Arrival (Part 5)

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“When I used to skip school we would walk the river front, cause it’s shorter. It don’t seem it, but you walk that river front all the way to Canal street it’s shorter than going up St Claude or something. You know? And we played ball and everything. Almost every Monday in football season we’d skip and go downtown. Just a bunch of stupid asses, I guess that’s what we were, really. You know? But uh, that’s how it was, you know? Did I tell you when I was a kid, son, trust me. We grew up poor. I mean dirt poor. Seven cents streetcar fare and you got four transfers with it for the seven cents. And that’s a fact. It was sevens cents for many many many years. Man, I could tell you stories. You know? And you say, ‘old man, he’s lying,’ and I’m not lying. I don’t have no reason to lie. You know? It’s the truth. Sometimes I can’t believe it. I tell my kids, they laugh at me.

“Ah, here we are. 2400 block of Royal. That’ll be 50 dollars.”

The trip had been so entertaining; I decided to give this old man a 100 dollar note. He started to get some change out. “Keep it, you seem to be a good man.”

“You sure? I mean, I’ll take it, but you know?”

“Absolutely, It was worth a bit of good company.”

“Alright, well you enjoy the city. If you need any more rides you go ahead and call me up.” He said handing me a business card; I took it, got out and closed the door. He drove off slowly.

As I exited the car, the air hit me like a wall of dank misery. It was unseasonably hot, well for what I would consider the season. I was a born and raised northerner, where seasons were always mild, except for the few freak occurrences. Winters that were extra cold and snow filled, summers that were so hot you could cook an egg on the sidewalk. But here, it felt like it was hot all the time, hot and humid.

I looked around me for the first time. Really looked. This city was amazing. It was all falling apart and decaying, but every house had a decently new coat of amazing vibrant paint. Not the traditional house colors you’d see in any other suburb or city, with their drab browns, grays, whites, and the occasional powder blue, or light yellow. No, here every house was a mixture of colors that would excite you. Purple with bright yellow shudders, greens, pinks, reds, and every other color under the sun. It had a certain whimsical feeling about it.

I walked up to the address that Howard had given me and knocked on the door. I had no idea what to expect. I wasn’t sure or not if Howard had already left, and what arrangements he had made for my arrival. An aged black woman opened the door. She stood much shorter than me, but perhaps that was just her age, years of gravity and life pulling her down. Her face was a mass of lines that went in every direction.

-V-

Read Part 6

Arrival (Part 4)

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I got into the cab and looked out at the airport as we left.

“How long is this going to take? And what part of the city am I going to?” I pondered out loud.

“It’s ‘bout a thirty minute ride, and you’re going to a real nice part of the city. Bustled right up next to the Quarter. It’s right next to the Tremé. Ain’t it funny how cities work. One street like Saint Claude separates a decent neighborhood like the Bywater from a pit like the Tremé.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, I tell you what, I’ve been in this city my whole life. And it’s poor over there, but they live better than a lot of poor people do, believe me. ‘Casue uh, I used to collect for the loan company years ago and I’ve been in some of those projects, man. The people, They just didn’t have nothing. Sometimes I wouldn’t try to collect, I’d leave them a dollar if I had it to buy something for their kids. It was that bad. I was born back…

“I’ve been doing this 40 years, so it’s been, quite a while back. In fact the projects is all torn down I think. But we had a bunch of projects here when I was a young man. But most of them were white back when I was a kid. Cause uh, New Orleans was probably 85 or 90 percent white. You know?”

As he droned on I found myself staring out the window at all the flat land with random trees sticking out. It was all so green and swamp like, but still felt very dry, as if it had once been a nasty swamp that the waters had receded from and left a lush green graveyard in its wake. It gave a sense quiet serenity.

“So yeah, it’s changed. That’s what I said. It changed, I mean, but everything’s changed. We had 150 million people, 130 million when I was born in 1929, now we got 300 and something million. So, You can see right there, where you got lots of changes.”

“Yeah, the world’s gotten a whole lot crazier.” I put in.

“It’s getting it, the populations killin’ us. We killing ourself environmentally really. And we do pretty good though, considering. I mean really, You know? I still eat good, I still can take a bath every day. Got a decent house to live in. Good job.”

“You sound like you got a pretty good mind on you,” I interjected.

“Well I got good common sense, son, I guess. You know? I think that means… I don’t have a college degree, I’m a high school graduate. But in my day that was good. You didn’t particular have the money to send you to college, you were lucky to go to high school. I was fortunate to do that.”

I found myself staring now at thousands of tombs, as far as one could see. I was so unaccustomed to seeing tombs and not grave markers. It was quite overwhelming. I had heard once that they had to practice this since the water level is so high in here, that if they buried someone six feet under, the next storm would see them coming back.

-V-

Read Part 5

Arrival (Part 3)

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The day my boss called me into his office to let me know I had been let go was such a blur. I was only partly there. The rest, well most, of me was walking through a forest in A’s most recent story. I had already decided that I didn’t have anything more left for me in this place, and figured it would be good to go try life in a completely different setting. And where better than America’s own largest port of sin, the crescent city, New Orleans.

I called the number listed at the bottom of the letter. Howard sounded very relieved to have anyone call. It seemed that he needed to be across the country with his estranged wife for reasons he would not disclose. He wouldn’t be able to afford keeping his apartment for the next three months to the end of the lease. He also wouldn’t be able to handle the large legal fees. Strangely, for all the things he was not, he was a man of his word. If he said he would pay someone, good deal or not, he would pay. It’s rare to find people like this nowadays. It seems most people just make promises and let them go.

I looked out the window at the quickly approaching tarmac. My muscles were tensing up as hard as they could. I closed my eyes and tried desperately to push all thoughts out of my head. I felt and heard the skidding sound of tires meeting runway. I was finally able to release the armrests and open my eyes. It seems so silly to get all worked up over something I have completely no control over. The plane will land or crash irrelevant of my actions, I’m pretty sure.

We had finally landed at Louis Armstrong Airport. The plane taxied into the terminal and I found my way to the cabstand. Most people would have found their way to the baggage claim, but I had no use for this futility. I sold everything I owned. I was on a one-way trip. The full extent of my possessions were the clothes on my back, and a small courier bag with all my money I had and the four manuscripts I had received at this point.

A very old man leaned up on his cab and stared at me intently. He wore a faded plaid short sleeve shirt of green and blue, had denim jeans that looked like they were recently pressed. When he realized that I was looking at him, he mouth crooked into a half smile. I walked up to him. “Need a ride?” he asked with a raspy voice.

“Certainly do.” I responded.

“Where to?”

“Say’s here I’m headed to the 2400 block of Royal Street in the… Marigny?”

“It’s pronounced Mary-knee, and I can get you there for a good price.”

“Sounds good.”

“Don’t look like you got any bags, what you in town for?”

“Searching for something.”

“Well I hope you find it.”

-V-

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