Recovering Charles

by Jason F. Wright

  “Yes, sir, he did. Good for you.” He opened his beer and took a long drink. “He was proud of you for that. That you decided to be a, what do they call that?”

  “Teetotaler. But it’s not a big deal; I just don’t drink.”

  “Teetotaler. That’s right. Dumb word—teetotaler.” He said the word with disdain. “Makes me think of tea. Why ain’t it beertotaler?”

  I grinned broadly, despite, or maybe because of the nerves.

  Jerome took another swig of his warm beer. “Son, we don’t know ’bout your father yet.”

  I exhaled. Is this relief?

  “No word. We got people all over the city lookin’, checkin’ shelters, askin’ ’round.”

  “I’m relieved,” I mustered.

  “Yeah?”

  “Of course. I drove down here, didn’t I?”

  Jerome’s face shone wisdom. “That’s right, you did.” He finished his beer. “You didn’t exactly rush though, did you, son?”

  “I really couldn’t.” It was the best I could come up with.

  He stared right through me. “You take the long way?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Nothin’. You’re here. We’re happy for you. Happy for your dad, too.”

  “You think he’s alive?”

  “For now I’m talkin’ like he is. Cause we’re goin’ to find ’im, son, one way or another. And you’re goin’ to help us.”

  “All right.”

  “Good.”

  “Is there a hotel open yet? I’ve got nowhere to stay.”

  “Nothin’ in the city. You can go north across the lake and find somethin’, maybe, but rooms are tight right now. But we got you all set. Got a sofa bed upstairs.”

  “Here?”

  “That’s right. Cause I didn’t say upstairs someplace else, did I?”

  “No, sir, I couldn’t put someone out, but I’m really grateful, truly—”

  “You sound like Charlie.” He stood up and stomped on his beer can, crushing it flat, and then flung it like a Frisbee toward a tall black trash can in the corner. The can bounced off the wall and fell in. “We have the will and the room, Charlie Millward’s boy. You’ll stay here. Go back to your car, get your belongin’s or bags or whatever you brought, and come back before dark. Curfew’s in effect but ignore anythin’ you hear overnight. Some of the reporters hangin’ around have been comin’ by late for a drink.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s need-to-know. Got it?”

  I nodded.

  “Good on you. Tomorrow we’ll get to work.”

  I had no desire to trudge back to my car.

  As if rehearsed, Bela and Jez made their way down the stairs and into the conversation. Jez looked like she’d been crying again.

  “Jez, Luke’s goin’ to be our guest upstairs. Would you mind settin’ up the gray couch for ’im?”

  “Happy to,” Jez answered.

  “Bela. Would you mind walkin’ with Luke back down to his car so he can get his things?”

  “Sure, Jerome.”

  “Great,” I said eagerly. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter

  17

  Bela’s bronze legs moved faster than mine did.

  “Wait up, you’re killing me.”

  “Sorry, Luke,” she said as we turned onto Canal. “Used to walking fast, I guess.”

  I picked up the pace and walked at her side.

  “Tell me again where you’re parked?”

  I was beginning to lose my breath; I calculated in my head the last time I’d been to the gym. “A mile from the Superdome. Garden District, I think.”

  “You didn’t write it down? Or take a picture?”

  That would have been an excellent idea, I thought. “No, no, I’ll remember it.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Is she walking even faster?

  We walked, mostly in silence, until we neared the area where I remembered parking the car. In the gray light of the September evening, I saw the two men still sleeping under a bridge and accepted that their sleep was eternal. I hoped they weren’t too far from the main streets to be noticed and recovered by the Red Cross, FEMA, or anyone else with body bags. I also wondered if they had worried children somewhere.

  A moment later we reached my car. I removed my duffel and laptop bags from the trunk. I slung my camera bag over my shoulder.

  “Is that everything?” Bela asked.

  “Think so.”

  “I don’t want to stress you out, Luke, but there aren’t many dry cars down here. So make sure there’s nothing valuable here, because it’s a pretty attractive target.”

  “For looters? Really? A cheap rental car?”

  “It’s survival. That backseat would be a welcome place for someone to sleep.”

  “True enough.”

  “You got the rental insurance, right?”

  Whoops. “Of course.”

  Bela’s eyebrows drew together and she reached out for a handwritten note that had been slipped under one of the wiper blades. She read it out loud in the fading light.

  “Whoever you are, you’re brave (or stupid) to leave a FEMA car unattended because you aren’t the most popular four-letters in town right now. We wanted to leave you a not-so-friendly spray-painted message telling you where to go but then we noticed the pass is for FEMA Construction—the good guys. So . . . thanks for coming. Thanks for staying. Thank you for helping us recover.”

  She gently folded the note and handed it to me. Then she tapped the window above the FEMA Construction pass. “Looks like this is better than rental insurance.”

  I swallowed past a sudden lump in my throat and carefully slipped the note into my wallet, grateful that small miracles were still happening in the Big Easy.

  Bela reached over and took the laptop bag from me. “Here, I got that.”

  We began to follow our route back to Verses, each block bringing darker shades of gray and a faster pace.

