We interupt our story telling to post the February WhereY'at article before I lose it.
Po Boy Views
By
Phil LaMancusa
Hearts And Flowers
Or
Hello, I Must Be Going
“ Love doesn’t come in a minit; sometimes it doesn’t come at all. I only know that when I’m init; it isn’t silly, it isn’t silly, love isn’t silly at aaaaaaaaallll.”
Yes Cats and Hats, it’s February and time to take love and Valentine’s Day for another spin around the block. So, kick the tires, check your gas gauge and fasten your seat belts.
To begin with: In the time of the Roman emperor Claudius the Cruel there was a priest named Valens or Valentine or something. Claudius the Cruel wanted to raise an army but guys didn’t want to leave their wives and families, so in a typical political maneuver the emperor outlawed weddings. He figured that if guys didn’t have wives and families that they would be more likely to give up their lives in battle for nuts like him. Typical political thinking. Rome was called a republic, which makes Claudius an early republican.
Well, Val was a priest that didn’t see eye to eye with Claude and went on marrying couples; so Claude had him bludgeoned to death with clubs and decapitated. The execution took place on February 14th, which was, by coincidence, the feast day of Juno, the goddess of childbirth and marriage. The Following day was the beginning of a festival called Lupercalia. (Actually Lupercalia was from Feb 13th-15th). Lupercalia was the celebration of purification and pregnancy, named for the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus, for the Greek god Pan and all his lascivious antics, and for the cleansing ritual named Februatio (after the Roman God of purification and washing, Februus) for which the month February is named. What’s the point? The whole point of Valentine’s Day was for the church to subsume another pagan ritual with a feast day of a saint whom they would later defrock, along with others such as Christopher and Nicolas. In Euclidian geometry a point is something that has no parts. And if you think that I’m handing you a line, I’ll take it a step further by quoting Euclid again who said that a “line is a length without a breadth”. If you throw religion out (imagine) the whole pagan festival is like a big three-day pure nurturing love fest, complete with body fluids; or, a line with a point at both ends, a beast with two backs. It’s more like the arrival of spring weather and a reason to party like it’s nineteen ninety twenty-two. Think about it.
So, there you go; full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. How’s your love life? Got your Valentine’s cards out yet? Got a Valentine? Want to beat them with clubs and cut their heads off?
Oh, before Val’s execution he passed a note to the jailer’s daughter, with whom he had developed a ‘friendship’ (yeah, right.); he signed it “your Valentine”. What was in the note is anybody’s guess. Supposedly, that was the beginning of the whole Valentines card thing.
So, let’s flog this horse another mile and touch on the subject of love. Love is, for the most part, a trickster, a shape-shifter and a mischief-maker; in all mythologies god and godlike beings personify these types of rascals and one thing they have in common is a proclivity and propensity for procreation. Like love, they also are not trustworthy. Eros, Loki, Kokopelli, Hermes, Ananse and Raven are prime examples. Not know many of those guys? Well here’s a story:
Once upon a time (it’s a ‘once upon a time’ story) there was a being born of the elements: fire, water, air and earth. This being was enormously unhappy because they did not have another crutial element, an element that was missing from their life, or so they thought---the element of LOVE.
This being was to wander the earth and spheres and witness the love that others had; the love of a mother as she suckles her babe, the love of a faithful and obedient pet, love to a just and merciful god, the love that comes from fealty to king and country and the love that the fortunate have for their local bartenders. There’s the love of arts and beauty, of food that is tasty and well prepared, and of the gifts of the muses: poetry, drama, dance and dirty jokes (just kidding); the love of a good book, a trusted friend, fauna and flora and a juicy piece of gossip.
Everywhere that this being looked they saw love: the love of toys and playthings, the love of a harmonic gathering of like minded individuals, of nature and of marshmallows toasted over a campfire at sunset. Then they saw the love that people have for being with other people: double Dutch rope jumping, card games, singing in harmony, playing dress up, playing undress up, doing shots together, group hugs and working together to achieve a common purpose.
Then they saw the love that a person has for themselves: in doing good deeds, in helping the less fortunate, in setting goals and reaching them, in tending the infirm, in preserving their natural surroundings, in those little ‘toys’ that are kept in the bedside drawer and in sticking it to BP for a butt load of money.
The being that was formed of the elements gave a big sigh (BBBBIIIIGGGGGSSSSIIIIGGGGHHHH!!!!!) and thought that there must be a down side to all of this love stuff, so they retreated to a mountain by the side of a lake and felt the breathing of the waves and listened to the whispers of the wind in the cool bright beatific shining of the sun and by the light of a pure moon and heavenly starlight. For a millennium they sat and pondered the human condition and came up with the insight and image of an insecure spirit trapped in a flawed body, greedy for power, materialistically oppressive, vindictive and cowardly petty; these belligerent bipeds, who infested the planet like a rash on a baby’s butt, thought that they were hot stuff armed with the belief that, if nothing else, being on top of the food chain made them something special.
The being that was formed from the elements came down from the mountain with this knowledge and was promptly bludgeoned with clubs and decapitated. It doesn’t pay to look too close at love. Happy Valentines.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
New Orleans Story Part Nine: the Caper
Short story Part 9: The Caper
And thus spoke Pearl: “Alright kids, this is the prototype, okay? That means there is only ONE of these babies, (plus plans). It’s like a kindle only this one actually reads to you and with you, if you hear a word that you don’t understand all you have to do is repeat the word and the machine will stop and explain the word; if you say the word and then say “thesaurus”, the machine will give you a lexicon. The machine is thin and the size of a folded newspaper and it is back-lighted, you sort of read along with it, you know?”
“Now”, she continued “the business section of The New York Times printed an article recently about a wireless router+ home backup hard drive+ digital picture frame. It (D-link DIR-683) will broadcast your internet connection wirelessly and will, with it’s strong Wi-Fi signal, turn your entire house into a Wi-Fi hotspot and give you port forwarding, Application Rules. Individual website blocking, a sophisticated firewall, UpnP, Multicast Streams, Wake on LAN, users and groups, network access lists, scheduled lockouts, log security formats like WPA and WEP and much more including the ability to inspect your router’s settings and the display of dozens of internet informational widgets; weather, headlines, sports, stocks, Twitter posts and- delightfully- photos from your Flickr or Facebook accounts. This baby kicks that one to the curb and spits on it”. She glanced around at suspicious faces: “ And guys, it’ll make a 6G network look like a field mouse in a Kansas wheat field! AND,” here she beamed a rare beam “ --wait for it”—“It comes with the option of background music!”
“It, also,” she continued “is ‘hand imprint’ operated; meaning that it is not opened by anyone but the owner who has been micro-chipped in perfect symbiosis with the thing. The machine can be kept as a diary, confidant, older sibling and shrink. It will tell you when not to drink and dial, correct you if you decide to text while tipsy and warn you if you’re about to facebook while you’re fucked up.
“A professor will be demonstrating the device as part of a panel at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival called… ‘Book Reading; Dead or Alive’”. She paused for a breath; “And that’s when we steal it… and him.”
She eyed the skeptical room. “My Chinese contacts will give me a hundred million dollars for it, no questions asked. Every kid in the world is gonna want one”
What she was describing was a system called ‘TUTOR’ it would make schools and learning institutions obsolete and the rest of the world irrelevant; you could be taught anything you wanted to learn by a patient teacher who would talk to you and not down to you and one that would explain again and again until you got your information in your own time; in you own language. You could learn to paint from the masters, read the sheet music of the maestros, fix your lawnmower or your love life and no, not every kid in the world would want one…. EVERYONE IN THE WORLD WOULD DEMAND ONE!
“Wait, wait, wait” interrupted Billy “before you go any futher, I got a few questions that you might want to answer.”
“Whoa, hold on Billy boy, let me finish.” Here she raised her hands and arms for silence and composure before she continued: “We can do this as a team or I can form another group but I really think that knowing eachother is important and we all have history together that I believe will act as grease for the gears that we’ll be spinning to pull this off. Of course, some of you will have to change your names.”
After a collective groan was heard she said: “just joking! But you see how you all act as a team already? How does two mil sound as a down payment for starters?” And she waved a small piece of paper.
There was a loud sound at this point that came from the bar area; it sounded like a POP (!) it sounded like a POW (!) it sounded like a BANG (!). Pearl hit the floor, Billy hugged the wall, Mo had a gun out and was at a crouch, Hinch had fainted and the girls, Anne and Brandi had their hands to their mouths in horror. Pearl went into a fit of Saint Elmo’s. It sounded like --and it was—the sound of Petey opening a bottle of champagne to make Pearl her favorite drink, a Kir Royale.
Petey jumped over the bar and yelled: “quick…Hinch!” and I sprang from my perch; together we pinned him down just as he went into spasms. Petey got some smelling salts under his nose and within seconds he was as right as rain, and everything settled back down.
Billy piped up again: “ that don’t look like no two million bucks to me!”
Pearl called for silence again “Okay, I’m gonna ‘splain it slow and don’t make me use no flash cards. We’ve got—assuming that we all agree to this—three months to pull this off. What we do is, we buy a house in the French Quarter and move in together and rehearse and train and plan our asses off until we can do this thing slicker than snot on a doorknob. We split ninety eight million dollars and fade to black, back to our lives or any other lives that we may wish. Now, c’mon guys, we’ll be perfect together, have some fun, some laughs and be rich by this time in April. Whaddya say?”
Billy piped up again: “ I don’t know where the big bucks are for starters and I don’t think that piece of paper that you’re waving looks like two million bucks; that looks to me like a lottery ticket, do you mean to tell me that the Chinese control the winning numbers on the American lottery?”
“Bingo! No flies on you Bill” said Pearl “This particular ticket will win the four mil pot on Wednesday and we cash it out for two and buy us a house, like I said, move in and work out the kinks for the heist. Perfect, eh?”’
