I fell back here like a bit of earthbound shrapnel falls from a broken jetliner bursting through the atmosphere. The fall was nothing more than an everyday example of mundane realism; interlaced with a series of sub-plots and dream visions. I fell awkward and hard, and missed the place I was supposed to land. I fell from several thousand miles and I fell with friends. They had said we were lost, or gone for good. We were disordered and disillusioned and we had been so outside ourselves in those ensuing months that nothing here was relevant to us, anymore. So we disbanded and went our separate ways, some to return later and some to continue on that trajectory; all the better for it, and happier, for I have continued to fall, but am enjoying the flight; I have found that in falling, one is privy to examine humanity at both its shallow lows and upmost heights.I fell back here, and its true; from the beginning it seems we were simply taking the long way home.Had I known that to begin with, I may have never left. But that is the sort of hindsight bias that befalls youth; and it is fitting that I left when I did, and with whom, and for that particular lenghth. Still, I believe that had the circumstances differed, the effect might have been the same, or entirely different. It doesn’t matter. What is truth, now, is that things transpired as they did.It was the day prior to departure, money was short. Julian had one and a half front teeth; a porcelian veneer was covering his chipped incisor and the other one gave him a lopsided grin. The repair had cost half of what he had planned to take with him. I wasn’t any more secure; I had six massages scheduled for that Friday. My alarm went off at seven that morning–the first order of business was to get a new driver’s license; my other had been lost or stolen, and without one I couldn’t claim my greyhound tickets in New Orleans. I arrived at the highway patrol thirty mintues before they opened, and already, a woman with her toddler were standing in front of the glass doors. I sat beside them, not particularly anxious to head the line. I began writing a letter to Heather–hello, I haven’t spoken to you in months; I’m coming to visit, I’m beginning an epic adventure–nothing fit, so I scrapped it for later, when there was more to tell. The line swelled, and despite being at the front, it still took well over two hours to accomplish the first task of the day. I had four massages scheduled for the afternoon, in hopes to brining in a little extra cash at the last minute. I got through the first two, and started to panic. I had planned a party for the evening–invited two hundred people, but had done nothing to prepare for it. I called Jesika around lunch.
“I’m going to have to cancel the party.”
“Huh, you can’t cancel your own party, are you crazy?”
“I have to pack. I don’t have any money, anyway. No one is going to miss me.”
“Well, you can’t cancel it. Don’t buy anything, people can bring their own. But you have to go to your own party. That’s absurd”
“Ok, fine”
I canceled my last two massages instead, and picked Jesika up around four. We went to the bakery where I used to work. Jesika walked in, ridculously dramatic, and started asking inane questions of the croissants. Meanwhile, I snuck in with a knapsack and went straight for the back. I didn’t bother with the bottom shelf; I just started picking up the best reserves; Brut Cuvee, pink champagne, bubbly if you will–as many as would fit in my bag. And with obvious and exaggerated bravado I motioned for Jesika to follow, and we pranced out, knowing that no one would bother to call the cops and that no one truly cared. Outside, Jesika counted sixteen bottles; picking each over and holding them up to the sunlight like jewels.
“I can’t believe you just fucking did that” she said, picking an $89.99 price tag off the back.
Our next stop was the liquour store–legitimately, this time. Jesika went in to figure out the pricing while I waited in the car. Everyone was expecting blue moon, but I settled for Yuengling.
Then we went to the Dollar Store, which is a wealth of papery, plasticy, cellophane things, none of which are necessities but all of which you want to buy, all at once, as soon as you walk in.
So we headed north, turned left; and left behind all that was familiar to me of that low swampland that had birthed me, and those people I knew best. I was cramped between luggage and blankets and books, with Ryder and Paul in the front seat, Julie next to me, and our precarious cargo nestled amongst suitcases in the trunk. I glanced back and smiled at Westman, who was perched on my knapsack; Ezra Pound in tow. He was deeply absorbed in that garbage. I slung a sleeping bag over my shoulder and slept for a while.
I felt myself choking, but in New Orleans, you hold your breath, anyway. There’s something they told me about called Katrina cough. Your lungs film with this stuff that has settled in the Ninth Ward. A fine dust of debris remains. I began to feel it at Common Ground, though we stayed only a couple of hours. It was getting dim outside. Ryder had a vague recollection of the area, but everything in this part of the city is a sunken, bloated mess, so he finally called Sal for directions. We drove around in circles for a while longer–it was next to this trailer, that parking lot–he was sure of it. I could hear the frustration in his voice as each promising facade turned out to be just another vacant building. Just after nightfall, we found it by chance–St. Mary’s of the Angels had been the name of it once, an elementary school. It had not weathered the hurricane well, but after the water retreated and the city lay in disrepair, it was gutted of its rotten faculties and occupied by volunteers–thousands of them, the year after–an endless parade of altruistic, rowdy kids who tore down drywall by day and drank, danced by night–the rage at injustice and the rouse of anarchy flanked in Teflon suits.
It had been two summers since the storm, and Common Ground was nearly vacant; though the national guard still occupied the ninth ward, those who came to its aid had since disbanded, returned to college campuses and Midwestern towns to put those weeks away in essays and diaries and songs lyrics and put some distance between themselves and the sad state of things down in Louisiana. We were met by two men who barely glanced up to greet us; Ryder recognized one. The electricity in the building was sparse, the air was stagnant. There was a Kool-Aid barrel and plastic cups in the gymnasium, but no lights, so I rendered trying to derive anything from its tap in the dark as useless, and went instead with Julie to look for the bathroom, down a long corridor, flanked with fluorescent streaks that fled ahead of us up the green tile as we walked. The toilets were decrepit; some unflushed, others absent from their plumbing. There were no doors on the stalls. The sink trickled and spat and refused to give up its contents. I awkwardly drew my pants down around my ankles and feared what ghosts would find me seated there.
