Wading Home_ A Novel Of New Orleans Part 5

"Julian Fortier!" A sixtyish woman in orange striped jeans and a white T-s.h.i.+rt that read, "It Wasn't the Hurricane, It Was the Levees" spotted Julian from the kitchen and squealed with delight. "Come and get you some of this food, baby!"

He smiled and held up a hand in the direction of the voice. The scent of barbecue was a welcome change from the acrid stench in the dead neighborhoods. He was hungry now; knowing Simon was safe had given him an appet.i.te again.

It took minutes to get to the kitchen, as arms reaching out to hug him slowed his progress. Elaine Stout, a cherub-faced woman who lived up to her name (and who, his father once told him, had worn something red every day since 1997, when she won a $5,000 scratch-off lottery wearing a red dress) caught Julian in a doorway and pulled him into a lilac-scented bosom of scarlet polyester.

"How you doing, Miz Stout?"

She shook her head. "Oh, baby. It's rough. Child, my house is gone gone. My whole house house. I mean it just slid on down the street in all that water and fell apart! The whole neighborhood...it's just..." Looking away, she took a deep breath and put her hand on her hip, still shaking her head, her voice quieter. "I'm still here, though. I didn't lose n.o.body. I'm blessed. But baby, it's rough."

Her large brown eyes glazed over a moment as something snapped inside her. "I'm sorry, baby," she said, embarra.s.sed, her hand to her mouth. "I'm so sorry. I heard about your daddy."

She put a hand to Julian's cheek, and he felt a strong desire to rea.s.sure her.

"He's OK," he said. "I went to the house so I know he got out. And I know where he went. I'm going to pick him up tomorrow."

Her face brightened. "Well, that's good news! Where is he?"

But before he could answer, a deep baritone voice called him to another corner.

"Julian! Saw you on TV! What's that Jay Leno like?'

And before he could answer that, others yelled out. "I caught your thing on Letterman. You played real good, baby!"

"The boy wasn't on Letterman, it was Leno," somebody else said.

"What you talking about? I got it on tape."

"Then you got Leno on tape."

"Julian, you bring your horn with you?"

For the next few minutes a crowd of four or five gathered around, a.s.saulting him with affection; his back got slapped, shoulders squeezed, cheeks pinched, head rubbed. He was the made-it-big homeboy, back from the world stage, a welcome distraction from the woeful world of storms and floods.

Julian ducked his head and resorted to monosyllabic grunts, embarra.s.sed. No one seemed to know that the Leno rerun was two years old, before everything had changed, and he wasn't about to mention it. He grimaced at the reminder that he was not the player he once was, and might never be again.

On Sylvia's green cotton slip-covered sofa, with paper plates balanced on their knees, sat two other church members he remembered well from his youth. Gideon Deslonde, a thin, retired carpenter with a mane of Afro-thick white hair, enjoyed local celebrity masking as a Mardi Gras Indian during carnival, and sitting next to him, Emma Zerra Pendleton, a willowy six-foottall jazz singer with an alto voice that occasionally dipped toward ba.s.s, was known to carry a black plastic urn with her-full of her deceased husband's ashes-every where she went. Julian looked down at Emma Zerra's purse near her feet, relieved to see no sign of Mr. Pendleton.

Spotting an escape from the adoring group, Julian squatted down near the sofa to talk to Mr. Deslonde, one of his father's oldest friends, whose worn face seemed shaded in sadness.

"How you doing, Mr. Deslonde? You all right?"

Deslonde put the barbecued chicken leg back down on his paper plate. He took off his black baseball cap, scratched the back of his head, then put his hat back on and shrugged.

"No good," he shook his head, sighing. "Lost it all. Lost my suit. Had to start all over again."