  “So it’s really unsafe down here after dark?”

  “Not exactly unsafe, not like the wrong-side-of-town unsafe. There’s just a lot of desperation down here, everywhere really. Not many people left in the city, but the ones who stayed are trying to survive.”

  “What about the evacuation? Why aren’t they forcing you out?”

  “We’ve held out pretty well because they have more important things to do right now than chase out locals.”

  “Especially locals trying to assist.”

  “Correct. And they know they can’t legally force us off our property anyway. It’s mostly rhetoric. Jerome’s had that argument a few times already.”

  “So why did you stay? And Jerome and Jez and the others?”

  “I guess because we knew if we got on a bus we might never come back. And we had too many friends not accounted for yet. Neighbors. A few employees.”

  We crossed Canal Street and heard a howling wail from down an alley. In the fading light it appeared a man was beating a dog with something.

  “Hey! Hey!” I yelled. “Stop!”

  “Don’t, Luke.” Bela grabbed my forearm.

  “That guy down there—he’s killing that dog!”

  “I see him. The animal is probably sick. Let’s go.”

  “You’re not—”

  “Let’s go, Luke. He’s doing the dog a favor. Trust me. I watched a guy kill a rabid dog with a clock radio a few days ago.”

  A clock radio? I thought. In any other setting I might have called her a liar. But in that place, on that street, I had no doubt she had seen just such a thing.

  As we walked away, the dog’s wails turned to whimpers. Then silence. I looked over my shoulder as the man exited the alley and sat on the curb. It was too dark to be certain, but I was sure he was crying.

  I’d never felt so out of place and disoriented.

  I walked faster.

  Just a few blocks later we walked back through the front door of Verses. The lights were on.

  “Power’
s on,” I said.

  “Won’t last. It’s been on and off since the storm.” Bela picked up two flashlights off the bar. “Just in case.” She handed me one as we climbed the staircase. She flipped a light switch at the top of the stairs.

  “You’ll leave that flashlight with me?”

  “Scared of the dark?” she teased.

  “No, just can’t see a thing. If the lights go out, I’ll kill myself falling down the stairs.”

  She didn’t laugh. “Of course I’ll leave it.” She pointed with her flashlight at a couch pushed up against the wall between the top of the stairs and the head of a hallway. There was a pillow at one end of the sofa and a blanket folded at the other. “This is you. No door, I’m afraid, but roomy.”

  “How about the rest of you?”

  “There are a couple other rooms down there.” She nodded toward the hallway. “A pretty big one that way—a few are staying in there on the floor.” She pointed her flashlight the other direction.

  “I don’t need the couch, Bela. I’m grateful but the floor would be fine, really.”

  “Relax. Jerome said the gray couch was yours.” She set my laptop bag by my feet.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I sat on one end of the couch and let myself settle into the soft, worn cushions. Whatever energy I’d had left fled into the unknown around me. “Who else stays here, if I can ask?”

  “May I?” she asked as she sat.

  On the opposite end of the couch Bela also melted into the comfortable cushions. She rested her head on the back of the couch, sighed, and stretched her legs out into the room. “Hard to say right now, people are coming and going. Jerome has his place, an apartment you can get to from outside. There’s an office up here, too.”

  “And Jerome said my dad lived in the Lower Ninth?”

  “That’s right. Jez lived down there, too.”

  “With him?”

  “Oh, no. Your dad wouldn’t let her move in until they got married.”

  “Hmm. Interesting. Is his place still standing?”

  “I hear it is. I haven’t seen for myself. But if it is, it’s still flooded. Too bad, it was a pretty nice place, actually.”

  “I didn’t realize there were nice places in the Ninth Ward. The news made it sound like mostly projects.”

  “The Ninth Ward is actually broken into the Upper and Lower, everything above or west of the canal is the Upper. And there are no housing projects in the Lower, if you can believe that. One of the few areas in the city without them.”

  “Interesting.”

  “There’s plenty of poor folks over there, that’s true. But they’re still home owners, a lot of them anyway. I haven’t seen the news much lately, but I bet they make it sound like a ghetto.”

  I nodded, but she was looking the other direction. “I guess they do,” I said. “Some of them anyway.”

  “It’s not the Garden District,” Bela offered. “But a lot of good people live there. Some well-known people in the city, musicians, business owners, artists, good families. Some whites, blacks, in-betweens like me, some foreigners. Mostly black, obviously, like most of the city, but more a melting pot than you’d believe.”

  “How about you? Where do you live?”

  “I live a few blocks away in a cozy apartment. No lights or water right now. But it’s dry. Thank the Lord.”

  “Cozy?”

  “Small.” She smiled at me, but before I could fully appreciate it, the lights went out. “And there they go. Probably won’t see power again through the night.”

  We sat in the darkness. I wondered if she was still smiling. “And you work here full-time?” I asked.

  “Hours vary, but usually I’ll pull forty-plus-hour weeks. I’m a student at Tulane, so my schedule is all over the place.” Her voice began to soften and her cadence slow. It reminded me of how tired I was, too.

  “You’re a student?”

