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The Old Man And The Alligator Boy 8.3.97
The killing slowed down quite a bit this week. Some corrections: last week I said three children had been wounded in the crossfire in the past month. That wasn't true last week (only two had been shot), but is true now. Also I said most of the killing was happening in the projects and in Eastern New Orleans but ten of the sixteen recent murders were in the Seventh Ward, a neighborhood of homes which begins about six blocks from here.
Shoot out of the week award goes to the four young men hiding behind a wall in the Seventh Ward who sprayed a passing car (and were sprayed upon) with automatic weapons. One dead, one wounded, one AK-47 left behind. Several homes were pierced. Police recovered fifty shell casings.
Monk buried his wife Friday and seems to be on the upswing.
Sunday: today I took four boys to Fontainbleau State Park on the North Shore near Mandeville. There is a swimming pool and the lakefront for swimming. The boys run for the pool with diving board and I walk to the lake. No one in sight, how nice. The water is calm, with barely a ripple to disturb it reflective quality. Puffy whites up above and a small cypress tree out in the lake to my left with wrist thin root tendrils running above and parallel to the surface before dipping back into the water closer to shore. Old support pilings spaced haphazardly rise a few feet above the water in more or less a straight line and then break into complete random order farther out. I walk into the shallow lake and aim myself for a log floating a hundred yards out. I look to the clouds and see no horses, crabs, or satanic symbols. I look back to the log and see alligator. Floating logs always look like alligators to me, especially since my East Texas oil exploration days where one day I shared a small pond with what I thought was two but turned out to be five or six young alligators. I stop walking and look harder at the log. Really amazing how the various forces of nature have conspired to carve this one living tree into the semblance of a living reptile. The way the back end looks like any old log but the front has that little raised ridge for the "eyebrows" followed by 12-14 inches of nothing then the upturned snout. I dip myself and float on my back for a minute before walking back to the shore. I sit and stare at the log for awhile trying to convince myself there might be a valid reason for a log to move across the current instead of with it. I've almost convinced myself when the log changes directions 180 degrees. And then the boys run up and want me to join them in a rollicking good time of water madness. Sure, but before we go in, see the alligator, and know where it is at all times, and don't go out as far as we did last week. The alligator snaps at a fish and Glynn says, no thank you, goodbye, and returns to the swimming pool. Fermin gets wet but comes out in a few minutes and goes back to the pool. Shelton is still at the pool. More people have arrived and are getting in the lake, we give them fair warning, the alligator has disappeared, the people think we're nuts, I float in, and Jacque thrashes, the water.
"You going back to the pool, Jacque."
"No, Mr. Jim."
"Why not?"
"Because…I am Alligator Boy."
"He was a fine young lad from New Orleans who went missing on the North Shore. Presumed dead by all who loved him. But little did they know he had chosen a new life, wandering the stagnated, mosquito infested waters thought to be his burial ground. He was Alligator Boy."
"Yesss…I am Alligator Boy…and you are…The Old Man."
(Ah kids, you really don't have to love them). "Yes, the old man he found living on the edge of the swamp in a shack made of alligator bones tied together with rat tails. The old man who fed him and soon demanded to be fed himself." I look over at a group of children playing off to our left. "Alligator Boy, I need food, bring me a white child."
"Say no more Old Man," and Jacque thrashes through the waist high water to confront the first white child he sees. "Give me your hat."
"What?" the boy says.
"I want your hat," Jacque says in a high pitched raspy voice.
The boy begins moving faster towards the shore while explaining that it is not really a hat he is carrying and also it does not belong to him…but Jacque quickly bores of this banter and moves off to confront the group of children I had originally been looking at. One from this group had earlier thrown a clam at me. Pay back time.
"I am Alligator Boy," Jacque roars.
No one from this group seems too disturbed by this admission except the teenage girl who jumps and says, "oh!"
"Did I scare you?" Jacque says.
"No, I just didn't know you were there," the girl replies. "Did you really see an alligator? How big was it? What did you do when you saw it? Did you run back to shore?"
"It was big," Jacque says. "And I won't lie to you, I ran from it."
"What did he do?" the girl says, pointing over at me.
OK Jacque, this is a test question. This is just a little girl and I have no need to impress her, but someday a similar scenario may be replayed before a more suitable damsel. Make me look good Jacque, make me look…heroic.
"Well…," Jacque begins real slow, and then he starts twirling his index finger and pointing to the side of his head. "He's a little…you know…in the head, and he has spent much of his time living in the water with alligators…"
So Jacque fails the test but makes me laugh, and goes to the head of the class.
Slapping The Bayou 8.10.97
Harold Armour's restaurant, bar, grocery store over on LaHarpe in the 7th Ward burned down last night. The establishment was 90 years old and was known by the original owner's name--Mule's (Mulay's). Harold and his brother co-owned it with members of that prodigious Ngyuen clan.
