But that was all was usual.
They weren’t just tossing cheap beads and plastic tokens, they were tossing condoms, amyl nitrate sniffers, balloons of nitrous oxide, spliffs. It wasn’t only ladies showing their tits for applause, there were people of both sexes and many genders up there on the balconies stripping down to exactly nothing and performing acts free in full view fit to kill off the business of the strip joints and porn shows and then some.
Down on the street it was more of the same only much more so. Inside a fog of pot smoke that did nothing to hide what was going on from the eyeballs. Half of the crowd was in half-naked costume, and half of those who weren’t were doing the full Monty. Couples, threesomes, even the occasional foursome, were screwing up against walls in full view at any given time, and the crowd itself danced up the street like an endless Chinese New Year’s dragon made out of flesh and feathers, glitter and bling, twisting and twirling to the crazy music, twitching and jerking like snake-handling speakers in tongues, and from the look of it, no few of them kicking that gong around.
And what cops there were, some of them looking morally outraged, some of them trying to make like they were and failing, others accepting the joints and drinks they were forever being handed with a nod and a smile, just moseyed up and down the street making sure there were no fights or pickpocketing in the crowds, a few here and there even tossing plastic doubloons themselves.
When I managed to get ahold of one, I saw that it was stamped out of styrofoam with a cookie cutter and painted blue. On one side there was just the silhouette of a badge in yellow. On the other side in crudely lettered yellow was just “The People’s Police.”
* * *
Sergeant Luke Martin had found it impossible to pay for his own drinks in the Blue Meanie since Mardi Gras began and the hero of the People’s Police, at least in the eyes of his fellow officers who were enjoying popularity with the wildly partying citizenry and the tourists for the first time, not only escaped any of the rotating bummer duty keeping the Swamp Alligators away from it, but was given nothing but the most coveted tours of duty “controlling,” but in reality mostly enjoying, the scenes around the major parades.
Baccus, Rex, Endymion, Proteus, the grand tour of the major krewes and their elaborate major floats along the major parade routes; if Luke hadn’t seen them all, he had certainly seen more of them than anyone else on the police force. As a sergeant, Luke commanded a squad of “crowd control” officers spread out along each parade route. But this terminology was quite obsolete, since the crowds were for the most part just having a drunken stoned-out dancing and fucking in the street good time, none of which could be controlled except by massive arrests by the riot squads, and no one was trying.
So the “duty,” such as it was, consisted mostly of snake-dancing and sashaying through the crowds more or less at the speed of the most amusingly flamboyant floats to the chaotic jazz of the mixed music, smiling, nodding, dancing a bit himself when the spirit and the free drinks and joints thrust upon him moved him, and trying to stay sober and keep his fly from being unzipped.
And now here he was on Rampart Street and here came the Krewe of Zulu down it on its way to Canal along the northern border of the Quarter.
Zulu was an all-black parade, had been when that got the krewe called uppity niggers and then Toms, and then Black Power Panthers, and now maybe the number-one stars of Mardi Gras. Part of the old mystique was that Zulu supposedly never announced its route beforehand, but part of the Big Easy was that most anyone who cared to find out knew it anyway.
Rampart being a wide main drag without wide sidewalks or overhanging balconies, the crowds poured out into the gutter and the floats glided through them like ships through the sea, and indeed there was even a slaver sailship taken over by its cargo, a retro jazz band done up like African warriors in broken chains.
Behind that came an enormous glowing pink elephant from the top of which mostly naked ladies in feathers and bling and grandees in ringmaster hats and tuxes whirled light sabers and tossed beads and doubloons to the crowds.
And there, making its way toward him, riding a wave of enhanced cheering and brass fanfares came the Zulu King’s float, a huge many-tiered tower done in multicolored neon, arising out of a palm tree forest and decked out with balconies from which members of the krewe tossed Zulu doubloons and throws of beads.
