* * *
He hadn’t run this fast since the night Bailey killed the blond detective. He made St. Claude within the span of a heartbeat. Amazingly a motor was approaching in the uptown lane, one block away. The driver was a white man in a suit and bow tie, with a stern mustache and disinterested eyes. He took one glance at the gesturing Negro and motored on. No sooner had he passed than Isadore spotted in the downtown lane another automobile. He sprinted across the neutral ground and into the road, waving his hands over his head. The motorist honked his horn but Isadore refused to budge. The car sputtered to a stop, the engine belching. Isadore, shielding his eyes from the headlamps, ran to the driver’s side, where he was greeted by a young man in a bowler thrusting a pistol out of the window. Beside him a young woman cowered.
“Don’t try it, boy!” yelled the man. “You let us go in peace.”
Isadore raised his hands. “Sir, my wife is having a child. We need a ride to Charity. Please, take pity—”
The car accelerated, clouding Isadore in exhaust and dirt. He was unable to make out the man’s parting obscenity but got the general picture.
Not another automobile or carriage was in sight apart from a Leidenheimer wagon too far in the distance, headed uptown. He could run into the Marigny and see whether a motor or carriage was parked in front of a house and try to rouse its owners. But he was less likely to get a ride than to get shot. No streetcar route was within walking distance and the St. Claude jitneys stopped running at nine. Their plan had been to use the carriage belonging to their neighbor Harold James, a driver who hired himself freelance to Uptown clients, but he worked on weekend evenings. Harold had jokingly warned Orly that she should make sure not to let her water break between the hours of 7:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. on a Friday or Saturday. The joke wasn’t funny then and it wasn’t one bit funny now.
A wagon appeared at the corner, pulled by a half-asleep mule. Isadore set off in a flat sprint. He would jump on the mule’s back if necessary. He would throttle the driver if necessary. If necessary he would kill him.
“Get in, boy!” shouted Sore Dick, pulling the reins.
Isadore leaped onto the footboard.
“Sis Pinky said we could use her delivery dray,” said Dick. “She saw that Miss Daisy would’ve kilt her if not.”
“Go. Fast.”
“Mule isn’t for fast. But it beats walking.”
Isadore flipped the door handle and climbed into the carriage. Orly was alone, her head in her arms.
“Tell me,” he said.
“The pains are coming regular. I can’t really figure the time. Maybe four minutes apart.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s not good. It’s not bad. But it’s not good.”
“It’s happening, though?”
“She’s coming. And none too soon.”
“Heavens.”
“Don’t be nervous.”
“I’m not, baby. We’ll be at Charity in no time.” But he knew that between now and then, and between then and forever, an infinity of bad things could happen. What made it especially bad was that he had no idea what most of the bad things were.
Reading his mind, she said, “If anything happens—”
He didn’t let her finish. “Only thing that’s going to happen is we’re going to have a beautiful baby. But not until we get to the hospital.”
The mule’s hoofbeats were painfully slow, methodic, indifferent.
“If anything happens,” said Orly, “I want you to know I’m proud of you.”
“I couldn’t even find you an automobile.”
“You made big sacrifices for me. For our family. It’s tried on you.”
“You made all the sacrifices. Between the Tiltons and my music nonsense—”
“Don’t call it nonsense.”
She squeezed his hand hard. He thought it was a gesture of endearment, but she kept squeezing until it felt his hand would break.
“What? What’s doing?”
“It’s happening.” She arched her body back in the seat, gritting her teeth.
“What do I do?”
She shook her head. He reached to wipe sweat from her brow. She pushed his hand away.
“Y’all good back there?” called Dick.
“I have no idea,” said Isadore.
“You a real tough baby now, Miss Orly! We’re about there.”
She grimaced, shaking her head.
“It’s bad,” said Isadore.
She nodded.
“Can you credit it—the Cosmo?” called Dick.
“What?”
“The Cosmopolitan Hotel!”
“Tell that fool,” said Orly, through her teeth, “to shut up and drive.”
