Nine Lives

by Dan Baum

  He grabbed his overnight bag, locked the front door, and climbed into the company truck for the long drive to Hot Springs, Arkansas. As he glided over the I-10 causeway toward I-55, he listened to a tape he’d ordered from the back of Variations: How to Speak Like a Woman. “Modulate,” the voice on the tape told him. “Men speak in monotone. Women let their voices rise and fall.” All across Mississippi, John practiced: “I’ll have the sea bass, please!”

  RONALD LEWIS

  SANDPIPER LOUNGE, LOUISIANA AVENUE

  1995

  Rebirth fell in behind the dancers, the trumpeter Derrick Shezbie pressing a hand to a ballooning cheek as though afraid it might pop. The Pigeontown Steppers bopped and twirled and shook with the music in their baby blue and yellow getups, making their way down Louisiana Avenue, the crowd parting for them and then falling in behind in the timeless manner of the second line.

  “They’re off the chain!” Pete yelled. From a man dragging a cooler the size of a coffin, Pete bought two icy Budweisers for two dollars and handed one to Ronald.

  Ronald nodded and, raising his beer to his lips, noticed a young white woman following the parade with a pad in her hand. Second lines were never announced in the Times-Picayune or on the radio, so tourists almost never found them. Local white folks rarely had the nerve to climb out of their cars and join in. A few did show up occasionally—hippies with tattoos and piercings, or photographers weighed down with camera gear, like they were on safari, shooting the wildlife. This woman, though, wasn’t either type. She was correct and proper, with glasses, short dark hair, and a trim, shin-length skirt. She’d watch the dancers for a minute, and write on her pad. She’d watch the crowd, or the band, or the police on horseback, and write some more. If she hadn’t been so young and innocent looking, he might have figured her for a cop.

  Nobody in the crowd spoke to her; even in the mid-1990s, there was no easy way to strike up a conversation with a white lady. But Ronald had grown up with Miss Duckie. He’d faced down Bob James and Hero Evans over the lunch-break table at NOPSI. He was proud of his ability to talk to white people; it’s part of what set him apart from other men. He planted himself before the white lady and said, “How do you do?”

  “I am just fine!” she said. She put out a hand to shake: big, bony, and strong.

  “My name is Ronald W. Lewis.”

  “Helen Regis.”

  “I notice you are interested in the second line,” Ronald said.

  “I’m a doctoral student at Tulane. I’m writing a paper about it.”

  Rebirth passed; there was no talking with a brass band walking by in full blow. The towering horses clopped past, mouths foamy and smelling strong. The crowd advanced, carrying Pete with it. Ronald stood with Helen, grateful for a chance to rest his aching knees.

  She launched into an explanation of what she was about that set Ronald’s head to swimming—something about “contested urban space” and “the commodification of culture.” Ronald settled back and took it in; he liked hearing white people talk. It was like learning another language. Then she said she was contrasting second lines with “minstrelsy,” and Ronald perked up. He’d had enough of minstrel men.

  “What you mean by that?” he asked.

  “Minstrelsy being exaggerated blackness, cartoon blackness, for the entertainment of whites,” she said. “The second line strikes me as the exact opposite.”

  She got it. Ronald put his big hand out again. “I think what you’re saying is you want to know about our tradition,” he said. “If so, I’m your man.” He read her his phone number. “Give me a call and I’ll tell you all I know about the culture. But listen: when you go over the top—when you get famous—don’t forget me.”

  “Deal,” she said.

  WILBERT RAWLINS JR.

  SARAH T. REED HIGH SCHOOL

  1995

  Wil paced the gridiron in his braided uniform, sizing up the opposition. They looked sharp: McDonogh 35, one of the best high-school bands in New Orleans. Their leader was the best. The little man in the plumed hat over there, he’d surely forgotten Wil. But there had been times at Southern when the work was so hard that the promise Wil had made to Herman Jones was all that had kept him going: I’m going to get that degree! I’m going to have a band that will blow your band out!

  Wil turned to watch his bandsmen filing to their seats. They looked surly and detached, in stained, ill-fitting uniforms. Hard-luck kids, all of them—with dads and brothers in prison, moms on drugs. They were kids who went weeks without a hug. Many were hungry and sleep deprived, on the verge of flunking out. That they showed up for band at all was a miracle.