Deslonde was not grieving over his house, safely upriver away from the levee breaches, but a loss nearly as heart-wrenching. His half-finished Mardi Gras Indian "suit," an enormous costume festooned with wildly fanned plumage and thousands of colored beads in elaborate patterns, had been stored at a lady friend's house in the Ninth Ward. The friend had survived, but the suit had not. Half of a twelve-month task of eye-straining needle-and-thread work (from the day after one Mardi Gras until the eve of the next), lost to the flood.

"I'm really sorry about that," Julian said, and bowed his head. "I know it was pretty."

"Aw baby." Deslonde's brows furrowed. "Pretty like you ain't never seen." He shrugged, took another bite of his chicken, wiped his mouth with a napkin, then looked up, eyes hopeful, glistening. "Started me a new one last week. Got me a whole five months 'til Mardi Gras. I'ma be ready! But it won't be like it coulda been."

Mardi Gras? Julian's eyebrows flew up. The city was in ruins. Some were doubting whether there was enough of it left to call a city. Yet Deslonde, chief of the Red Feather Night Warriors tribe of the Mardi Gras Indian nation (a decades-old traditional homage to Native Americans who sheltered runaway blacks during slavery), was talking about the next Mardi Gras. But that was the way the city was, had always been-the biggest flood of the century was no match for the rolling tides of tradition. If the city was going to go down, it would go down fighting, with people like Deslonde on the front line of the battle.

"Hey, son. Where your daddy at?" Deslonde took a forkful of the red beans and rice on his plate.

Julian rose up from his squat and dusted his pants legs with his palms, reminded of his purpose. "Not far. I'm gonna pick him up tomorrow. Uh, can you excuse me a minute? I've got to find Sylvia."

He patted Deslonde on the shoulder and went back to the kitchen.

The kitchen was noisy and cramped, as Sylvia and two other women bustled about, preparing food. Sylvia was pouring ice water into tall plastic cups from a large gla.s.s pitcher. Two other women from Blessed Redeemer, Vivienne Ponder and Lenessa Bishop, held ca.s.serole dishes covered in foil and were unveiling them-deviled eggs in one, Popeye's chicken legs in the other.

Lenessa, a pet.i.te woman with her right arm in a sling (she'd sprained it being airlifted into a helicopter from her roof), used her good arm to put the platter of deviled eggs on the counter. "Hey Julian how you doin' baby. Where you want these eggs to go, Sylvia?"

"You can put those in that big Corning Ware dish, and that white platter I set out," Sylvia said, pointing to a counter top. She turned to Julian. "You made it! I'm glad you're here, baby. I got something to tell you."

But Julian didn't hear those words. "Sylvia," he said. "I need to talk to you."

Vivienne and Lenessa took their dishes to the dining room, and Sylvia and Julian sat down at the kitchen dinette table near the back door, the fading window light dimming, while Julian poured out his theory about Simon.

When he was a boy, Julian's fourth grade teacher had spent a whole cla.s.s period talking about hurricanes, and for homework a.s.signed them to make an emergency plan with their parents. Figure out a place outside the city, she'd said, where they could all meet if they were separated after a storm and couldn't contact each other. Someplace they could all get to that was safely away from the storm.

Simon took two cups from the cupboard and turned off the percolator.

You can find me at Silver Creek.

Julian was nine. Silver Creek may as well have been on the moon.

That's too far. How am I gonna get to Silver Creek?

Figure it out. Cause that's where I'll be. Something happens, I'm going back home. Simon poured coffee from the pot into a white clay cup. Simon poured coffee from the pot into a white clay cup.

Come on, Daddy.

He put a teaspoonful of sugar in the coffee, tasted it, made a face, then put another teaspoon in. In Julian's cup of hot milk, he poured a tablespoonful of coffee and two teaspoons of sugar.

I'm gonna get my daddy's Bible and I'm gonna go to Silver Creek. Even if I have to walk there.

Julian contemplated his father walking along a stretch of barren road, a Bible tucked under his arm. He took a sip of the coffeeflavored milk, then looked up, confused.

What if I can't find it?

