The Sound of Building Coffins Read online

  A boom and a rumble like a runaway train gave the building a good rock and moan, drawing a long crack in the ceiling near the back wall on the Basin Street side. The train kept rolling as the gust failed to pass; angry water less like rain and more like waves as it shoved its way through unimaginable crevices between brick and mortar. The hall went quiet with worry ten seconds before the first window shattered. All but one female in the dancehall let out a shriek.

  Malaria stayed quiet as a mouse. Still as a statue, staring at Jim Jam Jump, seemingly unfazed by the storm’s alarming progress.

  “Murderer,” she said under breath. No one heard this over the din, but Jim kept a close watch on her lips and saw, and so smiled. She walked towards him on surprisingly steady feet, her mind clearing of alcoholic fog as miraculously as this morning’s fog had not. Wind and wet whipped through the hall through broken glass, creating havoc and a righteous mess of the place. The band played on, their tempo picking up with the pounding of their hearts.

  “Murderer.” The word spun like a top in her mind. The cops had believed Jim’s story about Dropsy killing West and then himself, but Malaria had bought none of it. There was no doubt in her mind Jim had killed them both. She recalled a night last week when Dropsy and Jim had come by Odd Fellows to work a table of marks. The gravedigger Marcus had spoken to Jim in anger that night, had said words she’d written off as the babblings of a crazy old coot—words that turned out a warning she might have heeded. She struggled to remember those words now and found herself repeating them aloud and verbatim.

  “I got my eye on you, devil.” A flying glass chip embedded itself in her cheek. She did not flinch. “Sent here by that Voodoo witch to make my life a hell. I know you.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Jim blankly.

  “Listen, devil. I got my eye on you. Don’t think I don’t. I watch yer every move.”

  “You shut yer pie-hole, nigger whore.” Jim seemed spooked. “Keep on and I’ll be cuttin’ yer damn throat is what.” Then leaning forward so only Malaria could hear: “I’ll get away with it, too, just like I always done and will. Just like fappy tah.”

  “Look at his eyes!” Malaria shouted for the room to hear. “Don’t you see? Red as summer cherries!”

  And they were.

  A nervous fear danced in Jim’s newly reddened eyes, and so she laughed. There was no good reason behind the laugh—but she did, and the laughter was a declaration, a release—not an attack upon he who meant her harm, this fiend who’d gleefully gutted and ruined her family and her personal history, ended who she was and might have been, and done it all for kicks, but a strike upon the unfair earth itself, the earth that now reared up and tore at its own skin with water and wind and spite.

  She was alive. All this suffering and death—and now the fresh promise of more to come—and she was yet alive. And so she laughed.

  Another mighty gust pulled and rocked the building further, shattering a second window and knocking Malaria to her knees while Jim crashed sideways to the rattling floorboards. The others had already scurried to the wall farthest from the window side, huddled together in the corner near the stairs. The wind inside was driving upwards against the ceiling now, widening the crack to let a torrent of water pour down upon the dance floor. The building adjoining Odd Fellows from the rear—a decrepit bakery called Manny’s, with cribs in the back and skank apartments on the upper floors—rapidly deteriorated then finally lurched and tumbled, crashing onto Basin Street and taking the back third of Oddfellows’ down with it. A large section of ceiling broke free and sailed above them into the terrible gray sky as the brittle screams of those still inside the apartments above Manny’s harmonized dissonantly with the continuous roar of the building’s collapse.

  “Malaria!” shouted Buddy from the relative shelter of the building’s front end, terror coloring his voice. “Get yer ass over here! Stop fooling around!” The wall that Buddy cowered against held firm thus far, still maintaining a significant section of roof overhead. Malaria heard what sounded like a low rumble of applause behind her and turned to see.

  Beyond the missing section of Odd Fellows lay an ocean, the streets of New Orleans obscured beneath a floor of churning black water that rushed over the fresh rubble of Manny’s Bakery, pitching the bodies of the living and the dead with absolute equality. She wondered briefly about the fate of her friend, Gary the Gent, who she’d recently stiffed for a tip in the Eagle Saloon below. Absently, she wondered how she might endeavor to settle that tab now.

