by James Sallis
Chapter Nine
So I hit the streets.
Parked at the Pigeonhole and walked across, car scooped up on a massive, lumbering forklift and served into one of the cubbyholes like a piece of pie behind me. Bourbon Street, first. If she’d never been in New Orleans before, there was a good chance she made the tour.
Louie at Pat’s. Barney at The Famous Doors. Jimmy at Three Sisters. Daley at Tujagues. The best I got was a “Well, maybe.” I even hit Preservation Hall and the Gaslight Theatre. But didn’t hit paydirt till I’d worked my way down to The Seven Seas.
“Yeah, sure thing, she’s been in here every other night this last week or so.”
“Alone?”
“Not for long, but she always started off that way.” Then, answering my sharp glance: “She was hooking. Had a look about her, you know? Fresh pony. Guys go for that.”
“You’re sure it’s the same woman?”
“Sure? Sure I’m sure. The hair’s different, but that’s her all right. Calls herself Blanche. Pretty heavy behind something, too, I’d say-out of a needle or out of a bottle. Hard to tell.”
I wondered then: what was it that started a person sinking? Was that long fall in him (or her) from the start, in us all perhaps; or something he put there himself, creating it over time and unwittingly just as he created his face, his life, the stories he lived by, the ones that let him go on living. It seemed as though I should know. I’d been there more than once and would probably be there again.
Sooner than I thought, perhaps.
“Any idea where else she might be working?”
“Might try Joe’s.”
“She hasn’t been there.”
“Well. Place called Blue Door, then. It’s-”
“I know where it is. Thanks.”
“De nada. But how about a drink before you split?”
I ordered a double bourbon, put it down in one minute flat, left a ten on the bar.
So Corene had turned herself, or been turned, into a white hustler, I thought, driving out of the Quarter against heavy day’s-end traffic and uptown toward the Blue Door. Stranger things have happened. Daily.
The guy behind the bar was Eddie, an ex-con. As a favor to Walsh I’d been a witness at the trial that put him away the second time. Once more and he was down for the count.
“Howdy, Mr. Griffin,” he said when I walked in.
“Behaving yourself, Eddie?”
“Straight as an arrow, ask anyone. Sunday school, prayer meetings. Right as rain.” He looked toward the big window. “Speaking of which,” he said, “raining yet?”
A few drops spattered against the glass and clouds rolled.
“Not yet.”
“Only thing about New Orleans. Rains every damn day.” He went down the bar to wait on a customer who had just come in. Then he came back. “Something I can do for you, Mr. Griffin?”
“I’m looking for a girl, Eddie.”
“Aren’t we all.”
“Calls herself Blanche. A hustler. You seen her in here?”
“Blanche. Hmmm, let me see now. ‘Bout five-six, real looker?”
I nodded.
“That’d be Long John’s girl. Brought her marks here a couple of times. Been on the street a week, two at the most. Fresh pony, you know?”
So now I was looking for two people.
“What’s this Long John look like?”
“Mean mother. Real dark-alley material. Six-three or — four, maybe two-forty. Always wears a yellow suit. Never synthetics, always cotton. Says cotton is the American Negro’s heritage. Heavy user.”
“And where could I find him, if I looked?”
“Cafe du Monde or Joe’s, likely.”
“Thanks, Eddie. Keep your nose clean.”
“Just cleaned it, didn’t I? Cool as silk.”
I went out wondering what Eddie had under the bar for special customers.
Chapter Ten
Not wanting to go two out of three falls with the traffic, I grabbed a cab back downtown and had the driver drop me off on Canal.
A crowd was gathering on the sidewalk in front of Werlein’s, doubled by its reflection in storefront glass among black pianos and shiny brass horns. I walked over, hearing about me a flurry of commentary, query, invective.
“Never knew what was coming.”
“I seen it, seen it all.”
“Bad blood ’tween ’em, had to be.”
“Just like that, and its over.”