Simon smiled, took a long, slow drink of coffee, and smacked his lips. When the time comes, you'll know, When the time comes, you'll know, he said. He looked down at the big eyes of his young son. he said. He looked down at the big eyes of his young son.

Cause it's your land, too.

Shortly after that, the family had made their annual summer trek to Silver Creek and Simon had pointed out every bend, every turn, every tiny creek along the way. It was the trip Julian best remembered, because he had fought so hard not to go.

Sylvia frowned. "I thought you said you called Genevieve and she didn't answer. And if he's there, why hasn't he called?"

"Daddy never could remember my cell phone number. And I don't know why Cousin G didn't answer. Maybe they got some storm damage up that way too. Whatever, that's where Daddy is, I'm telling you. Daddy walked to Silver Creek. Or hitched, or talked somebody into driving him there, or something."

"What gave you that idea?"

"The Bible. The Bible is missing from the house."

Sylvia's eyes clouded in skepticism, but she conceded, "It's as good a place to look as any. When you going? In the morning?"

"As soon as I figure out how to get there."

"You don't know?"

He shrugged, embarra.s.sed now. How many times had his father explained the route to Silver Creek while he, distracted, barely listened?

"Roads are kinda crazy down there, twisting and turning. When I get up, I'll look it up on the motel computer, or call Triple A. I'll call you as soon as I get there."

He ran a hand along the back of his neck. "So anyway, what did you want to tell me?"

"Tell you?" Sylvia's eyelids fluttered. "Oh, right. Just that someone you know, someone you used to know very well, might be stopping by, and I wanted to tell you in case you-"

The din of chatter rose in the living room; somebody everyone seemed to know had entered the house. The woman at the door greeted the friends gathered in the living room cordially, then walked straight back to the kitchen and stood in the doorway.

The last time he had seen her they had had a fight, a big one, and she had been walking away.

If she was as surprised to see him as he was to see her, she didn't show it. She wore yellow. Her frizzy curl was longer, and she was still small, her compact, athletic body boasting hidden strength. Her eyes still glinted like those of a woman with a secret.

Velmyra Hartley reached a hand to her hair and twirled the ends of it in her fingers.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey."

An awkward silence pa.s.sed between them.

Finally she said, "You know, I saw you on TV."

7.

On any other night, there'd have been lights on the river.

Any other night, at any other time, when the biggest storm of the century had not just swept through the town ravaging buildings and houses and parks and streets; any other time when the government levees had not failed and the flooding waters had not filled up the giant bowl of the sinking city and laid waste to thousands of acres and hundreds of lives; any other night when all that had not happened, there would have been lights on the river.

There would have been bridge girders strung with necklaces of white pearls, platinum jeweled steamboats and ruby-studded ferries and tugboats floating like giant party hats at sea. White gold beads of light from the Riverwalk shops and flickering bulbs from the houses of nearby Algiers. Carnival lights from the French Quarter bars and dives, the casino, the cafes, the taxis, and the red swirling lights of the police cars. And always, there would have been the rhinestone sparkle in the eyes of tourists, especially in the eyes of the children.

But tonight the only light on the river came from a pale, gibbous moon casting oyster-colored s.h.i.+mmers across the rippled surface of the water. Downriver, a lone barge floated without sound.

Julian sat in the unfamiliar dark on a bench near the water and put his trumpet case down near the leg of the bench. There was a small rock near his foot, so he picked it up and hurled it as far across the water as he could, and watched the small splash, the growing circles, the wider and wider spirals of concentric ripples spanning outward until they stilled, and the water near the splash finally restored itself to calm.

