by Seth Pevey
I’m going to just go on and on, all by my lonesome, until the vanishing point takes me up somewhere down at the end of all this. I still have this choice.
So, I put my foot up on the railing and start to raise myself over it.
“Hey!” I hear called behind me. It sounds so weak and sad, like a voice that has already given up to some horrible but certain thing. That last second on the ledge, I can hear even more feet rushing towards me. At least more people will know, I think. They’re coming now in a stampede—so many feet. I wonder if the boat will tip over to one side when all the people gather over here to look and watch what happens to a poor boy like me.
Louis Armstrong was here, before me. He walked on the deck of a boat just like this. Though it might have been wood and not metal. The people would have been different, too. The river water has changed a million times since then, but it’s still the same river. He would jump, too. If Daddy were here, he would jump.
I have to do it. I let go of the railing a few seconds before the riverboat man gets to me.
The next thing I feel is like being in space. There’s nothing underneath me except the water rushing up quick. The wind tears at my backpack but I keep it on, tight around me as I can, until finally I hit. When I land, it’s right on my left shoulder. I know I’m supposed to turn myself into a knife, to cut the water like a high diver, but I land all crooked like a dead fish instead and it hurts something fierce.
Then I’m lost with that pain for a minute in a brown swirl of bubbles. I take a big mouthful of water and my nose fills up with a burning, swampy smell. My head pops up, but the current is so strong. I’m thrashing around, trying to pull in the air, and being tugged away.
My head goes back underwater. I try and close my eyes. I try and think about Louis Armstrong. Maybe this is where the vanishing point will take me. I’ll be a part of history and a part of the river forever. Only no books will be written and there will never be a postage stamp with my face on it.
But I don’t fall asleep. Not yet. From underwater, I hear one of the loudest sounds I’ve ever heard. It has a rhythm to it as well, sounding like steady cannonballs hitting the surface. Maybe, I think, this is the music of death. But it isn’t. It’s the red paddle wheel of the steamer getting closer and closer. It is sucking the water towards itself, stronger than even the Mississippi, and with that water it’s also sucking me. I’m being pulled closer and closer towards it, the belly-flopping paddleboards getting louder and—
At the last moment, the wheel grinds to a halt, and the boat passes me by. I’m drifting along in the silty water. Sometimes it sucks me under for just a bit, but never more than I can stand. Otherwise it lets me back up again to breathe every ten seconds or so. Big logs drift by, large pieces of lumber and trash. The river is taking me where it wants me. I stop trying to fight it and give up.
But the backpack is weighing me down. I’ve got two pieces of metal strapped to me, I realize, in between breaths. A gun and a horn—two pieces of metal and they both want nothing more than to fall to the bottom of this river and rest there for a few hundred years. If they take me with them, it makes no difference.
But some miracle happens. Some spirit watches over me. I don’t really know how exactly I get so lucky but I suddenly just open my eyes and I can see rocks only a few feet away. I’m breathless and tired as I’ve ever been, but the rocks are so close. I start to paddle towards them, but I’m not much of a swimmer, so it takes me a lot of time and energy to move a few feet. When I try to grab for one of the rocks, it’s slippery and sharp. When I finally get a hold of one, I can feel how strong the river wants to keep me. For a second I think about just letting go, letting myself be washed down or drowned or whatever else it is that the river wants, because I’m tired of fighting against it, tired of everything, so much stronger than me, pulling me this way and that and having to fight against it. I don’t want to run or fight anymore.
But I don’t let go. I get the rock in both hands and pull. Finally, a few seconds later, I’m standing on a grassy bank. I cough and sputter and wheeze and the ground underneath me spins a little bit. Water is dripping off of me and the wind is cold. I climb to the top of the levee and make over to the other side. Then I look up.
All around me are tombstones, dead trees, but I don’t see a church or any people. There’s garbage blowing in the wind, the smell of old beer, kudzu vines swirling like the eddies in the river. No cars and no loud music, but the glow of distant headlines maybe a mile away. The sun is getting real low now, almost gone. The only thing here in front of me is just rows and rows of the stones, all of them about the same shape and size, equally spaced and probably neat and tidy once upon a time. Now they’re rotting uneven like bad teeth. Some of them have the names of the dead on them, some are so worn as to say nothing at all, some are toppled over and lying flat on the silt. There are a few spots of green grass, a few tussling tops of live oaks with their bushy leaves that never fall off.
I squish forward, realize I’m still only wearing one shoe and that the shoe is waterlogged and nasty. I take it off and toss it away. My feet are cold but the ground feels kind of good underneath them, and it’s nice not to have that squishy shoe weighing me down anymore.
I finish coughing up water and I try and shake myself off a bit. The wetness is making me shiver, and I’m starting to feel pins and needles working their way up into my legs. I walk around a bit to get my blood flowing and look to find a spot that’s maybe sheltered from the wind. It’s also getting dark. I find a brick wall and crouch behind it, shaking so hard among all those dead people. I wonder if any of them can see me. I take off my backpack and dump it out on the ground and—
My horn.
My horn is gone.
