Nora Jane (4 page)

“I’ll go over there tonight,” Chef Roland said. “We’ll get it straightened out. Meanwhile, you stay with us. There’s plenty
of room. You can have a room with Margaret Anne. You don’t have to stay with them.” He swerved to avoid a city bus, turned
onto Webster Street and resumed his argument. “Life is short, Maurice, the life of the planet may be short. We can’t let people
suffer. People suffer because of your bullshit. You’re too smart to keep on buying all that crap. I’m ashamed of you. You
had a good mind before the Jesuits got hold of you.”

“Oh, Roland, we need to have a long talk. I can’t believe I find you so full of venom. Sadness and venom. What do you have
to be sad about? We will go for a walk together. It has been so long since I’ve seen the park.”

“I go to the park all the time,” Nora Jane said. “I never miss a Saturday. There’s a grove of trees that is sacred to Apollo.
My grandmother knew the man who planted them.”

“She’s Lydia Whittington’s granddaughter,” Chef Roland explained. “Remember that time Momma took us to hear her sing?”

“I heard your grandmother sing Madame Butterfly,” Maurice said. ’A long time ago when New Orleans was a center of the arts.”

“We have a boomerang,” Matthew said to Nora Jane. “We can go throw it in the park tomorrow. You want to throw our boomerang?”

“I don’t know,” Nora Jane said. Her sadness had lessened in the presence of Chef Roland and his family. Her sadness was turning
back into rage. She remembered the real world. She was Lydia Whittington’s granddaughter. She had a reputation to maintain.
“I better go on home and see about Momma,” she added.

“You stay with us,” Chef Roland said. He turned the station wagon into the driveway and parked by the old garage. The twins
got out and took off running into the house, planning on getting in a few minutes of worthless trashy television before someone
turned it off. Betty went to look for her son Martin, who was on the baseball team but didn’t get to play very much. She was
always thinking about him when a game was going on, praying that he got to play, wondering if anyone had called him Four Eyes
or hated him for striking out.

“I think I’ll go on home,” Nora Jane said, getting out. “Thanks for letting me go to the airport with you. It was nice to
meet you, Father Maurice. I hope I’ll see you again while you’re here.”

“Let me go talk to her,” Chef Roland said. “Your mother likes me. I can talk to her.”

“She’ll be okay. She’ll be asleep by the time I get home. I’m okay. I’ll call you if I need any help. Thanks again for letting
me go with you. I had a nice time.” Nora Jane was moving away.

“Let me walk you home,” Father Maurice said. “Let me go home with you.”

“No, it’s okay. I shouldn’t have come over here. It’s all right. It really is. I’ll be okay.” She had gained the sidewalk
now. The man looked after her, not knowing what to do, not knowing where the lines were drawn in the problem of Nora Jane.

“I’m okay,” she called back. “I really am.” She waved again and hurried off down Webster Street. I am okay, she decided. It’s
all inside of me, heaven and hell and everything. I don’t have to pay any attention to her. All I have to do is go to school
and wait to get out of here. I’ll get out sooner or later. That’s for sure. At least I don’t have a bunch of brothers and
sisters to argue with. Their house is as bad as Momma’s is.

She stopped on the corner and looked down the long green tunnel of Henry Clay. Past the houses where the rich satisfied people
lived. “I’ll get rich someday,” she said out loud. “Whatever you want you get. Well, it’s true.” I’ll be leaving here before
too long. I’ll have a job and a boyfriend and the things I need. Remember what I read in that poem. Oh, world, world, I cannot
get thee close enough. Remember that and forget the rest.

I
T WAS NINETY-EIGHT DEGREES
in the shade in New Orleans, a record-breaking day in August.

Nora Jane Whittington sat in a small apartment several blocks from Jody’s Bar and went over her alternatives.

“No two ways about it,” she said to herself, shaking out her black curls, “if Sandy wants my ass in San Jose, I’m taking it
to San Jose. But I’ve got to get some cash.”