After he'd left Sylvia's in a daze of humiliation, he'd driven to the French Quarter, parked the car illegally near the recently reopened Cafe Du Monde, grabbed his horn from the trunk, and headed over the levee down to the river. It was something he'd done as a boy; whenever he'd slipped into a deep funk-botched a solo in the marching band, or a girl he'd liked had s.h.i.+ned him on-he found himself down near the water with his horn in his hands. The old heads, the musicians who'd been around forever, had told him how the hand-in-hand tourists went crazy for the romantic standards-"After You've Gone" or "Sleepytime Down South"-and between sips of chicory coffee and bites of beignets, would pay good tip money for a ballad or two. They were right. And if anything was bothering him, the feel of his trumpet, the flow of the music, and a pocket full of coin always made it go away.

No music-loving tourists tonight, and just as well. So he leaned forward, elbows on his knees and head between his hands, and tried to figure out what had just happened an hour ago.

Now, of course, he could think of a thousand ways it could have gone, a thousand things he should have said. Clever things, cavalier words to flaunt his impenetrable cool. But with everything else he'd been going through these last weeks, his emotions bound in a knot so tight he could not find one loose thread, he'd been blindsided. He hadn't seen it coming, hadn't known what seeing her again would do to his equilibrium, his balance. It was as if he'd been hit by a car all over again.

She'd started to make conversation, something about seeing him on TV. He'd said nothing, just kept looking at her like an idiot. She'd asked him something else, and he couldn't hear it because his face was too hot, and the bile in his stomach was rising too fast. So what had he done? "Excuse me," he'd said. And disappeared inside the bathroom off the kitchen.

Inside he'd tried to gather himself. This is old business, This is old business, he thought, shocked at his reaction. He looked in the mirror and saw a man trapped in trouble and pain. "Nice going, genius," he said to the sad figure looking back at him. His eyes sagging, his face s.h.i.+ny and chin covered in stubble, his hair too long and untrimmed, his T-s.h.i.+rt sticking to his chest. He'd always been a fairly good looking man, or so he'd been told-he enjoyed reasonable height, a trim and fit body from his daily standing date at the Gold's Gym two blocks from where he lived, the blessing of his father's luminous eyes, thick hair and long lashes. But that was not the man he saw. The man he saw looked like h.e.l.l. he thought, shocked at his reaction. He looked in the mirror and saw a man trapped in trouble and pain. "Nice going, genius," he said to the sad figure looking back at him. His eyes sagging, his face s.h.i.+ny and chin covered in stubble, his hair too long and untrimmed, his T-s.h.i.+rt sticking to his chest. He'd always been a fairly good looking man, or so he'd been told-he enjoyed reasonable height, a trim and fit body from his daily standing date at the Gold's Gym two blocks from where he lived, the blessing of his father's luminous eyes, thick hair and long lashes. But that was not the man he saw. The man he saw looked like h.e.l.l.

She, on the other hand, looked exactly the way he remembered, they way she had entered his dreams for the first eight months after their breakup.

She looked, well, perfect.

He'd washed his face with liquid hand soap and cold water. When he finally left the bathroom, she had moved to the other room. And he'd left through Sylvia's back door, got into his car, and headed for the river.

It made sense that Sylvia would invite her. After all, she and Sylvia were tight; in fact, it was Sylvia who had introduced them all those years ago. "There's a young teacher I work with," she'd said, sidling up to him one Sunday afternoon after one of Simon's elaborate Creole meals. "I want you two to meet."

Julian had been interested. He'd split with the accountant/yoga instructor he'd met at the gym and was looking to meet somebody new. He'd been doing little more than teach a couple of cla.s.ses and a few private students at Tulane, play a gig or two on the weekends, then go home to an empty place. Why not?

The restaurant on Tchoupitoulas Street where he'd taken her had been lit with geranium-scented candles that turned the ends of her hair to deep red. The suspended stereo speakers above their heads dispensed a dreamy, big band version of "Moonglow," and they had talked until the waiter had asked them for the third time, with practiced subtlety, if they "needed anything else?" And then until the chairs were flipped onto the tabletops.