“And who, exactly who, do all of us trust to cash in that ticket and not do a Houdini on us? Which one of us can be trusted enough to get the two big ones and not take a powder?” Asked Anne. “I’ll tell you right now, it’s not me!”
The company started eyeing eachother like curs surrounding a bone and with each second that pregnantly passed we all knew that none of us could be trusted.
Just at the time that the gang reached a unanimous stalemate, our eyes started focusing on the one person that we all could put our faith in; the one person that we knew would not double cross us. And then we all came to the same unanimous conclusion and our stares turned to the chump/champ that we could pick for our champ/chump; the one person that we could all agree upon. Hinch.
“Wha wha wha wha?” Hinch started to say
Brandi spoke up first and said it the best: “Of course! Hinch is the only one of us that has the capacity to put love before money.”
And thus spoke Pearl: “Alright kids, this is the prototype, okay? That means there is only ONE of these babies, (plus plans). It’s like a kindle only this one actually reads to you and with you, if you hear a word that you don’t understand all you have to do is repeat the word and the machine will stop and explain the word; if you say the word and then say “thesaurus”, the machine will give you a lexicon. The machine is thin and the size of a folded newspaper and it is back-lighted, you sort of read along with it, you know?”
“Now”, she continued “the business section of The New York Times printed an article recently about a wireless router+ home backup hard drive+ digital picture frame. It (D-link DIR-683) will broadcast your internet connection wirelessly and will, with it’s strong Wi-Fi signal, turn your entire house into a Wi-Fi hotspot and give you port forwarding, Application Rules. Individual website blocking, a sophisticated firewall, UpnP, Multicast Streams, Wake on LAN, users and groups, network access lists, scheduled lockouts, log security formats like WPA and WEP and much more including the ability to inspect your router’s settings and the display of dozens of internet informational widgets; weather, headlines, sports, stocks, Twitter posts and- delightfully- photos from your Flickr or Facebook accounts. This baby kicks that one to the curb and spits on it”. She glanced around at suspicious faces: “ And guys, it’ll make a 6G network look like a field mouse in a Kansas wheat field! AND,” here she beamed a rare beam “ --wait for it”—“It comes with the option of background music!”
“It, also,” she continued “is ‘hand imprint’ operated; meaning that it is not opened by anyone but the owner who has been micro-chipped in perfect symbiosis with the thing. The machine can be kept as a diary, confidant, older sibling and shrink. It will tell you when not to drink and dial, correct you if you decide to text while tipsy and warn you if you’re about to facebook while you’re fucked up.
“A professor will be demonstrating the device as part of a panel at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival called… ‘Book Reading; Dead or Alive’”. She paused for a breath; “And that’s when we steal it… and him.”
She eyed the skeptical room. “My Chinese contacts will give me a hundred million dollars for it, no questions asked. Every kid in the world is gonna want one”
What she was describing was a system called ‘TUTOR’ it would make schools and learning institutions obsolete and the rest of the world irrelevant; you could be taught anything you wanted to learn by a patient teacher who would talk to you and not down to you and one that would explain again and again until you got your information in your own time; in you own language. You could learn to paint from the masters, read the sheet music of the maestros, fix your lawnmower or your love life and no, not every kid in the world would want one…. EVERYONE IN THE WORLD WOULD DEMAND ONE!
“Wait, wait, wait” interrupted Billy “before you go any futher, I got a few questions that you might want to answer.”
“Whoa, hold on Billy boy, let me finish.” Here she raised her hands and arms for silence and composure before she continued: “We can do this as a team or I can form another group but I really think that knowing eachother is important and we all have history together that I believe will act as grease for the gears that we’ll be spinning to pull this off. Of course, some of you will have to change your names.”
After a collective groan was heard she said: “just joking! But you see how you all act as a team already? How does two mil sound as a down payment for starters?” And she waved a small piece of paper.
There was a loud sound at this point that came from the bar area; it sounded like a POP (!) it sounded like a POW (!) it sounded like a BANG (!). Pearl hit the floor, Billy hugged the wall, Mo had a gun out and was at a crouch, Hinch had fainted and the girls, Anne and Brandi had their hands to their mouths in horror. Pearl went into a fit of Saint Elmo’s. It sounded like --and it was—the sound of Petey opening a bottle of champagne to make Pearl her favorite drink, a Kir Royale.
Petey jumped over the bar and yelled: “quick…Hinch!” and I sprang from my perch; together we pinned him down just as he went into spasms. Petey got some smelling salts under his nose and within seconds he was as right as rain, and everything settled back down.
Billy piped up again: “ that don’t look like no two million bucks to me!”
Pearl called for silence again “Okay, I’m gonna ‘splain it slow and don’t make me use no flash cards. We’ve got—assuming that we all agree to this—three months to pull this off. What we do is, we buy a house in the French Quarter and move in together and rehearse and train and plan our asses off until we can do this thing slicker than snot on a doorknob. We split ninety eight million dollars and fade to black, back to our lives or any other lives that we may wish. Now, c’mon guys, we’ll be perfect together, have some fun, some laughs and be rich by this time in April. Whaddya say?”
Billy piped up again: “ I don’t know where the big bucks are for starters and I don’t think that piece of paper that you’re waving looks like two million bucks; that looks to me like a lottery ticket, do you mean to tell me that the Chinese control the winning numbers on the American lottery?”
“Bingo! No flies on you Bill” said Pearl “This particular ticket will win the four mil pot on Wednesday and we cash it out for two and buy us a house, like I said, move in and work out the kinks for the heist. Perfect, eh?”’
“And who, exactly who, do all of us trust to cash in that ticket and not do a Houdini on us? Which one of us can be trusted enough to get the two big ones and not take a powder?” Asked Anne. “I’ll tell you right now, it’s not me!”
The company started eyeing eachother like curs surrounding a bone and with each second that pregnantly passed we all knew that none of us could be trusted.
Just at the time that the gang reached a unanimous stalemate, our eyes started focusing on the one person that we all could put our faith in; the one person that we knew would not double cross us. And then we all came to the same unanimous conclusion and our stares turned to the chump/champ that we could pick for our champ/chump; the one person that we could all agree upon. Hinch.
“Wha wha wha wha?” Hinch started to say
Brandi spoke up first and said it the best: “Of course! Hinch is the only one of us that has the capacity to put love before money.”
Sunday, December 12, 2010
New Orleans Short story PartEight: Mo
Short Story Part Eight: Mo, the story
It was a clear dark night in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The sky was the color that the Scripto Ink Company calls Blue Black, there was a riot of stars in the sky and a 1950 Chevrolet pickup truck, brush-painted silver, with the name ‘Lazarus’ printed on the passenger side door slid to a stop on the gravel driveway outside of the Saint Dymphna Church of the Quiet Mind. Saint Dymphna is the patron saint of nervous breakdowns… but that’s another story for another time.
The Mescalero Apache, a small post middle aged, grizzled man named Luke Crazy-eye, who was the driver of that truck that sounded like honeymoon bedsprings in a cheap motel, opened his complaining driver’s side door, stepped down, crushed his cigarette out in the gravel with a scuffed Tony Lama boot that had seen better days and pulled a bundle from the orange crate that was sitting on the front seat. He carried the bundle to the door of the church and rapped loudly. It was Christmas Eve 1975, there was a definite chill in the air and Luke wasn’t breathing too well; Luke didn’t know that he had lung cancer and would be dead before Easter. But that’s another story.
One of the two women who ran the church, Sister Miriam, answered the door. There was a small fire going in the kiva oven and the thick adobe walls were doing their best to insulate the sparsely furnished room; Luke, as he had planned, said nothing and handed the bundle over to the first person that he came into contact with, which was the woman who opened the door, who was one of the two ministers of the church, the other being Sister Françoise
There was not a big Christmas turnout at the little church that year since the Holy Christian Church of the Bleeding Tortured & Beaten Caucasian Redeemer across town had started spreading rumors that the ministers at St. Dymphna’s were lesbian lovers who sought shelter from society behind the protection of the church.
The hand that reached out for the bundle had a number tattooed to the wrist from an unpleasant stay in Poland a few years previously and she stepped back into the room as Luke turned silently, walked back to ‘Lazarus’ and slowly drove away leaving clouds of smoke from a perpetual oil leak, a faulty carburetor and the steam from the temperature differential.
Sister Miriam brought the bundle to a table where she and Sister Francoise unwrapped it. (And no, they weren’t hiding behind the skirts of St, Dymphna and yes they might be happier in each other’s arms than anywhere else; but that’s none of our business.)
Inside the bundle they found a very newborn baby with a shock of black hair, bathed in a thin coat of mucus and with the umbilical cord still attached. The baby was curled in a fetal position and it would be a few minutes until they could determine that it was a little girl. They were doubtful that the child would live but they did what they could; they milked their nanny goat (a very apropos name) managed to feed the child and, after turning out the lights in the church, brought her to bed to sleep between them. Three virgins. Three naked virgins.
The Sisters talked into the night and decided to name the child, whether she lived or died, in a combination of their favorite writers: Sylvia Plath and Virginia Wollf. They tried many combinations and finally lit on Sylvinia Wolfpath. Sylvinia would later tell people who asked about her parents that her father was a traveler named Lazarus and that she had two mothers. Then she would transfix them with eyes that the Scripto Ink Company would call Blue Black (the same color of the sky on the night that she was born) and say “but that’s a story for another time”, and leave it at that.
Somewhere in the middle of that first night under New Mexican chilled skies, the baby, whether from warmth or pure love, stretched to her full length. Newly born as she was, her head rested between the minister’s breasts and her tiny olive skinned toes touched just above their knees. Sister Francoise awoke briefly and muttered: “Mon Dieu, someone, I think, has given us an anaconda!”
Christmas morning came and the baby still lived.