I look around in a panic, but it’s too dark now. Hopeless. I turn the bag upside down and the gun falls out, all on its lonesome. It twinkles, all wet, in the dead grass, and that horrible lightweight emptiness is all that’s left in my backpack.
Empty air.
I try to think about Louis Armstrong, but I can’t even do that. His face, the sound of his beautiful high C, the sweat he wipes away from his forehead as he smiles into the camera in Technicolor—all of those things are gone from me. They must all be sinking down with my horn into the bottom of the Mississippi, which is deeper than anyone could ever imagine. It might as well go all the way to the center of the earth. I see my horn falling to a place where no man can go that is so deep and dark and terrible that you can’t even imagine it.
It must have fallen out, it must be gone, it must be sinking still, second by second, into the murky water.
The only thing that’s still here is the gun, dripping wet but still all in one piece.
The gun is the only thing left.
The gun and me.
I put it back in my bag and run, no direction, no idea where I’m going. I just want to be away from all of the dead people before they convince me that I’m better off with them. Before they can welcome me. Before they can reach out and—
I come to some kind of an empty parking lot. Everywhere it is broken bottles, discarded underwear, plastic bags. And then I see it.
There, off to one side, is a billboard. A strange place for one, and it looks like it has been sitting here through all weather for years and years. It’s faded, torn in the corners, and in the last red glow of the sunset I can see it turn all orange and bright before the sun dips into the vanishing point and leaves me in the dead darkness.
“JAZZLAND: OPENING THIS SUMMER,” it reads in large bold letters. “4 Miles North on the 510, exit 182,” it says, slightly smaller, just underneath.
And just under that…it is him.
Daddy always said it wasn’t good to be superstitious, or to rely too much on signs. But that way of thinking didn’t do him much good, did it? Not in the end. Maybe Daddy wasn’t right about everything. This has got to be one of those moments. Why else would it be here, staring me in the face, right as I’m about to f
reeze? Right in my darkest moment. It is here, he is here. Just right when I lose my horn and wash up choking near a field of countless dead people.
Louis. He’s everywhere in this town. At the center of everything.
And now he’s right there in front of me, larger than life, as always. His face must be ten feet tall. Louis, faded and worn and torn by the wind, is still himself. He has one of those faces that you can never miss. It pops out in this dead place. Mr. Armstrong. No mistaking him, not for one second. No one else can blow his horn. No one else can go on, year after year, putting everything happy and right into the world while all of the broken glass and condom wrappers and cigarette butts just float around him.
Above Louis are the tops of roller coasters, a merry-go-round, a Ferris wheel. Behind him are a happy, laughing family. The dad’s head has been torn off by the wind, but I can imagine his smiling, happy face as he leads his family into Jazzland for a day of fun together, at Louis’s recommendation.
I stare at this sign for a long, long time. Thinking it all over—everything that has happened. My whole life. I don’t have a voice and now I don’t even have a horn anymore.
All I have is a wet gun, cold bones, and four miles to walk before I can find that final vanishing point.
Finally, it’s full dark, and I can’t see the sign anymore. That’s okay. I look right past it. I look right down the road. I know that’s where it has to all end. I know that there’s only one way I can be happy. But there’s one thing I want to make sure of.
I take the brass shell casings out of the pocket of the army jacket and toss them on the ground, right in front of the sign. I hope maybe the police will find them here, will take them in and put them under a microscope. I hope they will find out if these are the bullets that—
But then again, it doesn’t matter too much. You can’t change the past, and there’s no sense in trying. All you can do is try to just leave a little trace of yourself and hope that maybe someone will care.
Louis is still just there smiling, even though I can hardly see him in all the darkness.
For first time in a long while, the hurting stops, and I smile back.
Seventeen
“So, the kid comes in here, and he’s what, thirteen? You take his father’s ID badge and you turn him back towards the street? That what kind of a man you are?”
Felix had an accusatory finger pointed in the hotelier’s face. Melancon had to use two hands on his partner’s shoulders to pull him back to a safe distance.
“What do you want me to do? Urchins coming in here all the time. I reported the stolen ID, which is all the NOPD wants me to do. Who are you? You’re not even police officers. Why don’t you get the fuck out of my hotel before I call the real cops and—”
“Alright, look,” Melancon said, two hands of supplication raised as he took a step towards the hotelier, putting himself bodily between Felix and the tired-looking man. “We’re hunting that missing boy. He has a family that cares about him. I’m not sure if the cops told you, but that badge belonged to his recently murdered father.”
The hotelier cut his eyes to the side, rocked on his little stool a bit.
“Are you watching the game while I’m trying to talk to you?”
The man shrugged, but he didn’t return his attention. His eyes were indeed cast in the glow of some out-of-sight television. Melancon could even see a ball reflected in motion across in the man’s glasses.
Felix stepped around Melancon and slapped an angry palm down on the counter. “You. Tell me everything, every detail about the boy. How was he dressed? Did he say anything? Where do you think he was going?”
Melancon realized what a fruitless effort it was, how pointless this interrogation was bound to be, but he felt his phone buzzing in his pocket before he could alter this impotent line of questioning.
Janine again.
“Hey, Janine, we’re talking to the hotelier right now. Guy won’t—”
She cut him off.