Isadore sat beside her, as helpless as the sky. He promised himself that he would throw his cornet into the Mississippi if only Orly would stop hurting.
“There,” she said. “It passed.”
“You sure?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll tell you when it gets bad.”
It got bad seven more times before they reached Charity Hospital. Dick ran inside to get nurses, a wheelchair. The streetlamp illuminated a vein throbbing thickly in Orly’s forehead.
“I need something strong,” said Orly.
“Squeeze my hand if that helps.”
“Oh, baby. That doesn’t come close to helping.”
Sore Dick was back, his chest heaving. “They ain got any more wheelchairs. And they ain got any nurse or doctor available. Everyone’s busy with the flu patients. Asking if we got anyplace else we can go.”
Orly growled. Isadore had never heard her growl.
“This is our stop,” said Isadore. “Help me, Dick.”
It was oddly quiet in the lobby atrium. The desk attendant shook her head as soon as she saw them, Orly in the middle, her arms around the men’s shoulders.
“How long between contractions?” asked the attendant.
“I don’t know—four minutes?” said Orly. “It’s been coming faster, though.”
“You have time. I’d go to Presbyterian if I were you. We’re chockablock in here.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” said Isadore. Orly squeezed his arm. “We’re going to the birthing ward and I’m going to deliver this child myself if I must.”
“Tell ’em, Iz,” said Dick.
“Suit yourselves,” said the attendant. “The Negro women’s department is next door. Third floor.”
“What are you fools waiting for?” said Orly.
After another set of contractions in the stairwell they reached the ward. They emerged into a miasma of coughing and expectoration and rotting food. In the yellowish electric light they could only make out writhing limbs. Bodies lurched out of the shadows, lying in the cots and on the floor between the cots, in every configuration of agony and derangement. While Orly leaned on Dick for support, Isadore gathered discarded blankets that feverish patients had thrust to the floor and made a nest of them against the wall. Orly declined to sit on the blankets. She was no longer there, not really. Her voice was unfamiliar and it took Isadore a moment to realize that she was not groaning or asking for anything but singing, slightly out of tune, an old folk song:
Sauté crapeau, to chieu va brûler
Prend courage, li va repousser.
Dansé Calinda,
Bou-doum! Bou-doum!
“What’s that mean?” said Sore Dick.
Orly, ignoring Dick and everything else, kept singing.
Mo té ain négresse,
Pli belle que Métresse.
Mo té vole belle-belle
Dans l’armoire Mamzelle.
Dansé Calinda,
Bou-doum! Bou-doum!
“Something about a bullfrog,” said Isadore, thinking, praying, begging: if the pain ended soon and the baby survived, he would work two jobs the rest of his life. He would never raise his hand in violence against another man. He would never again see the inside of a tonk or hotel cabaret.
Orly paused, pressing her head against the wall, before resuming her song. She urged Calinda to dance even as Isadore went screaming for a doctor and Sore Dick ran downstairs to check on Sis Pinky’s dray, even after a physician finally arrived, trailed by a nurse carrying a tray with forceps, tenaculum, hemostat, perforator, syringes, and a vial of cocaine solution.
Dansé Calinda,
Bou-doum! Bou-doum!
Her voice grew louder, the words becoming inarticulate. It could not be called singing anymore but had become a kind of sacramental chanting, which she kept up even as she arched her back and her hips began convulsing, even as the physician injected cocaine into her perineum, even as the doctor made a slight incision and, with a final spasm, the tiny eyes emerged, followed by the nose and the grimacing mouth. The mouth was the last thing Isadore saw before turning away and Orly was still singing, her voice louder even than the baby’s wailing:
Bou-doum! Bou-doum! Bou-DOUM!
