Nine Lives

by Dan Baum

  Ronald labored up the back steps and stuck his head in the screen door. Minnie turned and faced him, holding a wooden spoon.

  “I was tired of looking at that shit,” she said. She was flushed from the heat of the stove. Her blouse was half untucked, her eyes were glittery, and her hair jumped out from her head, as though she’d been wrestling alligators. “I wanted to put a chair in that room. I wanted to see out the windows.”

  “I’ll be in soon,” Ronald said. He went back down the steps and unlocked his freestanding garage, barely bigger than a garden shed. He pulled the overhead chain to turn on the light and began moving sacks of grass seed, old paint cans, rakes, the lawn mower. Minnie had thrown out the hangers with the clothes. That was a good thing. His feet and knees ached as he stooped to pick up the first suit. He put it on a hanger, carried it into the garage, found a nail, and placed the suit on it, smoothing the velvet lapel. He went back for another and hung it on a loop of wire. He found he could reach the rafter, and hung lots of items there, leaving an open space in the middle of the room. Shoes he lined up neatly along the walls. Hats went up on the shelves beside the rose dust and weed killer. Minnie didn’t know about the new things in his car, and now she didn’t have to. They went straight into the garage. He ignored Minnie’s calls to dinner, transfixed by the sight of his tiny garage being layered with Indian suits, parading clothes, and the intricate paraphernalia that went with them: fans, sashes, flags, spy-boy staffs, crowns.

  Rashad, his younger son, came walking up the driveway. “Saw the light in here,” he said. “What you about?”

  “Mama threw out my suits,” Ronald said.

  Rashad’s eyebrows shot up; he knew Minnie’s moods as well as Ronald. He stared around at the neatly arranged suits.

  “Dad,” he said. “You got yourself a damn museum.”

  WILBERT RAWLINS JR.

  GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER HIGH SCHOOL

  2000

  Wil perched on a straight chair across from Mr. Jackson in the principal’s office at Carver High School, eager to get back to arranging. The Carver band was going up against Kennedy—Wil’s alma mater. His own little brother, Lawrence, was band director at Kennedy now, and Wil had to blow him out. What’s more, when word got around town that the Rawlins brothers were going up against each other, the football game got moved to the Superdome to hold the crowd. Wil wasn’t taking any chances. Carver had to shine.

  “Here’s what I been thinking,” he said. “Every other school has one drum major. I want eight. The one on the left with a G on his chest, the next with a W, and down the line, C-A-R-V-E-R. That would stand out!”

  “Don’t talk to me about more band uniforms.” Mr. Jackson frowned, neatening a pile of papers. “We still owe thirty-eight thousand dollars on the ones you’ve got.”

  “I know.”

  “How many are in the band now, Wilbert?”

  “Getting onto a hundred.” It was a quarter of the school, which meant that one in four kids had to show up at school every day, earn at least a 2.5 grade point average, and stay out of trouble with the police. Wilbert was convinced that cramming as many kids as possible into band was the way to save a school.

  “So how much are these suits going to cost?”

  “The drum majors? I figure with the hat and plume and everything, about a thousand dollars a suit.”

  “So, eight thousand dollars.”

  “Round about.”

  Mr. Jackson pursed his lips. Then he stood. “Come with me,” he said.

  He led Wilbert out into the main office, where a heavyset, light-skinned girl sat on a chair against the wall, her arms folded across her chest. Her stringy, straightened hair hung in front of her face like a curtain. Behind it, Wil could make out a frown hot enough to grill cheese.

  “That’s Nyja Sanders,” Mr. Jackson said. “You want eight thousand dollars for uniforms? Keep her out of my office for a week. You do that, I’ll find you eight thousand dollars.”

  “For real?”

  “For real. I have her up here three times a day. She’s got a record this long. She doesn’t let two minutes of class go by without disrupting it. She’s angry as a hornet. I am this close to putting her out for good.”

  “Fuck you,” Nyja said from behind the curtain. “I hear you motherfuckers. I know my rights.”

  Mr. Jackson looked at Wil and spread his hands. “One week,” he said, holding up an index finger and backing into his office. “Keep her out of here one week, and I’ll get you your drum major uniforms.”

