The Most Dangerous Animal of All

by Gary L. Stewart

  When their money ran out, Van got desperate.

  “You know, we could earn some easy money at this motel,” he told Judy. “All the girls do it. It’s quick cash, and I don’t think it will matter that you’re pregnant. Some men really like that sort of thing.”

  Judy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You want me to sleep with men for money?”

  “It’s just until we get enough cash to get out of here,” Van persuaded her.

  “No,” Judy yelled. “I won’t do it. How could you even ask me that? I’m pregnant!”

  “I know,” Van retorted. “That’s what got us into this mess.” He stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Judy threw herself on the bed, crying. She hadn’t bargained for any of this. Van had promised her excitement. He had said he would take care of her. She thought about calling her mother, but she didn’t want to go back to juvenile hall, and she was afraid of what Van would do.

  Van was in a better mood when he returned. He had gotten a man he met to cash a bad check for forty-five dollars.

  “Get packed,” he told Judy. “We’re going to New Orleans.”

  15

  America’s most wanted couple arrived in New Orleans a few days after Christmas 1962, the gloomiest time of the year for outsiders in the City that Care Forgot. Van, using the alias Harry Lee, wrote a bad check to a man he encountered named Morris Stark, swindling enough money from the kindhearted gentleman to rent a run-down apartment at 1215 Josephine Street, two and a half blocks from St. Charles Avenue, in the city’s Garden District. This area, once home to New Orleans aristocracy, had experienced a decline during the Great Depression when wealthy landowners were forced to sell their side yards for enough money to maintain their positions in society. Cheap apartments, poorly built because money was scarce, sprouted up along all of the streets bordering St. Charles Avenue, their design a startling contrast to the architectural masterpieces next door. Poor working-class people and vagrants flocked to the area, attracted by the inexpensive rent and cheap transportation afforded by the St. Charles streetcars.

  Staying in their cramped apartment as much as possible during the day and going out for short stretches only at night, Van and Judy managed to attract little attention in this busy section of New Orleans. Once in a while, strangers would comment on Judy’s growing belly or ask when the baby was due, but Van brushed them aside, not interested in chatting with anyone unless he was trying to scam them.

  Judy tried to be happy about her pregnancy, but Van was having none of it. He could not have cared less about the impending birth of his child. Still, Judy tried to please him, cooking and cleaning and not asking too many questions when he went out alone at night, his face hidden beneath a hat. Nothing she did worked. Although he repeatedly vowed his love for her, Van belittled her swollen belly, offended somehow by its very presence.

  Less than two months after arriving in New Orleans, on February 12, 1963, I was born Earl Van Dorne Best. (I’m not sure why my father added the e to Dorn—or whether that was a mistake made by the hospital.)

  Van called William.

  “I need the money I gave you,” he said. “Judy had this damn baby, and I need to pay the hospital bill before they’ll let her go. Can you wire it?”

  “Of course,” William said, “but Van, I need you to get back here as soon as possible.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “I got arrested. They charged me as an accessory for bringing you and Judy to the airport when you eloped. I have to stand trial, and I need you to testify that I didn’t know how old she was.”

  “You know I can’t do that,” Van said. “They’ll arrest me the minute I get to San Francisco.”

  “Van, please. This could ruin my career if I’m found guilty.”

  “Sorry, man. I can’t do it.”

  William hung up the phone. He wired Van the money, but he was angry that his friend would not help him.

  Van paid the hospital bill.

  The nurses at Southern Baptist Hospital, on Napoleon Avenue, did not know how young my mother was or they might have provided her with some instruction about child care before sending her home. After elementary guidance to a girl they thought was nineteen, they had smiled and waved good-bye, saying, “You take care of little Earl now.” That had been it.

  Two weeks later, my father, out of money and finding no one he could persuade to take his checks, talked my still-healing mother into taking a job as a cocktail waitress in a bar in the French Quarter. Van befriended the owner of the Ship Ahoy Saloon, on the corner of Decatur and Toulouse Streets, across from Jackson Brewery, and lied about Judy’s age to get her the job. The bar was a favorite of thirsty sailors who arrived at the Port of New Orleans on the Mississippi River, a block away.

