Gods of New Orleans

by AJ Sikes

  “Don’t you never go looking at them girls like that again. You hear me? Never. Les’ you want the Birdman to come an’ take your eye.” The chaperone snatched at the air like she’d pluck Emma’s eye out herself.

  Emma’s chest heaved and she nearly spat back at the woman standing in the cabin doorway, like she could push her out with just the right words. But the words didn’t come, and wouldn’t come no matter how much Emma willed them to. She again clutched the money with the hand in her pocket and nodded, feeling the shame rise to her cheeks when she realized her bottom lip was trembling.

  The chaperone moved into the cabin. Emma went to the door and worked the levers to release the gangway and pull the door closed.

  “Good,” the chaperone said. “Now get us on back the boarding house.” She stepped to Brand’s desk and took her seat there again, yanking open the bottom drawer as soon as her tailbone hit the chair.

  The woman made a disappointed grunt and slammed the drawer shut. “Ain’t got a bottle in there? What the hell it’s for then it don’t hold a bottle? Half useless, like a few other things round here.”

  Emma ignored the taunt and sat in the pilot’s chair. She kept her eyes on the controls and signaled the gearboxes she was ready to go. The radio crackled and gave way to the usual series of chirps Emma had grown accustomed to. The gangway withdrew and the mooring lines released. With another series of chirps and clicks, Emma had confirmation that the ship was free and clear. She turned her attention to piloting the craft away from the gala house.

  Down below, gaslight glowed from every window down the long side of the house. Inside, twirling silhouettes danced round and round the floor, like music box dancers cascading past the windows in a quickening flurry. Emma held the ship in a steady rise but still angled so she could watch the gala house through the cockpit windows.

  “Why you keeping us aimed this way?” the chaperone demanded. “Mama Fontaineau’s boarding house off east, same as when we left to come out here.”

  Emma held her tongue and turned the ship to the east. The gala house disappeared from view out the left window and Emma let it go. The feeling that she’d just delivered a flock of lambs to the slaughter didn’t leave her, though. It stayed with her the whole way back across the city.

  She left the chaperone at the deck by Mama Fontaineau’s boarding house without so much as a “So long, sister.” The fury had built and continued to build as they flew, and the chaperone hadn’t done anything to change Emma’s mood, at least not for the better. By the time she had the Vigilance moored in her and Eddie’s neighborhood, the ache of anger in her chest had wilted to a dull sorrow, pressed beneath a heavy dread.

  Emma walked down the street to their home and went inside, struggling to keep from folding over where she stood.

  Settling into the chair in the front parlor, Emma fell asleep, dreaming of little lambs stripped of their downy wool and let to run through a nightmare of dark houses that erupted with flames from the windows.

  ~•~

  Brand stands under a tree across the street from the Rising Sun and watches the jazzers and flappers having their fun. Light flares out of the building and the rumble and stomp of a good heel kick come to Brand’s ears across the night from the open front door and balcony windows. The two-story building looks solid and strong even in this run down riverside stretch of New Orleans. Somebody takes care of it, Brand knows. And that somebody is the man he met on the street the other day. His first delivery.

  Vice.

  Bacchus owns the Sun, and a whole lot more of this town. Brand’s figured that out in the short time he’s been on the street. Wasn’t that hard, really, what with every mud man from here to Lafayette telling him that was how things were. Bacchus owns this gala house and plenty others.

  He probably owns the people inside them, too. They just don’t know it yet. Or they don’t care.

  Miss Farnsworth’s jazz man is in there with them, hooting it up and blowing on his horn in between sips of sherry or brandy or whatever else they’re pouring inside.

  Looks like he’s having a glass of Janet and one of Josephine, too, from where I’m standing.

  Brand winces when a pang of hunger rips into his guts and stirs them up good. Worse than he’s felt before, even in the trenches. It’s been a long night of watching this jazz house glowing like a lighthouse by the riverside, and the night’s just getting longer. But Brand has nowhere else to go. Nothing to do but wait it out under this tree with his collar up and his hands wrapped in his frayed sleeves, while he hopes Miss Farnsworth’s jazz man is sober enough to carry a letter home in his pocket.

