The Sound of Building Coffins (40 page)

“
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 witnessed 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.

Weren’t no crib by a mile, that place. Real clean for a whorehouse and good enough money—but it still felt like sharing the woman I loved, which ain’t something I could ever cotton to with any sensa comfort.

Maria was working that night, and sitting on the steps outside when I passed. Pretty little head down in her hands, my Coffee Maria. Looking mighty blue, she.

“
Evenin’, sweet child,” say me. “Some bad man treating you mean tonight? Want I should smash his head fer ya, lil darlin’?”

I startled her, but her mind always quick: “You mean someone meaner ’n you, Mr. Marcus Nobody Special?” First time anyone ever called me that.

“
Doan be thataway, darlin’. You know yer my special gal. Always will.” True enough, that.

The hardness left her eyes: “Mama dead.”

“
Ah, darlin’…”

“
Got sick, died. Skin turned yella and hot. Talkin’ crazy then…I…I…just dunno…she got worse quick, stopped breathin’…oh, Marcus!”

“
Oh, little baby.” I held her in my arms. Holding her close felt special good, made me feel like a regular heel enjoying it under the circumstances. But that little Coffee Maria sure was sweet; her tiny body trembling against my chest like a scared sparrow.

This was the first dyin’ from the yella fever sickness I heard of that year. But not the last. Wouldn’t stop ner slow by summer’s end. No sir, that killin’ fever’d keep up strong and steady straight through the year eighteen hunnert’n fitty-three, sure ’nuff.
Mercy
.

*

Well, eight months passed since the day Coffee Maria cried in my arms, that day her mama died. I kept wanting to go back to visit that little girl, to pay my respects and offer up some comfort. But I been busy. Bodies pilin’ up. Yella fever bodies.

Bodies.

Me and Black Jake handling things pretty good awhile, then it just got too much. Fever spread a lot quicker than usual that year, spread like wildfire;
le quatres paroisses.
Mayor Crossman lent a hand by loaning some chain gangs to work the semma-trees in the city proper. Nice to have the help, but those convicts sure is ornery. If that fool mayor really wanted to help, he’d let us burn ’em up, do it right. Be better for everyone. Burn ’em up and there ain’t no diggin’. Burn ’em up and they’s only ash. Burn ’em up and you don’t have to worry about the rain so much.

I hated to think of what’d happen to all those shallow buried bodies if a real good rain come up. Tried not to think about it, but I know the rains a-comin’. Then what?

I worried real hard on that one.

Bodies in the potter’s field ain’t so much buried as sunk, sonny. Hard enough to get ’em down, then you gotta worry bout
keeping
’em down when the rain come. Sometimes keeping ’em down ain’t too hard—and sometimes ain’t too easy. Folks with money keep their dead above ground. Seal ’em in the fancy ’spensive tombs or shove ’em back in oven slabs. Ovens are best if a fella got some money but ain’t exactly rich. Year and a day’ll burn them bodies to dust nice and clean. You got a good oven slab, you can fit a whole lotta folks in one tomb, save yerself a pile of money over time.