MARCH 23, 1919—THE GARDEN DISTRICT—THE INDUSTRIAL CANAL
Boys were playing baseball in Laurel Street, but none looked anything like Giugi. The street game had evolved since he was an urchin, when they had used a decapitated broomstick and wrapped their black stockings around the hard rubber balls that sold for a penny at Mackey’s General. Giugi returned home with dirty feet and remorse in his face, understanding that it would have been cheaper to buy a new ball than ruin yet another good pair of stockings. He possessed a sense of guilt then. Today on Laurel Street the boys used actual baseballs and a real wooden bat; many wore gloves. Some weren’t even Sicilian. In the last decade the neighborhood had diluted. Here was a redheaded Irish boy, a Chinese, an Arab. The boys once spoke in an English-Sicilian pidgin but today even the Italians spoke straight American. No, Giugi wasn’t here at all.
“How is your head?” asked Raymond. “Isn’t giving you any pain?”
“Go to the next site.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“It is the same as driving to the Industrial Canal, only you continue on St. Claude over the bridge. Then left on Flood.”
“Yes, ma’am. I recall from taking Mr. Vizzini and your son upon a time.”
Good, reliable Raymond, driver and gardener, who compensated for his general dimness with his mastery of geography and geraniums, streets and strelitzia. He was working hard to project an attitude of carefree enthusiasm. He did not understand what she was after. Perhaps in the hope of eliciting information from her, he had begun to speak cavalierly. The comment about Sal and Giorgio, for instance. Raymond had figured out that their excursions had something to do with her family, but he did not understand what. She didn’t mind Raymond’s confusion. He was smart enough, and loyal enough, not to pry. Lizzie must have warned him against asking stupid questions: Mrs. Vizzini was not quite herself these days.
No, she thought, chuckling to herself. She was not.
“Ma’am?” Raymond glanced in the rearview mirror.
“Oh, nothing. I’m just admiring the beauty of this spring day.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, in cheerful bafflement. “It’s the kind of beautiful makes you laugh just to be alive.”
She hoped it augured well, for yesterday’s rounds had been a failure. Giorgio, she concluded, was hiding. She had not found him in the Upper Pontalba Building, where he kept his apartment and osteopathy office; Rosie’s old sporting house on DeSoto Street; or the dozen or so bars and grocery stores on his old collection route. The men and women they did encounter in those places avoided speaking with Beatrice or feigned ignorance. Overnight, however, the ticking of Sal’s grandfather clock had wound her sleepless thoughts into a tight geometry, and the logic came to her. Of course Giorgio would not turn up in those places. He might as well turn himself in to the police or present himself at her front door. But it was just as unlikely that he would have fled New Orleans. Even at the height of the Axman scare, when the entire city was on alert and cops pulled men off the street at the slightest suspicion, he had remained in town. The most logical explanation, the grandfather clock told her, or perhaps Sal himself communicated through the clock’s machinery—the most logical explanation was that Giorgio had sought out a place he knew intimately, but where he would not expect to be seen. He would have gone, in other words, to one of the places he loved as a child. No member of the New Orleans Police Department knew those places. Only his mother did.
Raymond piloted them out of the old neighborhood. They passed the one-bedroom house on Josephine Street that Zio Zo, who had preceded them to New Orleans, had rented for Sal, Beatrice, and Giugi upon their arrival on the SS Montebello. Sal had marveled at the central stove, the galvanized tub left behind by the previous tenants and, in the dirt backyard, the cypress cistern that collected rainwater running off the roof. But Beatrice now saw that it was smaller than the guest cottage on First Street where she lodged Lizzie and Raymond. The house itself, if not quite dilapidated, was nevertheless faded—the paint cracked, the window clouded with dirt. Perhaps it was only memory that made the house vivid. Everything seemed more vivid then: the scent of magnolia, the camphor pouches you wore around your neck like a vampire hunter during the yellow-fever scare, the twigs Giorgio bought at Chink’s Oriental that, when lit, gave off fumes of cassia and jasmine. The milkman delivered his brimming pail at six in the morning; the baker, his face spectral with flour, at seven; the grocery boy dropped off the tomatoes and peppers at four in the afternoon. At six the coal train gusted smoke into the living room if you forgot to close the windows in time. When Giorgio came home with a sooty face, she removed with the pointed edge of a dampened handkerchief the cinders from his eyes—his large eyes that, if not entirely innocent, were at least trusting.