  Since Conroy spurned him, Brand figures he’s got one of two plays with this new gig of his. He can deliver the mail like he’s supposed to, and slowly go crazy in the process until he’s sucking down mud for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Or, he thinks, as the jazz players slow down in the house across the way, he can find a patsy, someone who can do it just as good as him.

  He doesn’t know how the gods will take it, him handing letters to the wrong people. But if he makes sure the patsy doesn’t do something stupid, like opening the letter, well, maybe Brand can go back to doing the only thing he feels good about doing anymore.

  Wherever Barn and the fellas took off to, I’ll find 'em. And then we can talk about what’s left in the bottle.

  Drink. That’s what he’s come to, Brand thinks. A man and his drink. All he needs is someone to take over for him, someone to play messenger boy for the gods. So long as the person can walk a line to a destination and listens good enough to know they shouldn’t tamper with the mail, well . . .

  Brand sniffs and wipes a hand over his face. The jazzers are all quiet now, putting their horns away. The flappers are smoking and giggling, someone in there is almost cackling. And sounds from an upstairs window tell Brand that two people are having more fun than he’s had since who knows when.

  Soon enough, everyone but the pair upstairs is spilling out of the Rising Sun and taking over the street outside. A couple of jazzers strike up a song and dance with a pair of flappers. They all fall down in a heap with a groan and a screech. Somebody’s hurt, but Brand isn’t paying attention to their pissing and moaning. He’s worried about Miss Farnsworth’s jazz man, what’s his name again . . .

  Collins. Somebody named Collins. Brand tucks himself tighter against the tree and scans the crowd slowly filling the street. They’re all circling around the tangle of bodies on the ground. Someone in there is sobbing now. Brand thinks for a second he can help, and then remembers the weight like a lodestone in his pocket.

  Conroy’s letter. And now one for Miss Farnsworth, too.

  Then Brand sees him. Her jazz man. Eddie Collins.

  He’s got his horn in its case and he’s walking down the street. Stumbling down the street is more like it, Brand thinks as he watches Eddie fetch up against the side of the building with a thin, pale flapper trailing after him. She’s calling to him and pawing at his collar. Eddie turns around, plants a wet one on the flapper’s mouth and gets back as good as he gives. Brand waits it out while they have their fun. Soon enough the girl acts like she remembers where she is or who she’s supposed to be with. She turns away from Eddie and heads over to the circle of people in the street.

  She gets there and disappears into the group, swallowed up like a shadow of a shadow until she’s just another pair of flapper’s legs in the mix of bodies. They’re all standing around the group that took a tumble, two men and two women, now huddled together like they’re sheltering from a storm.

  Brand doesn’t see any blood on the faces or hands in the mix. But it’s dark as can be at this time of night, and it’s only shadows that Brand can see really.

  Shadows and more shadows. Brand peers around the street, trying to remember why he’s standing there, and then he sees him. Miss Farnsworth’s jazz man is still trying to walk his silly drunk ass home. This is the guy Brand is going to trust with Miss Farnsworth’s letter?

/>   What’d the gods think they were doing naming Conroy and Miss Farnsworth as the latest and greatest?

  “Don’t you have someone else you can drape your laurels on?” Brand mumbles into his collar.

  Nobody answers and Brand doesn’t bat an eye or lose a second wondering why not. They never do. He’s used to it now. The constant silence of New Orleans nights that never answer him.

  He steps out of his hiding place, careful to stumble like a good little tramp, and ignores the cries of surprise that follow him from the group in the street. He staggers down the way, keeping Eddie Collins in his vision as best he can, and gets himself ready to jump in case Eddie Collins starts to slide into the street.

  Sure enough, at the first intersection, Brand has to rush across the way and grab hold of Eddie. Brand hooks his hands under the black man’s arms and pulls for all he’s worth until Eddie’s legs come free of the mud with a sickening Pop.

