North American Lake Monsters

by Nathan Ballingrud

  The guy shakes his head and gives him his back again. “Maaa-aaaan,” he says. “Sick of these crazy motherfuckers.”

  “Did they pass some out? I’m just sayin, man. I’m hungry, you know?”

  “We all hungry, bitch! Whyn’t you take your ass to sleep!”

  Beltrane falls back onto the bed, defeated. After a moment the other man resumes his barely audible incantations, his obsessive rocking. Meanwhile the smell has grown even stronger, overpowering the musk of sweat and urine that saturates the homeless shelter. Sighing, he folds his hands over his chest, and discovers that the blanket is wet and cold.

  “What . . . ?”

  He pulls it down to find a large, damp patch on his shirt. He hikes the shirt up to his shoulders and discovers a large square hole in the center of his chest. The smell of bread blows from it like a wind. The edges are sharp and clean, not like a wound at all. Tentatively, he probes it with his fingers: they come away damp, and when he brings them to his nose they have the ripe, deliquescent odor of river water. He places his hand over the opening and feels water splash against his palm. Poking inside, he encounters sharp metal angles and slippery stone.

  Beltrane lurches from his bed and stumbles quickly for the door to the bathroom, leaving a wake of jarred cots and angry protest. He pushes through the door and heads straight for the mirrors over a row of dirty sinks. He lifts his shirt.

  The hole in his chest reaches right through him. Gas lamps shine blearily through rain. Deep water runs down the street and spills out onto his skin. New Orleans has put a finger through his heart.

  “Oh, no,” he says softly, and raises his eyes to his own face. His face is a wide street, garbage-blown, with a dead streetlight and rats scrabbling along the walls. A spray of rain mists the air in front of him, pebbling the mirror.

  He knows this street. He’s walked it many times in his life, and as he leans closer to the mirror he finds that he is walking it now, home again in his old city, the bathroom and the strange shelter behind him and gone. He takes a right into an alley. Somewhere to his left is a walled cemetery, with its above-ground tombs giving it the look of a city for the dead; and next to it will be the projects, where some folks string Christmas lights along their balconies even in the summertime. He follows his accustomed path and turns right onto Claiborne Avenue. And there’s his old buddy Craig, waiting for him still.

  Craig was leaning against the plate-glass window of his convenience store, two hours closed, clutching a greasy brown paper bag in his left hand, with his gray head hanging and a cigarette stuck to his lips. A few butts were scattered by his feet. The neighborhood was asleep under the arch of the I-10 overpass: a row of darkened shop-fronts receded down Claiborne Avenue, the line broken by the colorful lights of the Good Friends Bar spilling onto the sidewalk. The highway above them was mostly quiet now, save the occasional hiss of late-night travelers hurtling through the darkness toward mysterious ends. Beltrane, sixty-four and homeless, moseyed up to him. He stared at Craig’s shirt pocket, trying to see if the cigarette pack was full enough to risk asking for one.

  Craig watched him as he approached. “I almost went home,” he said curtly.

  “You wouldn’t leave old ’Trane!”

  “The hell I wouldn’t. See if I’m here next time.”

  Beltrane sidled up next to him, putting his hands in the pockets of his thin coat, which he always wore, in defiance of the Louisiana heat. “I got held up,” he said.

  “You what? You got held up? What do you got to do that you got held up?”

  Beltrane shrugged. He could smell the contents of the bag Craig held, and his stomach started to move around inside him a little.

  “What, you got a date? Some little lady gonna take you out tonight?”

  “Come on, man. Don’t make fun of me.”

  “Then don’t be late!” Craig pressed the bag against his chest. Beltrane took it, keeping his gaze on the ground. “I do this as a favor. You make me wait outside my own goddamn shop I just won’t do it no more. You gonna get my ass shot.”

