Marriage & Magazine St.

IOMESATIME IN LIFE WHEN

YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE

lY T BETWEEN LOVE

TON? AND ADVENTURE

anice and I arrived in New Orleans in 1960, shortly before Mardi Gras. We found an apartment in the French Quarter on St. Philip Street between Bourbon and Royal. The apartment was cheap and functional. We thought it looked like the place Elia Kazan had located Stanley and Stella in die film version of Streetcar, with an interior patio and a balcony over the street. The proprietor of one of the French Market stalls on Decatur gave us a striped kitten.

On Friday and Saturday there were a lot of fights on the street. Saturday night lasted from dusk until dawn, when bars closed for an hour to sweep. Every once in a while you could hear a pistol discharge and see the welter of blue police lights reflected on stucco walls down the street.

A.J. Liebling at that time described New Orleans as a cross between Paterson, New Jersey and Port-au-Prince, combining as always exquisite observation with rich

imagination. Still the most self-referential city in the country, New Orleans sat at the far end of the post-Faulknerian small­town Deep South, by which I mean the far end from me. It did not really represent the surrounding region, which nev­ertheless separated it from the rest of urban America.

An immigrant entrepot, a seaport, a city with strong Latin and Catholic fabric, New Orleans never seemed totally alien to me. Its accent had elements of Brooklyn speech. The city and its people seemed deeply urban, more like Boston or Philadelphia in some ways than like Atlanta or Dallas. Those latter places were bigger but in those days were very much a part of the Southern Calvinist society around them.

At the same time, New Orleans never imagined itself as other than Southern. Its relatively tolerant ways and the pres­ence of a black and mixed-race cultural tradition had earned it the nickname of Big Easy. As statutorily race-minded as the rest of the South, it managed somehow to seem less ornery about it, at least to outsiders. When Janice and I arrived, just a few years after Brown v. Board of Education, Southern iden­tity was still strong, but its moral self-conscience was reacting to a national repudiation of what the politicians called its way of life. The South of course was famous for its politi­cians. Like contemporary pols leading the struggle for val­ues, Southern politicians knew there was no cause like a lost cause to keep the discontented voters in a state of offended outrage. Big Easy or whatever, New Orleans was a tough city

for Yankees to find jobs in. It was also basically a poor one, especially dependent on the oil industry's fortunes.

The demonstrations against segregation had started in North Carolina in 1960, but when we settled in just before Lent of that year things had a long way to go. The Mardi Gras celebrations I had sort of dreaded were disarmingly cheerful and sweet, observed by both whites and blacks. We were surprised at the number and extent of racially mixed neighborhoods. At the time, I thought New Orleans was as residentially integrated as any city I had ever seen. What most surprised me were the two-story buildings of the public housing projects, many of which consisted of 20 apartments, 10 up, 10 down. These buildings were segregated in that their tenants alternated white-black-white-black. I had never seen people of different races, poor people at that, living in such proximity. This of course would go. In the 1970s New Orleans witnessed the most thoroughgoing white flight anywhere in the country, creating the modest suburbs of St. Bernard Parish and Jefferson Parish, which sent Klansman David Duke to the statehouse.

The first jobs 1 found were two temporary gigs on local assembly lines. Up until then I had missed out on the mass-production experience in America. First at an instant-coffee plant and then at a local liquid-soap factory, I became acquainted with labor discipline as it was practiced in mid-century. In both places people got fired as the day length­ened. The irrepressibly social went first, for talking on the line. At mezzanine level a railed catwalk led to a small glass booth from which two observers watched the line below. One faced left, the other right. Every time one of the temporaries or new hires was dismissed, the pace of the assembly line slowed slightly and then gradually sped up. It was impossible in these circumstances not to feel a trifle jerked around, if not totally dehumanized. Sometimes there was what seemed to be an arbitrary speedup, announced by the sounding of

a siren. There was half an hour for lunch, plus a break in midmorning and another in midafternoon. Breaks consisted of 10 minutes at a plywood table in a green-and-yellow room, mainly to let people have a smoke, forbidden on the line. The break room was also equipped with coin machines that contained things that could be swallowed.