  “Let’s get you home,” Brand says to the now sleeping jazz man. Brand lifts a hand and peels back the night, revealing a tunnel to the French Quarter. “I guess I’m stuck with this gig after all,” he says and then hauls Eddie Collins into the world behind the city.

  ~•~

  Emma woke with a start when Eddie came home. He was covered in sweat and the stink of cigar smoke mixed with perfume and sweet wine, like a cocktail poured from the Devil’s own decanter. And his pants were covered in mud up to his knees.

  “You ought to wash up, Eddie,” she said to him as he put his instrument case down on the love seat and flopped himself next to the case. He turned weary eyes to her, above a grin that was half wolf and half sloppy hound dog.

  “Oh, Eddie,” Emma said, her voice falling to the floor. “You’re drunk.”

  “C’mon here, Lov‌—‌” Eddie started to say and then spilled the night’s revelry into his lap. Emma reeled away from the scene and the sounds, flying from the chair and stepping fast down the hall. She closed the bedroom door behind her and leaned against it.

  How many nights? How many times had she cleaned up after her father when he’d been on a tear with the men from the power plant? Or the mayor? Emma had lived a servant’s life around the men she’d grown up being told to admire. The petty yet powerful of Chicago City’s elite. Nothing but a gang of drunks at the end of the day. And Emma had been their cleaning lady.

  May as well have been their nursemaid, cook, and mother while she was at it. Not half of them had wives at home. She’d taken that as a sign that no woman should stand by a man with one hand in hers while the other clutched tight to the neck of a bottle.

  Now Eddie’s gone over the falls, too.

  Emma stopped herself there. Had she really thought that about him? The man she’d risked her life to rescue from the lynch man’s noose. The man she’d set out with on this adventure in starting over. She had no delusions about life in New Orleans being easy, no matter what the city was called. But it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Eddie wasn’t supposed to wind up just as bad as the men she’d turned away from.

  A grunt and the dull thud of his instrument case hitting the floor told Emma that Eddie was moving around the front parlor. Shuffling footsteps and thumps against the walls and floor signaled his slow progress to the washroom. Emma breathed a sigh of relief that she wouldn’t have to clean him up like she had her father for all those years.

  ~•~

  The next morning, Emma stood outside the washroom. Eddie had slept in the bathtub. His clothes sat wadded up on the floor, reeking of his misery. Emma turned her head and breathed deep before going into the washroom and snatching up the soiled clothing. She fast-stepped down the hall to the auto-wash and tossed the whole mess into the basin.

  Emma worked fast to get the machine ready. With a sniff of disgust, she hit the switch. The machine started up with a jerk and whirred into a steady rhythm.

  In the kitchen, she made breakfast for herself and ate it in silence while Eddie snored and sometimes coughed in the bathtub. She thought about waking him, but figured he’d hate himself enough without the look she was bound to give him.

  Outside, New Orleans slowly came to life. Emma washed the dishes, and still Eddie slept. She thought again about waking him up and had decided to do it when the wall beside the kitchen door shimmered and lifted away like a translucent drape, revealing Brand in his tattered coat and beat-up hat. He stepped into the kitchen, letting the gossamer wall fall into place behind him, making the kitchen whole once again.

  Brand had the same weather-beaten look on his mug. His suspenders sagged lower than a gambler’s bottom lip after a bad day at the track, but his eyes were still bright as ever, alive and full of warning.

  “You got a minute, Miss Farnsworth?”

  “Looks that way, whether I like it or not. You don’t exactly give a girl a chance to tidy up for guests. Do you?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, taking off his hat and running the stained fingers of one hand through his now-thinning hair. “I’m doing this as a favor. If that makes you feel any better.”

  “It doesn’t. So what’s it about this time, Brand? More hocus-pocus and abracadabra? I’m not saying I mind, but if it’s all the same to you, I don’t see what’s in it for me. All this talk about gods and‌—‌”

  “That’s just it,” he said, as the hint of a smirk crept around his lips. He put his hat back on and motioned a hand to a chair by the kitchen table. “Okay if I sit?”