  In addition to the bar on the ground floor, with seven French doors that were always kept open, the establishment featured a hotel on the three floors above, where sailors could conveniently retire with the girl of their choice after a rowdy night of drinking. Loud music streaming from the open doors attracted passersby, and the bar never wanted for patrons. It was notorious for its violent clientele, with bloody noses the predictable ending to each raucous night.

  One evening after work, Judy stepped out of the St. Charles streetcar a few blocks from her home, shivering as the breeze off the Mississippi swept through her. It was early March and still cold—forty-three degrees and rainy. The skimpy outfit she wore beneath her coat, a requirement at the Ship Ahoy, did little to protect her from the cold. Judy hid her fear of the sailors well, smiling and flirting and lightly slapping overzealous hands to earn enough money to buy me formula and to keep Van supplied with the gin he needed for the Tom Collinses he now loved to drink.

  This was survival, and my mother had learned a lot about survival from Van.

  As always, Judy kept her head down as she walked. The police were still looking for them, and she worried about being recognized from photographs in the newspapers. Relief washed through her when she turned the corner onto Josephine Street. Our neighbor Charlie was outside, braving the rain to make sure she arrived safely, his fragile body silhouetted by the porch lamp. Van would never think to wait up for her—she could take care of herself. The old man, his face rutted from years spent working at the port, smiled and took Judy’s arm, leading her toward the small courtyard in the center of the building.

  “How’d you do tonight, girlie?” he asked, stopping her before she turned to walk up the stairs.

  “I made enough to buy the baby some formula, but those sailors are rough,” Judy said. “I think I have some bruises on my backside to prove it.”

  “You shouldn’t be working there, child,” the old man said. He worried about Judy. He had worried since she moved into the building with the man she said was her husband. He didn’t like Van, didn’t trust him. He could see the devil in his eyes. Charlie had lived in New Orleans all his life, had been raised with the voodoo traditions passed down through his family for generations. He knew evil when he saw it. Van scared him, and the old man did not scare easily. He had known from the minute he met them that he had to look out for my mother.

  “The baby needs to eat,” Judy responded, hugging the old man before she turned to walk up the stairs.

  When she reached our apartment, she gingerly turned the knob. She didn’t want the squeaky door to awaken my father. Hurrying over to Van’s old family trunk, which now served as my makeshift bed, she quickly pulled the heavy lid open to find me lying inside with blue-tinged lips.

  Barely breathing.

  This happened almost every night.

  She picked me up and cradled me in her arms, anxiously rocking back and forth to keep me quiet while I gasped for air, grateful that I would make it through another night.

  Awakened by the sound of the lid opening, Van watched jealously.

  Judy had dared to ask him a few nights before why he kept shutting me up in the trunk at night. “I’m
sick of hearing him cry,” Van had informed her. Judy kept silent. She knew better than to talk back to him. Van’s temper had become increasingly worse since they arrived in New Orleans, and she had seen the signs of his cruelty to me more than once.

  Blood on my nose.

  A cut on my head.

  She was petrified that Van would kill me, but he insisted she had to work. It was her responsibility to earn the money if she wanted me to eat.

  “We’ve got to get rid of this kid,” Van suddenly announced from his perch on the bed. “I’m going to bring him somewhere.”

  “You can’t do that! Bring him where?” Judy cried.

  “I don’t know yet, but I can’t take his constant screaming. It drives me crazy.”

  Judy ran into the hallway, still holding me in her arms, afraid of what Van might do. She knew she had to figure out a way to keep me away from my father. She wished things were different, like they had been before. She tried to be a good mother but had no knowledge of how to take proper care of an infant. She knew nothing about colic or burping a baby, nothing about how to prevent diaper rash or about trying different types of formula to learn what worked best. And with no money, even buying formula had become a problem. Being hungry only made me cry more, but whenever my mother reached out to comfort me, Van became angry. He couldn’t stand it when her attention was directed toward me.

