The Cottoncrest Curse (32 page)

From a dark corner of the room a swarthy man in his thirties stepped out of the shadows. He wore a red vest over a blue-and-white striped shirt with a high starched collar and carried a double-barreled shotgun. His black hair was pomaded down into a glowing shine. A part as straight as a surveyor's line ran through the center of it. Beneath the careful coiffure he had a baby face, but his eyes were as black and cold as a snake's.

The musicians retreated to behind the piano. The few women who had still been dancing stopped and led their men to the sides of the room. Lulu and Betsy crouched down on the other side of the bar.

While outside the Red Chair, music could be heard filtering through from other establishments and while the noise of the street crowd continued its drone, inside it was deadly silent.

The man with the red vest pointed. Extending his index finger, he gestured first to the side of the room and then to the point directly in front of Coso.

Jake drew the blade with the slightest degree of pressure across the bottom of the eye socket. A thin line of blood appeared and started to drip down Coso's cheek. Coso didn't dare move.

Red Vest pointed again, and his dark eyes sent an angry gaze toward the naked dancer who had huddled at the foot of the staircase. Quivering with fear, the woman pulled a table to the center of the room and then ran back to the wall.

Red Vest held up his index finger again, this time tapping his nose as if thinking. He put the shotgun down on the table and reached under his coat, behind his back.

Jake moved the blade to Coso's neck, ready to cut his jugular vein if necessary.

“Coso,” said the man with the red vest. “I think…”

Coso got ready.

Jake, feeling the giant tense up, held the knife firmly to Coso's neck.

Jake knew he could kill Coso with a single swift stroke across the neck. If he did, Jake knew that Red Vest would reach down for the shotgun, pump it, and fire. If Coso fell forward, dead, Jake thought he might have time to leap off his back in time to make it up the stairs or out the side door. If Coso fell backward, however, there might be no chance to escape the shotgun blast.

Jake and Red Vest locked eyes, Jake from his perch on Coso's back, Red Vest from behind the table on which rested the shotgun.

Why had Red Vest put the shotgun on the table? Jake couldn't figure it out.

Red Vest moved slowly and deliberately, all the while seeming to drill into Jake with his dark eyes. Red Vest reached under his vest and withdrew an item from his waistband.

“I think, Coso…,” said Red Vest, holding an eight-inch Freimer blade in his hand and then putting it on the table next to the shotgun. “I think this is a friend of Zig's. No?”

Today

“Off to my right, behind the big
IMPEACH EARL WARREN
sign, was Cottoncrest.

“What? You don't know who Earl Warren was? He was the chief justice of the Supreme Court when
Brown versus the Board of Education
was decided. He had taken a divided court and had fashioned a unanimous decision reversing
Plessy versus Ferguson,
the old separate-but-equal case.

“And what credit did he get for all that? For changing the course of race relations in the United States? For uniting the Supreme Court in a way that it has seldom been united before or since on a critical issue of national importance? For fashioning a decision that was as revolutionary in its effect as it was reactionary in harking back to the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment when it was enacted in the heady days after the Civil War? What credit did he get? In the South, none. He was hated. It was an intense, personal hatred. On our Freedom Ride we had seen
IMPEACH EARL WARREN
signs alongside of the roads from Virginia southwards.

“You know, to get the unanimous decision, Chief Justice Warren had to agree to the infamous language of having integration ‘with all deliberate speed.' What was that? How can speed be deliberate? If the decision was a watershed, the language was a dam against change.
Brown
came out in 1954, and here it was 1961, and the schools still weren't integrated, and the transportation system still was segregated.

“That's why I had gone on the Freedom Ride. I believed it was the dawn of a new time in the country. We had a new young president, and JFK had inspired all of us in college. ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.' We believed him. I had done something for my country with the Freedom Ride, and now I was doing something for grandfather. And for myself.

“So, I steered that big Oldsmobile to the right and headed down the dirt road for Cottoncrest. You could see it in the distance across the fields. It was a narrow dirt road in those days, not the fine paved one the tourist buses travel now.

