The Sound of Building Coffins (39 page)

By twenty past five Malaria was stone drunk, the storm outside humming smoothly like a seashell in her ears.

“
C’mon, papa. I’m good fer it,” she said with a flutter of lashes to the bartender who’d cut her off, a dapper fellow known to regular patrons of the Eagle Saloon as Gary the Gent. “Y’know I’m good fer it, Gary.”

“
Yeah, you good, baby. But no cash, no flash. Can’t go runnin’ this tab straight up to the moon, now.”

“
Hell, Gary, you ain’t no gent.”

“
You know you love me, baby,” he laughed. “All wounds heal with time, as they say.”

A strong gust slammed something heavy against the side of the building.

“
Damn
,” flinched Gary. “Don’t sound like this shit anywhere near ta passin’.”

Malaria wrinkled her nose nervously. “Guess I should get on up for my shift.” A flash of perfect teeth. “See you in ten hours, baby.”

“
Knock ’em dead, sweetheart. Knock ’em right on out.”

“
You know it.” Malaria blew him a kiss as she staggered towards the stairs, offering a drunken ass-wiggle to make up for not having tipped. Gary knew about Malaria’s hard luck this past week and so never-minded the stiff, but he did appreciate the show.

“
Damn, baby,” he said with a grin. She smiled at the compliment.

At the top of the stairs she gave Black Benny a touch on the shoulder and a peck on the cheek. “What’s shakin’, sugar bear?”

Benny grunted. “What’s shakin’ is you been downstairs all day gettin’ yerself shitcanned and still can’t help but drag yer ass in late as usual.”

“
Oh pooh,” she deflected with a pout, as she kept on towards the bar. Black Benny grunted once more before directing a worried eye to the pounding of water against glass.

Buddy’s band was up on the platform, sans Buddy, stomping out a lowdown gutbucket gospel blues called “Don’t Nobody Go Away” for a sparse crowd of degenerates and a scattering of whores that played cards and sucked back shots, defiantly hooting like hyenas each time the storm crescendoed menacingly outside with a slam or a bang or a wail.

Buddy had tried a few other horns since losing his old one, but when he couldn’t make any of them sing or shout the way he liked he lost heart and quit playing altogether. Sitting at the bar now with an early drunk on, Buddy winced into his glass at the noise made by some kid called Tig, his replacement, chosen seemingly at random from a legion of wanna-bees by that lousy turncoat bastard Frankie Dusen. Frankie had been Buddy’s longtime trombone player, a good old pal and partner for all those years, but had taken over the band a mite enthusiastically in Buddy’s opinion. Almost like he’d been hoping for the chance.

“
Step it up, dammit!” Buddy bellowed from the bar. “I learned y’all better ’n that. Keep it poppin’. This ain’t no fuckin’ funeral.”

Frankie grudgingly obliged, stomping out a quicker rhythm till the band caught up.

Buddy spotted Malaria from the corner of his eye, turned to give her a timid smile and wave. She smiled back.

Malaria smiled back because she didn’t know Buddy had killed her sister. Couldn’t conceive of it. The cops hadn’t done much, their investigation amounting to a shrug of shoulders over another dead whore killed, presumably, by another rogue sailor on shore leave. These things happened. There’d been rumors about Buddy’s involvement, but Diphtheria’s best friend Hattie Covington had supplied his alibi—telling the cops he’d been busy fucking her six ways from Sunday on the night in question. That was enough for the cops and enough for Malaria, too. No way Hattie would tell tales out of school about the murder of her very best friend. Even Buddy wasn’t that charming, or so she believed.

Malaria shoved herself quickly behind the bar to make change and pick up her tray. “Refill, Buddy?” she sang, noting his empty glass. But he didn’t hear her, his eyes staring hard toward the line of windows that overlooked Perdido Street. Following his gaze, she determined the distraction.

There sat the kid. That lowdown dirty scoundrel brat, Jim Jam Jump, soaked to the bone and sitting at a table with Buddy’s old cornet in his lap, wiping off stormwater with a dirty cloth, grinning defiantly and directly into the line of Buddy’s glare.

“
I never consented to the sale of that horn, kid,” Buddy said, loud enough to turn most heads in the joint.

Black Benny readied for trouble, focusing on the path of electricity that crackled between the two.

“
Ah, g’wan, ya big sore sport. Took my money without complaint if I recall. Ain’t my fault you done spent it up already on some whore. Higgle biggle wutch and such.” Jim licked the cornet’s mouthpiece like a lollipop, the ugly intimacy giving Buddy cause to shudder as he turned his face back towards the band. Downed the rest of his glass in a gulp.

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 Benny’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.