“Anybody call the police yet?”
One man-both were black-lay on the sidewalk in a mirrorlike pool of blood and urine. There was a sucking wound in his chest where the bullet had smashed its way in; each time he tried to breathe, the fabric around it, though blood-logged, fluttered. Then light went out from behind his eyes and his shirt grew still. He was done with all this.
Another man of about the same age stood over him with the gun hanging limply at his side, saying over and over to himself what sounded like “I done tried to tell him, I done tried to tell him.” As though (I thought, walking on toward the Quarter), speechless and dumb for years, he had found at last a way to speak, to say the things he wanted.
Years later, as I stood in Beaucoup Books reading a poem in one of the magazines I skimmed from time to time there, that scene, something I’d never again thought of in all those years, came back to me full force. Once again I could see the shirt fabric flapping, the reflection of the crowd in the windows, the peace in both those men’s eyes. You must learn to put your distress signals in code, the poem read.
Chapter Eleven
By the time i’d walked back into the Quarter, rain was imminent. I hurried down Chartres and through Jackson Square, with the smell of the brewery everywhere, to the Cafe du Monde.
He was sitting outside, in one of his yellow suits, with at least half a dozen empty coffee cups on the table in front of him. His pupils were as big as saucers. I could feel hatred building inside me, swelling, like the rain.
“Long John,” I said. “Long gone, like a turkey through the corn-if I remember my blues. Lew Griffin. Where’s Blanche?”
He looked at me out of those huge eyes.
“Now,” I said.
“What, you got a thing for white, man?” he said.
“Just Blanche. Used to know her.”
He seemed to be looking at something very far away, very private.
“She done changed since then,” he finally said. He picked up one of the cups and peered into it as though he knew coffee was still there, as though its absence were only illusion: interesting, inarguable, but (nevertheless) soon over. “Let me turn you a nice nigger girl. Got some lookers in the bag, whatever you want, they be waiting. Young stuff. Foxes. Lady wrestlers.”
I shook my head.
“It’s Blanche or nothing.”
“Then it’s nothing,” he said after a minute. He laughed and, raising his voice as if to order, said, “Nothing for all my friends. Lot of that going ’round, you know. Everywhere you look: nothing.”
“All right. You probably know my name, Johnny, back in there somewhere, wherever you are. And that pretty face of yours, pretty as any of your girls-remember? Think about make-overs, Johnny. About what you could look like tomorrow morning, n’est-ce-pas?”
He looked across the table at me much as he’d looked into the empty coffee cup.
“Yeah, I know the name, Griffin. I done heard ’bout you. But she don’t work for me no more, that’s fact.”
“I don’t give a shit who she works for. No more than I give a shit about your pretty face.”
“Yeah.” His head drooped. Suddenly he was tired. “Yeah. I hear you. Thing is, I don’t know where she is. I just don’t know.” Something flickered in his dull eyes. “Maybe still at the hospital.”
“What hospital? What happened?”
He stared off toward the river. Atop the levee an old man and a kid were playing godawful trumpet and tap dancing tolerably together. I picked up one
of the cups and smashed it down on the table. I went on grinding the shards into the table, blood running from my hand and pooling at the table’s metal rim by his arm. He lifted a sleeve clear.
“Preparing your facial,” I said. “Won’t be a minute.”
“Okay, man, okay. I hear you.”
He pulled a handful of napkins out of the dispenser and dropped them on top of the blood, pulled some more and handed those to me, still looking off toward the river.
“Saturday night we’re together and she just went plain wild on me, man. Crazy-you know what I’m sayin’? I cain’t have no crazy woman workin’ for me. So I dropped her off at the emergency room and left her there. What else could I do? And I knew they’d know what to do for her there.”
“Which hospital?” I said. “Which hospital was it?”
He thought. “Let me see. Baptist. Yeah, that’s it, Baptist. Cause I stopped off at the K amp;B up the street for a bottle when I left.”
