28

  The van turned onto what had been North Derbigny Street. Next to SJ in the front seat, Wesley carried the surprisingly small plastic box containing Lucy’s ashes. He was very quiet; like everyone else who had made this trip, he was unprepared for what he saw.

  It was the morning after Mardi Gras. Ten hours earlier, at midnight, the trucks had come out to clean the streets of the French Quarter, and police cars cruised the streets slowly, announcing that Mardi Gras was officially over. But no announcements had been necessary in the Lower Ninth Ward.

  They spoke very little to each other. In front of a church, someone had put up a wooden sign, with black letters on a white background, reading LOWER 9TH WARD RESTORATION. CAN THESE BONES LIVE? O YE DRY BONES HEAR THE WORD OF THE LORD! EZEKIEL 37. 1-7. SJ noted all the cleanup that had gone on since his first visit three months earlier. Much garbage had been removed and quite a few properties bulldozed already. In the distance, one or two other cars crawled along the streets, like mourners searching for a gravesite in a cemetery.

  SJ pulled up in front of his house, put the van in park and left it idling. Some of the garbage that had been piled in the driveway was gone. Now it would be easier to get inside, and that made him worry about whether looters had finally gotten to it.

  “Do you want to go inside?” he asked his nephew.

  Wesley sat in the passenger seat. He stared at the house for a long time without answering.

  “I don’t know,” Wesley said, finally.

  SJ shut the van off and they got out. He stood by the driver’s door, looking around at the ruined landscape, and Wesley did the same on the passenger side. Neither of them made a move toward the house.

  It would not be impossible to rebuild the house, SJ thought. All it would take was time. And energy, and willpower, and money. The entire front would have to be reframed. The whole first floor would have to be gutted back to the studs. That was carpentry; he knew how to do that. All the wood would have to be treated for mold. All the wiring would have to be replaced, and possibly the plumbing, too.

  Above the porch overhang, a piece of the fascia that had finished the original roof hung down at an angle. SJ noticed it, and it bothered him. He wanted to nail that slat back up into position. With everything else so messed up, why would that one piece bother him? But before he left town he was going to fix that, at least. That would be his down payment.

  “Look, Unca J.”

  “What?” SJ said.

  “That your truck? The back of it over there.”

  Off to the left of the house, on what had been the yard next door, its rear sticking out from a hill of garbage, its maroon paint job still visible despite the striated lines of muck and silt that covered it. SJ hadn’t seen it on his first trip. It had been hidden by the mountain of garbage.

  He walked toward the truck.

  SJ took his handkerchief out of his back pocket and used it to grab the handle of the rear double doors. A grayish brown dust came off on the kerchief as he tried to twist the handle down into the open position, but the handle would not budge. The rear window on the right-hand door had been broken out, and carefully, carefully, SJ reached in, and down, through the jagged-edged opening until he could grasp the interior latch. It grated and rotated slightly, and the bottom of the door popped out and SJ hopped down onto the ground and opened the door, grinding on its hinges, the rest of the way.

  An overwhelming smell of mold rolled out of the truck. The carpeting on the truck floor was still sopping wet and covered with obscene fuzz, greenish in the light from the door. His tools were disrupted, scattered; the truck had been pushed by the water’s surge, and the board along the right side on which he had secured wire cutters, cords and the like, had come loose and fallen over. The electrical cables would be useless, the fiberglass ropes more or less useless. Hacksaws rusted and useless, screwdrivers…His spare ladder lay along the left side, and that looked as if it might be usable.

  Then, remembering something, he climbed in, pushing the collapsed hanging board out of the way, and he made his way closer to the rear of the driver’s seat, looking for a line of jars that he had always kept in the truck, secured by two bungee cords. And they were there; he found them—three small mason jars containing nails. Their heavy, toggle-catch glass lids were secured over the rubber rings with the little tongues that stuck out, and he flipped the first one with some effort, the metal cap was corroded, but the latch finally opened, and he unhooked it and inside the jar the nails were completely dry. His father’s nails, still in the jars where he had kept them. SJ had saved them and kept them in the truck as a reminder of his father, of the effort he had gone through, the ingenuity, the strength. There they were, still. He stood looking at the jar in the dim light in the back of his ruined truck.

