Uptown Blues

by Seth Pevey

  Out on the porch, Melancon pulled at his belt and spoke in the most casual voice he could command, calling back into the darkness of the bungalow.

  “Say, Melph, I heard you were in the armed services. What was it that you did over…well where were you?”

  “Iraq. Afghanistan,” he replied, standing up and coming to his door, squinting out into the sunlight.

  “And you were Army?”

  “Marines.”

  “Impressive. And what did you do as a Marine?” Melancon was standing on the stoop now, hands on his hips. “Or are you even allowed to even say?”

  Melph came out onto the porch and leaned over the railing to pack his cigarettes against his wrist.

  “For detectives, you two damn sure don’t detect much,” he said, glancing down the street and lighting himself a smoke with an old Zippo.

  Melancon thought a moment. “Hey, can I get one of those cigarettes? I’m trying to quit, but my damn nerves are just shot to hell over this business.”

  A long arm reached down from the porch and delivered one of the tailor-mades.

  Melancon was able to sneak a quick glance down at it, but that wasn’t necessary. The feeling of it between his thumb and pointer finger was all wrong—too thick and substantial. Definitely not B&H. The smell from Melph’s lit one, heavy and tar-filled and masculine, confirmed it.

  “Need a light?” Melph asked.

  “No, I got one in the car, thanks.”

  “So, what did you do in the Marines?” Felix repeated.

  Melph blew out smoke and didn’t reply.

  Melancon snapped his fingers. “You know what, Felix, I do have a friend downtown…and you know…she has a friend who has access to records like that. NPRC, right? I think it’s form 180…”

  “Sniper,” Melph said. “I was a sniper.”

  He flicked ash down over the porch railing that wafted over and landed on Felix’s shirt.

  Melancon nodded. “Sniper, eh? I’d wager you have a story or two to tell. And, hey, maybe you’ll show us your rifle collection before this is all done and dusted, what do you say?”

  Once again, Melph did not reply. He snubbed out his cigarette and looked at them.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Melancon said, “we came here to bring you Andre’s phone.”

  The old man reached inside his coat pocket, but before he could pull out the device, Melph was already shaking his head.

  “You know what, keep it, partner,” Melph said, and without another word, he went inside his house and closed the door.

  “Y’all leave that handsome young man alone, hear?” the neighbor lady called after them, her lapdog yapping, as the two detectives tiptoed their retreat through the deep puddle on Leonidas Street.

  Fourteen

  Louis Armstrong is seventeen and has never left New Orleans.

  He stands on a wharf looking out over the river. Skyscrapers, mountains, heavy snow, the pyramids, the Eiffel Tower: these are just some of the things he hasn’t seen yet. Right now, he is wearing his best suit, his mama’s cornbread wrapped up in a handkerchief and stuffed in his jacket pocket. He has made up his mind to never tote another bucket of coal in his life. He doesn’t even know what a hero he is.

  The same sound that I’m hearing right now, he hears it, too.

  It comes rolling down between the streets and bouncing off of walls and throws itself out over the springtime Mississippi. The Calliope. That’s because they let the steam from the steam ship be put to use. They don’t waste it. Instead, they let it go up through a pipe organ on top of the ship, where it makes a beautiful, holy sound. It plays “Oh! Susanna” and “Saints” and “Dixie” and—

  Louis hears it and he smiles, taps his foot against the wharf planks. It makes him less afraid, that this is the sound he will be leaving to. Music can make you brave. He knows it, even if he doesn’t speak the words. The river doesn’t start here but it does end here. Everything is flowing and floating down to this final vanishing point. Louis will never come back to New Orleans.