Luke glided through the crowd towards it, thanks to his suddenly beloved blue uniform. Whether this was because he was recognized personally or just because the People’s Police were the fave raves of this Mardi Gras, with their T-shirts selling almost as well as those of the New Orleans Saints bearing the 66 of their star quarterback Brady Butterworth, was hard to tell, if for no other reason than because no one in the crowd seemed capable of recognizing much more detail than a blue blur and a shiny brass badge.
Number 66 was the King of Zulu this year, and the Saints quarterback sat on a gilded throne that looked vaguely like a stadium seat for God Himself, wearing his football uniform with the standard crown replacing the helmet and an ermine-ringed green superhero cloak.
In his left hand he held a scepter in the form of a spear, which he thrust aloft now and again, and in his right, a gilded coconut. The Gold Coconut was the single most coveted item in any Mardi Gras and supposedly only one got tossed into a crowd each year although no one could really be sure of that, and Butterworth drove the crowd into a feeding frenzy every time he teased them by raising it above his shoulder as if to throw a touchdown pass.
Luke found something a bit disgusting about it, but on the other hand, if he could actually hand Little Bruce the Gold Coconut tossed by Brady Butterworth, his son would be the prince of the schoolyard.…
So … might as well give it a try.
His uniform was enough to allow Luke to slide through the screaming mob to the front rank as the King’s float glided up to where he was standing.
Chance? Good luck? Mama Legba magic? As the float came abreast of him, Butterworth’s gaze seemed to fall upon him, and then they locked eyes for a long moment as it went by.
Something passed between them, as Butterworth nodded without looking away, and without looking away, the Saints quarterback rose, half turned, raised the Gold Coconut, pumped it once, twice, and as Luke raised his hands to receive it, threw him a touchdown pass.
Which Luke fumbled as the heavy coconut smacked his outstretched hand and fell to the ground.
Well, not really to the ground because a forest of hands like a zillion octopus tentacles grabbed and yanked at it before it could fall that far, until a big brawny brute wearing the 66 T-shirt got his mitts on it, hugged it to his chest, and used his elbows to clear his way.
And then he noticed Luke.
And his eyes lit up.
“Martin fuckin’ Luther Martin!”
He battered his way through to Luke.
“Hey, bro’,” he said, giving Luke the high-five, “y’know thanks to you an’ Mama Legba, me and mine ain’t livin inna cardboard box city under the I-10. We still got our house what’s rightfully ours.”
And he handed Luke the Gold Coconut.
“And this is rightfully yours,” he told him, and walked away.
* * *
Better put on the mask, and while you’re at it, the costume too, Erzuli had told MaryLou.
Masquerade as myself?
Mama Legba isn’t exactly yourself, now is she, girl? And since there’s hundreds or maybe thousand of women out there wearing Mama Legba masks and costumes, it’s the best disguise there is, hiding in plain sight.
Erzuli wanted to mingle with the Mardi Gras crowds and MaryLou couldn’t really deny that she did too. Who wasn’t at least curious about what was now being called Mama Legba’s Mad Mardi Gras in the press and promotions, least of all the human half of Mama Legba herself?
But actually renting a half-assed Mama Legba costume instead of just putting on the real thing and buying a cheap stylized mask of her own face didn�
�t make any sense to MaryLou until she arrived in Jackson Square.
Jackson Square was bordered on three sides by the pedestrian streets which MaryLou and her parents had worked back in the day and on the fourth by Decatur, which was open to traffic and especially the mule-drawn carriages. But Jackson Square Park was enclosed by a fence all the way around and could be entered only by two gates, supposedly to protect the foliage from an excess of the street life but really, as anyone who had ever worked the square knew, to keep the street acts out.
Now, however, the gates were wide open, and the pedestrian streets were so packed to the gills that the bands and other street acts had retreated inside the park through the wide open gates, and past the smiling cops. The park was jam-packed with revelers too, as well as dealers openly peddling loose joints, hookers showing off their wares, X-rated costumes, here and there where they could find room couples and threesome of variegated gender and plumage having at it.