  Wil walked over and stood in front of Nyja with his arms folded, a thoughtful hand under his chin, as though pondering the purchase of a used car. He knew how huge he looked. She looked everywhere but at him, darting her eyes over the front counter, the secretaries at their desks, the windows, the bench by the entrance. Finally, her eyes slowed, and glanced up.

  “Hey,” he said softly. “Let’s get out of here.” He walked out into the hall, and when he looked back, she was watching him, like an animal with its foot caught in a trap. “You want to stay here?” Wil said. “Come on. I’ll show you something.” He walked down to the band room, and she followed, a few paces behind, ready to bolt. The room was empty; it was past six o’clock.

  “Oh, fuck this,” Nyja said. “I don’t want any part of fucking band.”

  Wil walked into his cluttered office and picked up a trumpet.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Nyja called. “I don’t want any part of your fucking band.”

  Wil put the trumpet to his lips and blew softly, the opening notes of “Purple Carnival.” He stopped and listened. He had the sense Nyja was still there, so he lifted the horn and played the rest, and then “Big Four March.” Wil was himself only starting to learn the trumpet, and those were the only two songs he knew by heart, so he had to stop and look for sheet music. He came across a diagram of a marching pattern he’d been looking for and, distracted, stopped for a moment to study it.

  “Hey,” Nyja called softly. Wil started. Her curtained face appeared tentatively at the door. “Why’d you stop playing?”

  ANTHONY WELLS

  They got the best lawyers in the world in Angola. I got me alongside one; he tampered with a jury or some shit and was doing seven years. He helped me write my appeal. I filed it forma pauperis with the Louisiana Supreme Court. Didn’t even have a typewriter; I wrote it out by hand: Anthony Wells versus the State of Louisiana. Forgot all about it, to tell you the truth. Then one day I got a letter. They took away the aggravated battery and give me five years for the drug charge, so I only had to do one more year. I was almost fifty when I got out.

  It’s a nightmare to come home, man. People are grown up; people done died. Neighborhood looked different. That drug war torn a hole. All stem from the NOPD getting fifteen hundred kilos of cocaine off a barge and flooding the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth Ward with it. If you weren’t selling drugs for them, they lock you up or kill you. Used to have eleven-, twelve-year-old kids selling dope in the projects. One little dude had four or five brothers and sisters, and his mama was sick. Little dude say, “I lost the money; I got robbed.” He was using it for his family. The police killed that boy and threw him in the Dumpster. A woman seen the whole shit and she ended up dead. You got to see Master P’s video: “I’m Bout It, Bout It.” It’s all about that.

  My nerves used to get so bad I’d shake like a fifty-five Chevrolet from so much violence and shit. I’d have to get me a drink, take some pill to make me go to sleep. I was walking on glass. Finally bought me a Mossberg shotgun with a pistol grip at Bennie’s Hardware. Six-shot. Put that up under your coat they don’t know you had it.

  Up in the Goose, though, I still had my people. This little dude Peanut that shot my brother Roger, he’d be all, “What’s happening, Unk?” My nephews, they called me Unk. I loved those little guys. When I was going through my shit, those little dudes were right there. They were like, you need something, soldier? One day this little dude rolled up on
me, opened his trunk, gave me two pair of tennis shoes, some shorts. He was like, “We’re going to holler at you because you’re all right, you hang in the neighborhood, you’re a real soldier.” And that made me feel good, man. Once, when I was going through my shit? They gave me a .357 with a infrared light on it. Chrome. Did I carry it? I did what I had to do and threw it away. That’s what a gun is for, to use and not to abuse. You don’t kill a man for nothing, over a few dollars or a bottle or a woman. My dad taught me that. Jealousy and hate will get you killed. Self-pride will get you killed. That’s my daddy talking.