In fact the baby, partially thanks to the warmth and care of the two Sisters as well as a diet of good goats milk, thrived, grew and gave all indications of being hale, hearty and healthy. At two years of age she had outgrown her foal-like appearance and carried on more like a spider monkey; all arms and legs. She possessed the uncanny ability to scale furniture, climb anything vertical and box with the sister’s Tom kitten without getting a scratch; this she did with no change of expression on her sweet, but somber face. Her hair was long, straight and blacker than night, her skin took on a café au lait/olive hue and her eyes were dark and piercing; her mouth appeared petulant but was actually the only way her mothers had ever seen her look. “It must have been the cold of that first night that froze her expression so” Sister Miriam often remarked. She potty trained early, although she preferred to use Mother Nature as her lavatory and she was late to utter any words with which to communicate her wishes. If little Sylvinia wanted anything she would sit and stare until someone noticed and guessed her needs correctly, more often than not it was Sister Francoise that could tune in most successfully.
By 1979 the small but perfect family had been driven out of the west by the good Christians of Las Cruces and had purchased a Creole Cottage in the Lower Garden district of New Orleans on a street named after the muse Terpsichore, the muse of dance.
Her mothers thought it fitting to enroll her in classes of gymnastics and ballet, which she showed an aptitude for and in fact excelled at. Later she took fencing lessons from the one remaining master in Exchange Alley.
By four years old she was reading, well, as much as her mothers could tell for a child that did not speak. She would carom around the rooms, up bookcases and into crannies to select things to look at, her favorites being Nation Geographic, the Times Picayune Metro Section and cookbooks that offered photographs of different dishes. It was Francoise that first gave her colored pencils and paper and watched her scrawl out words. Albeit primitive, her first written words were: “muthers good”, and drew a picture of their home as it had been in Las Cruces; she Sisters wept in each others arms, hugged the baby and put the masterpiece on the refrigerator with magnets. They, the mothers, worshipped their child and treated her with respect, patience and love. Sylvinia Wolfpath was a perfect child, gifted with natural intelligence and good sense with the self-actualized countenance of a poetess, which, of course she was.
At five years old she uttered her first words. She was perusing the obituaries in the newspaper and looked up to find Sister Miriam studying her.
She put her finger in the middle of the page and said: “These people are dead. Why are they smiling?”
It was a clear dark night in Las Cruces, New Mexico. The sky was the color that the Scripto Ink Company calls Blue Black, there was a riot of stars in the sky and a 1950 Chevrolet pickup truck, brush-painted silver, with the name ‘Lazarus’ printed on the passenger side door slid to a stop on the gravel driveway outside of the Saint Dymphna Church of the Quiet Mind. Saint Dymphna is the patron saint of nervous breakdowns… but that’s another story for another time.
The Mescalero Apache, a small post middle aged, grizzled man named Luke Crazy-eye, who was the driver of that truck that sounded like honeymoon bedsprings in a cheap motel, opened his complaining driver’s side door, stepped down, crushed his cigarette out in the gravel with a scuffed Tony Lama boot that had seen better days and pulled a bundle from the orange crate that was sitting on the front seat. He carried the bundle to the door of the church and rapped loudly. It was Christmas Eve 1975, there was a definite chill in the air and Luke wasn’t breathing too well; Luke didn’t know that he had lung cancer and would be dead before Easter. But that’s another story.
One of the two women who ran the church, Sister Miriam, answered the door. There was a small fire going in the kiva oven and the thick adobe walls were doing their best to insulate the sparsely furnished room; Luke, as he had planned, said nothing and handed the bundle over to the first person that he came into contact with, which was the woman who opened the door, who was one of the two ministers of the church, the other being Sister Françoise
There was not a big Christmas turnout at the little church that year since the Holy Christian Church of the Bleeding Tortured & Beaten Caucasian Redeemer across town had started spreading rumors that the ministers at St. Dymphna’s were lesbian lovers who sought shelter from society behind the protection of the church.
The hand that reached out for the bundle had a number tattooed to the wrist from an unpleasant stay in Poland a few years previously and she stepped back into the room as Luke turned silently, walked back to ‘Lazarus’ and slowly drove away leaving clouds of smoke from a perpetual oil leak, a faulty carburetor and the steam from the temperature differential.
Sister Miriam brought the bundle to a table where she and Sister Francoise unwrapped it. (And no, they weren’t hiding behind the skirts of St, Dymphna and yes they might be happier in each other’s arms than anywhere else; but that’s none of our business.)
Inside the bundle they found a very newborn baby with a shock of black hair, bathed in a thin coat of mucus and with the umbilical cord still attached. The baby was curled in a fetal position and it would be a few minutes until they could determine that it was a little girl. They were doubtful that the child would live but they did what they could; they milked their nanny goat (a very apropos name) managed to feed the child and, after turning out the lights in the church, brought her to bed to sleep between them. Three virgins. Three naked virgins.
The Sisters talked into the night and decided to name the child, whether she lived or died, in a combination of their favorite writers: Sylvia Plath and Virginia Wollf. They tried many combinations and finally lit on Sylvinia Wolfpath. Sylvinia would later tell people who asked about her parents that her father was a traveler named Lazarus and that she had two mothers. Then she would transfix them with eyes that the Scripto Ink Company would call Blue Black (the same color of the sky on the night that she was born) and say “but that’s a story for another time”, and leave it at that.
Somewhere in the middle of that first night under New Mexican chilled skies, the baby, whether from warmth or pure love, stretched to her full length. Newly born as she was, her head rested between the minister’s breasts and her tiny olive skinned toes touched just above their knees. Sister Francoise awoke briefly and muttered: “Mon Dieu, someone, I think, has given us an anaconda!”
Christmas morning came and the baby still lived.
In fact the baby, partially thanks to the warmth and care of the two Sisters as well as a diet of good goats milk, thrived, grew and gave all indications of being hale, hearty and healthy. At two years of age she had outgrown her foal-like appearance and carried on more like a spider monkey; all arms and legs. She possessed the uncanny ability to scale furniture, climb anything vertical and box with the sister’s Tom kitten without getting a scratch; this she did with no change of expression on her sweet, but somber face. Her hair was long, straight and blacker than night, her skin took on a café au lait/olive hue and her eyes were dark and piercing; her mouth appeared petulant but was actually the only way her mothers had ever seen her look. “It must have been the cold of that first night that froze her expression so” Sister Miriam often remarked. She potty trained early, although she preferred to use Mother Nature as her lavatory and she was late to utter any words with which to communicate her wishes. If little Sylvinia wanted anything she would sit and stare until someone noticed and guessed her needs correctly, more often than not it was Sister Francoise that could tune in most successfully.
By 1979 the small but perfect family had been driven out of the west by the good Christians of Las Cruces and had purchased a Creole Cottage in the Lower Garden district of New Orleans on a street named after the muse Terpsichore, the muse of dance.
Her mothers thought it fitting to enroll her in classes of gymnastics and ballet, which she showed an aptitude for and in fact excelled at. Later she took fencing lessons from the one remaining master in Exchange Alley.
By four years old she was reading, well, as much as her mothers could tell for a child that did not speak. She would carom around the rooms, up bookcases and into crannies to select things to look at, her favorites being Nation Geographic, the Times Picayune Metro Section and cookbooks that offered photographs of different dishes. It was Francoise that first gave her colored pencils and paper and watched her scrawl out words. Albeit primitive, her first written words were: “muthers good”, and drew a picture of their home as it had been in Las Cruces; she Sisters wept in each others arms, hugged the baby and put the masterpiece on the refrigerator with magnets. They, the mothers, worshipped their child and treated her with respect, patience and love. Sylvinia Wolfpath was a perfect child, gifted with natural intelligence and good sense with the self-actualized countenance of a poetess, which, of course she was.
At five years old she uttered her first words. She was perusing the obituaries in the newspaper and looked up to find Sister Miriam studying her.
She put her finger in the middle of the page and said: “These people are dead. Why are they smiling?”
Friday, December 10, 2010
New Orleans short story Part Seven: Me Me Me
New Orleans Short Story 7: Me Me Me
So now it’s four-thirty of the afternoon in question and the drugs have successfully kicking in; hell, they done kicked in hours ago and at this point they have taken me over. I looked over at the bed stand and saw the time and a half empty glass of Scotch. I feel good though, my head is clear, I feel rested and I’m only seeing one each of everything; however, I can still hear god laughing at what a fool I am.
Petey looked in on me from the bedroom door. “Morning Sunshine, rise up and join the world, you have a party to give in two hours.” He said cheerily.
“What the hell did you give me?” I queried
“A little thing that I mix up myself” he replied “kind of a variation of Desbutol*, you know Desoxin and Nembutal? This one starts with the downer, puts you out, mediates your nerve endings for relief of your sore-nesses and then time releases the upper so that you wake up feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed. You’re good to go for another twelve to fourteen hours Chum, by which time, with any luck at all, you should be three sheets to the wind and ready for a good nights sleep. Now, at and up ‘em Soldier!”
“Swell” I said and jumped out of bed; I immediately got a vertigo rush, staggering against his waiting arms.
“Whoa there Kimosabe, you not want move fast, might fall back in canyon.” He sounded just like that frigging Indian.
“Whew, thanks Tonto. Where’s m’horse?”
Petey handed me a glass of orange juice and a stick of Juicy Fruit gum. “Juice for head, gum for breath, you smell like horse and look like buffalo dung.” he said sagely “Time to pow wow later, after long stay in rain room, go shower; Lone Ranger sweat much while sleep; remind Tonto two pounds crushed coyote sphincter.”
Well, how do you argue with a man who channels a faithful Indian companion? Short answer: you do not.