  Their horns, too, were dented rejects. If it weren’t for Da, coming by after work with his drumstick bag full of wire and tape, half the kids wouldn’t have instruments at all. Da could nigger-rig anything. He sat now in the stands behind the band, straight as a board, hands planted on thighs, chin raised in expectation. Wil waved, and he nodded. Da had never missed a performance of Wil’s—not in junior high or high school, not even when it meant driving to Baton Rouge to watch the Southern band, the Human Jukebox, perform. Whenever Wil took a stage or a field, Da was there to clap.

  A blare of horns spun Wil around. Mr. Jones had him a big old band—maybe seventy-five kids. He stood on a step stool, one hand jerking up and down, the other rising slowly from hip level. His mellophones were playing on the C and the baritones on the G, just like twelve years ago. He was building the mood. His band sounded good.

  “Listen up,” Wil shouted. “Soon as they finish up over there, we start playing “Love Don’t Live Here,” “Do Whatcha Wanna,” and “Listen to Me,” back-to-back, just like in band room. Got that?” They stared at him sullenly. Most had never held a horn before the start of the school year. Teaching kids to play horn, though, was the easy part. Teaching them to arrive on time, to practice, to join something bigger than they were—that was the challenge.

  Mr. Jones’s right arm slashed down, ending a great tune, “Purple Carnival,” with a blast. The McDonogh stands erupted in cheering. Wil raised his arms, ran his eyes over each child’s face, counted off, jerked his arms, and was practically knocked backward.

  Sound boomed out of the Reed band in waves he could feel against his tunic. The kids weren’t only blowing with their mouths, they were bobbing back and forth, pushing the music through their horns with their whole bodies. And tight! Every rest was crisp, every beat precise. Some of them had their eyes closed. All of them were lost, utterly lost, in the music.

  They slid sharply from “Love Don’t Live Here” to “Do Whatcha Wanna” to “Listen to Me” and finished with an explosion of sound. The stands went wild. People jumped to their feet, waving their arms. The kids wiped sweat from their faces and gave each other weary high fives. Proud smiles dawned across their faces. Da clapped, laughing. Wil raised both fists.

  He pivoted like a soldier on a parade ground and walked onto the gridiron. He hadn’t seen Mr. Jones in a decade, but the man loping toward him in a tall, cylindrical hat had hardly aged. His eyes shone. “Your band is awesome,” he said, grasping Wil on the upper arms, slamming him on the back. He leaned in close. “You blew my band out, just like you said in eighth grade!” He reared back, laughing, holding on to Wil.

  Wil’s throat constricted and his eyes sprang wet. “You remember that?”

  “I never forgot.” Mr. Jones’s eyes streamed tears. “I’ve been looking forward to this day as much as you have.”

  BELINDA JENKINS

  THE DREAMERS BAR

  1996

  Belinda took a sip of her drink, made a face, and yelled over the thumping music, “What?”

  “He’s cute!” Robin leaned across the table.

  Belinda shrugged and glanced at the man at the bar, who was looking their way. Her cousin Stevie was trying to keep Belinda from slipping back into her bookish solitude now that she no longer had a husband. He was constantly urging his wife, Robin, to take Belinda out and f
ix her up. It was a nuisance for Belinda. Between work, school, and the girls, she didn’t have much free time, or much energy. And the last thing she wanted, really, was another man. But she loved Robin, and Robin said thirty was too young to retire from the scene. If God had wanted her to be a nun, he would have birthed her into a Creole family from across the canal.

  “We been through this,” Belinda shouted. “Every guy you find is either married or has a girlfriend.”

  “How do you know?”

  “When they give you a phone number and it’s one of those cell phones, you know. You find me a guy that gives me his home number, I’ll listen.”

  Belinda glanced at the man by the bar. He raised his glass and smiled at her. Robin nudged her.

  Belinda looked up at the man and smiled. He slinked over and held out his hand.

  “They call me Snooker,” he purred. This, Belinda thought as she rose to dance, is so silly.

