The Cost of These Dreams

by Wright Thompson

  * * *

  —

  The mayor keeps a stack of red three-ring binders on the floor by his desk.

  “Those books are all the people who’ve been killed in my city,” Mitch Landrieu says.

  Every murder while he’s been in office is in there, with a photograph of the deceased. One victim, a 5-year-old girl named Briana Allen, lives in a frame on a table in his office. She had pigtails.

  To understand the city’s violence, go now to a different map. This one shows the location of each murder in 2015. The heart of Uptown is a big rectangle, bracketed by Napoleon Avenue and South Carrollton Avenue, Freret and Tchoupitoulas. Inside this enormous swath of bungalows, shotgun shacks, and mansions, there have been zero murders. In the Central Business District, from the Superdome down to the casino, there have been zero murders. In the French Quarter, there have been two.

  Now go to the other New Orleans.

  The 5th Police District, which includes parts of the 7th and 9th Wards, has long been the toughest assignment for cops. Daryle Holloway, who rode out Katrina at Charity Hospital with his mother, is stationed there. The 5th District was home to arguably the worst housing project, Desire, and to the Florida projects, where Holloway bought cereal, milk, and eggs for the hungry kids whose brother had been shot. Clusters of red markers appear on the district’s map, each identifying a murder, and here they come in bunches—in time and in geography. Four shootings over the course of one night, then 11 in 11 days. Four murders within a block or two of Elysian Fields and Claiborne and nearly a dozen in the corridor between St. Claude and Claiborne. Four in the small square formed by St. Bernard, Claiborne, Elysian Fields and St. Claude. Two dozen and counting in New Orleans East.

  This summer, a man got shot two blocks from the New Orleans Country Club in Hollygrove, the second murder in the city within an hour. The shooting happened around 5 p.m. The dead man was the 93rd murder of the year. His name was Bradley De’Penis, so obviously he got teased in school. He was born on a Thursday in 1980. He died on a Thursday too. He was 34. When Steve Gleason blocked that punt, De’Penis was back in the city rebuilding, and three years later, he went to Miami for the Super Bowl.

  He left behind a mother and a son.

  Three hours later, a 22-year-old named Jermal Jarrell was shot in front of A. L. Davis Park off 4th Street in Central City; he died at the hospital. Some people die in New Orleans without fanfare or public mourning, just names and addresses in a news story, the dead come and gone on B6 in the Metro section, a paragraph, two if they’re lucky.

  2100 block of Governor Nicholls. Dominique Cosey. He was 27.

  6000 block of Boeing. Gerald Morgan. He was 17.

  1400 block of Desire. Margaret Ambrose. She was 72.

  1600 block of Elysian Fields. Daryle Holloway. He was 45.

  * * *

  —

  On the morning he died, Officer Holloway arrived for his shift in the 5th District. A divorced father of three, he’d had a big bowl of Rice Krispies for breakfast. His first task of the day was transporting a suspect from the precinct to central lockup on South Broad Street.

  The suspect, Travis Boys, had somehow hidden a .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol from the arresting officers on the scene, one of whom recovered a box of .40 cartridges and still didn’t do a full pat-down to look for the gun. Holloway then loaded Boys into the back of a car. They drove down North Claiborne Avenue. Nearing the intersection of Elysian Fields, Boys reached the gun through the partition between the front and back seat and fired a single shot that entered on the right side of Holloway’s chest and exited the left. The bullet pierced his heart and lungs.

  With Holloway bleeding and the car still moving down North Claiborne, Boys climbed into the front seat through the opening in the partition. He reached for the passenger door. Holloway, pumping blood from his wound, grabbed the escaping Boys and held firm with one hand while driving with the other.

  “Let me go before you kill yourself!” Boys yelled three times.

  Holloway refused to let go, fighting and wrestling with the prisoner in the last moments of his life, bleeding out in the front seat of an NOPD cruiser. He held tight until he lost consciousness. Then his fingers went limp and Boys slipped out of the moving vehicle, heading into the 8th Ward on North Claiborne Avenue. Holloway’s body camera recorded the out-of-control transport vehicle crashing into a utility pole outside a Shell station at the corner of Elysian Fields and North Claiborne. Holloway died a short time later at the hospital.

  The morning after the shooting, a Sunday in late June, Holloway’s cousin drove down there. She went to the utility pole outside the Shell station where his patrol car came to rest. She tied two Mylar balloons to the pole. Both read “Happy Father’s Day.” The rain from the night before kept falling. Cops found Boys; uniformed officers saw him in a gas station in the Lower 9th Ward buying a hot sausage po’boy. The monument grew at the Shell station, people writing messages in marker on the pole or leaving flowers, stuffed animals, or balloons.