  Beltrane stood there and tried to look ashamed. But the truth was, he wasn’t much later than usual. Craig came down on him like this every couple of months or so, and if he was going to keep getting food from him he was just going to have to take it. A couple years ago Beltrane had worked for him, pushing the broom around the store and shucking oysters when they were in season, and for some reason Craig had taken a liking to him. Maybe it was the veteran thing; maybe it was something more personal. When Beltrane started having his troubles again, Craig finally had to fire him, but made some efforts to see that he didn’t starve. Beltrane didn’t know why the man cared, but he wasn’t moved to examine the question too closely. He figured Craig had his reasons and they were his own. Sometimes those reasons caused him to speak harshly. That was all right.

  He opened the bag and dug out some fried shrimp. They’d gone cold and soggy, but the smell of them just about buckled his knees, and he closed his eyes as he chewed his first mouthful.

  “Where you been sleepin at night, ’Trane? My boy Ray tells me he ain’t seen you down by Decatur in a while.”

  Beltrane gestured uptown, in the opposite direction of Decatur Street and the French Quarter. “They gave me a broke-down cab.”

  “Who? Them boys at United? That’s better than the Quarter?”

  Beltrane nodded. “They’s just a bunch a damn fucked-up white kids in the Quarter. Got all kinds a metal shit in their face. They smell bad, man.”

  Craig shook his head, leaning against the store window and lighting himself another cigarette. “Oh, they smell bad, huh. I guess I heard it all now.”

  Beltrane gestured at the cigarette. “Can I have one?”

  “Hell no. So you sleeping in some junk heap now. You gone down a long way since you worked for me here, you know that? You got to pull your shit together, man.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Listen to me, ’Trane. Are you listening to me?”

  “I know what you gonna say.”

  “Well listen to me anyway. I know you’re fucked in the head. I got that. I know you don’t remember shit half the time, and you got your imaginary friends you like to talk to. But you got to get a handle on things, man.”

  Beltrane nodded, half smiling. This speech again. “Yeah, I know.”

  “No you don’t know. ’Cause if you did, you would go down to the VA hospital and get yourself some damn pills for whatever’s wrong with you and get off the goddamn street. You will fucking die out here, ’Trane, you keep fucking around like this.”

  Beltrane nodded again, and turned to leave. “You better get on home, Craig. Might get shot out here.”

  “Now who’s making fun,” Craig said. He tried to push himself off his window, but the glass had grown into his head. His shoulders were stuck, too. “It’s too late,” he said. “I can’t go home. I’m stuck here forever now. God damn it!”

  “I’m goin up to the white neighborhood,” Beltrane said. He avoided looking at Craig, turned his back to him and started to walk uptown.

  “Yeah, you go on and get drunk! See what that’ll fix!”

  “I’m goin to find that little Ivy, man. She always hang out up there. This time I’m gonna get that girl.”

  “I can’t understand you anymore. My ears are gone.” And it was true: Craig had been almost wholly absorbed by his window now, or maybe he had merged with it. In any case, his body was mostly gone. Only the contours of his face and his small rounded shoulders stood out from the glass; his lower legs and feet still stuck out near the ground. But he was mostly just an image in the glass now.

  Beltrane hurried down the street, feeling the beginnings of a cool wind start to kick up. He glanced behind him once, looking for Craig’s shape, but he didn’t see anything.
r />   Just the empty storefront staring back at him.

  Beltrane stands in front of the mirror and watches his face for movement. He exerts great concentration to hold himself still: the slopes and angles of his face, the wiry gray coils of beard growing up over his cheeks, the wide round nostrils—even his eyelids—are as unmoving as hard earth. The skin beneath his eyes is heavy and layered, and the fissures in his face are deep—but nothing seems out of place. Nothing is doing anything it isn’t supposed to be doing.

  He’s standing over one of the sinks in the shelter’s bathroom. It has five partitioned stalls, most of which have lost their doors, and a bank of dingy gray urinals on the opposite wall. After a moment the door opens and one of the volunteers pokes his head in. When he sees Beltrane in there alone, he comes in all the way and lets the door swing closed behind him. He’s a heavy man with high yellow skin, a few dark skin tags standing out on his neck like tiny beetles. Beltrane has seen him around a little bit, over the couple of days he’s been here, kneeling down sometimes to pray with folks that were willing.

