Orleans (18 page)

She cleared her throat. “That be a long time ago. His church be right at the border where the gates used to be for volunteers and tourists, like you.” She chuckled when she said it, poking fun at him.

“He be a good man, Father John, and he make sure I always get my candy, and my pictures be scanned and sent to my people. The Coopers, 15527 West Arlington, San Diego, California. I remember the e-mail address if I think about it, too.”

Daniel plugged a second nutrient pack into his suit and resealed his pockets. “It must have been hard growing up like that,” he said. “Seeing what life was like on the other side.”

Fen shrugged. “Ain’t it be like that everywhere? Either you got it or somebody else do.”

Daniel tried to get comfortable, resting his back against the spongy wall. “I suppose.”

“It be true,” Fen said. “You seen Orleans—how different can it be over the Wall?”

Daniel blinked. So different, he didn’t know where to begin. “Well . . . for one thing, nobody’s hunted me for my blood.”

Fen snorted. “Yeah, we got special circumstances here in the Delta.”

“But they did round up people with the Fever and keep them in hospital camps,” Daniel explained. “Not so different, in a way. But there’s so much more that’s good. Schools and grocery stores and farms and amusement parks and movies.”

“Amusement parks?”

Daniel smiled. “It’s a place full of rides and crappy food that you go to for fun. You can ride roller coasters . . .” He trailed off, seeing her blank look. “It’s kind of like a train that goes up and down a track.”

“Where it take you?” Fen asked.

“Um . . . nowhere. It’s just for fun. It’s supposed to be scary and fun.”

Fen shifted the baby in her arms and lay down on her side. “That be different from Orleans, then, for sure. We got scary, but it ain’t no fun.”

She closed her eyes and fell silent. Daniel looked at her—that young face and those terrible burns on her arms. In the Outer States, those scars would be repaired with plastic surgery. Fen should be in high school, not toting a baby around this nightmare of a city. Daniel shivered and looked away from the strange girl. He felt far from sleep, and very far from home.

20

“DANIEL. DANIEL, WAKE UP.” I KEEP BABY GIRL
close to me and creep over to tap him on the foot. We been here less than fifteen minutes, and now there be a light coming in through the broken window. Firelight.

“Daniel!” He stir and suddenly sit upright. “Shhh . . .” I put a finger over my lips. He look around, nodding that he understand. I motion him to the front wall along where I been sleeping. “Come see.”

Normally, I be giving him a hard time for being a tourist, but this be something special. Something I be real glad to see, too.

He shuffle over on his butt, keeping low like me. There be an opening in the wall that used to be a window, but the glass be long gone, and now it be open to the street below.

“Christ, what is that?” Daniel ask, and it sound funny through his filter, no expression, just words.

“All Saints’ Day,” I tell him. “Hurricane season be over today, and we still here.”

In the street, riding toward us on lean brown horses, come an All Saints’ krewe. They be decked out in all they finery—owl- and pheasant-feather headdresses, chains and bracelets made of shiny metal and glass mounded high on they wrists, and necks with strand after strand of old Mardi Gras beads, purple, green, and yellow, all sparkling and shining in the torchlight. The krewe be riding, holding they flambeaux high up to the sky. Like a thundercloud of fire, rolling toward us, they be singing and shouting at the clouds as they go by.

“Who are they?” Daniel whisper. I bounce Baby Girl in my arms.

“Anybody. Everybody. They wear masks over they eyes to keep from knowing. All Saints’ krewes and the Market be the only times tribes come together. Folks just show up in they costumes, ready to ride.”

The krewe outside be a big one, almost twenty riders. They wheel around in a circle at the widest point of the road and thrust they torches toward the center of the ring, moving to a trot as the ring shift shape and turn into a spiral ’stead of a sphere. Now they be like a hurricane, swirling and swirling, the smallest rider in the center at the eye.