After being banished by the Janus-faced pairing in the booth, I found the second assembly-line job under circum­stances essentially identical. My dismissal, by an undead foreman, was less polite. The cashier presented me with a pink slip and a work schedule for the following week. My schedule read, "Terminated." It had boxes as on a speeding ticket, and two were neatly checked in. One check keyed the word Attitude. The other indicated "No incident of theft of material property or cash prior to termination." Since the last line on the document told me I might submit the thing to prospective future employers, I understood it was a qualified recommendation.

"I never said a word to anybody," I told the cashier.

"Y'all come back," the cashier said.

I passed through a number of ofT-the-books, cash-only positions. The next recorded employment I found was in the service of Collier's Encyclopedia, a set of thick, handsomely bound volumes I suppose was as useful as any other. Each morning the chief Collier's salesperson picked us up at a designated meeting place and drove us to one of the towns

within an hour or so of New Orleans. A town in St. Tam­many or Washington parishes would be likely, Covington or Bogalusa, or we might work across the state line in Pearl River County, Mississippi. Many of the towns had ordinances that outlawed door-to-door selling. Voter-registration drives were in action all over the South. In many towns North­ern volunteers had come to the deepest South for the first time, assisting local initiatives that were sometimes creating an African American constituency where none had existed since Reconstruction.

One night just after sunset we were working the poorer white quarter of a burg on the Mississippi side. By then I had found that the Mississippi Gulf Coast had some things in common with New Orleans. Most obvious was a degree of ethnic diversity that eased the pressure of what W.J. Cash called the proto-Dorian bond, the obsessive pursuit of white supremacy as a form of religion that tormented the dreams and threatened the lives of so many. The Greeks of Pass Christian and the Croatians of Biloxi had inherited a few ethnic concerns that went back beyond institutional­ized memories of the Confederacy. But the Mississippi town we were selling in that evening was not on the coast; it was far enough north in the state for the sultry wind to carry the scent of pine and tupelo and to encounter mule-drawn wagons on the shoulder of dirt roads. The town had been famous for the rough turp camps where Huddie Ledbetter had worked between jolts, and it contained the headquarters of an international logging company that took longleaf pine. The land was flat, but there were sizable Indian mounds around town, some with houses built over them, approach­able by wooden steps.

First door I hit was opened by a sharp-eyed man with a little brush mustache. Was that a gun in his hand? Yes it was, by God. Some kind of revolver. He put it back in a shaving kit he was holding. At some point in (continued on page 154)

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the pitch I asked, jovially, if the revolver was loaded. He looked at me with mild disgust. "Gun wouldn't do you no good wasn't loaded, now would it?"

"Ha ha," I replied. (A good jest, Montressor.)

At one point he offered me what he called a coldrink. I accepted. The man told me he was a long-distance bus driver. He said he drove 18-wheelers, too, but I didn't believe that part. He began asking depressingly dumb questions. He asked if there was anything in the encyclope­dia about evolution or the mixing of the races. I assured him there wasn't. It wasn't my finest hour. I was desperate for a paycheck. He signed up. He seemed a little angry.

We walked outside, and he turned on his front-door light. His house was on

top of one of the Indian mounds, with wooden steps leading to the door.

"You say you're sure nothin' in it about evolution or the mixing of the races?"

"That's right," I said. He had signed the goddamn thing. I was heartily tired of my own song and dance.

A million gnats, moths and mosqui­toes spun around the lighted tin carriage lamp beside his front door. One after another, little insects singed their wings against its flyspecked glass casing and fell into the ruined spiderweb at its base. The light was dazzling me. But when I turned away there was still light in my eyes. The wooden steps were steep, and the rail beside them was flimsy. I had my hand in front of my face, and I realized there was light in front of me and below. Someone was shining a power torch

beam into my eyes. A voice heard only in dreams (or bad movies) said. "Come down them steps real slow."

