Paula Morris (31 page)

"You'll be exhausted," Marianne replied, frowning at her
own grotesque reflection. She turned away abruptly and stalked out of the room.
This had to be hard for her, Rebecca decided. Tonight's parade was supposed to
be this exciting experience she shared with her best friend, Helena, and
instead she was stuck with a near stranger, Rebecca.

But after they pulled up in Miss Karen's Porsche Cayenne at the
assembly point, the sprawling parking lot of a supermarket right on the river,
Rebecca discovered there'd been a change in plans. She would be riding in the
front of the float, with Marianne on the pedestal behind her: That was

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where their respective skirts and giant headdresses had been
positioned, and nobody wanted to change that now. Because her movement would be
so restricted, Rebecca wouldn't be able to take her cues from Marianne. The
only person she could rely on was her steward, who wore a black tuxedo and --
incongruously -- a sinister, expressionless mask; his job was to hand her beads
and make sure she, and the feat of engineering that was her costume, didn't
topple over.

"I know it feels cold now," Aunt Claudia was saying to
her, walking behind Rebecca up the steps of the float. "But you'll be hot
inside that costume."

"I hope so!" Rebecca was wearing nothing but her
leotard, a pair of khaki shorts, and her Converse sneakers, clutching her pair
of gold lame evening gloves. The weather forecast for this evening was for true
winter cold, and the wind gusting off the river was bitter.

The two stewards on their float were busy lifting Marianne into
her tentlike skirt, one of them grasping for the cord to secure around her waist.
Rebecca stood gazing around the scene in the parking lot, which was clogged
with giant floats. Some were two stories high and as long as a truck, all
decorated with brightly colored papier-mâché shapes -- she could see birds,
flowers, waves, flames. Men in satin tunics and pantaloons, either holding or
already wearing those same blank masks, bustled on and off the floats, shouting
to each other and loading bags of beads and other throws, as well as boxes of
beer. Some were already drinking from cans or out of plastic cups, their masks
tilted back a little. Rebecca didn't recognize any of the men, of course, but
she suspected the Suttons' father was here, and Anton's father, and maybe even

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Helena's father. Rebecca's uncle. Her father's brother. Now
that
was a weird thought. Rebecca wondered where her own father was.

The green tractors that would pull each float were backing into
position. The floats were named and numbered: Nearby was number 17,
Blowing
in the Wind,
decorated in whorls of blues and grays; and behind it was
number 18,
Burning Down the House,
its fake flames rising like lurid
spikes. Rebecca glanced at Aunt Claudia to see if she'd noticed this particular
float, and by the look on her face -- something between relief and anxiety --
Rebecca thought she must have. Her aunt was right: Miss Celia's vision would be
realized, in every detail, during tonight's parade.

The queen's float was parked nearby as well, swarming with little
girls in blonde wigs and white dresses, the teen-aged queen herself a
fairy-tale vision in a bridal ball gown. She was a Temple Mead graduate,
Rebecca had heard, some sort of cousin of Julie Casworth Young's; she'd
transferred to LSU this year from the College of Charleston so she could be
closer to New Orleans and take part in all the required social events. Rebecca
had missed the special "queen's luncheon" and wondered if they'd get
to talk at all -- probably at the end of the parade. Right now everything was
too crazy.

Yellow school buses parked along Tchoupitoulas off-loaded band
members in their faux-military uniforms. Dozens of schools had to be taking
part in this parade -- some all white, some all black -- and many had sent
their cheerleaders or majorettes as well. The luckier girls were in shining
Lycra bodysuits, protected a little against the cold night air, but most were
in short pleated skirts, with only thick pantyhose

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to keep their legs warm. Some girls practiced routines in a corner
of the parking lot, or twirled their batons high in the air; drummers knocked
out an ad hoc rhythm, while musicians warmed up by blowing random notes on
their tubas or flutes. It was all costume and cacophony, whichever way Rebecca
looked. She felt as though she were taking part in some kind of circus,
especially when some tortured note erupted from a nearby trumpet: It sounded
like an elephant, getting ready to charge.