  JOYCE MONTANA

  VILLERE STREET

  1997

  The sun was sinking over St. Bernard Avenue, casting a salmon-colored light across the small, raised houses of North Villere Street and the crowd in front of number 1633. “When Tootie Montana started masking fifty years ago, the Indians was killing each other!” Fred Johnson cried in a high, clear voice. “Tootie taught us a new way to battle: with pretty. He said to the world, ‘I’m going to bust your ass with this suit!’” The crowd laughed and applauded. “But pretty is about more than a masterful piece. It’s about escaping the sense that’s been bred into us that we’re ugly niggers.” Fred was light skinned and sturdy, with a way of talking about tradition that raised bumps on Joyce’s arms. He was one of the best of the young men coming up, not only spy boy for Tootie’s tribe, the Yellow Pocahontas, but also a founder of the Black Men of Labor Social Aid and Pleasure Club.

  Tootie sat next to Fred on a straight-backed dining room chair, still in the pants, moccasins, and braids of his white suit, but without the enormous apron and crown in which he’d walked ten miles. Tootie’s suit had been perhaps his most beautiful ever, but at seventy-five years old, walking all the way to Washington and La Salle and back had taken it out of him. A banner hung from the porch roof, declaring this to be Tootie’s fiftieth year masking. “Appreciate this man! What Tootie Montana did was a labor of love!” Fred cried. “There have always been two carnivals in New Orleans; white people have theirs up on St. Charles Avenue, and they forced black people to have our own! But when that crown got lowered onto Tootie Montana’s head here on Villere Street, Rex wasn’t even part of the conversation!”

  Joyce spotted Bertrand Butler, an old friend from uptown who was following Tootie’s lead in reducing the traditional hostility between uptown and downtown tribes with something called the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian Council. Bertrand, a small-boned man with a neatly trimmed white beard, ear stud, and hajji cap, had worked for the Housing Authority for thirty-something years and been married to the same woman for about as long. Joyce was glad to see him here; it was another sign of peace.

  Drumming and chanting swelled from the direction of St. Bernard Avenue, and people turned, squinting. Here came Darryl in a huge white suit with half a dozen friends behind him, banging their tambourines. Darryl had done something nobody had ever seen; he’d built his suit around a theme—King Tut. A gold-and-blue head of the Egyptian boy-king rose from Darryl’s crown, another from the long-plumed staff he carried, and little King Tuts repeated in the beadwork all over his crown, down the front of his apron, and on his shins. Mouths had dropped open all day as Darryl passed. He’d taken Tootie’s craftsmanship to a whole new level.

  Fred Johnson stretched out an arm. “Here comes the new chief of the Yellow Pocahontas! Tootie Montana is handing it off to a new generation, to his son! Appreciate this man!”

  Darryl came through the crowd, smiling tiredly, letting friends inspect the tiny beadwork Tuts. His chanters helped him out of the crown and heavy apron; Joyce came down and handed him a bottle of water. He walked tiredly up the stoop and squatted next to Tootie, who looked at him sideways. “I had a lot of other people in line to be chief over you.”

  “I know that.” Darryl nodded.

  “I took a chance of people getting angry with me.”

  “I appreciate that.” Darryl took a sip of water but kept his eyes on Tootie.

  “They’re not my son.”

  “I know.”

  After a while, Tootie stood stiffly and walked inside, the glass storm door banging shut behind him.

  Joyce touched Darryl’s hand. “He loves you.”

  “He loves me as a son,” Darryl said, “but as an Indian, I don’t know.”

  “Your suit was beautiful; everybody says that.”

  “Thank you.” Darryl smiled his wise, sad smile. “But it doesn’t matter what they all say. I’ve never heard Daddy say, ‘You’re pretty.’”

  “He made you chief.”

  “He didn’t say I was pretty.” Joyce shook her head and frowned. We can’t quite get over, she thought. That Tootie made Darryl chief of the Yellow Pocahontas made her heart full, but they couldn’t quite get over. She found Tootie hunched over a glass of garlic water in the darkening kitchen.

  “Why don’t you tell Darryl how pretty his suit look?” she asked.

  “That King Tut suit come out of a book,” Tootie said, driving a knobby forefinger into the tabletop. “It come out of someone else’s head. He didn’t draw that book, so I can’t give him no credit.”

  ANTHONY WELLS

  My brother Roger, he’s a hustler. Had him a house on Dell Street, in the Goose. Guy come to the house, want some girl, want some drugs, Roger, he know where the drugs is, where the girl is, so the dude give Roger the money to go get it, then he smoke it up, do it up, at Roger’s house. Roger would provide that service. Roger, man, he’s smart. He’s like a giant squid with eight tentacles.

