New Orleans Noir (2 page)
T
he door swings open, in walks Reggie. Paul, on the stool next to me, gives him the once-over, shakes his head. “Man,” Paul whispers, “they say being black in the South is like being black twice. Being a dwarf, too? Man, what’s that like?”
Reggie’s eyes are bloodshot, yesterday’s clothes soiled. He stands, legs bowed, lets the door swing shut behind him. Give him a cowboy hat, it’s like he’s sizing up a Western saloon.
He’s got the swagger. He should. None of us have ever beat him at pool. Reggie plays up the angle for the newcomers,
What, I’m just a dwarf AND a nigger, think you can’t beat me?
Half-hour later your wallet’s lighter, and Reggie’s drunker.
First time I lost to him, I just shook my head. Maybe it’s his height. He sees things we don’t.
At the end of the bar, Reggie sidles up to Wayne, the meanest son of a bitch in the bar. Old rugby player from Wales. Reggie says, “My nigga.”
“My nigga,” says Wayne.
Billy, behind the bar, pulls out a Coke and an Abita, puts them side by side on the counter in front of me. “What’ll it be?” he asks in his thick Irish brogue.
“What time is it?”
“Uh,” checks the wall clock behind me, which I could’ve done. “Eight in the morning. What’ll it be?”
“You know me,” I say, “caffeine before alcohol.” Billy hands me a glass of ice. I pour the Coke over the cubes, down it like water. Already hot as a motherfucker outside. You’d think Billy could turn up the a/c. Cheap bastard. Billy waits. “Right,” I say, “guess I’ll have that beer now.”
Billy laughs and pops the top off. I take a swig, survey the crowd. Everybody’s baked. I’m always bringing up the rear.
Five televisions hang from the ceiling, various points, all with the pre-match commentary from across the pond. Ireland versus Switzerland. Onscreen, three fellows dressed for a night on Miami Beach break down the X’s and O’s. Billy’s got it turned down low, for now.
“What do you think they’re saying?” I ask Paul.
“I’m Scottish, who gives a fuck. What are they saying? Ireland are going to play like shite.”
I look around the bar. All familiar faces. The soccer fans in their jerseys, the neighborhood fellows, black, keeping to themselves by the pool table, watching us warily, wearily.
“Once again,” I say, “Louisiana’s Swiss community has let us down. Maybe they forgot to set their watches.”
At the end of the bar, other side of Reggie and Wayne, someone yells, “Fuck Switzerland!”
Hear hear, fuck Switzerland.
“Who plays after this?” I ask Billy.
“England versus Turkey.”
Again, from the end of the bar: “Fuck Turkey!”
Billy raises his glass with a hearty, “Fuck England!”
“Think you’ll have a good turnout?”
Billy shrugs. “Be plenty of English bastards,” he says, so the bastards hear it. “Don’t know of many Turks in the city. Wish I had a Turkish flag.”
The brothers hang back by the pool table, occasionally sending an emissary to the bar, whispering PBR orders like sweet nothings.
The Ireland game comes on. Reggie’s the only brother watching. He’s excited. “Fuck, I didn’t know they was any Irish niggas! Look at that one! Who that?”
Billy laughs. “Clinton Morrison.”
“Yeah! Clinton Morrison! Man, that ain’t no nigga name. The fuck?”
“He plays for shite.”
“Nigga plays for
you
, Billy!”
Wayne says, “Irish first, nigga second. Doubly fucked.”
“Nigga,
you
Irish.”
“Welsh, you dumb fuck.”
“Ain’t that worse than Irish? Welsh still answer to the Man, don’t they? Hell, it ain’t even the Man, it’s the fucking Queen.”
Wayne glares at him, doesn’t say anything.
“Yeah, Wayne, you think a dumb nigga don’t know nothin’ about history, huh? I fuckin’ went to school. Probably know just as much as you ignorant Welsh muthafuckas.”
Paul’s already up out of his chair, gets between Reggie and Wayne. Wayne’s got a short fuse. Rugby player, you know.
Reggie backs off. “Come on, Wayne, just fuckin’ with ya.”
Wayne forces a smile. “You’re lucky I like you, man.”
White guys in English jerseys begin pouring into the bar, waving Union Jacks, awaiting their game. Don’t ever bet the farm on Irish football. They play like shite. Switzerland wins it, two-nil.
Paul nods approvingly at the crowd, better part of a hundred, mostly English now. Waving flags, drinking Budweiser. “That’s a lot of English wankers,” says Paul.