Anton had to be here, she thought. Didn't he say he always got to
ride on one of the floats? In their masks and costumes, all the men looked more
or less the same. Sure, some were more rotund than others, but it was
impossible to tell who was young and who was old. The sallow masks made them
all look equally sinister and anonymous. Some men, in velvetlike breeches and
dark capes, were climbing onto horses; they wore cocked hats as well as face
masks, heavy gloves obscuring their hands.

These were the captain and the dukes, the most important men in
the Septimus organization, Rebecca knew; they were among the richest and most
powerful people in New Orleans. The decision about who was admitted to the
krewe, who was chosen as that year's king, whose daughters were chosen to be
the queen and her maids -- that decision was theirs to make. They must have
approved her stepping in for Helena, she thought, just as they'd approved
Claire's godfather riding for the first time, after years of paying his dues --
though he was stuck way back, Aurelia had told her, in the very last float. For
the first time, Rebecca truly realized

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how prestigious, and how unprecedented, her invitation was. These
were people who only looked after their own, people who spent large amounts of
money and time and effort sticking together and keeping the riffraff out. Like
Miss Karen had said, Rebecca was a lucky girl.

The saddlebags slung onto the horses were brimming with doubloons,
fake coins embossed with the krewe's name and the parade theme. This week,
despite all of Amy's loud sighs and sniffs, Jessica had spent one entire
lunchtime explaining "throws" to Rebecca, even bringing in a handful
of doubloons -- gold, silver, purple -- from previous years for her to examine.
The special thing about this year, Jessica said, was that all the doubloons
would be black.

"Your turn," the other steward told her, and the two
tuxedoed men lifted her by the armpits -- a little roughly, she thought -- to
maneuver her into the dress. She caught one last glimpse of Marianne, who was a
dramatic pyramid of black and silver at the back of the float, but soon Rebecca
couldn't look anywhere but straight ahead and, with effort, from side to side.
Aunt Claudia fussed around her, helping her pull on the evening gloves, getting
in the way when Rebecca was lassoed to her post.

The men known as flambeaux were assembling next to the maids'
floats. They were all black, Rebecca noted, and dressed in T-shirts and jeans.
They didn't wear masks, but several of them were shrugging on long black robes.
The torches they carried, strapped on for support, were dangerous-looking,
kerosene-fueled, metal contraptions that spewed flames and dripped oil. These
men would light the

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way, dancing and dipping and collecting coins from appreciative
people in the crowd, just as they had every year for nearly a century and a
half.

"How does that feel?" Aunt Claudia was asking, and
Rebecca realized that her headdress, mounted on the end of a pole, had been
levered into place. She settled her head, with its ridiculous pile of hair,
into the soft cap, glancing at the brilliant feathers curling down around her.
With her towering feathered headdress in place, Rebecca felt almost seven feet
tall.

"OK, I think," she told her aunt. The stewards had
disappeared, and Aunt Claudia was busy pinning her sequined bodice to the
leotard. Her aunt and Miss Karen were right: It was already hot inside the
stiff casing of the dress. She tried turning her head from side to side and was
relieved to discover that the pole pivoted with her. But there was no denying
that this was going to be an uncomfortable ride, and a long one.

"Now, I'll be waiting for you on Jackson," Aunt Claudia
told her. "I'll help you get out of all this."

"And where do I have to look for Aurelia?"

"She and Claire will be at Sixth Street and St. Charles, on
the neutral-ground side. Claire's parents have ladders."

Most families, Rebecca had learned, lined the route with ladders,
boxes hammered onto the tops to provide seats for their children. Aurelia and
Claire made out like bandits at parades, easily catching the showers of beads,
soft toys, plastic cups, and other throws that rained down from each float.
Last Saturday night, when Rebecca had joined them, she'd been hit on the head
over and over with plastic bounty,

275

though she'd barely been able to see the floats at all through the
wall of ladders.