“Cottoncrest back then wasn't anything like you see it today. Now it's all pristine and nice, restored with bright white paint. Now the vegetable garden is filled with tomatoes and eggplant and onions and squash and okra and mirliton that they serve you at the Cottoncrest restaurant for the plate lunches and fancy candlelight dinners. Now it's got the rose garden with its neat paths and the masses of azaleas and hedges of ligustrum and honeysuckle twined around the picket fence from the parking lot to the gift shop.

“But back in '61, when I first saw it, Cottoncrest was in a state of advanced decay. Those wide columns, which run up three stories, were mildewed and worn. Some portions had just rotted away. The veranda was sagging, and parts of the galleries on the upper levels had gaps so large that they looked unsafe to walk on. Thick vines had climbed up the sides of the house and had spread across most of the roof so that the house looked as if it was being slowly covered with a ratty green carpet.

“It was a house that had more pride than prestige. Like its owner.”

1893

“The minute I saw the Freimer blade, I knew that Zig must have sent you here. No one in New Orleans—that is, no one who's not working for me—has such a blade. I know that Zig only wholesales them to one other person. The Jew Peddler who told him about the Freimers in the first place.”

Antonio Micelli, in his red vest, was sitting with Jake at a table in a dimly lit corner of the room where Antonio could see everything but few people could see him. The band was playing again. Coso was back behind the bar. Lulu was back upstairs with a new customer. Betsy was dancing with a man at the bar, the top of her dress still around her waist. Other girls in various stages of undress were dancing with each other, whiling away these late after-midnight hours until the dawn came and they could finally go off duty.

Jake and Antonio had already reached a deal. Jake had offered $35 for sanctuary for up to two weeks. Antonio had countered at $200. They had settled for $75, which Jake had just paid.

“You knew,” Jake asked, “that I told Zig about the Freimers?”

Even in the dim light, Jake could see Antonio's broad smile and white teeth as Antonio said, with satisfaction, “Information is something valuable, is it not?”

Jake marveled at how Antonio had known that it was Jake who had convinced Zig to import Freimers from Germany. Jake had seen them while he had worked on the docks in Hamburg, after he left Russia and before he came to America, and Jake knew that no American knife could match the keen edge and precision of a Freimer.

Jake took a small sip of the whiskey in his tumbler. “A Freimer is my protection. I'm just glad you recognized the one I carried. Your double-barreled shotgun, however,” Jake said, pointing to the weapon that was propped on the side of Antonio's chair, “seems protection enough.”

“Protection? You can never have too much protection.” Antonio rolled up the sleeves of his blue-and-white stripped shirt, revealing long red scars on both arms. “You see these? I have them on my back as well. Lucky to escape the massacres with just these. But they're so ugly, I have to keep them covered all the time.”

“My people have a saying,” said Jake. “The ugliest life is better than the nicest death.” Jake silently thought it sounded better in Yiddish.
Der miesteh leben iz besser fun shesten toit.

“No death is nice,” Antonio declared, raising the mug of coffee to his lips. His work was more important than drinking liquor. He had to keep a clear head at all times. “You know about the massacre? No. I can see it in your eyes. You have been out of the city too long. Three months ago two Italians were accused of murdering Hennessy, a policeman. They didn't do it. We expected them to hang, nonetheless. What would a New Orleans jury do but to agree with the police and convict Italians of murdering an Irishman. But a miracle. The jury found them not guilty.”

Antonio paused, scanning the room, watching the customers. Satisfied, he poured more whiskey into Jake's tumbler.

“Tears of joy, however, turned to tears for which there was no consolation. The Irish and the Americans in the city became furious. They stormed the police station and killed the two men who had been acquitted. A few days later a boat landed with eighteen hundred Sicilians coming to this country for a better life. They knew nothing of what had happened. How could they know? But the Irish and Americans swarmed the docks, and they massacred fifteen hundred men, women, and children. Do you know what that means? Babies were flung into the harbor to drown. Women were beaten to death, their bodies so badly mangled that we couldn't identify many of them. The men were shot time and again. It was only by the barest that those of us who had gone down to the dock to greet the arrival were able to save ourselves and a few of the passengers.”