After twenty minutes in a scalding shower I was almost as normal as I ever was and Petey filled me in. “Okay Bud, nix the poultry party, likewise the use of this side of the house. I’ve got a cleaning crew working on the wreckage and I’ve called Los Tres Bastardos Grasientos catering company with dinner to be served—Voila—next door-- in the billiard room which, with the creative use of plywood and your Mama’s damask rose patterned linen, some candles and air freshener we now have ‘Chez Pierre’; the hottest ticket private eating establishment this side of Elaine’s. Oh by the way, you’ve had some cancellations so we’re down to five including me; I’ve got a call into Mo, so I’m really expecting us to be a sixer, you, me, Billy, Brandi, Anne and hopefully Mo. Sorry I couldn’t scare up Julia Roberts or someone of that ilk, they’re in Cannes or some such place watching movies and dancing naked by the pool…go figure.
“Mo, Mo?” I queried: “Really, Mo is the only one you can get? I’d even take Pearl over Mo; I’ve already had my maximum daily requirement of downers for the day; couldn’t you get anyone else?” I moaned. “Even Pearl would be preferable!”
“So solly Cholly”, Petey retorted, “Miz Pearl is either making her own movies, run off with the circus or in a slammer somewhere south of Peoria. You know that wacky sister of mine: at ease with sleaze. Besides,” he continued “what’s wrong with Mo that we can’t and haven’t dealt with? AND… you didn’t talk like that when you had her behind closed doors!”
Getting back to real time, reader, of course you know that Mo is not her real name. Onward:
Alright, alright… Mo and I had had a brief but intense ‘thing’ until I found out that she was moody, cynical, sarcastic, vindictive, armed and full-blown bat shit crazy; those are her good qualities. Her bad qualities would send a saint to Smirnoff, Seconal, and smoker’s cough. We affectionately, and between ourselves only, call her ‘Mo’ because she looks like a painting by Modigliani, if you get my drift. She’s extremely intelligent, creative, imaginative and a really great canoodler; and that’s a story for another time.
Now with mere hours to go, I hitched up my britches, put on a tie, a smile and a pair of cheap sunglasses and, ignoring the commotion of the repairmen, trundled next door to my saloon/salon. Once again, I was glad to be alive.
Over in the saloon that I had named ‘L’auberge ne relachez pas’ or ‘The Don’t Drop Inn’ Petey had been setting things aright as I could see when I wandered out of my back door, which, again, was in the front of the building and over to the back of the pub, which was likewise. The caterers were busy in the kitchen and the smell of freshly squeezed citrus mingled with the scent of burning animal flesh; a woman in the corner was making fresh tortillas while another chopped vegetables and herbs. They were joined by a couple of scruffy children in diapers; barefoot. Three burly, Hispanic looking, men were wreathed in steam and smoke from the cooking appliances and fat cigars, they were wearing matching grease stained wife beater undershirts that did their best to cover hairy bellies and the sweat flowed like wine from their pores into the food. I started to say something but feared for my safety and judging from the look of their jailhouse tattoos of old English lettering, saviors on crosses and virgin mothers, rightly so. I averted my eyes just picturing the pleasure that they would have taking a scrawny gringo in white duck trousers and burgundy velvet smoking jacket and playing ‘dunking for French fries’ in the deep fryer that they had set up outside the door using what looked like old furniture (I hoped not mine) for fuel.
I found Petey at the bar going through my mail and asked him about the seeming culinary chaos. “Who are those guys?” I hissed.
“Oh, you mean them greasy bastards?”
“Shhhh!” I whispered, “don’t let them hear you talking about them like that!”
“Hee hee” Petey laughed “That’s the name of the catering company, paleface, ‘The Three Greasy Bastards’, oh, I told them no chicken; I figured that you had enough fowl play for one day” He really got the giggles over that one.
“Very punny” I retorted, not feeling amused.
“Okay, okay. Boy, everybody’s a critic these days. Listen, folks will be arriving soon; by the smell of it, grubs about done. Take a load off, I’ve set us up in the mode of ‘Uber Comfort’. Here, smoke some of this."
So now it’s four-thirty of the afternoon in question and the drugs have successfully kicking in; hell, they done kicked in hours ago and at this point they have taken me over. I looked over at the bed stand and saw the time and a half empty glass of Scotch. I feel good though, my head is clear, I feel rested and I’m only seeing one each of everything; however, I can still hear god laughing at what a fool I am.
Petey looked in on me from the bedroom door. “Morning Sunshine, rise up and join the world, you have a party to give in two hours.” He said cheerily.
“What the hell did you give me?” I queried
“A little thing that I mix up myself” he replied “kind of a variation of Desbutol*, you know Desoxin and Nembutal? This one starts with the downer, puts you out, mediates your nerve endings for relief of your sore-nesses and then time releases the upper so that you wake up feeling bright eyed and bushy tailed. You’re good to go for another twelve to fourteen hours Chum, by which time, with any luck at all, you should be three sheets to the wind and ready for a good nights sleep. Now, at and up ‘em Soldier!”
“Swell” I said and jumped out of bed; I immediately got a vertigo rush, staggering against his waiting arms.
“Whoa there Kimosabe, you not want move fast, might fall back in canyon.” He sounded just like that frigging Indian.
“Whew, thanks Tonto. Where’s m’horse?”
Petey handed me a glass of orange juice and a stick of Juicy Fruit gum. “Juice for head, gum for breath, you smell like horse and look like buffalo dung.” he said sagely “Time to pow wow later, after long stay in rain room, go shower; Lone Ranger sweat much while sleep; remind Tonto two pounds crushed coyote sphincter.”
Well, how do you argue with a man who channels a faithful Indian companion? Short answer: you do not.
After twenty minutes in a scalding shower I was almost as normal as I ever was and Petey filled me in. “Okay Bud, nix the poultry party, likewise the use of this side of the house. I’ve got a cleaning crew working on the wreckage and I’ve called Los Tres Bastardos Grasientos catering company with dinner to be served—Voila—next door-- in the billiard room which, with the creative use of plywood and your Mama’s damask rose patterned linen, some candles and air freshener we now have ‘Chez Pierre’; the hottest ticket private eating establishment this side of Elaine’s. Oh by the way, you’ve had some cancellations so we’re down to five including me; I’ve got a call into Mo, so I’m really expecting us to be a sixer, you, me, Billy, Brandi, Anne and hopefully Mo. Sorry I couldn’t scare up Julia Roberts or someone of that ilk, they’re in Cannes or some such place watching movies and dancing naked by the pool…go figure.
“Mo, Mo?” I queried: “Really, Mo is the only one you can get? I’d even take Pearl over Mo; I’ve already had my maximum daily requirement of downers for the day; couldn’t you get anyone else?” I moaned. “Even Pearl would be preferable!”
“So solly Cholly”, Petey retorted, “Miz Pearl is either making her own movies, run off with the circus or in a slammer somewhere south of Peoria. You know that wacky sister of mine: at ease with sleaze. Besides,” he continued “what’s wrong with Mo that we can’t and haven’t dealt with? AND… you didn’t talk like that when you had her behind closed doors!”
Getting back to real time, reader, of course you know that Mo is not her real name. Onward:
Alright, alright… Mo and I had had a brief but intense ‘thing’ until I found out that she was moody, cynical, sarcastic, vindictive, armed and full-blown bat shit crazy; those are her good qualities. Her bad qualities would send a saint to Smirnoff, Seconal, and smoker’s cough. We affectionately, and between ourselves only, call her ‘Mo’ because she looks like a painting by Modigliani, if you get my drift. She’s extremely intelligent, creative, imaginative and a really great canoodler; and that’s a story for another time.
Now with mere hours to go, I hitched up my britches, put on a tie, a smile and a pair of cheap sunglasses and, ignoring the commotion of the repairmen, trundled next door to my saloon/salon. Once again, I was glad to be alive.
Over in the saloon that I had named ‘L’auberge ne relachez pas’ or ‘The Don’t Drop Inn’ Petey had been setting things aright as I could see when I wandered out of my back door, which, again, was in the front of the building and over to the back of the pub, which was likewise. The caterers were busy in the kitchen and the smell of freshly squeezed citrus mingled with the scent of burning animal flesh; a woman in the corner was making fresh tortillas while another chopped vegetables and herbs. They were joined by a couple of scruffy children in diapers; barefoot. Three burly, Hispanic looking, men were wreathed in steam and smoke from the cooking appliances and fat cigars, they were wearing matching grease stained wife beater undershirts that did their best to cover hairy bellies and the sweat flowed like wine from their pores into the food. I started to say something but feared for my safety and judging from the look of their jailhouse tattoos of old English lettering, saviors on crosses and virgin mothers, rightly so. I averted my eyes just picturing the pleasure that they would have taking a scrawny gringo in white duck trousers and burgundy velvet smoking jacket and playing ‘dunking for French fries’ in the deep fryer that they had set up outside the door using what looked like old furniture (I hoped not mine) for fuel.
I found Petey at the bar going through my mail and asked him about the seeming culinary chaos. “Who are those guys?” I hissed.
“Oh, you mean them greasy bastards?”
“Shhhh!” I whispered, “don’t let them hear you talking about them like that!”
“Hee hee” Petey laughed “That’s the name of the catering company, paleface, ‘The Three Greasy Bastards’, oh, I told them no chicken; I figured that you had enough fowl play for one day” He really got the giggles over that one.
“Very punny” I retorted, not feeling amused.
“Okay, okay. Boy, everybody’s a critic these days. Listen, folks will be arriving soon; by the smell of it, grubs about done. Take a load off, I’ve set us up in the mode of ‘Uber Comfort’. Here, smoke some of this."