It was the sheriff. Through the shafts of light I could make out the star-shaped badge on his work shirt. He had a Stet­son and stitched cowboy boots: he was leaning one foot forward on the wooden steps. He had a gut over his gun belt and a holstered pistol. I was being arrested.

They rounded up the whole team, which included quite a few non-Southerners, and took us to jail. There we remained until a local lawyer was retained by Collier's to spring us. Over coffee with the deputies we learned our Yankee inflections had brought the sher­iff. Townsfolk, including the 18-wheeler-jock wannabe, were afraid history had come for them in the form of outside agitators. Not quite, but it was coming.

A couple of weeks after I was liber­ated from my Mississippi imprisonment I saw a strange sign on the wall of a Royal Street coffee shop. It was printed in a kind of liturgical script with a cross and what looked like upraised spears. The largest drawn figure was of a metal chalice, and the title of the production was The Cup. There was what appeared to be a photograph of Jesus Christ in the middle of the sign. Closer inspection revealed it to be a photo of an actor in costume, a melancholy long-faced man with an actorish name who, according to the sign, portrayed "the Christus." The sign was soliciting apprentice actors for a traveling passion play, which it said was "North America's most reverent and moving commemoration of Our Lord's sacrifice. ' The show seemed to move from town to town, sponsored by local churches. I wrote the telephone number down, along with the particulars of the next few performances.

I didn't know what was on my mind; at 75 cents and SI.50, the tickets were in excess of our entertainment budget. At that time we were surviving through our discovery of an old New Orleans ame­nity, the friendly beanery waitress. The friendly beanery waitress could slip you a slice of white bread and redeye gravy to keep you whole until the next oppor­tunity came to borrow a quarter. Public assistance was not available.

I mentioned the odd joint to Janice, who politely told me she didn't think she'd like to go. Then I called the num­ber of the operation and pretended to be an applicant for a role in the reverent commemoration. Anyway. I thought of myself as pretending.

The show's local operation was in a small suite of rooms at a barely respect­able hotel on Canal Street. A tall slen­der woman with long silky hair opened the hall door. She had the unsound blue eyes of an Ibsen leading lady, magnified by wire-framed glasses. Gorgeous was the word for her. Hers had been the voice that responded to my telephone call. I

later learned she was one of the Christus's lovely daughters. In fact, I never got to see the other one, but of her comeliness I had no doubt. The sisters had various clerical and organizational duties with the group. They also performed onstage, bits like Pilate's wife and the serving girl who denounces Peter.

The man himself, the Christus, was pale and fine featured, with a high forehead and a bald dome. The fringe around his skull made him look tonsured. He wore very dark aviator sunglasses and a light­weight black suit. His voice was cultivated and, inevitably, somewhat affected. His name, I had noticed, was unlikely and resonant. All at once I recognized it as the name of one radio actor or another on one or another of the radio dramas I had listened to.

"Attitude," he told me, "is the key. People feel as though they're at a church service. They're open and worshipful. Sensitive. They may not identify a bad attitude, but they are aware of it. Some­thing will trouble them."

I nodded thoughtfully. Was attitude catching up with me again? As a youth 1 was as innocently bad-attituded as I could get away with.

"You cannot disdain the story. You cannot disdain your character. Of course you can't despise the audience."

The audience, he told me, would con­sist of small-town folks all over North America, and the outfit was called the International Gospel Theatre [sic]. It worked its way like a wheat-harvesting combine, rolling up from the Texas plains to the edge of the muskeg in northern Manitoba.

The character I would compete to portray was the chief temple guard, although I would have to learn several parts. As CTG I would command a corps of teenage Bible school students, always locally recruited, who would serve as Herodian spear-carriers. It was also the guards' responsibility to put up and break down the sets under the supervi­sion of their chief.