Nora Jane was nineteen years old, a self-taught anarchist and a quick-change artist. She owned six Dynel wigs in different
hair colors, a makeup kit she stole from Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre while working as a volunteer stagehand, and a small
but versatile wardrobe. She could turn her graceful body into any character she saw in a movie or on TV. Her specialties were
boyish young lesbians, boyish young nuns, and a variety of lady tourists.

Nora Jane could also do wonderful tricks with her voice, which had a range of almost two octaves. She was the despair of the
sisters at the Academy of the Most Holy Name of Jesus when she quit the choir saying her chores at home didn’t allow her to
stay after school to practice.

The sisters made special novenas for the bright, lonely child whose father died at the beginning of the Vietnam War and whose
pretty alcoholic mother wept and prayed when they called upon her begging her to either put away the bottle and make a decent
home for Nora Jane or allow them to put her in a Catholic boarding school.

Nora Jane didn’t want a decent home. What she wanted was a steady boyfriend, and the summer she graduated from high school
she met Sandy. Nora Jane had a job selling records at The Mushroom Cloud, a record shop near the Tulane campus where rich
kids came to spend their parents’ money on phonograph records and jewelry made in the shape of coke spoons and marijuana leaves.
“The Cloud” was a nice place, up a flight of narrow stairs from Freret Street. Nora Jane felt important, helping customers
decide what records to buy.

The day Sandy came into her life she was wearing a yellow cotton dress and her hair was curling around her face from the humidity.

Sandy walked into the shop and stood for a long time reading the backs of jazz albums. He was fresh out of a Texas reform
school with $500.00 in the bank and a new lease on life. He was a handsome boy with green eyes as opaque and unfathomable
as a salt lake. When he smiled down at Nora Jane over a picture of Rahshaan Roland Kirk as The Five Thousand Pound Man, she
dreamed of Robert Redford as The Sundance Kid.

“I’m going to dedicate a book of poems to this man’s memory,” Sandy said. “I’m going to call the book
Dark Mondays.
Did you know that Rahshaan Kirk died last year?”

“I don’t know much about him. I haven’t been working here long,” Nora Jane said. “Are you really a writer?”

“I’m really a land surveyor, but I write poems and stories at night. In the school I went to in Texas a poet used to come
and teach my English class once a month. He said the most important writing gets done in your head while you think you’re
doing something else. Sometimes I write in the fields while I’m working. I sing the poems I’m writing to myself like work
songs. Then at night I write them down. You really ought to listen to this album. Rahshaan Kirk is almost as good as Coltrane.
A boy I went to school with is his cousin.”

“I guess I have a lot to learn about different kinds of music,” Nora Jane answered, embarrassed.

“I’m new in town,” Sandy said, after they had talked for a while, “and I don’t know many people here yet. How about going
with me to a political rally this afternoon. I read in the paper that The Alliance for Good Government is having a free picnic
in Audubon Park. I like to find out what’s going on in politics when I get to a new town.”

“I don’t know if I should,” Nora Jane said, trying not to smile.

“It’s all right,” Sandy told her. “I’m really a nice guy. You’ll be safe with me. It isn’t far from here and we have to walk
anyway because I don’t have a car, so if you don’t like it you can just walk away. If you’ll go I’ll wait for you after work.”

“I guess I should go,” Nora Jane said. “I need to know what’s going on in politics myself.”

When Nora Jane was through for the day they walked to Audubon Park and ate free fried chicken and listened to the Democratic
candidate for the House of Representatives debate the Republican candidate over the ERA and the canal treaties.

It was still light when they walked back through the park in the direction of Sandy’s apartment. Nora Jane was telling Sandy
the story of her life. She had just gotten to the sad part where her father died when he stopped her and put his hands around
her waist.

“Wait just a minute,” he said, and he walked over to the roots of an enormous old live-oak tree and began to dig a hole with
the heel of his boot. When he had dug down about six inches in the hard-packed brown soil he took out all the change he had
in his pockets, wrapped it in a dollar bill and buried it in the hole. He packed the dirt back down with his hands and looked
up at her.

“Remember this spot,” he said, “you might need this some day.”

Many hours later Nora Jane reached out and touched his arm where he stood leaning into the window frame watching the moon
in the cloudy sky.

“Do you want to stay here for a while?” he asked, without looking at her.