Friday, December 3, 2010
New Orleans Story Part Six: Billy
Part Six: Billy
Okay, who is Billy? Well, consistent with the other characters in this story, Billy is not his real name; in fact Billy has had several names that he’s used that are other than the name on his real birth certificate, which is, believe it or not, Melvin Tennabruso. As I said, or at least inferred, Billy had gone by a number of different names since shedding the (he thought) hideous names that he was given at birth, in baptism, communion and confirmation. As a kid he wanted to be called Frosty the Snowman. He once saw a name on a wooden pencil: Mandarin #2 and wanted that one, he tried on ‘Esquire’ and that didn’t stick. He tried a one-word name of: ‘Face’ but nobody wanted to call him that, especially in the pool hall. Jack Frost, Brady Brady, Charles Wright (he dreamed of “Sir Charles” but that was also Teflon), Aaron Presley (Elvis’ middle name), Philip Mann (it was easier at the dry cleaners) and then he was Thomas Katt for a while, before stumbling onto Billy the Kid.
Well, he couldn’t use Billy D. Kidd (too obvious) so he settled on William Price, it had a nice ring and he could call himself Billy Price; his inside joke about the last name of Price was that he figured that everybody had one, a price that is. So his running joke was, when introducing himself, he would say: “The name’s William Price, everybody has one… but you can call me Billy”. He took great pains to introduce himself as often as he could; it never failed to bring a smile to his face. Not many other people got it, though.
Mel was raised in Hoboken, New Jersey where his folks moved when he was seven, much to their shame. His family for years had lived in New York City, in tenements and slums, and when gentrification reared its ugly head in their neighborhood (Greenwich Village) the poor people were the first to go. And being his family was racially and ethnically biased (They didn’t like anyone that wasn’t Italian or Irish and certainly no one that wasn’t Catholic), they had nowhere to go except New Jersey, which to them was like living in exile.
Mel and his friends and young fellow big city refugees tried to make the streets of Hoboken as dangerous as possible, just so that they could feel at home. They formed gangs, vandalized property, got into fights and stole things. They were the first kids to smoke cigarettes and drop out of school. They were mean to anyone that they found weaker than themselves. They were sneaky, crafty, brutal and without exception, cowardly. They bullied young girls into ‘putting out’.
Melvin being a typical Irish Italian Catholic became an altar boy and did his time at religious instructions; he was given (in his estimation) hideous middle names; one at baptism and another for confirmation. He felt that his family hated him and wanted only to humiliate him. His old man beat him regularly but that was no big deal; his father would get drunk and beat everybody he came in contact with: his wife, his kids and other drunks. Mel didn’t make no federal case about his beatings; he knew that someday he’d be out of that place called home or big enough to kick his old man’s ass, if for no other reason than the way his father mistreated his mother, whom he loved like a saint.
His chance came soon enough. One night Mel TennisShoes (as he was called on the street) and Tommy TooTall broke into the neighborhood pawn shop to rob anything that they could put their hands on. They broke in through the skylight. They dressed in black and put shoe polish on their faces just like in that Robert Mitchum movie. They brought a rope that they lowered themselves into the shop with and started looking around with flashlights that they held in their teeth. They made the mistake by pulling the rope in after them.
The silent alarm went off and they couldn’t get out; the front door was barred and the skylight was too high to reach. The police sat outside and laughed at them while they waited for the owner to show up with the keys to let them in to nab the two seventeen year old amateurs.
Their mothers cried at the trial, their fathers got drunk and got into a fight, the other kids laughed at how stupid they were getting caught like that. “Yeah, dere dey wuz, like rats in a trap, stoopid reeeelie fockin’ stoopid.”
The judge gave them a choice (some cherse!); off to the big house or volunteer for the armed services. Thomas James Joseph Tatarino volunteered for the U.S. Navy and Melvin Alfred Aloysius Tennabruso chose the Marine Corps. Tommy spent four years drinking and getting laid, he did as little work as possible and squeaked by with an Honorable Discharge. Mel (call me Billy) spent the first two years getting his ass kicked and the next two working at a recruiting center in New Orleans.
After completing his basic training at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Private First Class Tennabruso considered himself a trained killer; unfortunately he had his father’s propensity for not being able to hold his liquor and lose his temper, so Mel (call me Billy) would regularly go off base, off sobriety and off his rocker and get into fights that he never won. One day a fellow Marine, Deanjelo Dagostino (call me Dino) took him aside, talked sense into him and inspired him to lay off the booze. Actually, Dino introduced him to drugs, which they both liked a hell of a lot better than whiskey. Drugs did what you told them to do, either waking you up or putting you to sleep; they invariably made you feel good about yourself. Billy and Dino became fast friends and Dino taught him the two cardinal sins of drugs; one: don’t get caught with them and two: use just enough and no more. Both sins were punishable by dishonor, which both buddies feared more than death. Dino was from New Orleans and he was conniving, wheedling and manipulating a transfer to the recruiting station there, where a couple of the guys he knew were due to be discharged soon. He planned on getting his good buddy Billy to be transferred with him and it did come to pass that they did serve out the rest of their time in New Orleans, were discharged together and settled down for a spell. Dino and Billy shared an apartment in the French Quarter even while they were in the service of their country. They liked to troll the quarter at night looking for women that were a little worse for the wear of strong drink and ergo easy pickings.
Pat O’Brien’s bar was a favorite because it was raucous, loud and made a drink called a “Hurricane’ there, whose sole existence was to get people fucked up. Billy and Dino would hang around the bar until they spotted likely semi-disabled women, and having the advantage of being sober (albeit high) they made their moves and culled them from the herd for some hanky-panky at their place which was only two blocks away. Let it be known here, that the good times that the boys enjoyed was by mutual, although inebriated, consent. The buddies were well versed in that special point of weakness that came before moods became maudlin, and generally, a good time was had by all.
Billy had turned into a good looking man and as these things went, having doubted his attractiveness for most of his life, was insatiable in his lust for conquest. He often wandered off on his own picking up shop girls, waitresses and even a librarian or two. But, Billy was having sex, he was not making love; and this, shame that it was, would not occur to him until much later in his life.
Okay, who is Billy? Well, consistent with the other characters in this story, Billy is not his real name; in fact Billy has had several names that he’s used that are other than the name on his real birth certificate, which is, believe it or not, Melvin Tennabruso. As I said, or at least inferred, Billy had gone by a number of different names since shedding the (he thought) hideous names that he was given at birth, in baptism, communion and confirmation. As a kid he wanted to be called Frosty the Snowman. He once saw a name on a wooden pencil: Mandarin #2 and wanted that one, he tried on ‘Esquire’ and that didn’t stick. He tried a one-word name of: ‘Face’ but nobody wanted to call him that, especially in the pool hall. Jack Frost, Brady Brady, Charles Wright (he dreamed of “Sir Charles” but that was also Teflon), Aaron Presley (Elvis’ middle name), Philip Mann (it was easier at the dry cleaners) and then he was Thomas Katt for a while, before stumbling onto Billy the Kid.
Well, he couldn’t use Billy D. Kidd (too obvious) so he settled on William Price, it had a nice ring and he could call himself Billy Price; his inside joke about the last name of Price was that he figured that everybody had one, a price that is. So his running joke was, when introducing himself, he would say: “The name’s William Price, everybody has one… but you can call me Billy”. He took great pains to introduce himself as often as he could; it never failed to bring a smile to his face. Not many other people got it, though.
Mel was raised in Hoboken, New Jersey where his folks moved when he was seven, much to their shame. His family for years had lived in New York City, in tenements and slums, and when gentrification reared its ugly head in their neighborhood (Greenwich Village) the poor people were the first to go. And being his family was racially and ethnically biased (They didn’t like anyone that wasn’t Italian or Irish and certainly no one that wasn’t Catholic), they had nowhere to go except New Jersey, which to them was like living in exile.
Mel and his friends and young fellow big city refugees tried to make the streets of Hoboken as dangerous as possible, just so that they could feel at home. They formed gangs, vandalized property, got into fights and stole things. They were the first kids to smoke cigarettes and drop out of school. They were mean to anyone that they found weaker than themselves. They were sneaky, crafty, brutal and without exception, cowardly. They bullied young girls into ‘putting out’.
Melvin being a typical Irish Italian Catholic became an altar boy and did his time at religious instructions; he was given (in his estimation) hideous middle names; one at baptism and another for confirmation. He felt that his family hated him and wanted only to humiliate him. His old man beat him regularly but that was no big deal; his father would get drunk and beat everybody he came in contact with: his wife, his kids and other drunks. Mel didn’t make no federal case about his beatings; he knew that someday he’d be out of that place called home or big enough to kick his old man’s ass, if for no other reason than the way his father mistreated his mother, whom he loved like a saint.
His chance came soon enough. One night Mel TennisShoes (as he was called on the street) and Tommy TooTall broke into the neighborhood pawn shop to rob anything that they could put their hands on. They broke in through the skylight. They dressed in black and put shoe polish on their faces just like in that Robert Mitchum movie. They brought a rope that they lowered themselves into the shop with and started looking around with flashlights that they held in their teeth. They made the mistake by pulling the rope in after them.
The silent alarm went off and they couldn’t get out; the front door was barred and the skylight was too high to reach. The police sat outside and laughed at them while they waited for the owner to show up with the keys to let them in to nab the two seventeen year old amateurs.
Their mothers cried at the trial, their fathers got drunk and got into a fight, the other kids laughed at how stupid they were getting caught like that. “Yeah, dere dey wuz, like rats in a trap, stoopid reeeelie fockin’ stoopid.”
The judge gave them a choice (some cherse!); off to the big house or volunteer for the armed services. Thomas James Joseph Tatarino volunteered for the U.S. Navy and Melvin Alfred Aloysius Tennabruso chose the Marine Corps. Tommy spent four years drinking and getting laid, he did as little work as possible and squeaked by with an Honorable Discharge. Mel (call me Billy) spent the first two years getting his ass kicked and the next two working at a recruiting center in New Orleans.