  The other two jars were in the same condition. Carefully, he removed them from the special shelf he had made for them and carried them, stepping down out of the back of the truck, over to the van.

  “These were your grandfather’s,” he said to Wesley. “This is how he kept them.”

  Wesley knew about the nails, had heard it many times. But this time he looked; this time it meant something to him.

  “They been in that jar for forty-five years. Probably longer.” SJ stood up straight, looked around, holding the jars. After a few moments, he grabbed his windbreaker off one of the van’s backseats and wrapped the jars in it and set them gently back on the seat. Then he and Wesley made their way to the front of the house, climbing carefully around piles of debris.

  Inside, the house was as SJ had seen it in November, nothing changed except that the mold was heavier on the walls. They went upstairs, and then they came back down and walked back out by the van. They were as quiet as they might have been viewing a body at a wake.

  “Should we go by Tennessee Street?” Wesley said. They had discussed earlier where to put Lucy’s ashes. Wesley had asked SJ, and SJ had told him that he was a man, now. “You decide,” SJ had said, “and we’ll do it together.”

  “Is that where you want to do it?” SJ asked his nephew, now.

  “I don’t know. That might be good.”

  “You want to drive over?”

  “I want to walk.”

  Wesley opened the passenger door and retrieved the small box, and the two of them set off walking up North Derbigny. The closer they got to Tennessee Street, the more the neighborhood resembled a huge, sprawling field that had been used to dump garbage. Here and there a house pushed off its piers and somehow more or less intact, although at an impossible angle. Cement steps leading nowhere, upside-down cars, computers with broken screens, pots and pans, all corroded, chairs with the fabric ripped off. They walked until they came to what had been Tennessee Street, and there they made a right until they came to the place where Lucy’s house had stood. All that was left was a small section of hurricane fence on what had been the right side of the yard. Wesley looked at the lot for a long time.

  “It’s all right to cry, son,” SJ said.

  “I know,” Wesley said. “What’s gonna happen to this? They going to turn it into a park?”

  “I don’t know,” SJ said. “The people still own their property.”

  Wesley looked around. “I don’t want to leave her here,” he said. “It feel like she just gonna blow away.”

  SJ nodded.

  “What are you gonna do with your house, Unca J?”

  SJ was quiet for a few moments. “Long term, I don’t know,” he said. “That land is ours. The house can be rebuilt, and I am going to rebuild it.” He looked around in the morning light. “I know I’m not ready to move to Houston. Not yet. And I am not going to be run off my own property.”

  “I can help you with the house, Unca J.”

  SJ nodded, thoughtfully. “You have a
lot of decisions to make. I don’t see that this is necessarily the place where you want to be right now. You doing well, you got you a nice girl…You got life in front of you. I got some of my crew going to come back, you know; it’s not like I’m not going to have help. There’s going to be a lot of work in town. That would be something for you, I guess…But you would have to do it for you, not for me. You’re not really tied here so much, as far as I can see.”

  Wesley nodded. “But you are going to fix the house?”

  “Yes,” SJ said.

  “Can we put Mama down by you? We can bury the box by your house.”

  “All right,” SJ said. “Let’s do that.”

  They walked back to SJ’s through what was left of the old neighborhood. It was a sorrow too large for words, just as their own presence there, or anywhere, was a mystery too large for comprehension. There they were was all you could say. What they did with that fact would make all the difference.

  SJ had brought his toolbox from Houston, along with a shovel. When they got back to his house he got the shovel out of the van and they looked around to find a good place for Lucy’s ashes, where they could be on the property but not get dug up when work was being done. They decided on a place by an oak tree in the backyard, if they could dig deeply enough between the tree’s roots. When they had dug down about three feet they stopped, and Wesley got the black plastic box, brought it to the hole. SJ looked at him, noted the hesitation.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked his nephew.

  “It weird putting her down in a box like this,” he said. “It don’t look like nothing. It look like it just come down to a plastic box,” he said.

  SJ closed his eyes, breathed. All the years that came down to that box, but did they? Wesley was doing something with the box. SJ watched his nephew open it, look into it. Tiny pieces of bone in a pound of ash…Wesley looked at his uncle.

  “I’m-a pour it in, Unca J. Is that okay? Otherwise it like she just another piece of garbage or something, a plastic box. This way she here, she part of it. All right?”