  At an Uptown fried-fish and crawfish joint named Frankie & Johnny’s, oyster shucker Juan Pujol put down his knife and focused on the television, broadcasting news of Holloway’s death. The stereo played a sad, funky tune, a perfect and mournful eulogy. The rain fell hard. The downpour outside sounded like part of the song, accenting the white spaces. Juan couldn’t turn away, living right around the corner from where Holloway died. He talked about wanting to move, even a few blocks, above Esplanade, find some breathing room. Get his kids out of the goddamn shooting gallery. So many dead in the city, so many dead. A 1-year-old shot and killed in the arms of her babysitter. A 5-year-old girl shot at her 10-year-old cousin’s birthday party. So much rain, washing away nothing.

  * * *

  —

  Some traces of what came before cannot be scrubbed away. They’re layered beneath the current iteration of New Orleans, one sprawling metaphysical capital built from the overlapping maps of the past three centuries. Crackpot locals once devised a plan to rescue Napoleon from exile and bring him to live in the French Quarter; the house they’d planned to give him is now a restaurant. The house of New Orleans founder Bienville is an insect museum between a Marriott and a Morton’s steakhouse. Mitch Landrieu works on the spot where Louis Armstrong lived as a child, and four blocks from the Shell station where Daryle Holloway lost consciousness is the house where Tom Benson grew up. The small shotgun at 2127 North Johnson is still standing, although thieves stole all the wiring and pipes not long ago. An old man, Antonio Anderson, lives next door. He is a Mardi Gras Indian chief.

  The Indians started appearing during Mardi Gras in the 1880s, led by Chief Becate of the Creole Wild West tribe. Their roots lie in Congo Square, across Rampart Street from the French Quarter, where owners allowed their slaves to dance on Sundays. These dances were the few moments of freedom in a life of bondage, and every Mardi Gras Indian carries the spirit of those enslaved ancestors. In the brightly colored suits made of shiny stones and feathers, these Indians are not subject to earthly constraints like time. Elaborate rituals and customs have developed, the spy boys and flag boys, tribes battling one another, often beset by the police.

  Inside Anderson’s house, the walls are red and the heat is stifling. He sits in his chair most days and sews, not far from a framed photo of Barack and Michelle Obama. After his stroke, he struggles to talk. He’s a chief in a small tribe in the 7th Ward. Last year’s suit is hanging from a wooden stand, green, white, and pink feathers, with elaborate beaded grasshoppers and alligators on the headpiece. Next year’s suit is coming together, and he’s doing small detail work, running his needle and thread through a cardboard mold he made. Eventually, the suit will become a peacock.

  There’s something magical and rare about spotting a Mardi Gras Indian in full regalia, as if the soul of the city has somehow taken on a physical form, the man in the suit a vessel for
something old and mysterious.

  Parades are not scheduled or announced. The dancers just appear, mirages almost, envoys from a long-ago city. When they turn a street corner, shaking pastel feathers and bright flashing beadwork, dancing to a frenetic beat of a brass band, the rhythm that produced horn players and bounce rappers comes alive. Benson came from the same street as a Mardi Gras Indian, and although he looks frail now, the frenetic energy that drives the Big Chiefs also lives in him, the very same passion that once pulled him out of poverty, giving him the strength and callousness to crush anyone who tried to stop his rise. Friends and enemies alike agree: Don’t fuck with Tom Benson. The judge in New Orleans this summer ruled he was of sound mind, which isn’t a surprise, really. Disowning family he no longer likes is completely in character. This latest legal action is exactly something he would have done as a young man, risking the destruction of all he built in pursuit of what he wants. His final court battle is the fitting end to a life of combat and to a decade that has seen many things rise and just as many fall.

  * * *

  —

  A relic from Steve Gleason’s own fading past is parked outside his house: a 1965 Ford Mustang, black with gold racing stripes, a Saints logo in place of the blue oval on the grille. You should hear it in the driveway, a 302 bored up to 311, Holley four-barrel carburetor, Edelbrock intake manifold, shifter kit, roller rockers, 300 horsepower. His grandfather bought it off the San Jose line 50 years ago, January 12, 1965, metallic pea green, and when he died, he left the car to Steve in his will. After his diagnosis, Steve had it turned into a Saints-themed Mustang and sold it to raise money. Not long ago, the buyer fell on hard times and called the Gleasons, asking if they wanted to buy it back.

  Steve told his wife, “I want to buy it and give it to Rivers,” their 3-year-old son.

  They’ll get it all fixed, and then it will sit there and wait for the boy to turn 16. Rivers will climb inside and bring the engine to life. The rumbling block will be a father’s whisper from the beyond—the car a way for Steve to stay in his son’s life, one more reminder of the ugly truth that hovers over Gleason’s resilience: His health is fragile, and he’s aware of his impending extinction. Not long ago, he talked with a child psychologist about the right time to explain everything to Rivers.

  “It doesn’t seem to be something a 3-year-old should need to learn,” Gleason says.

  Already he’s approaching the edge of an ALS patient’s usual life expectancy. With his access to the greatest care in the world, and the sense of purpose his foundation provides him, he might live a long time. Stephen Hawking is still alive 52 years after his diagnosis. Gleason and his caregivers monitor every vital sign carefully, and Steve can tell when something inside his body isn’t right.