  On the floor in a daze, Jim felt a squeeze at his heart. Blood filled is head and nausea curled him sideways into a fetal position against rough wood. With his eyes shut tight he saw the stern face of his father, Antonio Carolla.

  “Time is short, Dominick,” said the face. “What you’ve become is not your fault, but you must fight the devil now. You’ve been the instrument of much suffering, but it’s not too late. You’ve only got one shot, so don’t blow it. Do right. See you soon. Jeeka bye boo.”

  Jim pulled himself up on unsteady feet, shaking off the haze of pain through sheer force of will. Along with the pain he shook out the image of his father’s eyes—and the unwelcome stain of hope they inflicted upon his soul. Muttered aloud to no one: “Stupid ghost thinks I’m bad ’cause that devil in me that one time, but I’d-a been bad whether or not. Ain’t here to blame no devil for what I am. Bein’ bad is a method done served me well and true.”

  He let the cornet slip from his fingers, the wind pulling it angrily from the place where he stood. He yanked up a loosened piece of floorboard and swung it experimentally against the wind like a bat. Focused on his prey with eyes like summer cherries.

  The floor behind Malaria had ripped away clean, the path before her currently blocked by Jim Jam Jump and his splintery board. On another day she’d have melted with fear, but not today. Fear was a thing designed for those with something left to lose.

  “My brother counted you as a friend,” she said calmly into the brutal wind.

  “I’m gonna kill ya now, and no one’ll know.” Jim smiled, but the worry in his eyes remained. “These suckers behind me about to get swallowed whole by this storm. But me? I kin swim good—just like a fish.”

  “My brother counted you as a friend,” she repeated defiantly and without blinking.

  “And I he,” said the devil immediately before rearing back with the board. Malaria closed her eyes, and so didn’t see him lurch forward—and then past.

  “Wake up, now,” said Buddy Bolden as he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her from the precipice. With Malaria safely behind him, he held up his weapon—a battered cornet—and waved it wildly at Jim’s floundering figure in the waters below.

  “I ain’t consented to the sale of this horn!” he shouted.

  Jim’s head bobbed in and out of the turbulent surf, his arms splashing wildly. His mouth opened to say something but was muffled by a low wave as the current carried him sideways to Perdido Street, then off towards Basin before the undercurrent pulled him down and under.

  Buddy followed Malaria to the front of the building where the others had grouped together in a shivering clump. She pulled Buddy’s head down to her own, kissed his forehead and said, “Thank you, my God, thank you.”

  Buddy pulled away. “Don’t thank me, Malaria. I owe your sister at least that much.” His eyes wandered briefly, searchingly. “You got no idea what I done.”

  “I always thought so poorly of you,” Malaria confessed. “I never thought that you had it in you to—”

  “If you want to thank me, just get through this.” Buddy glanced up at the deteriorating section of roof above their heads. “I’m afraid this old building about to come down altogether. Hope you can swim all right.”

  “I can swim,” she confirmed.

  Black Benny hunkered down to Buddy’s side and said with a rare smile, “Man, you sure whacked that kid good!”

  Buddy smiled faintly and lifted Malaria’s hand into Benn
y’s. “Take care of this one,” he told Benny. “She’s last of the good hearts. The last of the Morningstars.” Then he turned to Malaria. “Your father’s house likely done and gone now. But you gotta make it through this so’s you can build it back up, make some new Morningstars and go on.”

  “Okay, Buddy. All right, but—”

  “Now, if you’ll pardon me,” he interrupted, “I got some business to tend.”

  Buddy inched his way towards the precipice, staying close to what remained of the inside wall.

  “What’s he doing?” Malaria’s eyes widened with concern.

  “Hell if I know,” said Benny.

  With cornet in hand, Buddy furthered himself across the narrow remainder of floor that led to the building’s missing rear section. A cast iron spiral staircase that normally led to the roof’s railed observation deck dangled loosely from the remaining side wall, and Buddy waited for a steady gust to help carry him across before attempting the leap.

  Malaria screamed as he jumped, tried to get up and after him—but Benny held her firm.

