Wading Home_ A Novel Of New Orleans Part 18

A pause. "Who?"

"The Parette property on the other side of the creek? Mr. Parette? The old man whose car got run off the road."

Nathan stared at him, his lips tight and brows furrowed, then blinked. "I don't know anything about that."

"Right." Kevin smiled wryly, then shook his head. "You know Nathan, I owe you a real debt of grat.i.tude."

Nathan gave him a cautious look. "Why is that?"

"It was because of the likes of you that I decided I wanted to be a lawyer."

As they both turned to walk out Nathan called them back.

"Now, wait a minute, boys. Mr. Fortier." Nathan's bushy eyebrows angled downward. He unb.u.t.toned his jacket and put a hand in his pocket. "From what I understand you live in New York. And from what I also understand, you've enjoyed considerable success there. What could this land possibly mean to you? All you will do is impede the progress of what I'm afraid is inevitable. Now, I have given you a generous offer. But why don't you tell me what would be fair? What would it take to get you to drop this lawsuit? What's your price?"

Price? Julian thought a moment. He'd never given a thought before to what it would take to give up his family's land. Half a million dollars? A million? He smiled to himself, feeling power he didn't realize he had.

What was his price? A few years ago, none of this would have mattered to him. But everything was different now.

"There's no price, sir. The land's not for sale."

Nathan scoffed. "For sale? Have you forgotten? I've already bought the land. Quite legally."

"For now." Julian shrugged. "You may even wind up with it one day. But if I have to keep you in court for the next ten years to-what did you call it? 'Impede the progress of the inevitable'-then that's what I'll do."

Nathan's eyes flamed, and his small mouth began to twitch. "All right. All right. Go ahead. I have tried to offer you some of your land back, through my own generosity"-his voice louder now-"but you will lose everything if you continue." He glared at his grandson. "Both of you will lose."

Julian glanced at Kevin, then back at Nathan, as he reached for the door. "Have a good day, sir."

[image]

The creek on the Fortier land snaked along a winding path that went deep into the piney woods, then curved like a long S toward the open clearing at the south end of the property. The recent rains had extended the high water season, and the creek rushed along the deep bed, the water warbling in a trebly gurgle over the rocks and glimmering in the blinking light between the shading trees as if strewn with a million tiny mirrors.

Where Julian and Kevin sat, on a bank beneath the shade of an old live oak while their shoes sunned behind them on a distant, rocky rise, the water was clear enough to see the stones edging the bottom.

After the meeting with Nathan Larouchette, Kevin, turning to Julian in the parking lot, said, "Let's go fis.h.i.+ng." Kevin's eyes were gla.s.sy, his voice tight and curt, and Julian decided this was not the time to argue. He had a hundred things to do, including driving back to New Orleans to pin down a meeting at Simon's house with the insurance agent, calling Sylvia to check in on the search for Simon, meeting with Parmenter's attorney to get the details of the funeral, and so on. But in Kevin's eyes he'd seen a need that, he guessed, could only be satisfied by fis.h.i.+ng, and the idea of trespa.s.sing on what Nathan considered his land must have held a certain perverse appeal, too.

Julian knew it had been rough for Kevin in there; at the end of the meeting, his young friend had been visibly shaken by the encounter with his estranged grandfather. He was closemouthed on the way to the creek, but as he reached for a cigarette in his truck's glove compartment and lit up (Julian didn't know he smoked), his thin fingers twitched like a palsied old woman's.

Kevin had pulled two brand-new graphite fis.h.i.+ng rods from the bed of his truck and a tackle box full of plastic lures. Within a few minutes they were both sitting on rocks in the breezy shade near the first bend of the creek, Kevin with his s.h.i.+rt off and feet dangling in the water, and Julian, s.h.i.+rt unb.u.t.toned to the breeze, sitting next to him.

They had been there for fifteen minutes, both lines in the water, an occasion zephyr rustling the high gra.s.ses, before either one of them mentioned the meeting.

"Well, now, that was something, huh?" Kevin scoffed a little, then looked across the creek as the rippling water lapped against the earthen bank. "Man, I hate him for what he's putting y'all through."