After completing his basic training at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Private First Class Tennabruso considered himself a trained killer; unfortunately he had his father’s propensity for not being able to hold his liquor and lose his temper, so Mel (call me Billy) would regularly go off base, off sobriety and off his rocker and get into fights that he never won. One day a fellow Marine, Deanjelo Dagostino (call me Dino) took him aside, talked sense into him and inspired him to lay off the booze. Actually, Dino introduced him to drugs, which they both liked a hell of a lot better than whiskey. Drugs did what you told them to do, either waking you up or putting you to sleep; they invariably made you feel good about yourself. Billy and Dino became fast friends and Dino taught him the two cardinal sins of drugs; one: don’t get caught with them and two: use just enough and no more. Both sins were punishable by dishonor, which both buddies feared more than death. Dino was from New Orleans and he was conniving, wheedling and manipulating a transfer to the recruiting station there, where a couple of the guys he knew were due to be discharged soon. He planned on getting his good buddy Billy to be transferred with him and it did come to pass that they did serve out the rest of their time in New Orleans, were discharged together and settled down for a spell. Dino and Billy shared an apartment in the French Quarter even while they were in the service of their country. They liked to troll the quarter at night looking for women that were a little worse for the wear of strong drink and ergo easy pickings.
Pat O’Brien’s bar was a favorite because it was raucous, loud and made a drink called a “Hurricane’ there, whose sole existence was to get people fucked up. Billy and Dino would hang around the bar until they spotted likely semi-disabled women, and having the advantage of being sober (albeit high) they made their moves and culled them from the herd for some hanky-panky at their place which was only two blocks away. Let it be known here, that the good times that the boys enjoyed was by mutual, although inebriated, consent. The buddies were well versed in that special point of weakness that came before moods became maudlin, and generally, a good time was had by all.
Billy had turned into a good looking man and as these things went, having doubted his attractiveness for most of his life, was insatiable in his lust for conquest. He often wandered off on his own picking up shop girls, waitresses and even a librarian or two. But, Billy was having sex, he was not making love; and this, shame that it was, would not occur to him until much later in his life.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
New Orleans Story Part Five: Brandi
New Orleans story part 5: Brandi
Beatrice Mae Buttons had always been a big girl. She was born on the Button’s family farm in Eagle Rock, Missouri. In those days Eagle Rock was no more than a cluster of failing farms with a post office, a fire station and a filling station next to a convenience store that sold hot lunches to migrants in a bend in highway eighty-six; Eagle Rock was a haven for Hispanic illegals because there were no police to speak of in the vicinity.
Migrants hired themselves out to the dirt farmers around planting and harvesting time before moving south or north following the crops. They worked for a little money or the barter of goods and services. You see, there is an unmarked migrant workers highway that stretches from Canada to Louisiana where camps are set up and abandoned as the workers move south to north starting in spring working down up to the Canadian border and then back to the Gulf of Mexico to catch harvests; in this way hundreds of undocumented workers could remain below the radar, make a living, feed and clothe themselves and raise their families. That song “On The Road Again” was not a hit amongst those who had no other choice.
There were waystations and wooded encampments, abandoned farm buildings and even a midwife or two within reach and ken of the growing, moving, traveling, gypsy hands that were an important part of making the best of bad land and low incomes in places like the one that residents called ‘Eagle Rock Misery’ and other small poor communities and properties that no one could afford to live on and nobody else was fool enough to want to buy.
The Buttons’ farm was no better or worse than any of the neighboring properties; there was one thing that Mr. And Mrs. Buttons did raise in larger quantities than their neighbors, and that was children. They had nine living children and they all got as much schooling as necessary and then worked the poor land from that age on. In prosperous times they had a milk cow, yard chickens and occasionally a pig in a sty. Prosperous times were few and far between. The farm was just east of the highway and just west of Fire Road 2285. Forty acres; no mule. Help from migrants when they could afford it.
In hard times they ate corn and potatoes cooked in lard. Mrs. Buttons planted a truck garden every spring and usually a good portion of the crops were eaten by insects, stolen by migrants or rabbits which Mr. Buttons took great pleasure in shooting at with an old Winchester rifle. They often had rabbit for dinner but never a migrant worker. The Buttons worked the land a parcel at a time, when one parcel got played out they would work another parcel that they had cleared; an acre at a time. With all the clearing and planting and harvesting, the Buttons had no end to work. Just as the last parcel played out, the first one was ready for replanting. So it goes.
This was the world that she was born into; poor whites, poor browns and had she lived further south, poor blacks. These are folks that we hear referred to as ‘dirt poor’. Beatrice Mae Buttons was the fourth youngest and only one of the two girls, her sister Bonnie Jeanne being the baby of the clan. Beatrice, or Bea as she was called, was born after a late harvest on a dark and stormy night; there was a chill in the air and a north wind whistled through the chinks in the wall and under the door. Mr. Buttons had long since given up on helping with deliveries; Mrs. Button’s body had so much experience birthing babies that Beatrice literally fell out of her cervix. It was Mr. Buttons pleasure to never have to plow hard to plant another baby Buttons into the Missus.
Little Bea was cute from the start. She was born a little dumpling with freckles and dimples all over her, she had a shock of strawberry blond hair that would soon turn to pure sable. She was born with blue-grey eyes which would remain the same color all her life; they shone with a fire from within. Upon reaching her mother’s breast for her first taste of milk she looked up at Mrs. Buttons and smiled with her entire face and being; an angels smile. Mrs. Buttons wanted to hold her close forever, in fact, Mrs. Buttons did not know if she could ever not be holding her this close… or closer, forever. Another fact was, Mrs. Buttons had never been more in love with any thing or person in her entire life.
That’s just the way Bea affected people throughout her life; to see her was to love her; to love her was to want to touch her. To touch her was to want to hold her. The only challenge that Bea ever had was that anyone that held her would want to own her.
But Beatrice Mae could not be owned. You see, Bea is what you might call a free spirit. She gave of herself freely and all to whom she shone upon felt blessed. To her it was a simple act of bodies touching, souls entwining and spirits joining. At puberty she also found that there were body fluids to contend with and she went on and on into her early twenties until a trip down south to New Orleans entranced her. Without a shred of guilt or misgiving she said good bye to her family and caught a bus back with her worldly possessions packed in an old Pan Am bag that she bought at a garage sale. Six years later she received that phone call from her second cousin Anna Marie.
And that was six years ago. She had been living across the river from New Orleans proper in a place called Algiers Point; she had saved enough money to buy the house that she lived in and Anna Marie had moved in and out close by in an area called Gretna. Pretty much Anna Marie, now Anne, played her cards close to her chest and except for the askance occasional piece of advice or wisdom, the women stayed as close as they could, being a little ways apart in more ways than one.
Bea, now Brandi, opined that little Anna Marie, now Ann, had an unnatural affinity for trouble and rough times, like that Marine sergeant that she had lived with for a spell; what was his name? Oh, Billy something; he was sure a piece of work. Brandi had dropped him like a hot potato, but Anne had scooped him up like an inside fly ball. He didn’t last long with her, either; although Brandi heard through the grapevine that they still saw each other from time to time.
Brandi wondered, one time while putting on her make up for her weekend job, what had happened to old Billy; and as fast as that thought lit on her mind like a gad fly on the rump of a French Quarter mule… that’s how fast she slapped it like a fly swatter on a kitchen counter. “Good riddance to bad trash’, she said as she dismissed him from her aura. You see, Beatrice had learned the value of her warm spots and had no time for pikers, losers or bullshit artists.
Brandi had grown into herself, a wise woman now in her early thirties she was, as they say, round, firm and fully packed. Women trusted her instinctually as much as they did not trust their men around her. Men instinctually wanted to move closer to her. Men talked in lowered voices about her, referring to her as many adorable things and knowing deep in their hearts that she was, at the end of the day, just an invitation to the blues.
Brandi worked weekend nights as a hostess at a restaurant named Blanche’s in the Quarter on Chartres Street. The restaurant was named for Blanche DuBois of Tennessee Williams fame; you know, the woman that relied upon “the kindness of strangers”? She made all the money that she needed at her job and made still more in her spare time giving solace to lonely ‘new friends’. People seemed happy to give her money; money made no earthly sense to anyone that Brandi came in contact with, it was just something that they had and they wanted to give it to her. If you think that Brandi is special, if you think that she is wonderful, exciting or amazing… think again; Brandi is a frigging miracle, and make no mistake about it.
If she could see Billy now, she would not have changed her mind about him though, for he had not changed much in the last few years; although he didn’t live but across the river from her, that was still too close for her memories of him.
It was an early afternoon somewhere within a few weeks ago and Billy was getting ready for his nocturnal adventures. He picked up his phone and dialed a number. “Hello Dino?”
Continued in part six and
Beatrice Mae Buttons had always been a big girl. She was born on the Button’s family farm in Eagle Rock, Missouri. In those days Eagle Rock was no more than a cluster of failing farms with a post office, a fire station and a filling station next to a convenience store that sold hot lunches to migrants in a bend in highway eighty-six; Eagle Rock was a haven for Hispanic illegals because there were no police to speak of in the vicinity.
Migrants hired themselves out to the dirt farmers around planting and harvesting time before moving south or north following the crops. They worked for a little money or the barter of goods and services. You see, there is an unmarked migrant workers highway that stretches from Canada to Louisiana where camps are set up and abandoned as the workers move south to north starting in spring working down up to the Canadian border and then back to the Gulf of Mexico to catch harvests; in this way hundreds of undocumented workers could remain below the radar, make a living, feed and clothe themselves and raise their families. That song “On The Road Again” was not a hit amongst those who had no other choice.
There were waystations and wooded encampments, abandoned farm buildings and even a midwife or two within reach and ken of the growing, moving, traveling, gypsy hands that were an important part of making the best of bad land and low incomes in places like the one that residents called ‘Eagle Rock Misery’ and other small poor communities and properties that no one could afford to live on and nobody else was fool enough to want to buy.