  Buddy clung expertly to the swinging stairs without dropping the cornet, then carefully ascended to the wall’s top edge. He crawled with his chest low, snaking his way to the flat roof of the adjoining building next door. Gradually making his way back to the Rampart Street side, he crossed back over to the Oddfellows’ building—positioning himself protectively on the section of remaining roof that hung over the heads of Malaria and the others. The decorative concrete railing that framed the front of the building like a crown remained wholly intact, and Buddy braced himself against it, pulling himself up to one knee.

  The view from here was arresting. With fists of rain pelting his back, he watched helplessly as the storm ripped wood and brick structures asunder before him, nothing untouched or unharmed as far as the eye could see.

  He watched the city disassemble and drown, but felt no despair at the sight of it. What went through his mind was not, “Everything is gone.” What went through his mind was, “How long to return?” What he saw before him was an open question, not a final statement. The question itself not a mere manifestation of hope, but a realization:

  As the city dies, so the city is reborn.

  Buddy held tight to his cornet, gave her a gentle kiss. Then he remembered why he’d climbed to this precarious spot.

  “Can’t undo what’s done anymore than I can bring my family back, but maybe can have a hand in keeping things from getting any worse.” He held the cornet near his lips. “Now, if I can just remember that tune.”

  The song came out.

  The melody soared above him into the tumultuous gray, and he thought of Typhus, the youngest of the Morningstars, a man in the shape of a boy. Remembered his troubled eyes, the eternal longing in them. Buddy hadn’t known Typhus well, but he knew the meaning of eyes like that.

  He blew on:

  Jesus I’m troubled about my soul

  Ride on Jesus come this way

  Troubled about my soul

  The notes came out two octaves higher than he had intended.

  The notes held, dipped, leapt and crashed. But didn’t crash.

  Saved.

  The sky moaned angrily as the rolling tide belched up the bobbing head of Jim Jam Jump once more. The kid shouted up to Buddy, frothing like a lunatic; “Rat clap-a-tap map flap cut cat! Yeah, Buddy, I got my eye on you, got my ding dang eye all over yer sorry drunken ass! Gimme back my dang horn, you! I paid fer it fair and square! Jim jam scram hucka lucka zucka zig! Jeeka bye boo times two!”

  Buddy lowered the horn from his lips in wonder. “Well, if that don’t beat all,” he said. “The tenaciousness of that brat.” Then, for the benefit of the kid:

  “I ain’t consented to the sale of this horn, so I’m keepin’ her! Just you try and stop me!”

  The wind died momentarily, enough for Buddy to rise up on two feet before resuming play:

  The devil is mad and I am glad

  He lost one soul that he thought he had

  Troubled about my soul, Lord

  Troubled about my soul

  The waters around Jim came alight; diffused at first, then focused and gathering to a point of orange intensity directly behind him. Buddy shielded his eyes against the glare, unable to look away. From the light’s center burst the shape of a man, rising up as a phoenix from the foam.

  The able but slightly transparent arms of Dropsy Morningstar wrapped hard around the neck and shoulders of Jim Jam Jump. Dropsy put his lips close to Jim’s ear, whispered, “That’ll be quite enough, pardna,” then pulled down. Orange light blinked out entirely as the two went under. Buddy collapsed across the roof, the cornet loosely in his grasp, the thing formerly ripped from his soul having returned in force—as a lost melody is recalled in time.

  A ray of moonlight pierced the clouds, but the storm raged on.

  *

  The first of them to rise were among the cemetery’s newest residents; casualties of loose soil not yet packed down by sun and years. Less than a hundred yards from the spot where Marcus Nobody Special had cursed, threatened and prayed to the spirit of Malvina Latour, the body of young West Bolden slipped up and into the rolling muddy surf.

  The dead rose by the dozen that night and continued to do so on the morning after, their faces muddy, blank, violated, lost—but not Maria.

  Maria stayed down.

  Chapter fifty-six

  The River

  The river flows on, as it always has and will.

  Beneath bright blue sky a cloud like an immense dome mushrooms above the Girod Street Potter’s Field, formerly known as Cimetiere des Heretiques due to its Protestant history. The fishing pole of Marcus Nobody Special lies temporarily unattended, waiting. There is much to be done. The storm has made it so. So much is changed, so much the same. The search for a certain fish is interrupted but not ended.