  Sure, he will visit. They will have a parade for him when he steps off of the train on Canal Street a decade later. The whole city will rise up in pride and joy at their great son’s return. He’ll even be King of Zulu. But he will never really come back. Instead, he takes this place with him. Stuffs it in his pocket. He will sing its songs, dance its dances, beg his every wife to cook its foods and add its spices to every meal. For the rest of his life, he will do that. He’ll play over-the-top, jazzy cats in Hollywood movies. He’ll perform our way, talk our way, and when he gets up in some faraway place, standing with his handkerchief in front of maybe a king and queen, he’ll blow New Orleans straight into his brass, and the sound of it will make the world tremble with happiness and awe and love.

  But when he dies, he will be buried in a different type of dirt. Not this red Mississippi sand. He’ll die in New York and be buried in that faraway cold and stony ground.

  Not here.

  But right now, seventeen-year-old Louis Armstrong is putting his first foot down on that long road that will take him around the world and back again a dozen times.

  Because Louis has been hired to step on board a steamship, just like the one I’m hiding in now, to go upriver all the way north. He’ll play songs for rich people, out on a pleasure cruise, and he will leave his home behind. It’s the first step towards the big thing, the huge thing, that will make everything else seem small.

  One day, he’ll be on the cover of Life. His voice will be put on a gold record and sent out into the cosmos. A postage stamp will show his face blowing a horn.

  But right now, he is just a kid stepping onto a boat.

  Just like me.

  I hid in the smelly tent for an hour, trembling, hoping not to be found out. Finally, the homeless man opened the zipper and said, “You can come out, kid, those cops are gone off down the road.”

  I crawled out and stood in the sunshine, which had somehow changed the way everything looked from just an hour ago. It felt gentler now, covering the whole Quarter softly, gleaming off the rooftops and statues. I could hear the old toothless man had taken my spot by the café and was playing a sleepy tune on his sax.

  “You want to get out of here if you’re being hunted, just for a little while. They’ll lose interest pretty quick. Unless you killed somebody. You didn’t kill nobody, did you, kid?”

  I shook my head.

  “There’s a spot, right down there by the big riverboat, you see it? You hide there, and wait. Then, when you get a chance, sneak into that door where they load up the food. The boat comes back here again, after a while, but no one will be able to bother you for a few hours if you stay in the storage hold. It’s real warm too, and you can hear the music when they cut the engine.”

  I looked down where he was pointing, saw a crowd of people milling around in front of an old paddle wheel riverboat.

  We walked down there together, and once we got in front of the crowd, the old man bowed real low and said in a booming voice, “Behold, the greatest blues singer in all the world, King Oliver.”

  The old man pulled out a harmonica and began to blow it up and down the scales. His dog, on cue, started howling high and doleful.

  Everyone gathered around, although it really didn’t sound that nice. I guess the dog was pretty cute, and he could keep up with the harmonica. No one was paying attention and I just walked right in and hid behind some bags of rice.

  Now I’m huddled in the dark. The storage room is warm and nice and quiet except for the beautiful sound of the calliope playing those old songs. The muscles in my body start to relax for the first time in a few days, and I suddenly realize how very tired I am. Every bit of me is sore and worn out and I have little pains and bruises all over me.

  For some reason, I decide to pull one of the bullet shells out of the pocket of the army jacket and look at it. There’s only just enough light in the room for me to make out the outline of the thing. I know it’s just whe
re the powder goes, and that the killing bit, which is missing, is actually—

  I squeeze the thing in my hand, trying to crush it, trying to ball it up into a little crumpled nothing like you might do with a piece of tinfoil. But I know it’s made to deal with explosions bigger than any I can ever make, no matter how hard I try.

  I wonder where did they bury my daddy. I hope it was in the Seventeenth Ward. I hope it was right near his home. I hope it wasn’t in some faraway cold dirt. Or maybe they burned him up. Maybe they—

  I let things go for a minute, put the shell back in its place in my pocket, and fall asleep with my head laid on one of the big bags of rice.

  A while later, I’m woken up by a terrible sound. It’s like a dragon in the room just next to me, roaring something awful. It must be the engine room that the old man mentioned, but knowing what it is doesn’t make it any better. My ears are on fire, and I can’t hear anything, not the lovely calliope, not even my own thoughts. The sound is so painful, I have to stick my fingers in my ears until I can muffle that sound just a little bit, so that I can start to think again.