Sal took him on Saturdays to Bayou Bienvenue. It was not unusual for them to come home with a wagon full of king mackerel, bull croaker, and black jewfish the size of Giorgio himself. Sometimes they stayed the night at a camp belonging to one of Sal’s fishing friends. It was swampy country, dense with shadows and blackness. What better place to hide from civilization? What better place to hide from one’s mother?
At Sisters Street a security guard stood before a wooden barricade blocking the steel bascule bridge that passed over the Industrial Canal lock. He waved his arms. “The bridge ain open for automobile traffic.” He leaned into the driver’s-side window. “If you want to go to St. Bernard, you’ll have to take Burgundy.”
“Hello there, Arnold.”
“Mrs. Vizzini! I didn’t see you.”
“I wondered, Arnold—have you seen my son? Giorgio?”
“Ma’am, I have not.”
Two other men approached—the bridge engineer, a short man with nasty, bent features and a rabbity gait, trailed by his assistant, a cherubic young man whom Beatrice had never heard speak.
“Not today?” asked Beatrice. “Or not recently?”
The guard looked uncertain. “Not for some months, I’d hazard. Not since he was overseeing the dig, ma’am.”
The engineer poked his face through the window. Raymond decorously withdrew.
“Sightseeing expedition, Mrs. Vizzini?”
“What are you boys doing out here on a Sunday?”
“Final-checking the bridge, ma’am,” said the engineer. “It’s about set.”
From their ingratiating attitude she concluded that news of her dismissal from the Canal Board had not filtered down to the rank and file. “Have you got the drawbridge working correctly?”
“Me and Ernest here are just running some final tests on the counterweights, ma’am. But it’s just about ready to go.”
“You haven’t seen Giorgio, have you?”
“Mr. Vizzini? Can’t say I have. Ernest? You seen Mr. Vizzini?”
The assistant shook his head.
“I reassigned him to another project,” said Beatrice. “But I wondered if he ever passed through. To admire the work, perhaps.”
The engineer and the guard exchanged a look that Beatrice could not i
nterpret.
“Plenty of folks come to marvel at the canal,” said the engineer. “It’s a treasure you’ve given New Orleans, Mrs. Vizzini.”
“I’m glad that the deserving people of this great city are able to enjoy it.” She savored the flavor of the old magnanimity. To shield her pride she glanced down at her hands. The gold rings sparkled so brightly they nearly brought tears to her eyes.
“Say, would you like to try it out? The bridge?”
“If it’s safe,” said Beatrice. “Raymond, do you think you can make it?”
“Yes, ma’am. If it’s safe.”
The engineer clapped the door and the men followed him to the barricade. The guard and the assistant lifted either end of the barricade and carried it off the road.
Raymond mashed the starter and they rolled over the steel. Beatrice glanced back once; the men waved. She thought she could see the guard muttering behind his hand to the engineer but they were soon obscured by the rising dust. On one side of the bridge she could see down into the lock, which linked the canal and the river; on the other the canal widened to the point at which it would meet the Mississippi. When the final plugs of land at either end of the canal were dynamited, the project would be complete. Lake would meet river. The great dream would be realized. But it wasn’t really her dream anymore, was it? It was Rudolph Denzler’s dream. It was her nightmare.
Raymond turned left and they drove along the canal. The bright meadow that Hugs—poor Hugs—had shown her that spring day in his motor truck was a moonscape of sand, mud, cement blocks, twisted fencing, and rusting machine parts scattered like limbs on a battlefield. The cows had long ago been converted to steak and leather. The pelicans, wild turkeys, and snipe had vanished. Beyond Florida Walk, where another bascule steel bridge was under construction, they drove through a barren expanse that a year earlier had been an ancient cypress swamp. The air was noticeably cooler here, and the soil richer, the color of dark chocolate. The bayou materialized in the distance. Its few remaining stands of cypress were the only vegetation visible in any direction. Raymond turned right at the outlet and stopped beside the excavator that had been used to cut a passage into the canal’s turning basin. The roughed-up country felt familiar. An excavator had devoured her too, leaving wreck and ruin, or at least a void.
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