Julian said nothing. He was thinking about the last time his father had brought him here to fish. Or try too. It was his twelfth summer, and he'd come here only to humor Simon. To his surprise and his father's delight, he'd caught a catfish, a huge one big as his arm. "You got Caesar!" Simon beamed, elated, but made him throw it back. "He's as old as this creek, let him live a while longer." But for the next few years, Simon bragged about how Julian had snagged "ol Caesar," his first time out. It was the only fish he'd ever caught in his life.

Kevin stood up, reeled his line in, and cast it further across the water. When he sat back down, he blew out a long puff from his cigarette, his fourth since he'd gotten out of the truck. "You know, my mama's a Creole woman, and her great-granddaddy was as black as the bottom of this creek at midnight, they tell me." He paused, as if waiting for Julian to show surprise at his mixed ancestry. Julian nodded thoughtfully, and Kevin went on. "When my daddy took up with her, ol' Nathan liked to had a fit. Not his his son, by G.o.d. Never said more than two words to her the whole time Daddy and Mama were married. But then Nathan took up with a woman he'd been seeing on the sly, and guess what son, by G.o.d. Never said more than two words to her the whole time Daddy and Mama were married. But then Nathan took up with a woman he'd been seeing on the sly, and guess what she she was." was."

Julian's eyes widened. "A Creole?"

Kevin smirked, nodded. "Black and Creole. Ain't that something? Hypocritical b.a.s.t.a.r.d." He reached into his wallet and pulled out a photograph of a woman, black-eyed with long curly black hair and skin the color of cantaloupe rind. "That's my mama. She lives in Montana now. Moved there when she married again after Daddy pa.s.sed." and Creole. Ain't that something? Hypocritical b.a.s.t.a.r.d." He reached into his wallet and pulled out a photograph of a woman, black-eyed with long curly black hair and skin the color of cantaloupe rind. "That's my mama. She lives in Montana now. Moved there when she married again after Daddy pa.s.sed."

"Beautiful lady," Julian said.

Kevin nodded. "I grew up hating Nathan, the way he treated my daddy and my uncle, and then my mama. The way he'd run off sometimes and leave Daddy and his mama and brother when they were little, then come back the next month like nothin' happened. He and my daddy hardly ever spoke the last few years of his life, before Daddy's stroke. But sometimes whenever Nathan's name came up, I'd see Daddy staring off into s.p.a.ce, thinking. I always wanted to ask him what he was thinking about. But I knew." Kevin picked up a smooth stone and skipped it across the water. It hopped four times before disappearing beneath the surface as Julian watched in awe. He had never gotten a stone to hop more than twice.

Kevin looked at Julian, his brows arched up in the middle of his forehead apologetically. "I have to tell you this. So far, we don't have much. The truth is, after Prof died, I haven't had much luck with these cases. I keep tryin'. But when they get this far along..." He let his sentence disappear into the sound of the water.

Julian looked out over the creek. "I know."

"I was thinking about your cousin, Miss Genevieve? Didn't she say your great-great granddaddy won Silver Creek on a bluff in a poker game?"

Julian nodded. "Right. That's what she said."

"And that your great-granddaddy, what was his name-Moses-that he got the land when his brother had to leave the state after almost getting shot?"

"Right."

"Well, I hope that poker-face luck runs in the family, 'cause we're looking at one lousy hand."

"Yeah," Julian said, feigning attention, still lost in thought. He was hot and the air was sticky, but the breeze of the oak that cooled his face and billowed the soft cotton of his s.h.i.+rt away from his skin was as pleasing as fine spring rain. And he realized he hadn't had a headache in two days.

When Julian was in college after his mother died, Simon would take off for Silver Creek after a long week at the restaurant, just for a day or two, to "get his mind right." He'd always return looking a little younger, Julian remembered, with a little more spring in his step. Now he knew why. As much as his father loved New Orleans, it was a city. And this was a place where a man could open his chest to the sweeping air, look across a field unhemmed by buildings and see a landscape of possibility.

Leaning back, his elbow on the rock, his head resting on his fist, he looked straight up through the leaves of the live oak at the gauzy glare of filtered sun. He closed his eyes to it, stared at the warming orangey glow behind his eyelids. For a moment, he had not a care in the world.