  There’s no way I can stay. No way I can ignore this poison in my ears being so close. So, with my ears plugged against the pain, I make a plan in my head. I will go up on the deck, pretend I’m just another traveler enjoying a pleasure cruise. I’ll stand up in the fresh air and smell the river and hear the calliope and watch the happy families who have daddies still with them. I’ll make believe I’m one of them, listen to the calliope, and I’ll think about when Louis Armstrong left his home on a boat just like this.

  The door to the storage room is heavy and metal, but it opens with a creaking sound. Thankfully, the engine covers up that, as well as my footsteps against the metal floor. No one could possibly hear me as I come out into a long hallway. At the end of the hallway I see a set of stairs that has sunshine falling on it.

  Outside the sky is blue and brilliant and I see one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen. That’s because of what is called perspective. New Orleans, which is a place that seems so large when you’ve spent your whole life standing inside of it, seems small now. The river stretches out on all sides of us and I finally know just what a big river it is. The tall buildings of downtown are a small little clump of dominoes now, and I can make out the top of the Superdome sitting just like a marble between them.

  I realize that the calliope has stopped playing now and that the music I’m hearing is coming from a live band. I’m on one of the middle decks, and so I take another set of stairs up to the top deck, where the sunshine hits the top of my head and a group of men in pressed white shirts are playing some swinging Dixieland-type music.

  New Orleans gets smaller and smaller on the far bank of the river, and I wonder at what point it will disappear into a vanishing point and what that will be like for me.

  I find a chair that’s right near the railing in the sunshine. It’s warm now and I just sit there enjoying the music and thinking about—

  I feel a hand grip my shoulder. A man in a uniform. Not quite a police uniform, but halfway there. His hold on me is strong.

  “Andre Adai?” he asks.

  I don’t say anything, I just look him in his eyes to see if there is any hate for me there, any anger. I can’t see any. What I do see is pride. He’s proud he found me, like I’m a seventy-pound fish he has caught. I know this is bad. He knows my name and I can see him carry me into the station, where everyone gathers around. He will slap me down on the desk and stand back and puff his chest and let everyone take photos.

  I stand up, and when I do I twist and manage to get loose. He takes a few slow steps towards me, and now my back is to the railing that faced the small city a few minutes ago but now just faces a bunch of old run-down factories along the shore.

  “Come on, kid,” he says and tries to make a fake laugh. “The jig is up. I’m not the bad guy here. They gave me this picture of you, see?” He holds out a Polaroid, which I can’t see because the sun is hitting my eyes. “They told me about that scar on your neck.” He points. “Told me you loved jazz, and you loved riverboats, and that you might show up one day. And if you did, I needed to call it in. They said you ran off and have everyone worried sick. Don’t worry, you aren’t in trouble. You’re just lost.”

  I know right where I am. I’m on the Mississippi River, floating right away. I know that in another hour the riverboat will turn and I will be brought right back, and that they will be waiting for me—the NOPD, everyone will be waiting to grab me.

  The band keeps right on playing.

  I take another backstep towards the railing. I hoist up my backpack tight against my arms. Music can make you brave.

  The man in uniform takes another step towards me now, and his smile has gone all nervous and unsure.

  I’ve never been a good swimmer, but the shore is so close I’m certain it will be okay. But I also know about the Mississippi River, because I grew up right beside it. I know that young men full of beer try to swim across it every year and that it sucks them down into its depths. When they get spat out, they’re fifty miles away, floating out into the ocean. If they’re lucky, a fisherman is able to drag them out of the water so their family gets a funeral. I know that the water is so muddy that if you go under just one foot, then no one can see you at all. I know there are catfish lurking at the bottom the size of great white sharks, and if you see one you will never go back in the water again for your entire life.

  But maybe all that isn’t as bad as it sounds.

  I turn.