  In New Orleans, bodies buried in the ground come up in times of hard rain and flooding. After the storm there is much work needs doing, but it is cleansing work. Long-term wounds have festered, neglected for decades, their washing now begun as there is no other way but to move forward when so much is lost. Finally to heal, to begin again. As the waters subside, bodies of the living and the half-living are mingled with those of the dead. Communities near and far have banded together to search for and retrieve souls nearly lost, those clinging to life, waiting for their turn to be recalled or sent on to reward. The dead, new and old, will be tended to later—buried, burned or sunk—and will be tended then only by family and friends, by survivors, by the ones who knew them, who loved them, who hated them, who had forgotten them, but are reminded. Never to forget again, not until their own dying time.

  This is neither the first nor the worst of the dying times in New Orleans. Nor will it be the last.

  In this city there is a long and curious relationship with death, a closeness, a delicate truce. They say in New Orleans death is so close that the dead are mostly buried above ground, that the dead share altitude with the living. Death is so close here that parades are thrown in place of funerals, parades that begin with the solemnity of a dirge only to explode into joyous send-offs to God knows where. Reminders of life’s brevity are constant here, they are in the waters that surround, waters filled with glowing lights of joy and dread, invisible but there just the same. These lights are not visible for they are music; the music not audible in the usual way for it is a touch of the soul, both human and immortal. It’s a song that begins like all melodies, with a single note. It’s a song that resolves like all melodies, with a single note. Then starting again, a circle. And so they sing. Sing while there’s time. Life is short the world over, but the truth is more acute here and so life is lived as if endless. Here is where bad hands are played for all they’re worth. Here is where miracles come up from mud.

  Marcus Nobody Special is very old and has acquired hard-earned knowledge of miracles and mud. He has long-known about the circle of the river, has witnesse
d its truth firsthand. There is a secret he has kept. He knows that in this place where death remains close there is no death at all, only rebirth.

  The river flows on. Always, always.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Can’t No Grave Keep My Body Down (Marcus Talking)

  Well, I’ll tell you since you asked nice, young fella. But truly, it ain’t no one’s damn ta-do except fer my own. Mm hmm.

  Mostly what I’ll say is this here, so listen up:

  Trouble ’round the potter’s field always start when folks get to dyin’ too quick. Come down to simple math, sonny. Too many bodies in too short a time equals bad news in the City of New Orleans.

  I suppose it’s about time someone set the record straight on all that crazy talk anyhow, seeing’s how even the damn papers never got it right. Big fancy damn newspapers with all them fancy damn edjucated reporters writing words big enough to smash out a fella’s teeth and still can’t help but make it all up. Trine to make a dollar and a dime is all. So write it down and get it straight, mister. Sharpen up that damn pencil and get it right, yessir. Mm hmm.

  Folks’ll try and tell ya I’s dead awhile.

  Like to say being dead made me crazy, made me spend not enough time working in that potter’s field and too much time on this little piece of levee looking for a certain fish. Well, I’m looking fer that fish, yessir—most always will, I guess. But I ain’t been dead yet, me. It’s fun to believe in the spooky stuff and folks like to have their fun. The truth ain’t so dern spooky a’tall, really—but plenny ugly just the same.

  I remember the day it start, the real bad dyin’ times. Yella fever times. Yessir. Walking home from the river one night in eighteen fitty-two, looped longways back to the semma-tree so’s I could pass by the cathouses on the Rue Dauphine. This a habit I been in since I done made the worst mistake of my life in breaking the heart of Coffee Maria. A mistake mostly because a sweeter, kinder, prettier little thing never did I see, but also because that same little Coffee Maria was the niece of Malvina Latour, a local hoodoo mambo in them days. I only broke things off with Maria on accounta the kinda work she be doing; laying down with other fellas in Auntie Jin’s sportin’ house. But hoodoo folk don’t take kindly to the broken hearts of their kin, no matter what the reasoning. So I figured ol’ Malvina had me marked for some mischief.