It’s an hour until England-Turkey. The front door bursts open. A collective roar, singing as if in tongues, a wall of people wrapped in red flags, pours into the bar. We’re struck numb. The brothers in the corner, by the pool table, scurry out the back door.
Paul speaks first. “Fuck. Al-Qaeda.”
There has to be at least two hundred Turks, singing, yelling, waving flags. None of us can move. Literally. Try to fall down, you’ll stay upright. Fuck the fire code.
The Turks take over the pool table. They take over the dartboard. They pin Turkish flags up on the wall, over Celtic crosses, over printed lyrics to “Danny Boy,” over family photographs.
“Fuck,” Billy says, behind the bar. “Muslims. They don’t drink.”
Happily, not true. Like their English nemeses, it’s Budweiser all around.
I step outside for the fresh air. Two buses from Florida, Escambia County plates, parked in the left lane of Banks, next to the neutral ground. Florida?
More Turks are pouring out of the buses, singing.
It’s enough for me. Across the street there’s a birthday party. Some guy’s kids. They’ve got one of those giant inflatable jungle gyms—moonwalks is what they call them—out front, the kids, six of them, all of four or five years old, catapulting themselves to the top, back down, over and over, happy as hell. Man out front, drinking a High Life, I recognize from nights at the pub.
“Hey, man,” I holler, crossing the neutral ground, crossing Banks.
He calls back: “The hell’s going on over there?”
I reach his fence. “Turks. Fucking Turks.”
“Turks? Ragheads?”
“Well, you’d think. They all drink, though.”
“Oh,” he says, then “oh” again, as if, well, in that case, they must be all right. “Hey, it’s Sharonda’s birthday! She’s five. She’s right there, see her? Jumping up, there!”
Sharonda, on the descent, waves to her daddy.
I approach the giant plastic gym. “Sharonda! Your daddy says it’s your birthday! How old are you?”
“I … am …” She holds up her hand, giggles, counts fingers. “I’m FIVE!!”
The girls resume their jumping, higher now, to entertain the new guest. “Hey, man,” the daddy says, never can remember his name, “have a drink, huh?”
We go up the stairs to the front porch. Cooler in front, High Lifes. His lady’s sitting on a wooden rocker, glass of iced tea in hand. “How you doin’, baby?” she says to me.
“Pretty good. Congratulations on your daughter’s birthday.”
“Ohhh … I can’t believe she’s five. You got kids?”
“No. No wife either.”
She laughs. “’S wrong with you? You got cooties?”
“Lots of angry ex-girlfriends.”
We sit and watch the kids, quietly. The music coming out of the house, it’s kid music, something like Raffi. My man digs out two more High Lifes, pops the tops off, hands me one. He makes eye contact with his wife, says “Baby?” real quiet, but she shakes her head.
Across the street, the jerseys are gathered outside the front door in shock. Most of them have palms attached to ears, phones cradled between, shaking their heads, you won’t fucking
believe
what’s going on here.
A kid rides through the crowd, and I watch him lazily drift toward downtown; he fades out of sight. Kids are everywhere—street, neutral ground, sidewalk. Some are oblivious to the excitement at the pub, a few point and laugh. Makeshift hoops hang off second-floor porches, a few games of horse. The soccer jerseys stand out. Everyone’s got torn clothes, matches the paint peeling off crumbling houses.
I slap my friend on the back and rise. “You’re a lucky man,” I say.
He laughs. “Sometimes, man.” I catch the funny look he gives me before he turns his head.
I wish his wife a good day, and run downstairs to the kids in their jungle gym. “Hey, Sharonda, y’all want to make some noise?”
“YEAHHHHHH!!” The kids have been hitting the caffeine.
“Okay, look across the street. There, see the guy in the green shirt? That’s Billy. Everybody, on the count of three, yell
Hi, Billy!
Okay? One, two, THREE.”
It’s a hell of an uproar. Billy peers across the street, shakes his head and waves. As I cross the street, the kids take turns yelling at Billy again.
“Hey, Billy, so what’s the story?”
“Ah, mate, there’s too many fucking people in there.”
“And?”
He shakes his head, smiles. “What are ya gonna do? Drink faster!”
England-Turkey kicks off. The Turks shred their vocal cords, singing. I stand in the corner by the front door. Any trouble breaks out, quick exit.
Fifteen minutes into the game, the door swings open next to me. A bunch of the brothers who had run out after the Turkish invasion peer in. The one in front chews a plastic straw. “Shee-it,” he mutters, slams the door shut.