The Buttons’ farm was no better or worse than any of the neighboring properties; there was one thing that Mr. And Mrs. Buttons did raise in larger quantities than their neighbors, and that was children. They had nine living children and they all got as much schooling as necessary and then worked the poor land from that age on. In prosperous times they had a milk cow, yard chickens and occasionally a pig in a sty. Prosperous times were few and far between. The farm was just east of the highway and just west of Fire Road 2285. Forty acres; no mule. Help from migrants when they could afford it.
In hard times they ate corn and potatoes cooked in lard. Mrs. Buttons planted a truck garden every spring and usually a good portion of the crops were eaten by insects, stolen by migrants or rabbits which Mr. Buttons took great pleasure in shooting at with an old Winchester rifle. They often had rabbit for dinner but never a migrant worker. The Buttons worked the land a parcel at a time, when one parcel got played out they would work another parcel that they had cleared; an acre at a time. With all the clearing and planting and harvesting, the Buttons had no end to work. Just as the last parcel played out, the first one was ready for replanting. So it goes.
This was the world that she was born into; poor whites, poor browns and had she lived further south, poor blacks. These are folks that we hear referred to as ‘dirt poor’. Beatrice Mae Buttons was the fourth youngest and only one of the two girls, her sister Bonnie Jeanne being the baby of the clan. Beatrice, or Bea as she was called, was born after a late harvest on a dark and stormy night; there was a chill in the air and a north wind whistled through the chinks in the wall and under the door. Mr. Buttons had long since given up on helping with deliveries; Mrs. Button’s body had so much experience birthing babies that Beatrice literally fell out of her cervix. It was Mr. Buttons pleasure to never have to plow hard to plant another baby Buttons into the Missus.
Little Bea was cute from the start. She was born a little dumpling with freckles and dimples all over her, she had a shock of strawberry blond hair that would soon turn to pure sable. She was born with blue-grey eyes which would remain the same color all her life; they shone with a fire from within. Upon reaching her mother’s breast for her first taste of milk she looked up at Mrs. Buttons and smiled with her entire face and being; an angels smile. Mrs. Buttons wanted to hold her close forever, in fact, Mrs. Buttons did not know if she could ever not be holding her this close… or closer, forever. Another fact was, Mrs. Buttons had never been more in love with any thing or person in her entire life.
That’s just the way Bea affected people throughout her life; to see her was to love her; to love her was to want to touch her. To touch her was to want to hold her. The only challenge that Bea ever had was that anyone that held her would want to own her.
But Beatrice Mae could not be owned. You see, Bea is what you might call a free spirit. She gave of herself freely and all to whom she shone upon felt blessed. To her it was a simple act of bodies touching, souls entwining and spirits joining. At puberty she also found that there were body fluids to contend with and she went on and on into her early twenties until a trip down south to New Orleans entranced her. Without a shred of guilt or misgiving she said good bye to her family and caught a bus back with her worldly possessions packed in an old Pan Am bag that she bought at a garage sale. Six years later she received that phone call from her second cousin Anna Marie.
And that was six years ago. She had been living across the river from New Orleans proper in a place called Algiers Point; she had saved enough money to buy the house that she lived in and Anna Marie had moved in and out close by in an area called Gretna. Pretty much Anna Marie, now Anne, played her cards close to her chest and except for the askance occasional piece of advice or wisdom, the women stayed as close as they could, being a little ways apart in more ways than one.
Bea, now Brandi, opined that little Anna Marie, now Ann, had an unnatural affinity for trouble and rough times, like that Marine sergeant that she had lived with for a spell; what was his name? Oh, Billy something; he was sure a piece of work. Brandi had dropped him like a hot potato, but Anne had scooped him up like an inside fly ball. He didn’t last long with her, either; although Brandi heard through the grapevine that they still saw each other from time to time.
Brandi wondered, one time while putting on her make up for her weekend job, what had happened to old Billy; and as fast as that thought lit on her mind like a gad fly on the rump of a French Quarter mule… that’s how fast she slapped it like a fly swatter on a kitchen counter. “Good riddance to bad trash’, she said as she dismissed him from her aura. You see, Beatrice had learned the value of her warm spots and had no time for pikers, losers or bullshit artists.
Brandi had grown into herself, a wise woman now in her early thirties she was, as they say, round, firm and fully packed. Women trusted her instinctually as much as they did not trust their men around her. Men instinctually wanted to move closer to her. Men talked in lowered voices about her, referring to her as many adorable things and knowing deep in their hearts that she was, at the end of the day, just an invitation to the blues.
Brandi worked weekend nights as a hostess at a restaurant named Blanche’s in the Quarter on Chartres Street. The restaurant was named for Blanche DuBois of Tennessee Williams fame; you know, the woman that relied upon “the kindness of strangers”? She made all the money that she needed at her job and made still more in her spare time giving solace to lonely ‘new friends’. People seemed happy to give her money; money made no earthly sense to anyone that Brandi came in contact with, it was just something that they had and they wanted to give it to her. If you think that Brandi is special, if you think that she is wonderful, exciting or amazing… think again; Brandi is a frigging miracle, and make no mistake about it.
If she could see Billy now, she would not have changed her mind about him though, for he had not changed much in the last few years; although he didn’t live but across the river from her, that was still too close for her memories of him.
It was an early afternoon somewhere within a few weeks ago and Billy was getting ready for his nocturnal adventures. He picked up his phone and dialed a number. “Hello Dino?”
Continued in part six and
Saturday, November 27, 2010
New Orleans Short Story Part Four
Short Story Part Four: Anne Kenney
Anna Marie Kowalski came from Ville Platte, Louisiana. She was the middle child of five attractive and gifted children that graced the lives of Maude and Paul Kowalski. The family had moved to Ville Platte from Eureka Springs, Arkansas when Mr. Kowalski’s company opened up a branch office in Ville Platte. Paul Kowalski was a mortician who specialized in body contouring, which meant that his specialty was making people, dead people, fit into the coffins that had been picked out and purchased by miserly next of kinfolk. “You wouldn’t believe how many cheapskates want to carve off savings by putting a size eighteen body into a size nine casket” he would tell his wife and children over one of Mrs. K’s wonderful home cooked meals. A transfer to the facility opening in Ville Platte meant a sizable raise for Mr. Paul and the Kowalskis bought a roomy house with an equally sizable mortgage on West Main; three bedrooms, two baths. There they settled were fruitful and multiplied.
Ville Platte was the home of the Louisiana Cotton Festival. Anna Marie attended school at Sacred Heart Academy where she had average grades and a reasonable amount of friends both male and female. At fourteen she went out for the cheerleading squad and was accepted; it was one of the happiest days of her life, she loved Sacred Heart Academy and she loved being a cheerleader. It made her feel like a goddess.
On a late night drive, after the football team suffered a bitter defeat, while with the fullback of the team, she was informed as to what was logically expected of her as a cheerleader of the mighty Sacred Heart Trojan football team. She was kind of excited when she was told that she would be giving ‘succor’ to the team as part of her duties. The fullback explained patiently (his forte) how much pressure and stress a football team member is really under. “You can’t believe how much of a load one of your team’s players carry” he told sweet Anna Marie. Anna Marie felt tears coming to her eyes as she pictured the poor brute hulks, wearing the Trojan uniform, weighed down by such strains and burdens.
She wondered aloud if she really knew what ‘succor’ was, and the fullback kindly offered to show her. They drove to Hope Park, which is on the corner of Lincoln and Railroad Avenue and she learned on a picnic table, under spreading oaks, about ‘succor’. There was a bit of alcohol involved, but just a bit. Nor did Anna Marie know exactly what a Trojan was; her new friend obviously didn’t know either or didn’t care because he didn’t use one and Anna Marie was with child six months before her sixteenth birthday. She reasoned that, although she far from minded giving her all for the team, she probably wasn’t prepared for the consequences.
Anna Marie wondered, as she lie awake in the bedroom that she shared with her two younger sisters, what course her life should take from here; she hadn’t yet informed her parents of her dilemma, and she knew that in time her condition would avail itself to wiser eyes. Already some of the older cheerleaders had noticed, and told Anna of their experiences with that ‘succor jive talk’. Most had been suckered into ‘succoring’ at least twice; once by mistake and the second with the succor-er of their choice. “You should have seen the silly look on that quarterback’s face when I looked into his baby blues and said ‘ohhmy ohhmy Johnny, how ever can I ease that heavy load you’re carrying? Do, oh please do, show me all about succoring” one of the star cheerleaders told her with a laugh “but ya know, ya gotta take precautions!”
Anna Marie decided to call one of her second cousins who had moved to New Orleans to work with widows and orphans and ask for advice. Beatrice Mae had always been like the big sister Anna Marie had always wanted. It only took a few moments on the phone with Cousin Bea before Anna Marie was sobbing out her story.
“You mean that you actually fell for that succor line?” was Bea’s first impulsive query before her voice softened “I guess you fell for it hook, line and succor, eh, sucker? Now, now, you just relax, honey, and call me in the morning. I’ve got to rush off to some poor Merchant Seaman’s rescue; he’s locked himself in his hotel room and will only talk to a trained professional therapist, and that’s me, baby; by the way, it’s Brandi… I’m callin’ myself Brandi Mae now, that’s Brandi with an I”. As it turned out, Brandi Mae was in a succoring business of her own.
When Anna Marie called the following day (“not before noon, hon”), Brandi had a plan. “Listen hon, it’s almost Christmas break; why don’t you tell your folks that you’re comin’ down to see old Beatrice ‘cause she’s feelin’ a mite bit homesick for kin company. Act like it’s a big inconvenience, but say how much I’ve been such a good friend to you and that you can’t stand for me to suffer and be lonely after all I’ve done for you, and besides which, I can’t leave my job as a therapist during the holidays, can I? You got that?”