  “Yeah, I know, I’m old. It’s taken me a while.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Relax,” she interrupted. “It’s OK. I’m a grad student. I’ve been working on a masters in social work.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Thanks. It will be worth it one day. That’s what they tell me anyway.”

  “You do your undergrad there, too?”

  “Sure did. Bounced around from job to job, depending on where I was living. Finally found a great—that means cheap, by the way—place down here in the Quarter. Then your dad and Jez got me this job.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure did. I won’t bore you with the details, embarrassing details if we’re being honest, but the two of them were on a date down by the river at a place were I was waiting tables. Not very well, apparently, because I got fired.”

  “And they were there?”

  “Sure were. They were at the next table over the very night I got canned.”

  “You got fired while you were on a shift?” I asked.

  “Didn’t I say no embarrassing details?”

  “Apologies.”

  She took a moment before continuing. “I made a mistake. The customer got really upset. I lost my cool. Then I made a bigger mistake. The guy got even more upset. The manager came out and he lost his cool. He fired me.”

  “And people saw.”

  “Lots of people saw. Including Charlie and Jez. They came running after me, each put an arm around me, and offered me a job here. I have no idea what they saw in me, but I’m grateful they saw something. The next day I showed up downstairs and they put me to work. First time I’ve ever really cared about the people I worked with.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Sure is,” she said.

  “But you’re not from New Orleans?”

  “You need to start saying it right. Everyone down here says, ‘New Awlins.’”

  “Won’t I look stupid trying to talk like the natives?”

  “Probably.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “So you’re not from New Awlins?”

  She smiled. “Nope—Mesa, Arizona. It’s in the Phoenix area. My dad was born in Mexico and my mom’s from LA. They’re sort of an odd couple who fell in love.”

  Bingo, I thought. “Do you know Jessica Alba?”

  A door opened downstairs.

  “Who’s here?” It didn’t matter that I’d only met him late that afternoon, Jerome’s booming voice was impossible to mistake for anyone else’s.

  “Up here,” Bela called.

  “He up there?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s settling in.”

  “You all need anythin’?”

  “We’re all right, Jerome. I’m headed home soon.”

  “OK then. Be careful; have the kid walk you.”

  “I’ll be OK, Jerome.”

  “He’ll walk you,” Jerome said firmly.

  “All right.”

  “Jez is waitin’ on me at the hostel ’round the corner. Tryin’ to fix a generator.” He paused. “He know anythin’ ’bout generators?”

  She whisper-giggled. “You know he’s still awake, right, Jerome?”

  Awkward silence.

  “You know anything ’bout ’em?”

  “No, sir. If it’s not a digital camera or a laptop I’m afraid I’m not much help.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  The door shut and I was sure I heard Jerome say that a no would have sufficed. Bela and I sat quietly for a few moments.

  “He’s harmless,” she finally said.

  “Seems like a good man.”

  “The best.”

  “Jerome says he knew my father well. Did you?”

  “Not as well as Jez, of course, but I think I got to know him pretty well pretty fast.”

  “Because he got you your job?”

  “You ask a lot of questions.” From the sound of her voice I could tell she was looking in my direction.

  “I apologize.”

  “Don’t
worry about it. Your dad had my back, and I appreciated that more than he knew. He was honest, sincere, someone you could talk to. Not just me though, he was good to everyone here at Verses.”

  “Understood.”

  Two figures climbed the stairs and passed by the couch. “Heya Bela,” one of them greeted her without stopping.

  “Hi, Tater. Hi there, Hamp. Hanging in?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  The two walked down the hallway to the larger bedroom. They breezed a trail of stench that lasted long after the door shut.

  “Friends of Jerome’s?”

  “Friends of the club. . . . They’ve been searching attics.”

  “Oh.” I felt guilty for even noticing the smell.

  “Luke, you haven’t talked to your dad lately, have you?”

  “Not since he moved to New Orleans, no.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Why?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Our relationship was complicated,” I said. “Dad would call, ask for something, then go into witness protection for months at a time. It seemed that way anyway. Then I’d get a call out of the blue, often from somewhere new. He’d followed some band, a card game, whatever.”

  “I see,” Bela offered.

  “Let me guess. I can only imagine he was trying to get sober again, right?”

  “You know what, it’s late.” Her voice moved away from me again. “I better get out of here.”

  She stood.

  I followed.

  She led me down the stairs and out of the club. We walked briskly through the near-dark toward her place. Only about half the streetlights appeared to be working. Along the way, Bela pointed out places she’d eaten and places Dad had played.

  We got stopped by police, twice, the second time just in front of her apartment building. I wished the walk had been just a few blocks farther.

  “You OK then?” I asked Bela after the police officer left us and rounded the corner.

  “Sure am. Can you get back?”

  “I think so.”

  She reminded me of the route back anyway.

  “Thank you for everything,” I said, sticking out my hand.

  She shook it firmly. Even bathed in the yellowish glow from the streetlight she had a beautiful presence I could hardly look away from.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow? Or do you have school?” I asked.

  “There is no school right now, Luke. Tulane’s closed. Everything’s closed.”