The Sound of Building Coffins (25 page)

And the
very
last thing Dropsy heard was the sound of the Pennsylvanians’ own dumb laughter—laughing at what they believed to be the misery of a poor, sick boy just sixteen years old.

Dropsy couldn’t have hoped for a cleaner getaway. He slipped Black Benny a wad of currency before helping Jim down the stairs. Benny gave up a rare smile witnessed by no one.

Upon reaching the dark Perdido Street alley outside, Jim did indeed vomit for the best of two solid minutes. In the aftermath of sickness, he wiped chin to sleeve, then brushed sleeve to hand. The night’s winnings came out of Dropsy’s pocket for a final tally in the shadows. The split was fifty-fifty—fair and square just like always.

“
Nice little take there, fellas?” The voice of Buddy Bolden startled the two. Cigar clamped between teeth, and horn in hand, Buddy’s tall frame conspired with the light of the alley’s mouth to form a long shadow.

Chapter thirty

What Dropsy Saw

“
Thought you was gettin’ busy with them girls,” Dropsy deadpanned.

“
Howdy, Buddy!” Jim grinned with yellowy eyes. “Some mighty nice playin’ tonight. Sorry we can’t stay for the next set.”

“
Reckon that wouldn’t be too safe, all things considered and such, eh Jim?” said the silhouette of Buddy Bolden.

“
Ah, hell, I’d keep on going but them fellas tapped out. Ain’t as fat as I reckoned.” Then, after a moment’s consideration. “From some place called Pennsylvania. Not much money up there, I guess.”

“
Well then,” Buddy sounded tired. “What’ll you be spending all that hard earned cash on, Ratboy?”

“
Funny you should mention, Buddy.” Jim smiled, a patch of dried vomit on his cheek cracking into a dozen smaller pieces. “I was thinking of buying that horn of yours offa ya. If yer willin’, I mean.”

“
Didn’t know you played, Jim.” Pretending he didn’t know all about Jim’s grand notions of graduating from the rat killing business in favor of musical stardom.

“
Well, if I had a horn I might.” Smile gone, vomit bits reassembled.

“
Lots of horns besides this one around, I reckon. Better ones, ’n cheaper too, I s’pose.”

“
I like that one,” Jim insisted, eyebrows nearly joined. “Ready to pay top dollar fer it, too.”

“
That makes some sense, I guess. This horn does have some history. But it’s also got sentimental value can’t be bought. Anyway, after I’m done with it, it’s already spoken for by some-other-body.”

“
Spoken for? By who?”

Dropsy had never seen such plain disappointment on Jim’s face. The sight of it made him uneasy.

“
That little boy of mine,” Buddy answered coldly. “This horn got some of his daddy’s magic in it, I guess. Some other kinda magic too, most likely. Figgered on hanging onto it fer awhile then pass it on to West one day. Least I kin do fer the little guy ’sidderin’ I left him to be raised by a whore.”

“
That horn may be worth twenty dollars brand new,” Jim angled. “I’ll give ya sixty fer it right now.” Jim’s eagerness tipped his hand. One more thing Dropsy had never before witnessed Jim do.

“
Sixty, eh? Well, that’s a mighty tempting offer, son.” Playing with the player is what Buddy had in mind. “But I’ll have to pass.”

“
Eighty?” Jim’s desperation brought Dropsy close to tears. Buddy smiled but shook his head, stroking the horn like a kitten.

“
Hunnert, then,” said Jim firmly with beaten, angry eyes. “Final offer.”

Buddy’s expression softened with a thing approaching genuine remorse—or, more likely, pity:

“
I’ll tell ya what. I’ll give you a little blow fer free. Just so’s you can see if you like it. Playin’ horns ain’t fer everyone, y’know. Might not be fer you once you have a go.”

“
Really? I mean, ya wouldn’t mind? Ya ain’t kiddin’?”