  “Go ahead,” Emma said, standing back from the table a step farther. His stink wasn’t that bad, but he looked every type of dirty there was, and Emma’d had plenty with cleaning up after Eddie.

  “So?” she said as Brand got settled. “What’s the scoop, Brand?”

  “Your jazz man,” he said, tossing a look down the hall to the bathroom. “Got himself good and sauced last night, hey?”

  “What business is that of yours? Look, I’m not up for chit-chat, so‌—‌”

  “You want to hear this, Miss Farnsworth. You don’t have to like it and you probably won’t no matter how I tell it, but you’ll be thanking me when I’m done. Your good-time guy in the bathtub is only alive because of me, and I risked what’s left of my neck making sure he got home last night. If I hadn’t, he and Al Conroy would’ve been bunking together in the street. A couple of mud men with nothing better to do than hit the sauce and lie around waiting for the boss to call.”

  Emma leaned back against the counter, finding the rim of the sink with her twitching fingers and holding on to the enameled metal with all her strength. A grimace worked its way across her mouth and up her face until she felt her eyes watering.

  “What the hell is this, Brand? The gods followed us from Chicago City?”

  “No, but you’d be better off if it was just them we had to worry about. Industry and his pals are still fighting the bad fight, or the good, depending which side you’re on.”

  “Then what‌—‌?”

  “The ones down here don’t care as much about taking over and making the world run by their rules. Vice, Corruption, even Innocence. They just take you in soon as they’ve got half a chance to do it. Last night, Corruption had her sights on your fella. Eddie nearly hit the street with a belly full of hooch and ten kinds of lady paint on his collar. He‌—‌”

  “What?” Emma shouted, her tears forgotten. Now she felt nothing but a burning hatred. “Get out, Brand. Get the hell out!”

  Brand stood up slow, but as she advanced on him he seemed to get the message. He stepped back to the kitchen door.

  “I-I’m in a jam here, Miss Farnsworth. I did you a favor and figured you’d do me one back, hey?”

  “A favor?” Emma said, hoping Brand felt the word stab him in the guts like she meant it to. “You call bringing Eddie back a favor? He should be out there making a hot mess of himself instead of making another mess for me to clean up in the house.”

  “It’s the kid,” Brand said. “Conroy. He needs help, Miss Farnsworth, and his folks aren’t good
for helping him anymore.”

  Emma had another knife on her tongue, ready to stick in him, but the mention of Aiden put her back on her heels.

  “What about the kid? What’s going on with him, and why does he need my help?”

  Brand didn’t answer right away. He stuck a hand into his coat pocket and lifted it like he intended to bring his hand back out with something between his fingers.

  “Before I show you this, you gotta promise me you’ll help him. He’s the only one I’ve got left out of the three of ‘em,” Brand said, choking up on the words. “My three newsboys. That damn monster the gods sent after us took care of Jenkins and Digs Gordon back in Chicago City. Conroy’s the only one left. I can’t let him down.”

  “So why don’t you help him? You’ve got the magic tricks, Brand. What’s the matter?”

  “I tried,” Brand said, sucking in the tears and wiping his face with his free hand. “Aiden . . . he didn’t want the kind of help I have to give.”

  Brand pulled his other hand out of his pocket and Emma’s eyes went narrow with doubt when he held out two envelopes.

  “Go on,” he said. “Please. I need to give it to somebody and the kid’s nowhere I can find him. I’ve looked.”

  “Isn’t it your job to deliver the mail, Brand?” Emma reached for the letters and her fingers closed on them, but she didn’t tug like she wanted them yet. “What happens to me if I take these from you and I’m not the right person to read ‘em?”

  “Just be sure you only read the one addressed to you and it’ll be jake,” Brand said, letting the letters go. In a flash, he’d lifted the curtain beside his head and stepped through it. Before Emma could holler at him to wait, the hallway dropped back into place and Brand was gone.

  Emma’s eyes wanted to go every other way they could, but she forced herself to look at the letters.

  INNOCENCE C/O AIDEN CONROY

  VIGILANCE C/O EMMA FARNSWORTH