Antonio paused a moment, refastening his shirtsleeves and covering his scars.

“Our best efforts were not enough. My sister, her three children, her husband and two cousins—all were on that boat. All dead.

“Where was the protection of the police? Nowhere. The police let the massacre occur. They encouraged it. So, protection is only where you create it for yourself. La Famiglia was not something I had wanted or needed before the massacre. But now La Famiglia is all that there is. We stick together. We make our own protection. I have Coso. I have my shotgun. I have a Freimer. And I now have hired many men to work for me to protect my business. I have built up my business, and I shall not lose it. No. I have a family. A wife and eight children—seven daughters and one son—and no harm shall befall my business or my family or me.”

“My people,” said Jake, “have another saying. If I am not for myself, who am I for?”

“Your people seem to be full of sayings. I do not have time for sayings. I have time only for action. It is not enough to be for yourself. You must have the support of others. And the only ones you can trust are your family. We Italians know this. This city is too full of people who are either too proud of what they are or want to pass for something that they are not. Here, look at me. I have the skin of an Italian and the hair of an Italian and the accent of an Italian. What can I do but be what I am? My cousin Roberto Micelli, he passes for black Irish. Bobby Mc Kelly they call him. As an Italian Catholic, there are no jobs, but as an Irish Catholic, he can be a conductor on the railroad. That's where he is now. Conductor McKelly. And you, Jew, you could pass if you wanted. You speak En glish with no accent. You could be almost anyone. You could pass for someone who is not a Jew, and yet you are known as the Jew Peddler.”

Jake said nothing. He could not tell where this conversation was leading. What could he say? As Uncle Avram used to admonish,
Far dem emes shlogt men.
For the truth you get beaten up.

“I think you do not know New Orleans, even after your two years here in this state,” Antonio warned. “Look, over at the bar, the young girl dancing with the man. What do you see?” Antonio pointed to Betsy.

“A girl. Too pale. Too young as well.”

“What else?”

“Straight black hair. Narrow lips. Tiny nose. Tiny breasts. Slim hips.”

“And white?”

“If you say so.”

“If I say so? To every customer she's white. She passes. But she's an octoroon. One eighth black. You know there are lots of octoroons out there. Roberto Micelli—Bobby McKelly—had to arrest an octoroon. Did you know that? An Italian passing for Irish had to arrest an octoroon who could have passed for white but insisted he was black. This Homer Plessy, white as Betsy here, got on a train bound for Covington, a two-hour trip, and went to the first-class Whites Only car. It had been arranged in advance with the railroad. They knew what Plessy wanted to have happen, for he had told them what he was planning to do. So, the railroad told Roberto and gave him instructions. Roberto didn't want to do it, but he had to follow orders to keep his job. When Roberto asked him for a ticket, this Plessy said, ‘I have to tell you that, according to Louisiana law, I am a colored man.'

“Roberto asked him to move to the cars for Negroes and drunks, but, as planned, Plessy refused. So Roberto arrested him, as planned, which was what Plessy wanted so he could sue the railroad. The ‘Irish' conductor arrested someone who insisted he was colored although his skin was lighter than the conductor's. Plessy's skin was as light as Betsy's.”

Jake looked again at Betsy, dancing with her pale white breasts exposed. So Plessy was as light as Betsy. Both of them were darker than Rebecca, and all three of them were of mixed blood.

Where the Mississippi River makes the huge curve that gives the Crescent City its name, it curls back northward in an eight-mile loop as if it wants to take one last look at the vast continent through which it has flowed, and then, at the foot of Canal Street, at the very place where the French Quarter begins, it abruptly dips south to empty into the Gulf of Mexico more than eighty miles away.