  One of Steve’s oldest friends from high school, J. D. Ward, picked up the ’65 Mustang in Pensacola a day or two ago and drove it back to New Orleans. They grew up together in Spokane, Washington, hitting the 4000 Holes record shop, spending hours discussing the relative merits of Pearl Jam’s Atlanta show in 1994 or the Bridge School Benefit later that year. They’re making a playlist for the band’s XM channel, and the thing has taken on the scope and seriousness of an invasion plan. J.D. wants to work on it now, but Steve says he needs to go into his room and write a speech. He seems anxious. His wife, Michel, puts up a good front but is clearly overwhelmed, visibly stressed.

  “What’s he writing speeches for?” J.D. asks when Steve leaves the room.

  “Money,” one of the caretakers says.

  While Steve works, J.D. takes the car for a spin, turning onto Carrollton with the windows down, past the working-class Parkview Tavern. He’s emotional, grappling with watching his friend cry earlier. Before ALS, he saw Steve cry exactly twice. Once when they lost a high school football playoff game in double overtime to Eisenhower, and the second time during a baseball game when Steve’s father screamed at him while he sat in the dugout. Now he’s watching his friend lose the fight. Death by ALS is an ugly thing, and people who’ve seen it kill a family member will inevitably struggle to block out the memory of someone they love begging to die.

  After a stop for a beer, J.D. cranks the car and heads back toward Steve’s house. The Pearl Jam show that happened just after the levees broke plays on the car’s stereo.

  He points to his arm.

  “Chill bumps,” he says. “Are you kidding me?”

  He smiles.

  “I’m driving Steve’s Mustang with an open container,” he says, then nods at the thumping speakers. “Hurricane Katrina was going on through this whole concert.”

  The show happened at an amphitheater built above a deep gorge in the Columbia River, in Washington State, looking down at the canyon carved by the water. It was green and blue and magnificent. J.D. was there, and a few hundred miles south, Steve stood on a sideline in San Jose during a moment of silence. They were both young and invincible then, blind to how much could be taken away.

  * * *

  —

  Chris Rose is going out tonight.

  A group of old friends invited him. Walt Handelsman, the Pulitzer-winning cartoonist who worked at the Picayune, wrote a song about the newspaper staff during the hurricane. Some other friends were playing—Paul Sanchez, formerly of the local rock band Cowboy Mouth, and a singer-songwriter named Lynn Drury—and they’d asked Walt to sing his song.

  Standing on the sidewalk outside the club, as traffic passes on Canal Street, Rose postpones the awkward hellos with a cigarette. He’s excited about the show; Drury wrote his favorite Katrina song, “City Life,” and he’s hoping she’ll play it. Inside, the band covers Bruce Springsteen’s “Atlantic City”: Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact. But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.

  He’s wearing a white T-shirt and a black vest, cool in black, leather Skechers. A bunch of reporters hang out at a table next to the wall. They all wrap him up in hugs and ask where he’s been hiding.

  “A Rose sighting!” Handelsman says.

  The bar is dark, but people start to notice.

  “I think I see Chris Rose standing out there,” Sanchez says from the stage, and the crowd cheers.

  Sanchez tells the story of a hurricane party for Andrew, in 1992, when they all played cards and drank whiskey as the storm blasted the city. He’s got that blue-collar New Orleans accent, the Irish Channel thick on his tongue. That night, Paul passed out in the pantry and woke up cradling a can of creamed corn and a bottle of scotch. Outside, he found Rose and some other folks wrestling in the mud. They were all on mushrooms. Rose drove a 1963 convertible with the top down through the torrential, sideways, Exodus-style downpour, tripping his face off, passing cops who just waved. They all laughed at hurricanes then.

  “I wasn’t there,” Rose calls from the darkness of the audience.

  Walt gets onstage to perform his song, about the Times-Picayune staff coming back to report from the wounded city. He sings about Rose’s columns, about “the rage, the fear, the tribes, the tears.”

  “Oh, God,” a voice in the crowd says softly.

  By the stage, Rose asks Drury to play his song, but she says she opened with it. He steps outside, smoking cigarettes and holding court. The newspaper reporters start telling Katrina war stories, about cops at a looted Walmart. One cop stepped up as people were smashing a jewelry case. “Free bracelets!” a man had screamed, holding the fake diamonds above his head. The officer stepped in front of the case. A reporter taking notes thought, Finally, some order. Instead, the officer wrapped his hand in a bandanna and just cleared out the jagged pieces of glass so people could loot safely and efficiently.

  “Protect and serve,” the reporters joked.

  Rose is happy, everything about him looser and softer, even his voice and the lines on his face. He looks like he swallowed one of the lightbulbs hanging over the sidewalk outside the bar. He’d told his ki
ds he’d be home by 9:30, but 10 has come and gone and 11 is hanging out there, tempting. They’re rolling now, jokes about photographers never leaving the office without a broken doll and a tattered American flag in the trunk, in case a picture needed punching up. Nostalgia is as addictive as opiates, and almost as dangerous.