“And this was Saturday night?”
“Saturday night. She just went crazy on me, man.” He looked back at me. Picked up one of the cups and tipped it back as though drinking. Dabbed at his mouth with the back of a hand. “Now what kind of girl was it you said you wanted?”
I wanted to kill him. Kill someone. Instead, I got up and walked away. I found a pay phone down the street, dropped in a nickel and dialed Baptist Memorial, asking for Admissions.
“I’m trying to find my sister,” I said when I got through. “She ran away from home-Mom’s worried to death-and we don’t even know what name she was using other than Blanche. I heard she might have been hurt Saturday night and brought there.”
“Just a minute, sir, I’ll check.” She was gone two or three minutes. “Sir, our records show that a Blanche Davis was admitted Saturday night. Negro, late twenties, early thirties. Could that be your sister?”
“Almost certainly. Could you tell me what room she’s in?”
“Just a moment.” A shorter wait this time. “Sir, our records show that Miss Davis is no longer a patient at this hospital.”
“Can you tell me where she is?”
“This is your sister, you said?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then I suppose it’s okay to tell you. Miss Davis was transferred from our own psychiatric wing to the state hospital in Mandeville on Monday.”
Chapter Twelve
Halfway across lake Ponchartrain I almost turned around and went back. The rain came down in buckets. Suspended there on the Cause-way, both shores out of sight, I wondered: did I really want to know? That twenty-six miles was the longest trip of my life.
I drove through the gates and followed the signs that said ADMISSIONS. Pulled up in front of a cinderblock building painted green, got out, went in. After stating my business, I was told that Dr. Ball would be with me shortly. The waiting room was full of what I assumed were patients. They probably assumed I was too. A psychiatrist I’d gone to once, back when I was trying everything to keep my marriage and life from falling apart, told me I needed to be here.
“Shortly” was an hour and spare change. Time moves a little slower over here, I guess.
When I was finally ushered into his office, Dr. Ball said, “Mr. Griffin, I’m sorry to have kept you waiting so long, but as you can see, we’re very busy here.” An upper-Mississippi accent, edge planed away by college and ambition. He settled back in his chair. “Now, what can I do for you?”
“You’re holding a patient calling herself Blanche Davis,” I said.
“I’d have to check to be certain of that.”
“Would you, please?”
He picked up the phone and dialed three digits, spoke her name, listened.
“That is correct, Mr. Griffin,” he said, cradling the phone. “She’s in Ward E.”
“I wonder if you could tell me what’s wrong with her.”
“You are a relative, I believe?”
“Her brother.”
“Well, then. As for what’s wrong, I only wish that we knew. We seldom do, really. I can tell you that she’s been drinking heavily. There are fresh needle tracks inside her arms, behind her knees. But I’m afraid she’s too locked up in herself to give us much useful information. Perhaps your being here will help.” He picked up a pen and tapped it once, lightly, on the desk. “We fear, Mr. Griffin, that she may be schizophrenic.”
“I see.” I didn’t.
“You would like to see her?” Dr. Ball said after a moment.
“Is that possible?”
“Absolutely. It might well do her some good. All of us. The last thing we want is for patients to lose sense of whatever family there is. I’ll call for a truck to take you over to the ward.”
I waited outside and the truck showed up in about ten minutes. It was an old paneled job, green like the building. The driver was a cheerful-looking young man with long hair. He may have thought I was a patient.
“Ward E?” he said when I climbed in.
“Ward E.”
That was the extent of our conversation.
He wound about the grounds and at last pulled up in front of another green building with oversize windows and covered walkways running off in all directions.
“It,” the driver said.
I got out and walked through the nearest door. Halls converged toward a room to my left where a number of people sat reading magazines or watching TV. I walked in and back toward what looked like the nurse’s station-either that or a tollbooth. Mrs. Smith RN got up and stepped out of it.