"Now promise me," Aunt Claudia said in a low voice,
leaning in close, "that you won't move from this spot until I come to get
you."

"I
can't
move," Rebecca whispered back. This was
true. For the next four hours or so, she was a prisoner of her costume.

"I'll be waiting," Aunt Claudia promised. "And I'll
bring your jeans and coat, so you don't freeze to death. Though I think you'll
find throwing beads is very hot work."

"I'll do my best." Rebecca grinned. She intended to
fling beads as far and as fast as possible, especially if that meant making her
steward work harder.

"And one other thing." Aunt Claudia wasn't smiling.
"Remember to look. When you ... you know."

Rebecca nodded. She knew exactly what her aunt was talking about.
When her float passed the Bowmans' house, she had to be sure to look up at the
windows.
That night the two girls would come face-to-face, lit by
torchlight.

The flambeaux fired up their torches, shouting to each other. One
of the dukes trotted past, calling to the captain that it was nearly time. The
flashing blue light of a police car pulled into view; it would lead the parade
onto Napoleon. Aunt Claudia, mindful of Rebecca's makeup, blew her a kiss and
climbed down off the float.

Septimus was about to roll.

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***

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

***

Hail, Septimus! hail, septimus!" Between the cacophony of the
bands and the clamor of the people lining the streets, the parade felt as loud
as a rock concert to Rebecca. All along the route, the citizens of New Orleans
were screaming and waving and jumping in the air, pressing in toward the float
from both sides. "Throw me something!" "Over here! Here!"
"THROW - ME - SOMETHING!"

The steward passed her handfuls of plastic necklaces, and Rebecca
hurled them into the crowd; but however fast she threw, it was never fast
enough. The crowd roared and bellowed, always wanting more. Children perched on
ladders, hands outstretched, shrieked at her, and though she was looking out
for Aurelia and Claire, Rebecca never saw them in the blur of faces and
flailing arms.

In fact, before long she couldn't tell one cross street from the
next: Between all the crowded balconies and porches, the thicket of people on
the sidewalk, and the oak trees

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already festooned with wayward beads, the entire parade route was
a chaotic carnival. The strings of beads she threw were every color of the
rainbow, and in the crowd, many people were dressed in costume or in lurid
nylon wigs, their faces painted and their necks swaddled in beads or
fluorescent necklaces or garish plastic pendants.

Everyone on the street seemed to be having a great time, but to
Rebecca the whole experience felt increasingly surreal, and at times almost
sinister. Her float was both led and flanked by men on horseback, surveying the
parade through their expressionless masks. The crowd greeted them with cries of
"Hail, Septimus!" and the dukes tossed doubloons to them, splattering
the street with the small, shining black discs. The way people scrambled onto
hands and knees to pick up these fake coins made Rebecca think of medieval
peasants, groveling at the feet of the high and mighty, grateful for any act of
charity. There was something contemptuous in the casual way the doubloons were
thrown, and something desperate and eager about the way they were grabbed up. It
was as though these men were acting out, in pageant-style costume, the way they
saw their role in the city: as smug lords and masters, generous only when they
felt like it, socially superior to everyone else.

In front of the float, flambeaux twirled and dipped, their flames
streaking the night sky. Occasionally they paused -- when someone pushed
through the crowd to hand them some change or a folded dollar bill -- but most
of the time they were on the move. The kerosene was pungent, and fumes from the
tractor pulling the float belched into Rebecca's face; cigarette smoke wafted
over from the crowd.

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Between twisting from side to side, as best she could, to throw
beads, and being surrounded by the constant movement of rushing bodies, waving
arms, trotting horses, and dancing flambeaux, Rebecca started feeling
flustered, sweaty, and dizzy. They seemed to have been rolling for hours, but
they were still on St. Charles Avenue.