“
Normally I’d mind plenty, sonny. But truth is you and this horn have a special history—though you was too young then to remember ’bout it now. Sang to you when you was a little baby, this horn. Put a breath in yer chest and a smile on yer mama’s face. Only seems right you should have one little blow on it. Fer old time’s sake.” Buddy, unlike Dropsy, was aware of Jim’s true history. Knew that Jim Jam Jump was a stage name invented for him by Crawfish Bob, and that his real name was Dominick Carolla, son of Sicilian immigrants in spite of fair skin and blue eyes.

“
Well, all right then.” Jim wasn’t exactly sure what Buddy was talking about, but it was true he’d felt a certain connection with this particular horn. It wasn’t just in the way that Buddy played it; there was something about the horn itself.

Reverently, Jim took the cornet from Buddy’s outstretched hand. Dropsy suddenly realized that, until this moment, he’d never seen Buddy not holding the damn thing. The man looked surprisingly thin and vulnerable without it in his hand.

Jim drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes, then: lips to mouthpiece.

The sound that came out wasn’t a note of music so much as it was a toneless scream. Jim’s fingers depressed random keys, searching for the ones that might make sense to his ear, sending a trail of dissident, brassy coughs on a choppy journey through charcoal-colored air, the sound of it lightly amplified by dull mist. Finally, Jim seemed to find a note that suited him.

The lonesome, pitiful wail of Jim’s chosen note echoed through the tenderloin. The sound went on and on without benefit of second breath. Dropsy pressed both hands against his ears to shield his mind from its brittleness, the pressure of his left hand enraging the tender ear recently punched hard by Windmill Willie.

Buddy Bolden stood expressionless, looking at his feet, knowing certain things. Jim Jam Jump was in church. In rapture. The scar of his chest was burning, the scar in the shape of a hand.

The ugliness of the note’s journey was something Jim recognized at his core, an unwelcome and damning thing, a primordial reflection in a forgotten mirror. This thing was undeniably his, though, and so he didn’t turn from it. He took it for what it was—and embraced it absolutely. Hearing the sound of your own soul can be an enlightening and satisfying thing, even if it isn’t a pretty sound.

The cornet’s howl gradually tapered and finally did end, leaving perfect quiet—except for a rustling sound.

Dropsy Morningstar: “Holy sweet Jesus, what’s that?”

Not aware till now that he’d closed them in the first place, Jim Jam Jump let his eyes fall open.

Twinkling red lights dotted the cobbled floor of Perdido Street through thickening mist. The lights were in pairs, and behind each pair was a dark oblong shadow ending in a thin, whipping tail. Among the smaller pairs was one much larger set of red dots with its own accompanying shadow. The tail of the bigger shadow wagged happily—the tail of a dog.

biggest thing I ever kilt

The sight of it put a feeling of dread in Dropsy’s stomach, a sensation of unpleasant things consumed but not yet passed—but for Jim it was a satisfying thing. It was a thing he’d made all by himself, the
biggest
thing he’d made yet. And it suggested to him the possibility of things
bigger still
.

Jim’s face was as expressionless as Buddy’s now, something in his soul shaken loose, drifting into night. Even the cherished horn of Buddy Bolden slipped from his conscious mind—its fall from his limp hand triggering a series of hollow clickety-clacks against the alley floor.

“
Careful, dammit,” hissed Buddy, bending down to retrieve the dropped cornet, whispering, “My baby. Shhhh. Poor baby.”

The sound of Buddy’s whisper brought Jim round, his eyes suddenly fluttering with twitchy double-blinks. He turned to Dropsy with flushed cheeks, “Guess I’ll see you ’round tomorrow, pardna. How’s about ten o’clock at our regular spot? Tomorrow be a bigger day, my friend.
Bigger.
”

Turning to leave, Jim strolled casual as you please down the dead center of Perdido Street, red twinkles and tiny shadows following westward.

“
Hold up, Jim,” said Dropsy. “Wait for me.”

Jim didn’t seem to hear, so Dropsy took a step forward.

Buddy placed a hand on Dropsy’s shoulder, said quietly: “No. Let him go.”

Dropsy and Buddy watched in silence as Jim disappeared from view, followed by twinkly red.

Dropsy stood blinking, single blinks, not double: “Damn, Buddy. What just happened?”

“
Nature happened, kiddo.” Ever-expressionless.