“I want to stay here for a long time,” she answered, taking a chance.

So she stayed for fourteen months.

Sandy taught her how to listen to jazz, how to bring a kite down without tearing it, how to watch the sun go down on the Mississippi
River, how to make macrame plant holders out of kite string, and how to steal things.

Stealing small things from elegant uptown gift shops was as easy as walking down a tree-lined street. After all, Sandy assured
her, their insurance was covering it. Pulling off robberies was another thing. Nora Jane drove the borrowed getaway car three
times while Sandy cleaned out a drugstore and two beauty parlors in remote parts of Jefferson Parish. The last of these jobs
supplied her with the wigs. Sandy picked them up for her on his way out.

“I’m heading for the west coast,” he told her, when the beauty parlor job turned out to be successful beyond his wildest dreams,
netting them $723.00. He had lucked into a payroll.

“I’ll send for you as soon as I get settled,” he said, and he lifted her over his head like a flower and carried her to the
small iron bed and made love to her while the afternoon sun and then the moonlight poured in the low windows of the attic
apartment.

Robbing a neighborhood bar in uptown New Orleans in broad daylight all by herself was another thing entirely. Nora Jane thought
that up for herself. It was the plan she settled upon as the quickest way to get to California. She planned it for weeks,
casing the bar at different times of the day and night in several disguises, and even dropping by one Saturday afternoon pretending
to be collecting money to help the Crippled Children’s Hospital. She collected almost ten dollars.

Nora Jane had never been out of the state of Louisiana, but once she settled on a plan of action she was certain all she needed
was a little luck and she was as good as wading in the Pacific Ocean. One evening’s work and her hands were back in Sandy’s
hair.

She crossed herself and prayed for divine intervention. After all, she told herself, robbing an old guy who sold whiskey and
laid bets on athletic events was part of an anarchist’s work. Nora Jane didn’t like old guys much anyway. They were all wrinkled
where the muscles ought to be and they were so sad.

She took the heavy stage pistol out of its hiding place under the sink and inspected it. She practiced looking tough for a
few minutes and then replaced the gun in its wrapper and sat down at the card table to go over her plans.

Nora Jane had a methodical streak and liked to take care of details.

“T
HE FIRST NIGGER THAT COMES
in here attempting a robbery is going to be in the wrong place,” Jody laughed, smiling at Judge Crozier and handing him a
fresh bourbon and Coke across the bar.

“Yes, sir, that nigger is gonna be in the wrong place.” Jody fingered the blackjack that lay in its purple velvet sack on
a small shelf below the antiquated cash register and warmed into his favorite subject, his interest in local crime fueled
by a report in the
Times-Picayune
of a holdup in a neighborhood Tote-Sum store.

The black bandits had made the customers lie on the floor, cleaned out the cash register, and helped themselves to a cherry
Icee on the way out. The newspaper carried a photograph of the Icee machine.

The judge popped open his third sack of Bar-B-Que potato chips and looked thoughtful. The other customers waited politely
to see what he had to say for himself this morning concerning law and order.

“Now, Jody, you don’t know how a man will act in an emergency until that emergency transpires,” the judge began, wiping his
hands on his worn seersucker pants. “That’s a fact and worthy of all good men to be accepted. Your wife could be in here helping
tend bar. Your tables could be full of innocent customers watching a ball game. You might be busy talking to someone like
that sweet little girl who came in last Saturday collecting for the Crippled Children’s Hospital. First thing you know, gun
in your back, knife at your throat. It has nothing at all to do with being brave.” The judge polished off his drink and turned
to look out the door to where the poll was going on.

Jody’s Bar didn’t cater to just anyone that happened to drop by to get a drink or lay a bet. It was the oldest neighborhood
bar in the Irish Channel section of New Orleans, and its regular customers included second- and third-generation drinkers
from many walks of life. Descendants of Creole blue bloods mingled easily with house painters and delivery men stopping by
for a quick one on their route.

Jody ran a notoriously tight ship. No one but Jody himself had ever answered the telephone that sat beneath a framed copy
of The Auburn Creed, and no woman, no matter what her tale of woe, had ever managed to get him to call a man to the phone.