Brandi told Anna Marie that she had a “cute little place” in an area called Algiers Point and that she was welcome to stay with her while she made some phone calls and “set something up”.
And so it was that Anna Marie Kowalski went further down south on her school break and stayed there, explaining to her folks that Beatrice Mae had gotten her into a school that was training her in the field of Psychopharisaicpharmacology, for which she had scored high marks as an applicant and seeing how Beatrice was a recent graduate who could help her with her studies in a school, one not found anywhere else in the whole country, she would work hard and do her family real proud. Naturally her family, good god fearing country folks that they were, was flummoxed, confused, impressed…and gave their consent. “Imagine, Mrs. K told the ladies at her quilting bee, “my daughter in school to become a psycho-Para… something or other. I’m sure she has a fine and secure future ahead of her; oh, I do hope she meets as wonderful a man as her father is.” To which the other ladies could not but roll their eyes, Anna Marie’s true story was common knowledge to everyone but the Kowalskis.
What happened next was, at Brandi’s encouragement Anna Marie Kowalski became Anne Kenney and got a job shelving books at the local library. She got her GED and met a Marine Corps recruiter that she liked well enough, and with adequate protection, occasionally ‘succored’. His name was William Stratford Price but everyone called him Billy. Billy had an apartment on Spain Street in the Faubourg Marigny; Anne would sometimes visit him when she thought that he would be less boring than whatever else she had going on. Brandi had introduced them; Anne considered him (as had Brandi) a failure as a lover.
Billy Price was also a failure as a Marine Corps recruiter, and was in danger of being shipped out to the prevailing war, wherever that might be, because his ‘numbers’ were too low. Anne could not let that happen to her; after all, she had boring Billy trained to behave her way and she didn’t want to have to start over with training a new, boring, boyfriend. So Anne, when she saw an opportunity, found recruits for Billy… in likely young boys that she picked up at her job in the library. Anne had grown and prospered. She had taken courses in Library Sciences at Delgado College and had matured into a lovable, but well seasoned, credit to her gender. She still shared a house with her second cousin and sometimes to relieve her boredom with Billy, went on house calls with Brandi as an ‘assisting therapist’.
Anne had visited her family from time to time and on holidays she would send many presents, but she was damned if she would ever move back to Ville Platte. She received word regularly on boring subjects like births, deaths, marriages and babies. She had made up stories about how she decided to forgo the career in Psychopharisaicpharmacology and pursue a cerebral career as a librarian to the public. She told her family how she took the ferry across the Mississippi river each day and how exciting her life was, dispensing knowledge and wisdom to the underprivileged.
Actually, Ann Kennedy was pretty bored with her life and just about the only thing that got her juices going was the effect that she had on the boys that she picked up at the library. They clearly could see the goddess within her.
Anna Marie Kowalski came from Ville Platte, Louisiana. She was the middle child of five attractive and gifted children that graced the lives of Maude and Paul Kowalski. The family had moved to Ville Platte from Eureka Springs, Arkansas when Mr. Kowalski’s company opened up a branch office in Ville Platte. Paul Kowalski was a mortician who specialized in body contouring, which meant that his specialty was making people, dead people, fit into the coffins that had been picked out and purchased by miserly next of kinfolk. “You wouldn’t believe how many cheapskates want to carve off savings by putting a size eighteen body into a size nine casket” he would tell his wife and children over one of Mrs. K’s wonderful home cooked meals. A transfer to the facility opening in Ville Platte meant a sizable raise for Mr. Paul and the Kowalskis bought a roomy house with an equally sizable mortgage on West Main; three bedrooms, two baths. There they settled were fruitful and multiplied.
Ville Platte was the home of the Louisiana Cotton Festival. Anna Marie attended school at Sacred Heart Academy where she had average grades and a reasonable amount of friends both male and female. At fourteen she went out for the cheerleading squad and was accepted; it was one of the happiest days of her life, she loved Sacred Heart Academy and she loved being a cheerleader. It made her feel like a goddess.
On a late night drive, after the football team suffered a bitter defeat, while with the fullback of the team, she was informed as to what was logically expected of her as a cheerleader of the mighty Sacred Heart Trojan football team. She was kind of excited when she was told that she would be giving ‘succor’ to the team as part of her duties. The fullback explained patiently (his forte) how much pressure and stress a football team member is really under. “You can’t believe how much of a load one of your team’s players carry” he told sweet Anna Marie. Anna Marie felt tears coming to her eyes as she pictured the poor brute hulks, wearing the Trojan uniform, weighed down by such strains and burdens.
She wondered aloud if she really knew what ‘succor’ was, and the fullback kindly offered to show her. They drove to Hope Park, which is on the corner of Lincoln and Railroad Avenue and she learned on a picnic table, under spreading oaks, about ‘succor’. There was a bit of alcohol involved, but just a bit. Nor did Anna Marie know exactly what a Trojan was; her new friend obviously didn’t know either or didn’t care because he didn’t use one and Anna Marie was with child six months before her sixteenth birthday. She reasoned that, although she far from minded giving her all for the team, she probably wasn’t prepared for the consequences.
Anna Marie wondered, as she lie awake in the bedroom that she shared with her two younger sisters, what course her life should take from here; she hadn’t yet informed her parents of her dilemma, and she knew that in time her condition would avail itself to wiser eyes. Already some of the older cheerleaders had noticed, and told Anna of their experiences with that ‘succor jive talk’. Most had been suckered into ‘succoring’ at least twice; once by mistake and the second with the succor-er of their choice. “You should have seen the silly look on that quarterback’s face when I looked into his baby blues and said ‘ohhmy ohhmy Johnny, how ever can I ease that heavy load you’re carrying? Do, oh please do, show me all about succoring” one of the star cheerleaders told her with a laugh “but ya know, ya gotta take precautions!”
Anna Marie decided to call one of her second cousins who had moved to New Orleans to work with widows and orphans and ask for advice. Beatrice Mae had always been like the big sister Anna Marie had always wanted. It only took a few moments on the phone with Cousin Bea before Anna Marie was sobbing out her story.
“You mean that you actually fell for that succor line?” was Bea’s first impulsive query before her voice softened “I guess you fell for it hook, line and succor, eh, sucker? Now, now, you just relax, honey, and call me in the morning. I’ve got to rush off to some poor Merchant Seaman’s rescue; he’s locked himself in his hotel room and will only talk to a trained professional therapist, and that’s me, baby; by the way, it’s Brandi… I’m callin’ myself Brandi Mae now, that’s Brandi with an I”. As it turned out, Brandi Mae was in a succoring business of her own.
When Anna Marie called the following day (“not before noon, hon”), Brandi had a plan. “Listen hon, it’s almost Christmas break; why don’t you tell your folks that you’re comin’ down to see old Beatrice ‘cause she’s feelin’ a mite bit homesick for kin company. Act like it’s a big inconvenience, but say how much I’ve been such a good friend to you and that you can’t stand for me to suffer and be lonely after all I’ve done for you, and besides which, I can’t leave my job as a therapist during the holidays, can I? You got that?”
Brandi told Anna Marie that she had a “cute little place” in an area called Algiers Point and that she was welcome to stay with her while she made some phone calls and “set something up”.
And so it was that Anna Marie Kowalski went further down south on her school break and stayed there, explaining to her folks that Beatrice Mae had gotten her into a school that was training her in the field of Psychopharisaicpharmacology, for which she had scored high marks as an applicant and seeing how Beatrice was a recent graduate who could help her with her studies in a school, one not found anywhere else in the whole country, she would work hard and do her family real proud. Naturally her family, good god fearing country folks that they were, was flummoxed, confused, impressed…and gave their consent. “Imagine, Mrs. K told the ladies at her quilting bee, “my daughter in school to become a psycho-Para… something or other. I’m sure she has a fine and secure future ahead of her; oh, I do hope she meets as wonderful a man as her father is.” To which the other ladies could not but roll their eyes, Anna Marie’s true story was common knowledge to everyone but the Kowalskis.
What happened next was, at Brandi’s encouragement Anna Marie Kowalski became Anne Kenney and got a job shelving books at the local library. She got her GED and met a Marine Corps recruiter that she liked well enough, and with adequate protection, occasionally ‘succored’. His name was William Stratford Price but everyone called him Billy. Billy had an apartment on Spain Street in the Faubourg Marigny; Anne would sometimes visit him when she thought that he would be less boring than whatever else she had going on. Brandi had introduced them; Anne considered him (as had Brandi) a failure as a lover.
Billy Price was also a failure as a Marine Corps recruiter, and was in danger of being shipped out to the prevailing war, wherever that might be, because his ‘numbers’ were too low. Anne could not let that happen to her; after all, she had boring Billy trained to behave her way and she didn’t want to have to start over with training a new, boring, boyfriend. So Anne, when she saw an opportunity, found recruits for Billy… in likely young boys that she picked up at her job in the library. Anne had grown and prospered. She had taken courses in Library Sciences at Delgado College and had matured into a lovable, but well seasoned, credit to her gender. She still shared a house with her second cousin and sometimes to relieve her boredom with Billy, went on house calls with Brandi as an ‘assisting therapist’.
Anne had visited her family from time to time and on holidays she would send many presents, but she was damned if she would ever move back to Ville Platte. She received word regularly on boring subjects like births, deaths, marriages and babies. She had made up stories about how she decided to forgo the career in Psychopharisaicpharmacology and pursue a cerebral career as a librarian to the public. She told her family how she took the ferry across the Mississippi river each day and how exciting her life was, dispensing knowledge and wisdom to the underprivileged.
Actually, Ann Kennedy was pretty bored with her life and just about the only thing that got her juices going was the effect that she had on the boys that she picked up at the library. They clearly could see the goddess within her.
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