  Slowly, she made her way downstairs, hoping Charlie was still by the fountain in the courtyard.

  “You okay?” the old man said when he saw her.

  Judy brushed the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand.

  “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  “That’s a fine boy you got there.”

  Judy smiled through her tears. “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?”

  Charlie nodded, putting his finger out for me to hold. “You got your hands full, huh, cher?”

  “Sometimes I just don’t know what to do about things,” Judy said.

  “Well, my mama always tol’ me, ‘Just do what’s in your heart.’ Dat’s all you can do.”

  The old man turned and walked up the stairs, leaving Judy alone with her thoughts. She sat in a chair by a doorway, staring mindlessly down the street as she rocked me back and forth. In the drizzle, beautiful flowers and foliage poked through the lamplit balconies along Josephine Street.

  At first Judy had liked New Orleans, had felt safe there, hidden among so many people. It was a lot like San Francisco—edgy and beautiful, yet ugly, too. The Vieux Carré, or French Quarter, was a striking contrast between intricate French, Creole, and Spanish architecture, with balconies dressed in lacy wrought iron, and dark alleyways where winos drowned their sorrows in bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. Scantily clad prostitutes paraded up and down the narrow streets, earning meager wages for their talents, while wealthier ladies dressed in the latest styles perused antiques stores. The stench of urine from the alleys mingling with the tantalizing aroma of spicy seafood streaming from open restaurant doors permeated the Quarter. Beauty and degradation weaved together in a splendid cacophony thirteen blocks long and six blocks wide.

  But the homes lining St. Charles Avenue, only blocks away, were part of a different and more gracious past in which huge mansions, many built in majestic Greek Revival, Italianate, or Colonial styles, with massive Corinthian columns and sprawling porches, had ostentatiously displayed the wealth of cotton moguls, politicians, and industrial tycoons. St. Charles Avenue was paradise plastered on the fringes of hell, the same hell that was filtering into Haight-Ashbury, back home in San Francisco. Judy could handle that sort of thing, even at her age. It was the hell inside her apartment that she couldn’t handle. She dared not defend me against Van’s rages, for fear that he would turn on her or, worse, leave her all alone.

  When I began stirring, Judy hurried back to the apartment to boil water to warm my bottle. Van walked up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. “You’re not mad, are you, baby? You know how much I love you.”

  Judy squeezed his hand. “Of course I’m not mad. I can’t stay mad at you.”

  She checked to make sure my formula was not too hot. “Just let me feed Earl and put him to sleep. Then I’m all yours.”

  “That’s my girl,” Van said, slapping her on her behind.

  Judy winced, the night’s bruises still fresh. She fed me as fast as she could and laid me in the trunk, covering me with the receiving blankets the hospital had given her, leaving the lid open.

  “Come get in bed,” Van commanded. “I’ve got a busy day planned for tomorrow, and I can’t sleep without you.”

  Judy quickly shucked her clothes and climbed into bed. Van pulled her into his arms and nuzzled her hair. “I’m going to make everything better soon,” he whispered.

  The next morning, Van got up and dressed while Judy was still asleep. Fumbling through her purse, his frustration rising, he jolted her awake. “Where’s the money you made last night?” he demanded.

  Judy looked at him without understanding.

  “I need cash for the train. I’m taking the baby to Baton Rouge. It’s the closest big city to New Orleans, and the capital of Louisiana,” he informed her, as if these facts were of importance.

  My mother looked around anxiously and saw me wrapped in my blanket on the floor next to the bed.

  “He will be given a good home there,” Van cajoled when he saw the stunned look on her face.

  Judy jumped out of bed and grabbed for me. “Please, can’t we keep him? I’ll keep him quiet, I promise.”

  “No. I’m sick of him. All he does is cry,” Van said, picking me up and jerking me out of her reach. “I want my life back.”

  My mother was no match for him. She knew she wouldn’t win this fight. She had known since the day I was born that something bad was going to happen. Van hated me, and that was that. She was a fugitive dependent on my father to keep her safe, and there was nothing she could do except let him take me.