  JOHN GUIDOS

  SOUTH RAMPART STREET

  January 1, 2001

  It had been a wild New Year’s Eve at the Golden Lantern. John lay a long time in bed, listening to the birds outside his window. From time to time he rubbed his chin and cheeks, enjoying the smoothness. He climbed out of bed and opened his packed closet. At least half of the contents was men’s clothes. He pulled a pair of Ralph Lauren Chaps off a slacks hanger and threw them on the floor. He grabbed a button-down shirt and a handful of neckties. The more he yanked, the faster he worked, pulling hangers out by twos, by threes, by the armful. Kneeling, he rooted in the men’s shoes, flipping them over his shoulder, neither pausing nor relenting; even the beloved black motorcycle boots went into the pile. By the time he was done, he was panting with exertion. The hormones diminished his wind. In the middle of the floor lay the first fifty years of his life, in sport jackets, golf shirts, and tiepins. Even the leather: he didn’t want it. Left in the closet, with plenty of room to breathe, were the pantsuits, dresses, and skirts by which all the world would know her.

  She selected a clinging black dress with a plunging neckline that showed off her bust. Up her muscular legs she unrolled lacy-topped fishnet stockings. She worked half an hour on her hair and makeup.

  Donnie Jay was waiting for her at Mandich’s, reading the Times-Picayune and looking a little the worse for his New Year’s revels. He did a comic double take when he saw her.

  Donnie was the best. Delicate and elegant, with big features and long fingers, he was a dean of the city’s female impersonators. For him it was performance, not a full-time lifestyle, but nobody had been more sympathetic as JoAnn made her transformation. She kissed him on the cheek.

  “It’s JoAnn full-time now,” she said, banging her palms on the table.

  “No!”

  “Yes. No more John, no more switch-hitting.” The waitress came and, without so much as a glance at JoAnn, took orders for Bloody Marys and crab bisque. JoAnn said, “When Mom was sick, she looked up at me and said, ‘I’m not going to have to see you in a dress, am I?’ I remember thinking, ‘Mom, I’m standing here with my eyebrows plucked and a French manicure!’ I never wore a dress in front of her or my dad. It was the least I could do. But I made a resolution when Mom died that the first of the year, I’d be JoAnn full-time.”

  “I must say, you’ve developed quite a figure,” Donnie said.

  “Forty double-D,” JoAnn said proudly. The waitress started to set a Bloody Mary in front of her; JoAnn intercepted it, downed half in one go, and ordered a second. “On hormones, men usually get Bs, maybe a C,” she told Donnie.

  “Lord.”

  “I got good genes.”

  “And your face …”

  “Two and a half years of electrolysis. Twice a week. Touch it.” Donnie ran a fingertip across JoAnn’s cheek. “Forty-five dollars an hour. I’d schedule in the late evening, and get an extra half hour free.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Does it hurt!” JoAnn boomed, sounding appallingly like the old Hattiesburg field-goal kicker. “It’s a little bitty needle going into each follicle, one by one, an electric shot burning out the hair. That woman got off on giving people pain.” She started to wolf up her soup and then, remembering, changed her grip on the spoon and took a dainty taste.

  “What’s next?” Donnie asked.

  “The surgery! I got to get this done; it’s all I ever wanted. Hey. I gotta show you. I had to get my driver’s license renewed last week,” she said. “The lady with the camera tried to make me take off my jewelry and makeup. I said, ‘I don’t think so; I’m transsexual.’”

  Donnie laughed, covering his mouth with his long fingers.

  “She went back and spoke to her boss. Then she came out and took my picture.” JoAnn fished the license from her purse and handed it to Donnie. It said, “John Guidos” and “male,” but the photo smiling in the corner was of a woman with sharply tweezed eyebrows, bright red lips, and a plunging neckline. She was smiling so brightly it seemed the camera had caught her in mid-laugh.

  WILBERT RAWLINS JR.

  VETERANS HOSPITAL OF NEW ORLEANS

  2001

  A trail of blood ran from the bathroom back to Da’s bed.

  “It’s from my anus,” Da said, pulling the sheet up to his chin with bony hands. “I want you to see that. I want you to be afraid of that.”

  “Da …”

  “Every moment is precious, Wil,” Da said. “You got to play your cards. You got a wife now; life is serious. You hearing me?”

  Wil backed out of the room and ran to the first doctor he saw, a big, gray-haired man in a pale blue lab coat. “Come here, son,” the doctor said, pulling Wil into a corner. He put the eye thing on Wil, just like Da, and Wil felt himself shrink. “Your father has cancer,” he said. “His internal organs are no longer working. If we give him any more blood, we’ll be wasting it.”