The audiences, the Christus informed me, were unlikely to have seen a live show before, unless it was perhaps a previous year's performance by the International Gospel Theatre. He said his group had been offered money to perform on tape. But the Christus believed in live per­formance. It was the only way to bring out the sacramental quality of a passion play. Did I grasp this? I said I did, but he told me anyway, about the Thirty Years' War and the plague and the burghers of Oberammergau. I had always mixed up the town with the half-timbered village that hired the Pied Piper. He had me do some readings from the King James Bible. Job and Ecclesiastes. Revelation. I asked if I would have to read such stuff on the road. He said he liked my read­ings. He said from time to time we would open the show with a little scripture.

I saw the comely daughter who took phone calls looking at me. She had listened to me wail about the seven seals and the beast from the sea and so on. The Christus noticed me return her look.

"You have folks?" he asked. "Married?"

"No," I heard myself say, "not me."

"Yeah, well," he said, "it's no spot for a family man."

The last thing I could endure to be at that moment was a family man.

The Christus said he thought well of my work and might decide to hire me. He had a few other men to hear. For some it was just a courtesy; they were past it.

"So you want to play chief of temple guards!" he said. He had the kind of smile called vulpine. In his pictures with a Jesus wig he looked like Raspu­tin. He told me to check back in per­son at the end of the day. I thought of going home to the Quarter, but 1 didn't want to see Janice. I was contemplating an unspeakable treachery. Or at least I thought I was. I went to the public library on Federal Square, where it was cool, and read the city histories. There was an entire room filled with geneal­ogy. I settled down in fiction and read all of The Plumed Serpent. I admired Lawrence very much then. From time to time the bottom fell out from under my stomach when I remembered what I was contemplating and I said, "Oh God," which was enough to turn the other readers in my direction. When the time came, by my cigarette-coupon watch, I replaced the book and went into the glaring heat of downtown.

Back on Magazine Street the Christus's lovely daughter smiled without looking at me as she let me pass.

"Well," Mr. Christus said solemnly, "you may join us if you choose."

For a second I didn't get it.

When I understood, I said, "Can I bring someone along?"

"You certainly can't."

"Ah," I said. "When will we be back here?"

"I wouldn't think for the best part of a year. If we get any gigs in this state at all. Problem?"

I shook my head, feeling even fainter. "No problem."

"Can you come with us to Lake Chickasaw?" he asked. "We're there tomorrow night."

"Can you make it?" he said when I didn't answer. "We'll book you a room in this hotel tonight. You won't even have to share. This time."

"We'll buy you dinner," his young daughter said, "if you can get back here."

"Sure," I said. I felt as though I must be trembling. The thought of their din­ner made me ill. I wanted the crazy life I was looking at more than anything. The last trace of gypsy life on the continent. I did not want to be stuck in New Orleans with my pregnant wife.

I wanted feverishly to clamber aboard this absurdity, and I wanted the ruthless-ness and sangfroid to try. 1 don't know what I saw shining there. Maybe just the chance to change the life I was making for myself and start a new one.

I walked back through the hot streets, across Canal and down Royal to St. Philip, through the patio and up the inner stairs. Janice was on the balcony, leaning back on her chair, resting her feet. Naturally slim, she was showing seven months' pregnancy. She looked radiant and lovely, a loose lock of brown hair over her eye.

"Where've you been?" she asked me.

"The library. And pursuing this phan­tom job."

I wanted a drink. I took a few dol­lars, which I could ill afford, from our pathetic money stash and went down to the corner saloon. I had a couple of two-fers at the bar and took a jug of plonk home with me.

"What was the phantom job?" she asked. I was sitting a couple of feet away from her, looking down toward the river. I was thinking of towns like Chickasaw, of the whole continent disappearing into times past. There was no chance an experience like performing in The Cup would ever come my way again. I was too young to be tied down this way. A world of adventures awaited, across continents and oceans. A world of beautiful and available women of which the Christus's daughter, who indeed seemed to like me. was only the first.

