of course, of course. My lord, how does he keep it affixed?”
“Suction of ignorance is my guess.”
We were having such a good time. A heavy Vietnamese woman in a smeared white apron and paper hat arrived table-side to collect our payment, and she too had an opinion on our early morning entertainment. “Mmmm-mm,” she blew, as we watched that blessed fellow teeter off towards Jackson Square. “I ain’ ready for that. Too early inna day.” Her accent came straight out of Plaquemines Parish.
Food is too cheap at the Café Du Monde, and leaving a properly calculated tip is embarrassing. I urged Pebbles to leave with me before our server returned with my change. We should have gone back to Esplanade then, but as with all experiences pleasant and complete, it is human nature to extend the moment into something weird and iffy and potentially ruinous. We drifted towards the Cabildo, and as the sun rose to burn off any cool remnant of dawn, the number of joggers, breakfast seekers, and first-minute shoppers increased, all of them plowing their way through pigeons now congregated big time in front of St. Louis Cathedral as if the archbishop himself was fixing to toss out some communion wafers or holy popcorn or whatever.
During our stroll I learned a few things about my lady Pebbles. It seemed she haled from a dry county in Arkansas, a refugee from a two year Christian college through which she visited New Orleans as part of a program to help folks rebuild their homes. It was supposed to be a six week mission, but by the program’s conclusion Pebbles hadn’t done much of the Lord’s work; instead she secured employment and a tiny walk-up on Esplanade. She was currently employed as a barista in an un-famous internet café, and it was her best job so far—she’d tried a little stripping, a little bartending, a little house cleaning, all the conventional service gigs, but pulling coffee meant she worked in a reliably air conditioned environment, and her nights were mostly free. Free for what? Free to sing the blues, of course. While she was waiting for divine inspiration to tell her what she was going to do with the rest of her life (and she did not want to return to college, thank you), she liked to sing at open mic nights. Checkpoint Charlie’s mainly.
That settled it. I had to get out more. I told her I’d like to hear her sing some time.
“You sure about that? Because I’m damned awful. I just get up, wiggle around and yell a couple tunes for the folks who are too drunk to go home yet. They’re real appreciative, but the musicians pretty much think I suck.”
“And you love the blues that much?”
“Not really. But that’s what people want to hear from white girls around here. I prefer honky-tonk, like Loretta Lynn when she was doing those ‘Fist City’ type songs. Those I can sing, but players around here don’t like to rock so much.”
Normally, if the day is fine, you’ll come across a little pick up band installed on the benches in Jackson Square, maybe sharing the territory with a palm reader or a juggler or homeless druggie Bobby Rebar, dancing his fool head off. But we were too early for that, encountering instead a lone tuba player seated on an overturned white plastic bucket. He was an elderly Creole, somewhere between sixty and two hundred years old, and his instrument looked like it had gotten caught in the undercarriage of a runaway bus. He wasn’t playing, not just yet, but his lips were poised over the mouthpiece as he eyed passersby, silently and unsuccessfully willing them to gather. You gotta give the people what they want though, so he commenced an unenthusiastic rendition of “When The Saints Go Marching In,” one of the few options for solo tuba. Some folks slowed down to listen, but I had the sense he wasn’t playing for them so much as he was calling to his tardy brother musicians: Hey, help me out here!
Unfortunately, he managed to attract our mad hatter, who sort of planted himself ten yards away, eyes ablaze as if receiving signals that no one else understood. He’d scored himself a refreshment, a large white go-cup full of pink frost, and he sucked on the straw like he needed a brain freeze to shut out the nagging voice of God. I began to worry for the pigeons at his feet.
There was tension between these men. Predator and prey. A bit of nervous fear in the tuba player’s eyes.
The hat man sucked hard, as if that plastic straw was his portal to glory, and his face changed colors. He finally let go and gasped a squealing breath, the quality of which captured my attention and that of many others in the square.
Then he was down. I heard a flesh muted crack. An explosion of pigeons opted not to catch his fall in favor of forming an avian cloud to hide the shame of his collapse. But pigeons know how to rid themselves of strong emotion, and in a split second they dispersed, settling just a short hop away from the man’s still form. He was face down. At first it appeared as if he were horribly, impossibly injured, but that was because he’d landed on top of his hurricane. The pink, icy ooze squirted an unfortunate trajectory across the bricks from about where his heart was located. It was not gore, obviously, but suggestion can be a powerful thing. Some good soul screamed for our prone lunatic whose head was now entirely obscured by his ludicrous craft store hat.
He moved his arms. Hands tentative as they sought the push up position, and that small sign of life sent a wave of relief among those who had paused to watch. There were six or eight of us, enough for a small concert. No doubt the tuba man was pissed.
When Pebbles touched my arm, I felt emboldened. “Sir,” I said firmly.
Two palms to the ground, testing his weight. He groaned.
“Sir, do you need assistance? Should I call for help?”
“Let him sleep it off,” someone suggested, and there was agreement from others. Hat Man had made himself popular, all right. I could only imagine that he’d made a full morning out of expressing his charming opinions.
He groaned again, made another move to raise himself. I did not want to touch him. I sort of leaned over, but away so he couldn’t catch me with some drunken, round house move. A mule and carriage clopped onto the scene, and the driver paused to scare up custom. “Any y’all want to ride?” He seemed unimpressed by our unwell friend.
The hatter made a forceful move and heaved himself over onto his back.
“Shit,” said about four people at once. His nose was smashed, and blood painted a thick, filthy stripe out over his mouth and down his chin and neck, pooling on his shirtfront where the bass no longer appeared indifferent to their situation. The pink libation clashed with the red blood, and it looked as if his torso had been used as a fish cleaning station.
I’m not trained in these matters, but I crouched next to him, and another man joined me. Several onlookers used their cell phones to dial 911, and all I could think was that there didn’t seem to be a way to stop the bleeding without pushing stuff into his head.
Pebbles dropped some of her unused napkins from the Café down to us—I don’t know why she kept them—and the man who knelt with me accepted them gratefully, but then he too became indecisive. He held the tissues in his hand and hovered over the wound, unsure of where he could do any good. Our man’s nose was absolutely obliterated; it looked like he’d been shot in the face.
His eyes were open, zig zagging like an animal. Then they closed. “I think you need to stay awake,” I said. A siren burst, not too far away. “Someone’s coming sir. It won’t be long.”
Then the man honked like a goose, and flecks of blood and other particles sprayed upward. I caught most of the gory sneeze, and my helpful friend caught a bit as well.
“Oh my God, Victor!”
I clamped my lips and eyes shut, but it was too late. I could taste copper, could feel hot specks on my skin. I lurched back. The crowd gasped. We all shared the same horrible, unchristian thought, underscored by what the mad hatter managed to declare next, his voice a thick, nauseating thing:
“I’m dying. I know it.”
I kept my mouth and eyes sealed. I didn’t even want to God-damned breathe.
“Gimme your water!” Pebbles’ voice sounded like a crow. Subsequently I detected a scuffle, which