“Andre went in the river, David.”
“What?”
Melancon didn’t want to believe it. He shot his young partner a panicked glance. Felix caught the gist of it right away, turned away from the surly hotelier.
“Get down to the Chalmette Battlefield. It happened right near here. There’s a search-and-rescue operation. But you know, David…I mean, I don’t have to tell you…about the Mississippi River…in March.”
Her voice was cracking. Whether it was sobs or a bad connection, he couldn’t be sure. He could hear men yelling urgently in the background, the sound of a chopper starting.
“What do you mean, ‘he went in the river’?” Melancon asked, not wanting to simply unpack those straightforward words himself. This odd question caused even the impassive hotelier to look away from his television, but only for the briefest of moments.
“Just get down here, David. I need you,” she said and hung up.
They were back in the El Camino in twenty seconds, the chassis of the thing fishtailing a bit as Melancon gunned it out onto Tulane Avenue.
“Did she say what happened? Do you think he’s dead? Drowned?”
“She didn’t say anything, kid. Just that he went in the drink. We’re about to find out, though. Hold on.”
Melancon made a few quick turns, taking them down shorter side roads, the car flopping over the deep potholes.
“Felix.”
They took a quick turn onto St. Peter. Both of them had to grip the handles as the car squealed against the moist asphalt and righted itself straight again.
“This is not the quickest way, partner,” Felix was saying, “You need to take 10 East or Rampart to—”
“Felix!”
“What?”
“Look behind us.”
“Holy shit, is that—?”
“I think it is.”
What Melancon saw in his rearview was disturbing to say the least, given the already tense circumstances. The dark green Explorer was now inches away from the El Camino’s bumper—the same Explorer they had seen park in front of the house on Leonidas Street just a few hours earlier, driven by a long Marine sniper who had stepped out onto the St. Augustine and somehow avoided wetting his feet in that street-wide puddle. But the windshield of the Explorer was just a little too tinted to be certain, a little too dark to see the face behind the wheel.
But Melancon knew.
“It has to be Melph. He’s been behind us for the last three turns,” the old detective said, followed by a stream of expletives. He was adjusting the rearview mirror and dodging potholes as best he could as he got them onto Basin Street, flying past the detective agency and onto the eastbound highway.
“Lose him,” Felix said, drumming his fingers nervously on the dash.
Melancon pressed his foot down on the gas pedal, merging into heavy late-afternoon traffic and weaving between three slower-moving cars, quickly breaking out into the fast lane. The old engine complained in a dull roar, the metal pinging and thumping with the exertion.
“I don’t know how much of this the old girl has in her,” Melancon yelled, gripping the steering wheel tight in both hands.
“He’s still there!” Felix cried.
“Hold on.”
Up ahead there was an exit blocked off by an accident of some kind—three or four men standing around a series of orange cones, a tow truck, and a broken-down vehicle.
Melancon waited until the last moment, and then pulled the wheel to the right, knocking one of the cones down and passing within inches of the back of the tow truck. On the exit ramp he lost control of the vehicle—the old El Camino spun around once, banged up against the guardrail, and righted itself with clear road ahead and no trailing enemy behind.
“We lost him,” Melancon said, nearly breathless. “You alright?”
“Yeah, good job,” Felix replied, gripping the dashboard with both hands. His face had gone ghostly white. “Are we still mobile, or we need to get out and push?”
Melancon gently caressed the gas with his loafer and was relieved when the car moved forward again.
When they had made it a few blocks, Felix slumped in his seat and finally released his vise grip on the dashboard. “I hate to say I told you so, old man, but I told you so.”
Melancon nodded, pulling onto the two-lane highway that would take them to the battlefield.
“Maybe you were right. I don’t know why he would be following us if he’s an innocent man. Or maybe he thinks we know where Andre is and is hoping to gain some glory by finding the kid at the same time as we do.”
Felix shook his head. “The kid he lost? Anyway, I don’t have a good feeling about anyone finding that boy now.”
As they pulled into the battlefield tourist parking lot, the situation indeed appeared far from hopeful. Dozens of police cruisers were there, some of them flashing their lights. A small tent had been set up in one corner of the grass, where a few uniformed men stood around a table, their map fluttering in the late-evening breeze. The moon had come up over the river, casting a beautiful though grim light down on the whole operation. Rescue boats were moving around in the current, and in the distance, the detectives could see the bridge lit up and twinkling as commuters made their way home to the West Bank.
Felix’s phone rang.
“Tomás, we’re doing the best we can. It would be helpful if you stopped calling me every—”
The young detective’s mouth swung open. “Hold on, I want Melancon to hear this.” He pressed the speaker feature on his device, letting Tomás de Valencia’s voice enter the vehicle.
“I heard a…a sound. I thought, someone could be breaking in downstairs. It turned out to be only the wind. But in my fright, I went for the pistola your father, Felix, always kept in his desk drawer. The one in his office, you know, with the pearl handle. You remember, of course? But I was shocked to discover that…the gun…it is no longer there. And I thought to myself, who has been in the house? There has been no new cleaning woman, no new anyone…except…”