“
Nature?”

“
Listen, up, cuz.” Buddy was unprepared to venture into this conversational territory at that moment (or ever)—especially with an idiot like Dropsy Morningstar—and so changed the subject. “I want you to give yer sister a little message.”

“
Huh?”

“
Tell her I ain’t given up on her yet. Ain’t given up on my little boy, neither.”

Buddy Bolden turned away before Dropsy could think to reply. Swallowed up by the backdoor of the Eagle Saloon, off to play out the fifth set of the night.

Nighttime could be an endless thing for musicians in the tenderloin.

Chapter thirty-one

Night Whisperer

Beauregard Church had long been aware of the long, muddy trail that stretched from behind the prison to the Old Basin Canal and up to the bayou’s heart, had known about it since the days of his tenure at Orleans Parish Prison when he’d often used it to deposit the unwanted remains of prisoners who’d died bereft of other arrangements. The dark path had felt haunted to him even then, and he remembered imagining the sounds of the loveless dead wandering its length in search of last reward. But now the trail was his alone to haunt, and he haunted it well.

Ghosts were plentiful enough at Parish Prison, so it was no shock to guards or inmates when Beauregard’s huge, creaking form began appearing in its halls. The presence of shadowy figures—gliding, stumbling, sometimes flashing—through the walkways of the compound hardly raised an eyebrow in a place so wrought with terrible things, inmates and guards alike often trading ghost stories just to pass the time. Beauregard rather enjoyed being in a position to inspire such tales—and was quite pleased to have once heard an old friend identify him as “The Ghost of Beauregard Church.” The recognition gave him a sense of place.

Beauregard’s excursions to the prison had supplied the Morningstar Family with many happy dawn-time surprises over the years; various foodstuffs, tools, coal, and blankets to name a few—but more recently the prison had supplied a thing of value to Beauregard himself. After many years of paying penance, Beauregard had recently discovered himself unwelcome and unforgiven in the eyes of Typhus Morningstar—the son of the man he killed—and so decided such penance was a thing that could never be paid in full. The prison’s ready supply of morphine tablets provided something of an answer—or at least an escape from the prison of his own guilty heart.

The first tablet brought Beauregard near bliss—but along with this comfort came a hollow feeling at the center of his chest. The warm light of morphine gave him a sensation of untainted conscience, but guilt cut through bliss as a separation of body and spirit, and with this separation came an understanding that peace and emptiness may really be one and the same. He sat at the edge of orange-tinted swamp water pondering such circular thoughts as his eyes followed the lance-shaped leaves and small white flowers of alligator weed that floated at its surface. A voice broke the uneasy silence, his own:

“
Got no business feelin’ good ’bout nothin’,” he reassured himself. “This morphine like ta test ya is all. Want to make sure you can keep a hold of yer own pain, Beauregard Church. Pain’s all ya got left, old man. Gotta hang onto that. Pain is yer only reason for bein’. Don’t forget that, now.”

Tugging at his hair and beard with trembling fingers, he focused hard on the task of recapturing his heart’s former heaviness. Gradually, his conscience refilled with regretful memory, but the god of morphine insists on extremes, and so the burden of his soul grew rapidly past capacity, a
physical
thing now, his heart swelling painfully under the pressure. The bubble of remorse pressed outward against his ribs, causing tears to fill his eyes that failed to blur, the jagged spines of alligator weed only sharpening in focus.

At first Antonio’s ghost had been no more than a wisp floating up from the bog like a blue ball of lightning, speaking in throatless, unintelligible whispers. The Cajuns called this kind of light
un feu follet
—meaning “a spirit always moving.” Beauregard had heard people refer to the lights by many names over the years, including foxfire, will o’ the wisp, marfa lights, corpse lights, St. Elmo’s fire, night whispers, Jenny burnt-tail, hunky punky, irrbloss,
les eclaireux
, and
ignis fatuus
. There was even a poem about the lights by the Acadian writer Annie Campbell Huestis. Beauregard liked the poem because, in contrast to most mythology surrounding the lights, Miss Huestis’s poem told of longing, not dread: