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The Amiable Thief
This guy called out, Jim, from across the street on Dumaine and I turned around and he said you don't remember me, do you? Look, all you people who I have known casually who go off to jail for five or six years I can honestly say I do remember you, but how am I going to remember your names? He lived straight across from the Dumaine house and was a nice guy. Installed security systems. Worked at the corner store for awhile until late one night he compromised the security system, robbed the store, and then two days later met the gunpoint of the owner who put the two's together and then the guy went off to jail. He asked about M , but I think he called her Lisa, or Nancy, or Maria, and I corrected him in that subtle way by saying her actual name, told him a little about her deal, and he said God would bless her and take care of her, which is not necessarily a crock of shit, so M, you got that going for you, the blessings of God via the amiable thief.
He said he was trying to get some of that FEMA money and I told him about Joe, who as far as I can tell, just by appearing slightly retarded, got 22k. That news seemed to encourage him. He had just seen Joe himself, who had come by the store where the amiable thief was helping the Muslim gut the store. You know the adage, keep your friends close but keep your enemies closer? Joe had pointed to the security camera and asked if he could have it. In my opinion, this was Joe's little joke, referencing the amiable thief's crime. Joe is a funny guy. Years ago, at a Super Bowl party at his sister's house across the street he had made some attempt at humor regarding the dysfunction of M and I's relationship and I stood up in front of where he sat and unzipped my pants and suggested he fellate me.
The amiable thief pointed to the former Mama D's house and said did I know that old man that lived there, mowed grass around the neighborhood, and I said I seem to remember people talking about him but I was on Rocheblave by then so I didn't really know him. He said the old guy and his wife and a little girl drowned in there during the flood. I said, but the water was only ankle deep in those houses and he suggested various scenarios which could account for drowning in ankle deep water.
I washed the front of the house in the late afternoon and then poured a little more than a little Jameson's in a glass and sat on the porch and got my buzz on. I was deep in reverie when a banger drove by playing at alarming volume the most patently ridiculous rap song I have ever heard and I just busted out laughing, but then stopped because it really wasn't that funny.
Snow had been walking back and forth from his perch on the steps of the nearly and impressively renovated Esnard Villa to up past the Dorgenois corner (where he got shot a month ago) and on one of his circuits I got up the courage (my friend Jameson egged me on) to ask him where he got shot.
Snow.
Raised eyebrows (He never actually spoke very much but now I think he doesn't speak at all).
Where did you get shot?
Raised eyebrows saying--say again.
I spoke louder and tried to rephrase in a way that would rule out the regional misunderstanding of unfamiliar dialect. I said, where-did-you-get-shot?
He slowly raised his shirt and showed a small, well healed pucker, close to his hipbone but still in the soft flesh of his outer belly.
Just that one? I asked.
By no movement of eyebrow nor verbal utterance did he dignify that question with response. He started moving on.
I read about you in the paper.
He stopped, eyebrow saying--say again.
I read about you in the paper.
I think he almost smiled.
Painting Dumaine
Ok, so I only lasted that one day without complaint. It's almost 90 degrees here in New Orleans today and that is too damn hot for April. I took the day off from work so I could work in the hood and I keep coming over here to Rocheblave because it is a little cooler over here than on Dumaine but most of the work is on Dumaine.
I'm going back over there in a little while and wash the front of the house. That will involve spraying water and scrubbing with a truck brush dipped in soapy bleach, on an extension pole, and then more spraying with water, so I could get wet, and cooler.
I have an airport? card in my laptop so I got Internet in the house now.
I better call those guys about replacing my flooded AC compressor. That's the last major thing I have to do over here on Rocheblave. If I had the AC working I would be running it now.
I might have bitten off a little more than I can chew with the Dumaine exterior paint job but that's not a complaint just a statement of fact. I've gotten a good bit of the shit work out of the way, the power sanding, the scraping, a lot of the priming except the front, but I still have some more scraping on a couple of high sections, and a fair amount of window re-glazing, and replacing a few pieces of window glass. The painting itself will be a large job but child's play compared to the prep work.
This paint job was something I was supposed to do a long time ago so me doing it now is not me being a helluva guy but rather a day-late flunky. And it is a pretty good environment to work in, without all the high drama that could sometimes overwhelm Dumaine. And this will not be my A+ work but more like my B-minus work, just in case you look too closely. There are a few window sills that need replacing but I simply won't have time for that. I'll be lucky if I get all the windows re-glazed. And some of the weather boards could use some nails, and I just don't think there's any way in hell I'm going to cut out that bad caulking job from the last painters, who instead of nailing the weather boards tighter, just caulked the underside gap and now it's harder to nail and harder to make right, so I'm just going to paint it up and hope for the best. Most of the siding is original, so it's 110 years old, and the paint may be the only thing holding it up. Anyway, I think it will look better than it did (it's going to look stupendous), and hopefully, if M gets her insurance figured out and gets that money then maybe her contractors can tighten it up a little bit.
Ok, I'm going back over there now. I'm going to take my Irish friend, Jameson, with me.
Easter New Orleans
A couple of things. There aren't anymore marauding rats in the Dumaine house and as for the occasional mouse, if I bother to set the traps, I might catch, that is kill dead, one every other week, so I hardly even bother with such inconsequential threats and as for threats of a more serious nature, all it took was locking the side gate at Dumaine and I don't see anyone hanging around for over a week, even my little helper, who it just so happens is not the embodiment of pure innocence. So it was a false alarm thinking the drug 'n thug scene was starting up again around Dumaine. However, the corner store guys are beginning their gutting and rebuilding process, so when the store gets going it could liven things up in a not necessarily good way, I guess.
The person who will rent from me when I go back to VA in June wanted to do a little landscaping so the backyard and side yard have become a veritable garden paradise (at least relative to the post-apocalyptic feel of it prior to two weeks ago) and without the manic barking dogs (Sheba, Killer, and Watchdog, in the backyards backing up to my side yard) and constant threat of roaming knuckleheads, the Rocheblave property has really catapulted to become one of the top two places I live.
It is so quiet here in New Orleans that even though I still get a little choked up when I pass through the many dead neighborhoods, I mostly am feeling very calm, and happy, if just a little tired. If I hadn't worked so hard on renovating this abandoned property over the last six years I would feel guilty about how fortunate I am, having this nice little place surrounded by so much catastrophe. But, perhaps contrary to my nature, I have worked my ass off on this property, granted over a rather longer than necessary time period, but that I didn't take but a few inches of water in the front two rooms, and am now almost fully operational, while so many people are still suffering their losses, is not something about which I am persecuting myself.
Raheim, the 10-year-old kid from around the corner that I can almost beat most of the time at basketball, doesn't come by too regularly but he shows up once in awhile. Because there are so few open schools here in New Orleans he is attending school in Jefferson and it is an all white school and Raheim longs for his old school, his all black school. He is getting scary good at talking like a white kid and he plays it as a gag until I can't stand it, and say, thank you Raheim, but that's enough. At ten, he's still got more of the innocence and less of the street on him, and when I look at him and his fresh little innocent smile I hope he doesn't get his wish of going back to his all black school because but for a few exceptions to prove the rule, the public schools here in New Orleans, predominately black, were killers of children. The accomplices in the murder of New Orleans children are the absent fathers, and...I don't know, I guess the list is long.
In the past, as I was all about the mayhem and murder and degradation here in the hoods of New Orleans, I want to go on a little bit more about how quiet it is here now. On top of being quiet in general it is especially quiet because it is Easter Weekend and all the workers have taken three days off. Other than me, the reprobate, and the Dumaine corner store guy, Muslim, I don't think I've seen any grunt workers in the neighborhood, this Easter Sunday. It is so quiet and de-populated that I go out in my backyard periodically, in my underwear. Biafran babies are obese compared to me with no leggings on and I just rarely go around without my legs covered. Anyone that knows me knows this. So, I'm going out in my backyard in my underwear, how de-populated is that? This is the first worker break since the area has become somewhat more operable, stop lights mostly working and and a corner store or two (still not one of the five or six fast food establishments open in my area though) and a grocery store within a mile, so what if there used to be five within that same mile? And from here you can still hear the barges and the ferries at night blasting each other on the river with their horns and the old St. Charles streetcars running on Canal, a block away, make more noise, in a good way, than the newer (but flooded) Canal streetcars. And the weather lately has been almost perfect, if slightly hinting at the heat to come.
Um, that's pretty much it. I am without complaint.
There Go Your White Man
I have probably more time in construction crappers (port-a-toilets) than most of my readers and I'm bragging about it.
Things have really gotten better here in the Deep South as regards to hateful racial graffiti in the crappers.
I remember this English teacher I had during my abbreviated student tenure at the University of Texas, she was from England no less, and once I remember she was going on about how far the United States had come in the arena of civil rights and I just shook my head condescendingly, an 18-year-old know-it-all, and she cited all the obvious advancements and I said take away the laws and not a damn thing would be different. Sure the laws have changed but not the hearts of men, I argued. And eventually men will break laws.
But I'm big enough to admit being wrong, in fact I revel in wrongness, so Teach, you were right and I am wrong.
In Metairie to where I go for work and the most hateful racial attitudes (or not, really) I read in this particular crapper a fairly common sentiment which I have seen year after year after year--KKK, kill all blacks. It is etched in the plastic with razor knife. It is most often hard working black men who drive the crapper suction trucks that clean out these toilets. And I know they are as relieved as I am that we have come as far as we have. Love in the21st century. I mean, in the past, it was always the N-word used. We are truly blessed, all of us, in these times.
Then I will drive home, stop by Rocheblave, and head over to Dumaine to try to do a little something at the house that 11 years ago began my insight into a culture I will never do proper justice to, by description or understanding.
I guess I have a mean stare sometimes, or an edginess. I'm not bragging about it because it is a weakness, although except for choosing otherwise I could have been a good little hard-ass fucker of a businessman, with my edgy persona. I could have been somebody, I could have been a contender, ha.
It ain't nothing really, not yet, but the little dudes are starting to hang out, just lightly, around the 2600 block of Dumaine. I didn't even glance at Dumaine the week my back was most troublesome but pulling up to the curb day before yesterday and seeing some youngster I may recognize as 8 or 10 years older than the 10-year-old kid with the black heart or just bad luck of circumstance, and I hard stare him because he is leaning against the fence of the Dumaine house, and I'm tired, and I don't have the patience for this stupid shit all over again. It's too hard to work, period, without doing it to an audience of lazy fucks. I could love the kid if he would make the slightest effort of respect, but he won't, and I won't. He'll hang, deal drugs or not, smoke or not smoke the blunt, not lift a finger, leave his trash on the ground instead of three feet away in a bag hanging on the fence, and make no courteous hello, so you give up and hard stare, and they hard stare back. It's all fear and anger, on both sides. Something better could be easy if it weren't so hard.
I unlock the grate and kill some time inside because I don't want to have a confrontation on account of I am feeling irrational. It's like counting to ten I guess. I hear the kid outside talking to another kid I know, and he sounds all pissy and punk ass bitchy. I can't hear anything but tone and the words "white man.'' White man this and white man that. I just stay inside even though all the work I am trying to complete is outside. I am not going to wait indefinitely. Although my main goals in life are not to be mean to other people (I often fail at this) and to not get killed, I must get to work. I'm still feeling too irrational though so I wait a few more minutes until I can't stand it any longer and then I bring out the ladders and move back and forth from the foyer to the front porch. The kids have moved on and I start doing some scraping but my heart isn't really into it. I'm not sure scraping is something you can really put your heart into.
Later, I'm back in the foyer, with the front door open, and I hear from across the street the kid I know egging on the kid with the black heart, "there go your white man up in there." Something. Something. "There go your white man." I have never in my life referred to a man as nigger or black man, except the first to describe or act out other people speaking it and the latter to describe the popular conception of African American skin color. Give me the same, you little pissants. But really, I do love you guys when I'm not hating you.
Down south in the 21st century.
Letter To Clifford, 8-9-10
Dear Mom, 6/27/05
How are you doing? I am doing fine, waiting on the guests of JF to wake up so I can do a little work up at the bighouse. That's what I call the main house on this property--the bighouse. J and his wife, L, don't come out too often because of busy schedules with their kid's activities, but occasionally let people use the bighouse for a weekend getaway. I have been painting the metal roof of the house but have met one obstacle after another. First, the pollen from the many trees surrounding the house was so coating the roof that I could barely walk on it, much less prep and paint it. So I waited for that stop happening and now it is getting so hot I can't do much on the roof except for early in the morning and maybe a little in the evening. The roof is peeling pretty bad and some of the cleanser I am using makes it peel even more, so I end up having to scrape it twice.
The section of the roof I am working on now has a view through windows into one of the upstairs bathrooms, so I don't want to make their guests nervous, and am just staying down here at my cottage for awhile. This house is not really a cottage but people want to call it that because they can't really call it a guest house on account of I live here all the time, and I ain't much of a guest. And cottages are associated with country property, which this certainly is. I am pretty much considered the caretaker but there seems to be some slightly negative connotation to that word because of the way caretakers have been portrayed in various movies and pieces of literature, over time. Caretakers have been portrayed as tall thin silent loners who are a little grumpy and occasionally unpredictable in their behavior and rude to strangers who happen onto the property. Which I think describes me pretty well.
I am very slowly getting to know more people around here and before you know it I will know everyone, because there aren't that many people out in this part of Virginia. The town I live in, Washington--sometimes called Little Washington so as not to be confused with Washington DC--has a population of only 186 people. There are no stoplights in town. The entire county, Rappahannock County, has only about 7,000 total residents, and likewise, in the entire county, there are no stoplights. Needless to say, if I don't leave this immediate area, I don't get stuck in traffic jams.
I had two extra tickets to a musical concert in Washington DC recently (which is 70 miles away) and I don't know if you know this or not but your oldest son and my oldest brother, D*n, has a son living in DC this summer, the son's name is J*ck, and he is acting as tour guide, before going back to Texas A&M in the fall, to enter his senior year. So I invited Jack and his girlfriend, K*m, who is also in DC this summer (what a coincidence), and they joined my girlfriend, T, and I for the concert and we had pretty good time. J*ck's girlfriend is summer interning with the CIA and will also go back to A&M in the fall to finish her senior year.
Speaking of Washington DC, let me just remind you that your good friend [sarcasm, my mom was to say the least, not a big fan] and president of the United States, George W. Bush, only has three and a half more years on his second term, so clearly, there is a future worth looking forward to. love, Jim.
Dear Mom,
I am having some problems writing you a letter this morning. The computer I am writing on tends to freeze up, which means the keyboard won't respond and then I have to turn the machine off and when I turn it back on the words I have written are gone. So this is attempt number three this morning. You might ask why I don't just use a pencil and paper and if you did ask I would say because I can't find a pencil.
Your oldest son (who lives in Arlington), D*n, is my oldest brother, and his youngest son, J*ck, is in Washington DC for the summer, as is his girlfriend, and they have driven out to visit me this weekend. They are driving around the property in a jeep right now. I asked him to be careful and not tip the jeep because that happened to a guest once and the person tore his knee up pretty bad.
I went hiking yesterday with a friend who knows the trails around here as well as anyone and he knows many private trails that lead through and around rather exclusive private properties with giant homes, and manicured, landscaped ponds, and guest houses. Many of these properties around here are weekend homes for well-to-do Washington DC residents. We are 70 miles from DC.
I've been socializing more than I'm used to, going to parties, throwing parties, and I've met some nice people and some other people I could live without.
My guests, nephew J*ck, and his girlfriend, K*m, have come back from riding around in the jeep and we had a little talk and now they are either going to walk into town to window shop or they are going to stay on this property and play tennis and swim. Later tonight, my girlfriend, T, who plays trumpet in a musical band, is having a concert and we are all going to hear her play.
The owners of this property I take care of are my childhood friend, JF, and his wife, and they have three young boys, 11,8, and 5, and they were out for the July 4th weekend. They had some guests staying with them at their house and I had some guests down here at my house and it was an interesting mix of people and we shot off some fireworks and didn't burn the place down so I guess everything went well.
I am going to lay around and read now. I bought 15 used books for about 4 dollars the other day and I got some nice ones.
You be good. love, Jim
Dear Mom,
Yesterday I saw a movie set in New Orleans. I recognized much of the scenery and the neighborhoods and I felt the effect the movie makers were trying to create and it made me a little lonely for New Orleans, which is where I used to live before moving here to the Virginia countryside. But mostly what I couldn't get over was how they shot the movie without really showing a lot of black people and I thought how could you film such and such a neighborhood in New Orleans without showing more of the people who actually live there. I wonder sometimes, in general, if there is a story to be told that hasn't been told yet, and when I think about that I always think about New Orleans and how so much of the story I know from there doesn't seem to be tell-able or if it is tell-able how to my knowledge it hasn't been told yet. Sometimes I think about trying to tell it but except for a few hundred pages written about it while I actually lived there, sort of a journal I kept, I haven't really begun to work on the New Orleans story as I know it.
Its Sunday and I went hiking again this morning, this time up in the Shenandoah Park proper. I got up there about 9 a.m. and there was a large group of people having a get together at one of the picnic sites. I walked an easy, not overly-inspiring section of the Appalachian Trail and then I turned around and walked back. When I got near the lot I could hear people singing and it turned out that that large group at the picnic site was some sort of gospel, bluegrass, Christian musical group, and, they were pretty good. When I got to my truck though they had finished the song and some guy was just talking the talk, which turned out to be a whole lot less interesting than the music. So, I drove home and went for a swim.
One of your grandsons, J*ck Louis, who is the youngest son of your oldest son, D*n Louis, has been visiting me for a couple of days here in Virginia. J*ck and his girlfriend both attend Texas A&M University but are working in Washington DC (which is about 70 miles from where I live) for the summer and so I have seen them a couple of times.
I learned a secret handshake this weekend. Next time I see you I will let you in on the secret. love, Jim
Letter To Clifford, 7
If it gets any better on Rocheblave I don't think I could stand it. Across Rocheblave from the NOPD PIB (Internal Affairs) building is the parking lot for the United Way building which fronts Canal. Never before, but today there is a free concert over there (and the Chauffeur just walked over and brought me back a couple of free chili dogs) and the stage is such, facing Iberville, that sitting on the porch of my house I can hear this very credible female soul/blues singer belting out standard covers and she pretty damn good, so again the question remains, why leave the porch, why get off the boat? The Chauffeur is over across the street putting some oil in his van so it doesn't burn up when his replacement uses it to deliver advertising circulars (his bread and butter gig and only gig until he gets another limousine to replace the one that flooded) to a major drug store chain. Chauffeur has to fly to Houston, which is where to his mother and father evacuated when a rather impressive natural Corp of Engineers disaster occurred here in New Orleans seven months ago. His mother is in the hospital and very sick.
I am at that stage where I won't be able to put off finishing Sea Wolf by Jack London much longer and I don't know to where I will go next to find such an enjoyable and improbable tale of turmoil, catastrophe, high adventure, love, brutality, and philosophy. Following is a another letter I wrote to my mom in the months preceding her death.
Dear Mom, 6/12/05
The last time I wrote I was going to a Memorial Day party and I'm here to say I survived that. It was a little dicey at the beginning because the ex-boyfriend of my girlfriend, T, was there, and for awhile just by himself, even though he has a girlfriend of his own, and I thought--holy cow, what fun it is to live in a small town. You can't really go anywhere around here without running into people you would easily avoid in a larger town. After awhile the ex-boyfriend's girlfriend showed up and so I cared less about him being there, because If I wanted to be small-minded, I could always flirt with his girlfriend. I am proud to say I took the high road and we were all respectful of each other.
It finally started getting hot around here and my air-conditioner stopped working right about that same time so I got a fan going and am pretty cool if I do say so myself.
Also, there is a swimming pool on this property so I can go jump in that if I get too hot. Usually it cools off pretty well at night.
I have a birdhouse up out here and it was supposed to be for Purple Martins but I didn't attract any of those and instead got a couple of swallows, which I don't mind at all and enjoy watching. A mockingbird was perched on top of the birdhouse the other day and the swallows, Mr and Mrs I guess, took offense to the mockingbird's presence and flew in cirlces around him, swooping in close enough to pick the fleas off of his neck, and the mockingbird just acted like he didn't even know they were there but eventually did fly off and leave them alone.
I found a small copperhead snake near the back porch of the main house (I live down the hill in a caretaker's cottage) today and I was going to kill it but T objected and we had already had a small fight over something stupid the night before so I decided to play it cool and do whatever the hell she wanted, which was to scoop the snake up and take it somewhere off the property and let it out. And that's what I did, so don't tell me you can't teach an old dog new tricks. I had it in a glass jar with a snap on lid and as me and the snake drove along the country roads together I thought wouldn't it be funny if that lid came off and that snake was to take up residence in my truck. But the lid didn't come off and I stopped along the side of the road (although I thought about taking it to T 's house) and I shook it out, and the last picture in my mind is of one pretty ticked off baby snake. If I run across the ma or pa of that baby snake though, I will chop off their heads. I am, afterall, the caretaker out here.
Just a few blocks from here (this property I am at, 70 miles from Washington DC, is on the edge of a small, quaint town) there is a 5 star restaurant [The Inn at Little Washington} and presidents and heads of state are often to be seen dining there and last night T and I walked into town and plopped ourselves down in some comfortable chairs set up in an outdoor pavillion that nobody ever uses and we just watched the fancy people walking to the restaurant from the many surrounding Bed and Breakfasts. T was able to verify that what she sees in fashion magazines is in fact what the women are wearing when they go out with their husbands or men friends who are willing to spend five or six hundred dollars on a meal (or in some instances that amount of money will only buy a single bottle of wine). So I am here to tell you that for women's fashion the color black was all the rage for awhile but now pink is the new black and a lot of women seem to be splitting the difference and are wearing pink and black. That is all for now. Hope you are well.
love, Jim.