Things are sleepy and quiet on Dumaine. Temperatures are a little down but the air is too still and wet. Some of the boys playing football in the street. Sharon stabbed Greg today. The Saints are playing the Chiefs in the Superdome. I'll probably listen some on the radio.
I've been staying inside lately, pondering, stagnating, "resting." Reading a couple decent books--Richard Russo's, Straight Man, and some good detective fiction by a Boston writer named Robert Parker.
Mr. Dave, from around the corner on Dorgenois, died Wednesday, deserves something of an extended obit but I will have to confer with Jim Wolff, who sold the house next door (Esnard Villa), to Yolanda.
I'm going outside to see what happens.
Sunday: (I never did go outside last night. There was no place to sit what with all those kids and coloring books). Got up around 6:30 a.m., went to look for paper but it wasn't here yet. Came in, took a bath, made coffee and toast, loaded up the one hitter, and drove down to the Bayou, parking on Moss, just down from the corner of 3300 Dumaine. I sit at the first set of steps, the Dumaine bridge to my left and that church with the copper dome to my right. Early Sunday mornings are so fine in New Orleans; so quiet the sound of repentance. My coffee is good but I burnt the toast. I light a cigarette and bow my head in prayer. That fisherman two hundred yards away might be jealous of my trained fish, who glitter at sunrise, high above the water, before reaching the arc's pinnacle, where they lay flat and to the right (as per training), and come down slapping the water in high fashion. God, I love those fish.
Joggers, bikers, and dog walkers are making their appearances. More cautious than curious, they seem to carry with them an inherent understanding of the folly of running yourself healthy in a place so casual about killing. Reiterated too often in the news is that discouraging reality that no place in New Orleans is completely safe.
I set fire to the little morsel of weed in my pipe and suck it dry. A little dab will do me. I have to hold the smoke in my lungs longer than I like out of respect for that pedestrian who had sneaked up behind me. By the time I do exhale, very little smoke leaves my mouth. I guess I got all of that one.
I am completely alone on the Bayou when the church bells start clanging what soon becomes a brief melody. Just when I think I might be able to hum along, the notes begin breaking down, slow and easy, until the disintegration completes itself with a single wavering note. Silence.
It's 8:30 a.m. when I get back to 2600 and there are five boys waiting in front the house, ready to clean the street. Only four of them will fit in the Festiva.
So the four boys and I leave out of here, headed for Mississippi, with Michael crying in the rear view mirror.
A white family let the boys play with their nerf football. When I went to return it prior to our departure, the man said--"well you're very welcome, it looks like they're having fun." I'm not sure, but I don't think he was referring to the part where they were holding each other's heads under water, yelling--"stay down bitch, stay down."
Rapping With Miss T And Satan 8.13.97
The police just got though questioning Charles, owner of Expressive Hair Works, next to Jack's convenience store. They were showing him what looked like a wanted poster but Charles's body language stated he had never in his life seen said person. Yolanda came from out the front of her house and around to our side. M and I started jumping up and down and yelling--"flush the shit, flush the shit, and hide the guns." Her boy-man, James, sauntering across the street with cell-phone pressed to his ear.
G and KK's mom, Nanette, got out of jail this week. I guess she'll be staying at Mama D's for the short term, after that, who knows? It looks like she gained quite a bit of weight.
Sunday, there was a record release party for a couple of local rap groups over in the 2400 block of St. Philip, across from Rodgers Elementary School. Some of the neighborhood kids were there until the shooting and hand to hand combat started. Fermin ran home to Mama E's house on Orleans where E and M were sucking down brewski's. "Where's
(cousin from Slidell) Joe," E wanted to know. "I don't know mom. I just ran when the shooting started," Fermin told her. M went around the corner with Julia who found Joe up on Dumaine. First hand accounts vary as to whether or not there was actually gunfire. Probably just a bunch of seriously bad brothers scaring up the place.
M and a bunch of kids on the front porch and Jacque says, "Miss M?"
"What Jacque?"
"Mr. Jim, He think he black."
"What makes you say that?" M asks and Jacque proceeds to tell her the Alligator Boy story, which M has already heard from me.
"And he told me to get a white child," Jacque explains.
"Jacque, that was Jim making a joke (to himself obviously), and he's just trying to say he doesn't care much about color so he changes things around to make a funny picture.
"Ohhh, I see," Jacques says, real skeptical like.
JD's helper, Mark, is a semi-reformed Neo Nazi, tattooed, recorded punk rock playing, Satanist, who has taken to doing little favors for me at the workplace. After each one, he smiles, and says, "You've got Satan in your corner now pal."
I've made him hip to the Pat Boone classic, Cross and the Switchblade, so I respond--"God loves you Nicky."