He'd taken her home, where they'd talked outdoors in front of her apartment for another two hours. She spoke thoughtfully, her timbre low and eyes flas.h.i.+ng, her hands in constant motion. She was an artist, a painter: mostly figurative stuff, occasional abstracts, some collage. She liked the play of bold colors in neo-Afrocentric themes, and managed to sell at least two paintings a year, each bringing in enough for about two months' rent.

She liked jazz, she told him, the older stuff mostly, Peterson on piano, early Miles. For a living, she taught art to thirteen-year-olds in the school district-her real pa.s.sion. Teaching delighted her-the silly jokes, the sharp, curious challenges of her smartest kids-and he loved that she loved it. When she talked about them, the air around her seemed to amplify, charged with light. Her brown eyes warmed to amber, and her smile nearly took his breath away.

He'd started to leave sooner, but wanted to memorize her face, trace her profile in his mind so he could call it up that night while he slept-the loose, raw beauty, the strong features gently framed in red oak skin.

Within weeks, they were a thing. They spent long hours talking on the phone, then met for even longer dinners at Dooky Chase's or Parmenter's, where his father sent special hors d'oeuvres from the kitchen, or floated winks and smiles between the stage and the back table while he played the late set at Snug Harbor. They rode their bikes through Audubon Park and jogged along the levee by the river. He washed her car on Sat.u.r.day afternoons, and she picked up his s.h.i.+rts when he was running late. She fixed him cinnamon coffee while he practiced arpeggios in her studio, and he baked his special lasagna while she painted, her stereo rolling out vintage Miles.

Their engagement ended abruptly. To this day, he couldn't remember what happened between them at the end, just the muddy weight of his heart after it was over. He was in New York when he heard the news of her marriage, a few months later, to a man he thought she barely knew. That sent him reeling. And a year later, news of her divorce left him just as dazed.

One good thing had come out of it all. From her, he learned to play the blues-the deep-down, been-there blues. After their breakup, everything in his playing s.h.i.+fted; he dared to reach deeper inside, walk the tender landscape she had bruised, and turn the journey into liquid sound. Minor thirds, salted with tears, spilled from his downtilted bell, and soulful riffs of heartbreak became his signature. When he arrived in New York, heart scarred and mind numbed, music flooded from his horn, from him, unstoppable.

He could even say it was Velmyra who'd made him famous. It had taken him a while to put the whole business behind him; but when the heat of his hurt had cooled and he could walk upright again, the memory of her, which had been dense and imposing, thinned to vapor. The stamp she'd made on his music, though, was still there. The pain let him tap into something real, something everybody knew, and it had taken his playing from good to great. From that point on, his life hummed. Things came easily, quickly, perfectly. A recording deal with a major label. A great deal on the best apartment on a gentrified street in Brooklyn Heights. Dates at the best clubs in town-the Village Vanguard, The Blue Note, Birdland-and a major network TV appearance that fell into his lap.

He fas.h.i.+oned an image that was cool, clean, and marked by a sartorial elegance he a.s.sociated with success. Ta.s.sled loafers handcrafted in Italy. Hand tailored s.h.i.+rts from London, and gig suits designed by Hugo Boss. His people marketed him a "young lion of jazz"-accessible, with a nouveau-bop edge that straddled a graceful line between the mercurial tastes of the young and the older jazz purists. He made more money than he had time to spend, and women clung to him like lint to coa.r.s.e black wool. Once he became well known in top music circles-when the word went out that another new hotshot was up from New Orleans-he was the curiosity everyone wanted to hear.

His life was exactly the way he wanted it to be-every day, another dream.

Until the accident.

He stood up from the bench. He could have sworn he heard a sound-like a s.h.i.+p's foghorn-coming from the river. But maybe not, maybe it was just in his head. Whatever, the music of the sound-a low, husky B-flat-was enough to make him unpack his horn.

The metal mouthpiece was a cold shock to his lips, as always when he hadn't played for a while. The valves were stiff; he drummed his fingers, miming a quick scale. His lips and fingertips had grown tender and uncallused since the surgery. He started blowing a flood of hot air through the horn.