  “You all right?” the volunteer asks.

  Beltrane just looks at him. He can’t think of anything to say, so after a moment he just turns his gaze back to the mirror.

  “The way you charged in here, I thought you might be in trouble.” The volunteer stays in his place by the door.

  Beltrane looks back at him. “You see anything wrong with my face?”

  The man squints, but comes no closer. “No. Looks okay to me.” When Beltrane doesn’t add anything else, he says, “You know, we have strict policies on drug use in here.”

  “I ain’t on drugs. I got this thing here . . . I don’t know, I don’t know.” He lifts his shirt and turns to the volunteer, who displays no reaction. “Can you see this?” he asks.

  “That street there? Yes, I can see it.”

  Beltrane says, “I think I’m haunted.”

  The man says nothing for a moment. Then, “Is that New Orleans?”

  Beltrane nods.

  “I guess you’re here from Katrina?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. It fucked my world up, man. Everybody gone.”

  The man nods. “Most people from New Orleans are going up to Baton Rouge, or to Houston. What brings you all the way out here?”

  “My girl. My girl lives here. I’m gonna move in with her.”

  “Your girlfriend?”

  “No, my girl! My daughter!”

  “You’ve been here two days already, haven’t you? Where is she?”

  “She don’t know I’m coming. I got to find her.” Beltrane stares at himself. His face is dry. His hair is dry. He lifts his shirt to stare at the hole there one more time, but it’s gone now; he runs his hand over the old brown flesh, the curly gray hairs.

  The volunteer says nothing for a moment. Then, “How long has it been since you’ve seen her?”

  Beltrane looks down into the sink. The porcelain around the drain is chipped and rusty. A distant gurgling sound rises from the pipes, as though something is alive down there, in the bowels of the city. He has to think for a minute. “Twenty-three years,” he says finally.

  The volunteer’s face is still. “That’s a long time.”

  “She got married.”

  “Is that when she moved here?”

  “I got to find her. I got to find my little girl.”

  The volunteer seems to consider this; then he opens the door to the common area. “My name’s Ron Davis. I’m the pastor at the Trinity Baptist, just down the street a few blocks. If you’re all done in here, why don’t you come down there with me. I think I might be able to help you.”

  Beltrane looks at him. “A pastor? Come on, man. I don’t want to hear about God tonight.”

  “That’s fine. We don’t have to talk about God.”

  “If I leave they won’t let me back in. They just give up my cot to someone else.”

  Davis shakes his head. “You won’t have to come back tonight. You can sleep at the church. If we’re lucky, you won’t ever have to come back here. If we’re not, I’ll make sure you have a bed tomorrow night.” He smiles. “It’ll be okay. I do have some influence here, you know.”

  They leave the shelter together, stepping into the close heat of the Florida night. The air out here smells strongly of the sea, so much that Beltrane experiences a brief thrill in his heart, a sense of being in a place both strange and new. To their left, several blocks down Central Avenue, he can see the tall masts of sail boats in the harbor gathered like a copse of birch trees, pale and ethereal in the darkness. To their right the city extends in a plain of concrete and light, softly glowing overpasses arcing over the street in grace notes of steel. People hunch along the sidewalks, they sleep in the small alcoves of shop doors. Some of them lift their heads as the two men emerge. One of them tugs at Beltrane’s pant leg as he walks by. “Hey. Are you leaving? Is they a bed in there?”

  Davis says something to the man, but Beltrane ignores them both. He hopes the walk to the church is not long. The pleasant sense of disorientation he felt just a moment ago is giving way to anxiety. The buildings seem too impersonal; the faces are all strange. He looks up at the sky—and there, in the thunderheads, he finds something familiar.