Kevin stood up and found a fist-sized rock to balance his rod while he reached in his pocket for another cigarette.

"Gotta quit this smoking thing before little Suzy, that's the baby's name, before she comes."

Julian sat up and took a drink from one of the beers in the six pack of Bud they'd gotten in Local. He tried to imagine a little girl looking like Kevin.

"So what do we do now?"

Kevin shrugged. He'd spent hours poring over the land dispute cases in Pointe Louree Parish. Not one case had been decided in favor of the plaintiff, the original landowners, in the last three years. For decades, families had lost acres and acres of land, gas, oil, and mineral rights, all through the shenanigans of companies like Nathan's.

Even the case with the Parette family had quietly gone away, Kevin said. The accident had been officially determined as just that-an accident, despite the second set of tire tracks near the ditch that would have indicated Parette had swerved to avoid a collision. After he died, the family, who lived out of state, had sold the land to Nathan for a song.

"We can buy a little time maybe, but what we need is some kind of a will. I know you said before y'all don't have one. But it doesn't have to be anything fancy. Just something written down somewhere saying who the land's intended for. Judges can be pretty liberal in these kinds of cases."

He explained that in Louisiana they had something called "olographic" wills. It could be hand written on a napkin for all the judge cared, but if it's written by the decedent who owned the land, and dated, it could be binding in court.

Julian frowned. Nothing like that existed as far as he knew. Even Genevieve said so. His father hadn't yet written a will (with only one son, he hadn't seen the need), and Julian's grandfather Jacob, as far as he knew, hadn't either.

Kevin pulled his line in and recast it in deeper water. "Well, like you said, we'll keep his lawyers busy as long as we can. Maybe something will come up."

"Maybe so." Julian had an odd feeling in his gut. It may have been the comforting sun, his easeful mood, but the fleeting a.s.surance that in time, everything would work out as it should, warmed him like a gentle, steadying hand. He looked across the bank of the creek to the groves of pines and poplars and cypresses in the distance as far as his eyes could see. This could all be mine This could all be mine, he thought. Then he corrected himself. Is mine. Is mine. And for a brief moment he felt as if the whole thing with Nathan Larouchette had never happened. And for a brief moment he felt as if the whole thing with Nathan Larouchette had never happened.

"Hey, look!"

Kevin pointed to Julian's bobber, which bounced in the water while the tug at the line ripped wide s.h.i.+mmying circles across the surface.

"Grab it!"

Julian, who had been leaning back against the rock, jumped up on his feet. He grabbed the rod while the line loosened, the bobber trailed farther out into the water, and the crank of the reel spun. It was a good, solid strike. Not a big fish, but it had an impressive pull.

He let the line go a little slack, then cranked it in tighter to set the hook.

"By G.o.d I think you got that sucker!" Kevin stood next to him, grinning. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear you knew what you were doing."

He worked with the catch for minutes, reeling it in, letting it run, then reeling again. Stepping down on the bank closer to the water, bare feet tracking the grit of rock and sand, he repeated it over again as sweat beaded on his forehead and his heart raced.

Kevin's eyes opened wide, gleeful as a child's. "d.a.m.n! The little son of a gun wants to give you a fight."

Julian bit his bottom lip as the rod bowed with the tension. I've got him hooked. If I can just outlast him, he's mine. I've got him hooked. If I can just outlast him, he's mine.

And then he saw his father's eyes light up like the blaze of sun that flashed through the live oak leaves above. "Just hold on," Simon was telling him, as he had before. "He's already yours, you just gotta fight to keep him."

Sometimes that's the hardest thing. Holding on to keep what you've got.

With a splash, something broke the surface of the water. Julian slowly reeled in the catch. The line much shorter now, Julian lifted the rod, smiling the way he had when he was twelve, as a catfish, no bigger than his hand but feisty with life, twitched and danced and dangled in the late summer light.

18.

By mid October, the city of New Orleans, like a prizefighter pummeled and pressed to the mat, strained to raise its head from an unconscious, near-death state. Its pulse, though faint, was steady, its prognosis in doubt, and even the struggle back to its knees would be long and arduous. Six weeks after the biggest disaster it had ever seen, a stream of residents, armed with faith, hope, and whatever courage they could muster, still flowed in daily to face an uncertain future in the city that had broken their hearts.