Half the people in the crowds were costumed too, roughly half of them were women, and at least 10 percent of those were wearing store-bought or homemade Mama Legba costumes just like MaryLou and the same cheap papier-mâché mask.
If MaryLou had showed up unmasked, her own face, that is the face of the real Mama Legba the television star, would have been immediately recognized, and what would have happened to her then in this drunken stoned-out dancing frenzy, however good-natured, was something she didn’t care to contemplate let alone experience, and she could now well understand why Erzuli didn’t want to either.
So, hiding in plain sight, the real Mama Legba was able to party hearty with the revelers as just another copycat, buying a spliff and a Sazerac, drinking, smoking, dancing along to the musics like MaryLou when MaryLou felt like it, not even drawing an audience when the more adroit Erzuli took possession.
Indeed, while none of the wearers of the Mama Legba costumes seemed to be among them, there were any number of people in the crowd, costumed and otherwise, who were puffing on spliffs as if channeling the ghost of Bob Marley, gulping down booze as if to summon up whole herds of phantom pink elephants, mating in and out of the shrubbery and dancing like they never danced before.
And rather than moving through the dance, it was the frenzied supercharged dance itself that seemed to be moving through them, moving from person to person, flitting here and there, gawky dorks suddenly rolling their eyes back and dancing with the energy and grace and demonic energy with which MaryLou was well familiar from serving as Erzuli’s horse and then falling abruptly back into the material world when the loa dismounted.
Well, sure, hon’, Erzuli told her when MaryLou pinned her on it. We immaterial girls and boys just wanna have fun too! An’ since we ain’t got no bodies, we gotta ride yours to boogie in the material world. Don’t you get it? That’s why we made our deal with the cops, we want to party like what we are, and that ain’t anything gonna get no Family Friendly ratings from no Holy Rollers or enforcers of tight-assed moral rectumtude!
16
Well, it sure was the most successful Mardi Gras in years as far as the tourist business was concerned, and yours truly was certainly feeling no pain countin’ up the profit total after Fat Tuesday. But what goes up, must come down, we’ve all heard said, though I never heard anyone explain why, and you probably haven’t either, and it wasn’t just the beginning of Lent. Nor was it immediate fear of the Hurricane Season, which wasn’t due to hit for months either.
Admittedly the tourist business always dropped like a stone after Mardi Gras, although of course it didn’t take nearly as big a dive as it did around the middle of June when the Hurricane Season started.
But there was an election for governor of Louisiana this year, and every Republican candidate for the nomination was on the run for the upstate vote, and every two-bit preacher up there in Louisiana’s Bible Belt was goin’ on about how wicked New Orleans had gone all the way this time and made an open deal with the Devil on television for everyone to see.
In New Orleans, it had come to be known as Mama Legba’s Mad Mardi Gras.
Upstate, it was generally regarded as Satan’s.
It was the usual Republican smoke screen to hide their usual dirty deal with Mammon, but on steroids. Rile up the rednecks, peckerwoods, and general Holy Rollers with righteous rage against Godless Atheistic New Orleans, and maybe they’ll be riled up enough not to notice that the economic Powers That Be foreclosing on their farms and homes too own your asses and you can once more flim-flam the yokels into voting Republican against their own obvious self-interest.
This time around the stakes were even higher because there were local police forces up there copy-catting the People’s Police of New Orleans at least to the point where most of them were at least refusing to evict their fellow cops, and a growing number of them were refusing to evict anybody.
Well, of course, the Powers That Be didn’t feel they could afford to let this communist un-American evil to spread, so the pressure from the Loan Lizards and Company on those vying for the Republican nomination to promise to send in the Troopers or the Guard to New Orleans and enforce “the laws of God, Man, and the State of Louisiana” was intense enough to have all of them swearing to send in one or the other or both or maybe demand the Pentagon send in the U.S. Marines.