  Piling rainclouds and the cool winds which precede a storm made the walk uptown more pleasant. Rain was not a deterrent, especially in the summer months when the storms in New Orleans were sudden, violent, and quickly over. Low gray clouds obscured the night sky, their great bellies illuminated from time to time by huge, silent explosions of lightning. Beltrane’s bones hummed in this weather, as though with a live current. He made his way out of the darkened neighborhood of the Tremé and into the jeweled glow of New Orleans’ Central Business District, where lights glittered even when the buildings were empty. The streetcar chimed from some unseen distance, roaring along the unobstructed tracks like a charging animal. He walked along them, past the banks and the hotels until at last he hit the wide boulevard of St. Charles Avenue and entered the Lower Garden District. The neutral ground—the grassy swath dividing the avenue into uptown and downtown traffic—was wide enough here to accommodate two streetcar tracks running side by side. Palm trees had been planted here long ago by some starry-eyed city planner. A half mile ahead they gave way to the huge, indigenous oaks, which had seen the palm trees planted and would eventually watch them die. They stood like ancient gods, protecting New Orleans from the wild skies above her.

  “Here we are,” Ron says, and Beltrane drifts to a stop beside him. There are no trees here. There are no streetcars.

  The Trinity Baptist Church is just one door in a strip mall, sandwiched between a Christian bookstore and a temp agency. The glass of its single window is smudged and dirty; deep red curtains are closed on the inside, and the corpses of moths and flies are piled on the windowsill. Ron takes a moment to unlock the door. Then he reaches inside and flips on the light.

  “My office is in the back,” he says. “Come on in.”

  They walk through a large, open area, with rows of folding chairs arranged neatly before a lectern. The linoleum floor is dirty and scuffed with years’ worth of rubber soles. Ron opens a plywood door in the rear of the room and ushers Beltrane into his cramped office. He seats himself behind a desk which takes up most of the space in here and directs Beltrane to sit down in one of the two chairs on the other side. Then he switches on a computer.

  While it boots up, he says, “We’ll look online and see if we can find her. What’s your name?”

  “Henry Beltrane.”

  “You said she was married. Will she still have your name?”

  “Um . . . Delacroix. That’s her husband’s name.”

  Davis’s fingers tap the keys, and he hunches closer to the screen. He pauses, and begins to type some more. “
Twenty-three years is a long time,” he says. “How old would she be about now? Forty?”

  “Forty-five,” Beltrane says. “Forty-five years old.” It’s the first time he’s said it aloud. It works like a spell, calling up the gulf of years between now and the time he last saw her, when he was drunk in a bar and she was trying one more time to save his life.

  Dad? she’d said. We’re leaving. Four more days. We’re doing it.

  He’d turned his back to her then. There’d been a television behind the bar, and he fixed his eyes to it. Have a good trip, he said.

  It’s not a trip. Do you understand? We’re moving there. I’m moving away, Dad.

  Yeah, I know.

  She grabbed his shoulders and turned him on his stool so that he had to look at her. Daddy, please.

  He watched her for a moment, shaping her face out of the unraveling world. He was so drunk. The sun was still up, filtering through the dusty windows of the bar. Her eyes were tearing up. What, he said. What. What you want from me?

  Davis releases a long sigh, and leans back in his chair. “I got a Sam and Lila Delacroix. That sound right?”

  Beltrane’s heart turns over. “That’s her. Lila. That’s her.”

  Davis jots the address and phone number down on a sticky note, and passes it across to Beltrane. “Guess it’s your lucky night,” he says, though his voice is flat.

  Beltrane stares at the number in his hand, a faint, disbelieving smile on his lips. “You call her for me?”

  Davis leans back in his chair and smiles. “What, right now? It’s almost midnight, Mr. Beltrane. You can’t call her now. She’ll be in bed.”

  Beltrane nods, absorbing this.

  “Look, I keep a mattress in the closet for when I don’t make it home. I can pull it out for you. You can crash right here tonight.”