Drink faster. Billy tosses me another Abita, another, crowd just as packed but becoming less relevant. Halftime approaches. Penalty awarded to England. The Turks roar indignantly, deafeningly.
Paul moves next to me. “Christ,” he says, “all fucking hell.”
We tense up, awaiting the kick, the goal, the angry Turks to turn as one toward us. David Beckham takes the kick, sends it high into the stands above the posts. The Turks roar again, a gift from the heavens, and they sing aloud to them.
Paul sighs. “Thank God.”
Halftime. We move out onto the sidewalk. There’s rain. It’s light but getting heavier. Clouds darkening. My friend across the street is slowly gathering the kids, ushering them up the steps, into the house. He looks our way, waves. I raise my bottle.
I’ve lost interest in the game. I wander off to Telemachus Street, to my car. The brothers are out on their porch, safe from the rain, falling harder. They wave me up.
It’s not uncommon. Most evenings I come to the pub, I park at their house, hang out for a bit, bring up some forties. Good security. Nobody’s going to fuck with my car.
“I was just wondering who that ugly white motherfucker was.”
“Yeah? I was wondering who the blind black motherfucker was.”
They’ve got Juvenile pumping out of the house. He’s rapping about sets going up, the Third Ward, the UTP. The hell’s the UTP?
Rainfall hits the roof, a clatter of buckshot. The brothers offer me a Colt 45. Shit’s strong, goes down smooth. I’m lit. One of them’s up out of his chair, rapping over the sound of the rain, smacking an invisible ass in front of him,
baby, let me see you do the rodeo.
The brothers whisper shit about their girlfriends, look over their shoulders, make sure they can’t hear. I offer up an ex-girlfriend, several months vintage. I say mine had a bigger ass.
Nah, man, white bitches don’t have no big asses!
Shit, this white bitch had an ass so big an astronaut could see it.
The rain lets up, enough. I’m on the sidewalk in the drizzle, back at the pub. Paul’s outside, cigarette in hand.
“What’s the score?” I ask.
“Nil-nil, mate. Almost over. Hope it stays a draw. Don’t want to have to fight the Turkish bastards.”
“Or English bastards.”
“Right. Not sure which ones smell worse.”
It’s the anticlimax we all craved. Fulltime, the Turks drift out of the bar onto their Florida buses. Some sing halfheartedly, most trudge by quickly, making rapid eye contact, then breaking it.
Naturally, the English stick around. They’re happier. They only need a draw to go on to the next round.
Soon, it’s just twenty of us. Shitfaced. Billy pours himself a draft Harp, leans on the bar. “Without a hitch. What a relief.”
Quiet hangs over the establishment. The building sighs, and settles. Zombielike, we sit at the counter watching our drinks, unable to make the effort to lift them. I’ve developed a dark ring around my line of sight; tunnel vision. Too shit-faced to care.
The front door opens slowly, then four figures pour into the room, slamming it shut behind them.
The first thing that registers is the straw in his mouth. I notice it before I hear him. Everything appears at the end of the tunnel. He says, next to me, wet with rain, “Motherfucker, open the register!”
Hands grab me from behind, throw me to the floor. My palm hits the ground first, my head next. Distantly aware of impact. My wallet’s ripped out of the sucker pocket.
There’s yelling. I don’t move. I make careful observations of the grime on the bottom of Billy’s barstools. Mental note.
Paul’s down here too. He’s looking back at me, not at the barstools. Blood’s coming out of his ear. They threw him down hard. He’s not blinking. Shock.
Billy’s voice, from a long distance: “That’s all I’ve got.”
I think of that scene from
Apocalypse Now
on the boat, when they suddenly go crazy and shoot that family. That’s what happens now. I feel the explosions in the floor, barstools clattering to the ground, specks of red like schools of fish. Hearing’s gone but for the deafening beating of my heart.
I move my head, just enough. Blue jeans, baggy, riding low, striped boxers. The fucker who opened fire.
There’s no conscious decision made, no preparation. I drop him. My right leg comes up in a scissor kick, behind the knee, fucker goes down. I see the gun hit the wall behind me, but can’t hear a thing. I imagine a satisfying clatter.
I’m up. The three other dudes stand by the door, aghast. Can’t believe that white motherfucker dropped their boy.
Boys, I can’t believe it either
.
Behind the bar, Billy’s slumped over the cooler, green jersey spotted with red. He blinks, but I’m not sure if there’s anything there.