But while the city crawled to life, every hour news stations reported stories of struggle and tragedy as the death tally spilled beyond the flooded city's limits-infirm or elderly citizens, ferried to outposts of safety in distant towns survived the storm and flood, only to die in Houston, or Atlanta, or Dallas or dozens of other places, from lack of critical medicine or some long standing illness worsened by heartbreak. And even some who were healthy when they left perished as their bodies buckled under the shock of tragedy and the load of loss.

But stories of impossible survival and answered prayers softened the hearts of the most hardened cynics: a three-year-old boy, helicoptered out of harm's way and leaving his tearful father behind, reunited with him after weeks alone and lost in a shelter in Colorado; an unlikely pair-a five-year-old black girl and her white, eighty-nine-year-old wheelchair-bound neighbor-braved three harsh nights on an overpa.s.s before being transported to safety, a journey that involved three cities and nearly every known mode of transportation.

For days Julian had poured over these happy-ending stories in the online edition of the Times-Picayune Times-Picayune in the computer room of the Best Western, still holding on to hope. As much as his mind worked to accept Simon's death, his heart could not, and would not until he had proof. Each TV news dispatch, radio story or newspaper photo cut line of a happy reunion bubbled in him like a tonic, so he combed the pages one by one, praying to find a story of a seventy-six-year-old black man, maybe wearing a brown straw hat, with or without a big leather Bible and carrying a hand-carved African cane. in the computer room of the Best Western, still holding on to hope. As much as his mind worked to accept Simon's death, his heart could not, and would not until he had proof. Each TV news dispatch, radio story or newspaper photo cut line of a happy reunion bubbled in him like a tonic, so he combed the pages one by one, praying to find a story of a seventy-six-year-old black man, maybe wearing a brown straw hat, with or without a big leather Bible and carrying a hand-carved African cane.

Standing in front of a bar in the Faubourg Marigny section of the city, a rock's throw from the French Quarter, Julian watched the fading light of the October sky and thought about those stories. Anything was possible in this bizarre netherworld that had replaced his hometown on the other side of the nightmare. He looked at Grady standing next to him, lighting up, then taking a long drag on his cigarette. Grady was the only man he knew who could smoke like a fiend and still play the h.e.l.l out of the trumpet. And though Julian had never smoked a cigarette in his life, he thought of asking him for one. There was something about the comfort it seemed to bring, like a child's pacifier, that looked appealing.

"Don't even think about smoking these things, man," Grady eyed him as if he'd read his mind. "I thought I was done with them but since all this mess happened..."

He let the unfinished sentence dangle in the drift of the breeze from the river. Julian gave him an understanding look, then glanced down at his watch.

"So you told them eight, right?"

"Yep."

"So you sure Little D's coming?"

"Little D. Yeah."

He nodded, looked at his watch again. "Easy Money, too?"

Grady tossed his cigarette on the ground and smashed it with his foot. "Quit worrying, man. They'll be here. Every one of 'em said they would. Don't forget, don't none of the clocks in this town work anymore."

"Besides," he added, "I told 'em what the gig pays."

Julian nodded. They had only been waiting a little while and it was only a little past eight. The autumn sky still held faint traces of blue, the shadows lengthening on the street. Wood and gla.s.sfronted shops on Frenchmen Street-a hookah bar, a tattoo parlor, a coffee house, a tiny cafe/deli, more than a few night clubs and other small businesses-stood mostly in shadow like hollowed ruins. On a normal weekday night, music would have blasted from every other doorway while college-age kids, musicians, and a few hip locals and tourists streamed from the bars and milled in the streets, their laughter a tickle in the air, pulsing with a rhythm of its own. A bra.s.s band might be tuning up to jam. A jazz trio from one of the colleges might be setting up for a late set, or a guitarist might sit crosslegged on the sidewalk, playing some good Texas blues for tips. But on a street that had once been the pulse point of the city's music scene, every noise that resembled the sound of pleasure had been drowned by the flood.