  Judy turned to hide her tears as she handed him my bottle. Van refused to take it. “He doesn’t need to eat right now,” he said firmly, walking toward the door.

  My mother grabbed my pacifier and put it in my mouth, fervently hoping that it would keep me from crying. When she tried to kiss me good-bye, Van pushed her aside.

  The bang of the closing door reverberated through the room, and Judy sank to the floor, crying.

  16

  “All aboard!” the conductor of the Southern Belle yelled as people from all walks of life hurried toward the train bound for Baton Rouge. Part of the Kansas City Southern Railway, this passenger train, with its brightly colored yellow-and-red engine, traveled from New Orleans to Kansas City, Missouri, between the 1940s and the 1960s, with stops at cities like Baton Rouge and Shreveport, Louisiana.

  Van hurried with the others to reach the train station on time. It was a short walk from the apartment, about ten minutes. Charity Hospital, known to the locals as “Big Charity,” was only a few minutes’ walk past the train station, but in the early 1960s, there were no “safe haven” laws that allowed parents to leave unwanted children at hospitals, police stations, or fire stations. If you wanted to dispose of a child at that time, you had to get creative.

  “That’ll be nine dollars even, four-fifty each way,” the ticket master said. “The little guy rides for free.”

  Van paid for the round-trip ticket to Baton Rouge and boarded the train, which had been designed for passenger comfort, making his way down the spacious aisle to his seat. Other passengers had no clue that the nice-looking gentleman holding the infant was on such a dastardly mission. A few minutes later, the train pulled out of the station, and the rocking motion and the rhythmic sounds of the steel wheels upon the rails lulled me to sleep. Van held me while I napped, by all appearances a loving father as he settled further into his seat.

  As the train rolled alongside Highway 61 toward its destination, it paralleled the Bonnet Carré Spillway, built in 1937, after the Great Mississippi Flo
od of 1927. Its purpose was to divert water from the Mississippi River into Lake Pontchartrain whenever the mighty Mississippi threatened to overspill its banks and flood the soup bowl that is New Orleans. In the distance, Norco Refinery, with its smoky plumes billowing into fluffy clouds, cast an eerie glow on the dreary, misty horizon.

  Once we were past the swampland that borders Lake Pontchartrain, sugarcane fields, rice fields, and tall willows lined the tracks. As the Southern Belle approached Gramercy, the train’s horn sounded, signaling drivers to beware its massive strength. Before long, passengers could see wooden shotgun houses fronted by rickety porches where families and friends often gathered to drink beer and feast on large, simmering pots of gumbo or jambalaya.

  Our journey was almost over when the train passed the towns of Gonzales and Prairieville, the landscape here turning to marsh filled with huge live oaks whose branches, weighted with moss, hung low.

  About twenty minutes later, a voice over the intercom announced, “Baton Rouge Depot” as the train squealed to a stop.

  Van stood up, pulled me close to him, and exited the train on the west side of the station. He walked across the tracks and made his way up South River Road. My father could not help but notice the Old State Capitol, a neo-Gothic structure located on a hill overlooking the Mississippi River that is so memorable Mark Twain once wrote, “It is pathetic enough, that a whitewashed castle, with turrets and things—pretending to be what they are not—should ever have been built in this otherwise honorable place.”

  A light wind began to swirl as Van turned right onto North Boulevard. My thin blanket did little to shield me from the cool air. Looking for the perfect spot, my father passed by the State Library of Louisiana and then the police and sheriff’s departments, housed together in one building. Fallen leaves and acorns from the plentiful live oaks that decorated downtown Baton Rouge crunched beneath his feet as he walked. Reaching the top of a hill, Van could see a needle-like structure that resembled the spaceship NASA was planning to send to the moon one day. Built by Huey P. Long, the Louisiana State Capitol stretched upward 450 feet and housed thirty-four floors, making it the tallest state capitol building in the country. To his right, the Old Governor’s Mansion, home to Louisiana’s singing governor, Jimmie Davis, who had risen to fame with his song “You Are My Sunshine,” bore a strong resemblance to the White House.