  I face the river and look down at it.

  “Kid?” the riverboat man says.

  Fifteen

  “A fucking Marine sniper.”

  “Yeah, I heard the man, Felix.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wasn’t the guy who shot Kennedy a Marine?”

  “Something like that.”

  “A Marine sniper, with the same kind of obscure cigarettes in his ashtray, on his porch, as the ones we found at the base of the bell tower overlooking the crime scene, where a man was clearly sniped.”

  “But he doesn’t smoke them,” Melancon said and pulled Melph’s cigarette from behind his ear to hand to his worked-up young partner.

  They were rolling along in the El Camino, burning east on smooth federal roads. With the sun behind them and the humidity chilled from the air, they could see for miles.

  Felix turned the papery thing in his hand, rolled it between his thumb and pointer finger. “He could have smoked an off-brand in front of you to throw you off. Or maybe he smokes more than one type of cigarette, depending on his mood. Doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Neither does being a sniper. It’s all circumstantial so far. Not even enough for a warrant, I don’t think.”

  The young man fidgeted audibly in his seat, causing the cracked leather to complain. Afterwards, he tossed the cigarette on the dash. He had bitten his fingernails down to the nubs now and, with nothing solid left to chew, was going for his cuticle. Tiny flecks of blood had been left on the cigarette from where he had handled it with his raw fingertips.

  “It has to be him. There’s no other way.”

  Melancon studied his young charge out of the corner of his eye. Tomás had called Felix twice more since they had left the Seventeenth Ward. Felix’s girlfriend, Tina, had also called once, to say that Tomás had called, and to say that she was worried about Felix and about the young boy. The phone was driving him mad, and at the same time he seemed unwilling or unable to turn the thing off. As a result, Detective Herbert was looking like he might be folding under the pressure.

  “Pull it together, kid. You’re talking like you’ve already made up your mind about things, and that’s a dangerous place to be. You go looking for easy answers and you end up grabbing at straws. Day one stuff. You’re better than that. Pressure is just part of the job. Don’t let it get to you. You put everything else aside except for finding Andre. This is a
ll going to work out.”

  He heard Felix blowing out a deep breath from the passenger side. It sounded almost like the car had taken a nail in one of its tires.

  “You think Melph knows where the kid is?”

  “No, I don’t believe so, Felix. I think if he knew it we would know it, one way or the other.”

  They were getting into the outskirts east of the city now—a place where the ground was sodden and took a disdain for man’s buildings. A place where levees failed and graffiti lined the concrete and tired-looking men pushed tiny lawn mowers that would never be able to fight back the sedge. Indian grass and swaying palmetto fronds reached up from empty fields next to buildings in various states of decay. Kudzu vines and high-water marks covered the few soldiers who had withstood the swamp’s voracity. Even the roadway itself lifted up, taking a federal aversion towards the local soil, as if to say that it wanted nothing to do with this untrustworthy native ground. The view, on the other hand, was quite excellent. They could see the city behind them clearly through the crisp blue air, a bastion of constrained life among all of this water waiting to one day gain reentry. In front of them, the endless tops of trees, broken only by the top of a defunct amusement park, its painted spires and twisting metal breaking the tree line in a jarring interruption.

  As the roadway went higher and the detectives burned further eastward, they were more and more confronted with that iconic view that anyone leaving the city in that direction was bound to notice. It was always a surprising thing, seeing it there where it clearly had no right to be. The broken tops of toppling roller coasters. A Ferris wheel with its cars all hanging loose and rusty. The sign that somehow still read “Closed for Storm” fifteen-odd years later. From their elevated position, they could see all of these things and more—crumbling spires, broken slides, a parking lot broken up by the roots of small saplings and cypress knees. Big pools of water filled up the low spots where manicured green spaces were supposed to have been. A merry-go-round, near the center of the place, had a collapsed roof, exposing the faded horses and mystical creatures within. It was a lingering reminder of the past, of the great storm, and it haunted the east side of the city still.