So the usual anxious anticipation of the Hurricane Season started earlier this year because of the beginning of the Louisiana political season, which was even crazier than usual. Which is saying something in a state where Governor Fast Eddie Edwards got approval of casino gambling by swearing to keep his business in New Orleans and never go to Vegas to roll the bones again, where Huey Long built a new governor’s mansion in the form of a half-scale version of the White House because he wanted to feel at home in the real thing when he moved in, and where Earl Long, Huey’s nutcase brother, pissed on the legislature and was governor while in the state loony bin and sprung himself by firing hospital head after hospital head until he finally appointed one willing to certify that he was not insane.
Both New Orleans and the upstate Republicans were waiting for the Hurricane Season, the Big Easy with baited breath hoping against hope that Mama Legba’s Supernatural Krewe really could protect the city, while and the Republicans breathing fire and brimstone and fixin’ to turn up the heat even higher if they did.
That’s right, the deciding political question this turn around the merry-go-round was whether or not Satan was going to protect New Orleans from the Hurricane Season!
And if you think that’s crazy, let ol’ J. B. tell you what’s really crazy. Namely that if no major hurricane whacked New Orleans, whichever hack won the Republican primary would probably be elected governor by running against the Devil and his henchman, the Democratic candidate, and send in the Guard as promised, but if the usual disasters hit, meaning that Satan hadn’t delivered on his bargain or hadn’t been involved in the first place, the Republican would most likely lose.
So New Orleans needed a major storm during the season to protect it from the National Guard and the Republicans had to be praying for Sin City to be spared to prove that Luke Martin and the “People’s Police” really had sold the city’s soul to the Devil.
Well, the way the election schedule had been bent around to accommodate the Hurricane Season a while back, the primary votes came in May to avoid its beginning, and the election itself had been pushed forward to the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, well after its usual end.
Harlan W. Brown, a state senator from Born Again redneck country, won the Republican primary, and Elvis Gleason Montrose, likewise a state senator but from New Orleans, won the Democratic primary.
The smart money, not that you had to be Albert Einstein to do the math, was that Montrose had his balls in a nutcracker. His only chance depended on turning out an even more overwhelming Democratic vote out of New Orleans and environs than usual, which meant there was no way he could promise to send in the State Police or the National Guard to break the wildly popular strike by
the popular People’s Police.
But even if Montrose got every last vote, it wouldn’t be a winning hand unless he could do it without getting a bigger upstate vote than any Democrat had gotten since Eddie Edwards and then some.
Brown might not be a mental giant, but he wasn’t dim enough to suppose that a candidate promising to send in the State Troopers or the National Guard or the Marines to occupy the city so that evictions could resume and law and order as the Bible intended could be enforced wasn’t going to come out of New Orleans with more than a handful of votes, so he had nothing to lose and everything to gain by running against un-Godly un-American Satanic Sin City and would’ve put on a sheet and a pillowcase mask if he didn’t have the Klan vote already locked up.
Montrose would screw himself as a traitor in New Orleans if he went anywhere near sending in the National Guard, but he would screw himself big-time upstate if he defended the People’s Police, as a servant of the servants of Satan at best and the Devil’s right hand at worst, a club which Brown was already righteously and gleefully banging him over the head with.
So he tried to mush-mouth his way out of it, fobbing the issue off on Joe Roody, who had made it clear that there would be a total police strike if the State Police or the National Guard set foot in New Orleans, and the Troopers certainly didn’t have the manpower to police even a small city, and using the National Guard raised both state and federal Constitutional questions, so it would be irresponsible to promise something the elected governor might not even be able to deliver, blah, blah, blah.…
Like every Democratic candidate for anything these dire economic days, Montrose tried to shift attention to where Republicans were the ones up against the wall. It wasn’t just homeowners in New Orleans who were being squeezed out of their homes by the Loan Lizards before the police strike, they were gobbling up houses upstate too and all the farmland that had been leveraged to the max and, as it turned out, well beyond, in order to plant every acre during the worldwide grain and corn shortage. And of course by promising to send the Guard into New Orleans to enforce evictions, Brown was making it clear that he would do the same thing to break the copycat police strikes upstate.
The People's Police Page 11