  Crazy-looking dude, too, Roger. One time a roof jack jumped back on him and knocked out his four front teeth. They give him new ones, but then he put a piece of pizza in a microwave and got it real hot. He took one bite and them four teeth came right out. After that he said, “Fuck it,” and let them be.

  Tell you what happened one time, though. Roger got it going on in his house with the girls. Came a knock on the door, Roger opens, and this dude Peanut shoots him, BAM, BAM, BAM, with a .38. Roger’s in the hospital and he’s like, “Why the fuck he do that?” Little dude Peanut came right there to the hospital and apologized. Said he was trying to get someone else. Roger let it go, but I’ll tell you, man, if he hadn’t apologized, Roger would have apologized for him. You feel me?

  One Valentine’s Day we were at my cousin Mae’s having us a card party. Lights go off, and these guys come in shooting. Seventh Ward dudes; got hoods and masks on. Two guys died—Edward and Butch, Mae’s boyfriend. I got hit twice in the upper right chest. Twice in the back. Here, man. Look.

  Didn’t want to go to Charity, because that’s where the police look for you. A lot of people get killed in Charity. I went to Methodist on Read Boulevard. My uncle come in and say, “The paper said you can identify the perpetrators.” Well, that’s a death sentence. I snatch the IVs out my arm and I’m gone. Got me a .38, and I’m hanging on my porch, cousin Jerry changing the bandage on my back, putting gauze in there. Sunday or Monday, I’m walking down the street, the police see me, and I can’t move fast enough ’cause I’m all fucked-up. They got me with the gun in my pocket. Some guy had been shot with it. I should a knowed better, but I’d rather get caught with it than without it.

  Charge was aggravated battery and possession with intent to distribute, and they sent me to Angola. Nothing but killers in there, man. Nothing but alligators and sharks. Dude say, “I got your back,” he wants something. Don’t ask nothing from nobody. Don’t do nothing for nobody. That’s how you get by. I was planting fucking carrots for seventeen cents an hour. That deals up to about thirty dollars a month. Got a little store there. If you got
money on the books, they look it up. Coffee, sugar. Bugler is low, so you’re better rolling your own. Potato chips are twenty-five cents a bag. You can get a box of Little Debbies. Honey buns. Mayonnaise, mustard, squeeze cheese. Envelopes. Got to be careful, though. If you go to the doctor and you got money on the books, they take it out your money. You’re supposed to get twenty dollars at Christmas, and if you owe money at Christmas, you don’t get shit.

  What you don’t want to be doing is eye-fucking the guards. It’ll be like, “What’s wrong with your face, boy? What’s wrong with your eyes?” They’ll put you in the Hole for looking—for thinking—like you might kill him. You got to be all, “I’m just waiting to get started on my day, sir!”

  The Hole is a little tiny cell, like a damn closet. No TV, no reading materials except the Bible, no smokes, no candy. After breakfast chow, you got to throw your mattress out; the only time you get it back is when they cut the lights off at night. No shoes—they give you fucking thongs. And a black-and-white jumpsuit, like a zebra. It’s hot—no fans, no air-conditioning. What it is? It’s like Cool Hand Luke. “I got my mind right, boss!” It’s like an invisible whip; you can’t see it but you feel it.

  WILBERT RAWLINS JR.

  BATON ROUGE

  1998

  Theodore Jackson exited Interstate 10 and wended his pickup through the unfamiliar streets of Baton Rouge. His gray beard was neatly trimmed. He wore a pink shirt, a blue diagonally striped tie, and a pin-striped suit with wide lapels that emphasized his rock-solid shoulders. Wil had never seen Mr. Jackson dressed so fine.

  Mr. Jackson had just saved his career. Wil had put the pine across the ass of one of his band kids at Reed, and the girl’s parents had tried to get him fired. Wil still couldn’t believe it. Everybody knew a certain kind of child needed a lick or two with the board to restore focus. Wil had never been cruel about it. The kids themselves didn’t mind. A couple of good licks was quicker, kinder, and more effective than suspension or putting a child out of band. All that did was leave an already troubled soul with even less supervision. Lots of parents had called Wil to thank him for whipping their child. Some had called to beg him to do it, especially the single moms intimidated by their teenage sons.