“You must be Mr. Griffin,” she said. “Dr. Ball called ahead that you were on your way. Let me take you to her.”
We went through a door into a dormitory room with maybe twenty beds. Then through another door-each one was locked-into a long hallway with windowed doors on either side. Halfway down the hall, the nurse stopped and fit a key into the lock of one of the doors.
“This is it,” she said. “Try not to be too shocked. It’s extremely difficult, I know. It always is, the first time.”
She opened the door.
On a bed inside the room a woman lay staring at the ceiling, her eyes wide with fear. Every few seconds she would scream out-a silent scream-and throw her body against the restraints. Her exposed fingers worked at the air nonstop, like the legs of an overturned insect.
I had found Corene Davis.
Chapter Thirteen
As I drove back across the causeway, my mind rolled like the clouds that were still sending down a boot-heavy rain. I felt years of hatred, fear and anger draining out of me, a kind of rain itself, and I knew that Corene, the sight of her there in that locked place, had done that for me. Now what could I do for her?
One thing I wasn’t going to do was tell Blackie and Au Lait where to find her, or what had happened. Maybe search out her people in New York and talk to them, confidentially. Corene needed friends now, not disciples.
Fame, pressures, loss of private time and life-what had done it to her? Or was it just something in her from the start, coiled up in there, waiting? I guess no one knew. Maybe no one would ever know. I found myself trying to reconstruct what happened between New York and New Orleans, to make a story of it, the plan, the execution. Getting on the plane knowing what she was going to do, her future in a suitcase at her feet. It all seemed so voluntary. But was she really in control? Or driven?
Finally, I guess, it wasn’t that much different from the way we all make up our lives by bits and pieces, a piece of a book here, a song title or lyric there, scraps of people we’ve known, clips from movies, imagining ourselves and living into that image, then going on to another and yet another, improvising our way from day to day through the years we call a life.
I gave it up and sat watching the wipers slap rain back from the windshield. Every couple of miles there were small stations where you could pull off and call for help. There wasn’t much else but water and sky and rain.
I thought about Harry. I thought about Dad and about Janie,
my wife for just over two years, and my son. For a moment, as lightning flashed and the storm rumbled in its far-off heart, I became Corene again, as I had in a momentary flash back there: play of light and dark on the ceiling, gone even the words that would let me say what I watched, what I felt, what I had lost. But unlike Corene I had only to imagine a new life, and lean into it.
At the office there were the usual messages from downstairs and the usual accumulation of mail. A yellow envelope stood out from the rest. I picked it up and ripped it open.
YOUR FATHER DIED TODAY AT FIVE AM STOP FUNERAL FRIDAY AT TEN STOP CALL ME STOP LOVE MOM
I sat there for a long time without moving, thinking how it had been: the expectations and disappointments, the fights, recriminations, misunderstandings, all of it getting worse and worse as time went by. But there were good things to remember, too, and finally I got around to them. Dad and me working on my first car in the backyard, a battered old Ford coupe. Getting breakfast together and watching day break in the woods above the town where we hunted squirrel and rabbit and came across Civil War miniballs which always brought him to thoughtful silence. The night he pulled out his old trumpet and played the blues for me that first time, when I realized that somehow he’d had a life before me, one that didn’t have anything to do with me-and that my own pain was somehow the world’s.
I lit a cigarette. LaVerne had the money, I had the time. Just call Blackie and tell him I couldn’t find Corene, that’s all there was to it. I’d be a free man in more ways than one. Then call Mom.
I finished the cigarette and reached for the phone.
Outside, the rain had stopped. The night was black like me.
Part Two
1970
Chapter One
New Orleans was sweltering. it hadn’t rained in two weeks, and the temperature hovered around one-ten. Kids were turning on fireplugs-I guess they learned that watching the evening news-and older parts of the city didn’t have enough water to flush toilets. There was also a garbage strike, and every fly that called itself American had moved south.