I looked over at Janice. And I thought, She's done it to herself, committed to all this too young. She was just a kid. Committed to a louse like me, she'll find out what a selfish creep I am. She could pass the baby to her parents; they could help her and she could have a life. And in turn I could have a life and cross those continents and oceans to where life was richer. To embrace fate, to live out the cruel rituals of life at the core of the flame, to do and see every­thing. Oh wow! To have the courage to be brutal and to reject convention and compromise. Chief temple guard was only the beginning.

I snuck another look at her, and indeed she looked beautiful. And being so young, she looked innocent and trusting. She looked as though she loved me.

So. At that moment I knew 1 was not going anywhere. I loved her, and that was fate. If I stood up to leave, my legs would fail, my frame wither, my step stumble forever. All my strength was subsumed by this rash, so unwise, too early love. There was no hope except in this woman. She would give birth, and the new life would assert itself and take over our center and prepare to replace us. Instead of far continents it was boring parenthood; we would just roll down the old biology road like every other sucker. Trapped by nature's illusion, like a bug by a pred­ator's coloration.

I felt infinitely relieved, happy for a moment as 1 would hardly ever be. I thought. This rejoicing shows my medi­ocrity. Just another daddy Dagwood bourgeois jerk. Because if 1 had been destiny's man. I thought, I would have walked—strode away with my bus sched­ule and my backpack, ready to ride from Lake Chickasaw to the Great Slave. But I was not, I could not, not anymore than I could fly. I guess I also knew at about that moment that I would never leave her, not ever, that this thing was forever.

Your great soul, your world-historical figure, would have walked. Not Bob. Not your daddy, children. Leave your mother? No. So like the original Christus and the young man who could not leave the life he knew, I turned my back on the wager and went my way.

The hospital where my daughter was born was Huey Long's gift to his pri­vate tinhorn republic. It was segre­gated, which meant everything had to be done twice, replicated. Only the poor went there. Fathers were not allowed in maternity. Doctors and nurses were con­descending and sarcastic. It seemed only the black nurse's aides were kind. We had a girl, and we called her Deidre.

Just as the unimaginable summer heat began to subside, we started north. Janice traveled on the train with the baby and the French Market cat. I planned to hitchhike. Rides were so bad through Mississippi that I tried a freight train, the one and only time in my life I've ever done so. The yardmas-ter at Picayune, Mississippi was friendly. He advised me not to ride. Then he reminded me to always put a two-by-four in the freight car door to keep it from slamming shut forever. He taught me a little of the number system that keyed the destinations of freight cars. I made it to Birmingham, Alabama, not very far. I was quite happy to get out. Hitchhiking over the mountains, hassled by police, threatened and occasionally befriended, I headed for the Apple and Janice, wanting nothing so much as to see her again.

Drifting through the rich, strange, bru­tal fever dream that was New Orleans 50 years ago, I was astonished to learn some things I hadn't known. As married kids in the middle of the French Quar­ter, our new baby hidden from the insect hordes under an old prom-night crino­line of Janice's, we found ourselves sur­viving. Nor was our poverty a game of la vie bnlieme: there were no well-off parents to save our skins, no prospect of refugee status and rescue to call on. I doubt either of us then knew what a trust fund was; we might have guessed it was the value of the quarter you owed someone for your most recent slice of white bread and red­eye gravy. The city of New Orleans had not required us, neither us nor our new daughter, born with the grudging assis­tance of Huey Long's Charity Hospital.

It's so long ago now that I have only fragments of recollection—river mists, magnolias, gardens enclosed in old stone. Also police sirens and shouts in the street, tambourines and the notes of a clarinet in the twilight at the end of a blazing day.

NEW ORLEANS WAS AS INTEGRATED AS ANY CITY I wad EVER SEEN. I HAD NEVER SEEN PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT RACES, POOR PEOPLE AT THAT, LIVING IN SUCH PROXIMITY.

Through the shafts of light I could make out the badge on the sheriff's work shirt. I was being arrested.