By the time we returned, Ryder had already fallen privy to one of dozens of ragged, molding couches assembled in the hall. Two more bodies occupied couches in opposing corners–both were unshaven, rough-looking men with shallow and coagulated breath. Ryder woke as we entered, and pushed his couch up next to another, and motioned for me to climb between them. He tucked his arm beneath his head, and promptly resumed his sleep. I attempted to separate my face from the foam that was budding from the torn fabric beneath me. Everything smelled of must and dampness. I sank into a crevice between cushions and tried to lay as still and breath as little as possible. An itch began to nag at my sinuses and grew into an irritation that caught me in a relentless cough. I pulled my bandana over my mouth, but nothing calmed it. I drifted through a fitful sleep until the others roused and shook their slumber. I woke Ryder, and our little party put on shoes and parted timidly from the sad, soggy school and crept back into the swampy New Orleans night.Our first order of business, having slept until an appropriately late hour, was to acquire some contraband alcohol.
As we drove out of the Ninth Ward, we stopped briefly at a gas station and waited while Julie went inside to make the purchase. Then Ryder directed us towards Canal Street. We parked at an ostensible distance, and imbibed most of the bottle. Then tumbled out and into the ruckus—there is, famously, a ruckus at all hours, all the time in New Orleans. Tonight was not particularly loud, but still, we danced between patrons crowding the sidewalks, a flurry of Hawaiian shirts with middle-aged and flaxen beauties strung to their shirtsleeves, wielding wild-colored mixers and flailing their tawny, strappy legs in all directions. We tested a dive bar, then another; resolutely out stepping legalities that seemed laughable, here. Julian ran up ahead, drawn by a crowd that broke to us; in their midst a ten-man band whose songs were bellied by balladiers and boisterous conversations; people yelling atop each others’ voices and piles upon piles of arms and stomachs and the spoils of liquor and cigarettes.
Closing time came soon, and as the bars began to shun their neon lights, we wandered towards the edge of shadows and wound our way past a dozen shuttered, painted ladies. Ryder fell onto the sidewalk and we lay there a while, staring up into the glare of streetlamps. We peed in some bushes behind a church. We walked through the quarter, down Decatur Street, and collapsed in an alley, and Julie and I finished off the bottle. Then we climbed into the car. Paul was a stoic, steady drunk, put on Don McClean; Ryder valiantly guided us towards his own intentions.
Julie and I slept, intermittently, in the back seat. There was a low feeling in my chest that I could not shake. The whiskey had tamed my cough, for the moment, but something else had caught. Paul kept his eyes to the road, Julie’s were shut. Ryder stared across the highway with a soft gaze; we were slipping from the suburbs, from row houses to strip malls, lying abandoned and eerie, then pasture land. Ryder seemed distant, and I wanted to touch him, but I got the feeling he was not there. My mind drifted, and then came again to Ryder tapping the window. I followed his nod across a wide, dark expanse to the dim glow of an oil refinery, its turrets burning. There was a huge spill there, after the hurricane, he said. His voice cut with guilt. I drifted back to sleep. The sky had begun to grey when I woke again. We were turning left; the turn signal had broke me from sleep. Don McClean was still singing his ballade on repeat, Don McClean before the storm, Don McClean laughable to us that the levy was dry. Ryder motioned for us to stop, and Julie, waking, murmured approvingly. I asked where we were.
Violet, Louisiana. Violet? Mhmm. I opened the car door and reluctantly planted my feet in the tall, marshy grass that edged the road. Ryder ran to a house across the street, which seemed, had it been the thing he had so anticipiated during our drive, dispairingly vacant and indistinct. There was a deadbolt on the door, which was not the sturdy material that most doors are comprised of, but a flimsy, four-ply substitute that was painted with the same familiar demarkation as all other doors in New Orleans. I kneeled under Ryder and spied in through its crack. The inside was as empty as was to be expected, but there was a pregnant air to it that caused my throat to catch again. Ryder, reluctantly, pointed to a corner. “That’s where I slept.”
We carried on, down the row of brick houses of a once suburban spread. A few had been salvaged, and Ryder and Julie both acknowledged having been responsible for their rennovation. Still others were hollow, gaping frameworks that had been gutted of mold and warped furniture. The streets still retained their moisture, and the air itself seemed close to saturation.
My cough had returned, just as the sun was beginning to imbue the moisture with a yellow hue. It was inescapable. I felt it coming on, and tried to excuse it as allergies. They shook their heads. It was not until later, until we had left the South, that anyone bothered to diagnose or inform me of the mess of dust that must have amassed in my lungs to bring it on.
Ryder broke into a run down the street, and we followed suit. There were a few dogs that had wakend with our presence, and they called after us unharmoniously as we ran. Ahead, the streat dead-ended to an embankment ten feet high; grassy. Ryder did not slow his speed, but ran directly up it. I, breathlessly, ensued. It’s crest was flat, and along it ran dirt tracks. I came to it, and grazed down it’s westward slant to an abrupt halt at the heady bank of the Mississippi. It was quiet, there, for all the momentum of that water; a serene and soggy riverbed flanked by willows and swarmed with mosquitos that bit every uncovered inch of our flesh.Ryder, Julie, Paul and I took respite there in drunken silence, and watched a tug boat pass and waited, as the sun spread over us and hit the swell of ripples in its wake.
Whatever has nested in my chest would not be shaken, and I found it hard to fill my lungs. So I came out of the south with an asthmatic rattle, with an unwielding vision of countless x’s that denoted the dead on every door, and a space I could feel begin to tighten with a suspicion that would not leave me in peace.