A man in his twenties cruised by on a ten-speed bike, and three girls in shorts and tank tops, no doubt volunteers from some distant city, walked by. One of them, the youngest-looking one, with shoulder-length brown hair and freckles, stopped and asked Grady for a cigarette. He fished in his pocket and offered her his pack.

"Where y'all young ladies from?"

A tall blond girl wearing a red baseball cap smiled. "We came down from St. Louis."

They were members of a United Methodist Church group who had come to help gut houses in St. Bernard Parish.

Grady smiled. "Long way from home."

"We drove all night," she said. "Got a light?" The younger girl held the cigarette up to her lips.

"Oh, here you go." Grady found his matches and lit one.

The girls had come to the city when they read an article in the Post-Dispatch Post-Dispatch about one of their church member's relatives, whose newly built house in St. Bernard had taken on eight feet of water. They'd gotten permission to miss a week of cla.s.ses to help with the friend's house and others in the neighborhood. about one of their church member's relatives, whose newly built house in St. Bernard had taken on eight feet of water. They'd gotten permission to miss a week of cla.s.ses to help with the friend's house and others in the neighborhood.

The third member of the group, a brown-skinned girl with a round face, a silver nose ring, and a puffy Afro highlighted with blue dye, joined in the conversation. "I like it down here," she said. "I think I might come back and stay longer, when things get better."

An SUV full of young people who clearly knew the church trio pulled up alongside them. "We're gonna go find some food!" one of the girls in the vehicle yelled out. The three girls said goodbye to Julian and Grady and got in.

Grady and Julian waved as they pulled away. Before they reached the corner Grady yelled to them, "Thank y'all for coming down to help!"

"Well, at least somebody thinks this place is worth bothering with." Grady reached in his pocket for another cigarette. "You wouldn't believe all what I been hearing, man, stuff about the city never coming back, or coming back with none of us us in it. Crazy." He shook his head. in it. Crazy." He shook his head.

"Maybe Cindy's right," he said. "Maybe it's not worth trying to make it here."

"Hey, come on, man. Sure it is." Julian's words tumbled out like a reflex, but landed without conviction. He wasn't at all sure he believed them. The truth was, he'd been so consumed with Simon, Silver Creek, Velmyra, and even Parmenter, that he'd thought little lately about the future of this place where he had been born and raised.

"I don't know, man." Grady s.h.i.+fted his weight to one foot and leaned a hand against one of the posts supporting the wrought iron balcony above. "You know what they're saying up in Texas? Dude told my wife he heard the city was dead. All gone." He shrugged. "I ain't gonna lie, I thought the same thing myself, a time or two. It's like one of those disaster flicks, where the dude knows the world is over, like, everybody's done for and he's the last dude on earth, but he still goes around searching for food."

Grady looked at Julian. "But you wanna stop the guy and ask him, 'Why?'"

Julian nodded thoughtfully at the movie a.n.a.logy, a comparison he'd made himself just a couple of days ago. Why? Why? It was a question he'd asked himself every day as he prayed for good news about Simon. Giving up just wasn't in his blood; he'd figured out it felt... unnatural. But keeping on-hoping-that was a natural thing. It was a question he'd asked himself every day as he prayed for good news about Simon. Giving up just wasn't in his blood; he'd figured out it felt... unnatural. But keeping on-hoping-that was a natural thing. Hope. Hope. Maybe it was something that folks were just born with, the real proof that you were alive. It's what his grandfather'd had, for sure, and no doubt his daddy too. And it was the only thing that kept him going now, searching for Simon. Maybe it was something that folks were just born with, the real proof that you were alive. It's what his grandfather'd had, for sure, and no doubt his daddy too. And it was the only thing that kept him going now, searching for Simon.

Grady lifted his head back and blew a long, slow stream of smoke up toward the balcony. "What do you think, bruh? You think this place can come back?"

Julian turned up the collar of his s.h.i.+rt as a cool breeze floated by. He looked out toward the outlines of buildings and sky across the street where he'd spent many a summer evening hanging out, playing his horn. He felt a slight chill as he imagined the most dire predictions coming true. Did he? Really? Did he? Really?