  “But …”

  “The cancer has eat up his liver and filled it with bile,” the doctor went on. “We could put in a shunt to drain it, but that wouldn’t change anything.”

  “You could try,” Wil said.

  “We got men in here that can survive,” the doctor said. “We got to look after them first.”

  Wil looked at the floor. He was losing Da, and he didn’t know how.

  “You are the oldest son,” the doctor continued, squeezing Wil’s shoulder harder. “You got to prepare yourself, and you got to look after your mama. Your father is dying right now. He may not live to see tomorrow. You got to be strong.”

  He let Wil’s shoulder go and gave it a pat. Wil walked back to Da’s room, which smelled heavily of feces and sweat. Da was watching the Food Channel, as usual. Sick as he was, he loved the thought of cooking. He rolled his head toward Wil. The whites of his eyes were the color of egg yolk.

  “They told you I was going to die.”

  “Yeah, man,” Wil said. He felt himself starting to break up, but held it in. He wasn’t going to fall off the Wilbert Rawlins Sr. train at this point. Not now. Not in front of Da. “You fought a good one. They say there’s nothing they can do for you.”

  Da rolled his head back to the Food Channel. “You go home to that new pretty wife of yours and get some sleep,” he said without looking at Wil. “I’m going to call you in the morning. We’re going to get them to give me that surgery.”

  Wil couldn’t breathe. Da’s determination to have things his way was running up against his determination to call the truth as it lies—a collision Wil couldn’t bear to watch. He said good night and drove home. Belinda was already asleep; he got into bed beside her. It was still dark when the phone rang. The caller ID window said, “VA HOSP,” and for three rings Wil was afraid to pick it up for fear of what he’d hear. Finally, he lifted the receiver and put it to his ear.

  “I told you I was going to call you in the morning,” Da’s voice said. “You thought it was them people calling to say I was gone, didn’t you?”

  Wil couldn’t speak. He nodded as though Da could see.

  “They’re about to take me down to surgery,” Da said. “You got to pray.”

  FRANK MINYARD

  FAIR OAKS FARM

  2002

  Frank stood on the porch of his farmhouse, across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. Chickens scratched in the pebbled driveway. His horses nuzzled the ground in an enclosed field, and his
Black Angus bull lay in another, chewing its cud, massive as a rock outcropping.

  They say you never really grow up until your parents are dead, Frank thought, and maybe that’s true. Mom had been gone six months, and Frank was living the life of a choirboy. No running around with young women, no wild drinking bouts, no late nights with the boys. At seventy-three years old, he’d come to enjoy animals. They were so calm. They didn’t demand anything. They didn’t lie. They didn’t judge.

  He’d bought the farm as a weekend retreat, but found himself, lately, coming out Thursday nights instead of Fridays and staying through Monday instead of Sunday. The whooshing of the wind in the oaks was more pleasant now than trombones and the clink of martini glasses, the soft yielding of leaf-covered grass kinder to his feet than the clickety-clack of cobblestones and cement.

  The phone rang inside, and Frank lifted the receiver in the kitchen. “Frank? It’s Catherine.” They’d gone to high school together, but he hadn’t heard her voice in years. Her family was Yugoslav. Oyster people.

  “Listen,” she said. “My daughter, Nancy, moved to New Orleans not long ago after her divorce. She’s a nurse practitioner at Tulane. She doesn’t know a soul, and she’s down something terrible with the flu. Would you give her a call? She could really use a friend right now.”

  Frank agreed, hung up, and dialed Nancy’s number. The poor woman sounded dreadful. “Hey,” he said. “How about I bring you some soup? Doctor’s orders.”

  He drove across the causeway, bought two quarts of pea soup from the Plantation, and found Nancy’s address. The woman who opened the door was petite, dark haired, and sick as hell. She was in her fifties, at least two decades older than the women Frank had most recently dated. Frank, though, found himself unable to speak as she took the cartons of soup into her strong, long-fingered hands. Even sick, she was lovely, with dark hair and deep brown eyes. “Sorry it took so long,” he finally said. “I was at my farm.”