The sound grow louder. I hear them and I mouth the words. “Katrina, Isaiah, Lorenzo. Olga, Laura, Paloma.” Up and down, over and over, they be going faster and faster. “Jesus, Jesus, Hay-SEUS!” The Hurricane riders be stretching wider and wider in the street, and then they burst apart, horses and riders shooting off in every direction, splashing through the streams and trampling over the neutral ground.

Some of they flambeaux go out, they be moving so fast. And they shout, hoot, holler, and I got to hold my tongue not to join them out loud.
“Nous sommes ici! Nous sommes ici! Encore! Encore! Encore! Nous restons ici!”

Daniel be looking at me like he never seen me before. I want to laugh, but we got to stay quiet. All Saints’ or no, it won’t do to let them know we here. Maybe the riders ain’t gonna bother us, but there be others that might.

“It be a good sign,” I explain to Daniel as the torchlight fade and the riders gallop into the night. One rider play a trumpet. That old tune, “When the Saints Go Marching In.” “Only time of year someone be fool enough to blow a horn like that. Ain’t nobody hunting a Saints’ Day krewe. Bad luck.” The riders be gone now, but you can hear they song farther up the road.

“I don’t understand,” Daniel said.

I sigh and curl myself back into my corner. Daniel sit beside to listen. I wish Cinnamon Jones be here to tell it right, but I do my best. “In the beginning, Orleans be like this special place, back when it been New Orleans. Everybody knew about it. We tell the story all the time. It been beautiful back then, and there weren’t no Wall, neither. It been part of Louisiana, and the whole Delta still been part of the United States. But then them hurricanes came, Rita and Katrina. And they break pieces off the land like eating cake. And they still rebuilding when Isaiah hit, and he ain’t the end. Laura and Paloma come along, and they be calling them the Two Sisters, ’cause they dance right on up the coast and drop skirts of rain on New Orleans like girls knocking over glass figurines with they spinning and twirling. And it almost over for the Delta. But the Government say they going to help us, they going to fix everything.” I look up, suddenly shy. I been talking like one of Daddy’s schoolbooks or Lydia, but I don’t sound as good as they do. Did. Most likely Daniel done heard it all before, but he still be listening, so I carry on.

“Then Jesus came. It spelled like Jesus Christ, but it pronounced the Spanish way. I can’t know why they named it that. Maybe somebody thought it funny. But it ain’t. Jesus come so big, they ain’t even able to measure it. They call it a Category Five because that been as big as they could get back then. But Olga been a Five, too, and Paloma. Jesus been way bigger, so the Government give up, say everybody evacuate. But can’t everybody fit on a road out of town at the same time. Some people can’t even get up outta they beds, so what
they
gonna do? No gas for the cars, and the roads be clogged, and people be needing they medicine and whatnot. And then some folks, well, they figure they born here, they gonna die here, too. The city been full of workers, immigrants who came here for jobs rebuilding since the Government been promising work and all. They stuck here, too, living in trailers and cheap housing, what the Government provide.

“And all them folks still here when Jesus come walking up the coast. West Florida to East Texas, he take his time, and he don’t ever get weaker. He like a dog chewing on a leg bone, slowly eating it up. And so many people be dead when he finally fade and move north that survivors be getting sick, with bodies clogging the water and the pipes, and things all broken, and chemicals and sewage filling up the place.

“You probably know the rest. The Government say they can’t save us. There ain’t enough of us left to bother. Folks be given the chance to leave, and the first ones that do bring the sickness with them, and it turn out that the Fever kill more folks in the Outer States than it do in the Delta, so they be holding us off with soldiers. Then that checkpoint become a gate in the Wall, and we no longer part of Louisiana or even the United States. We just the Delta, and we been making our own way for half a hundred years.

“So that what they be singing about. How we the Delta, how we still Orleans. That first year after Jesus, when it been looking like we dead, that when the first krewe start. Somebody found an old Mardi Gras warehouse or something, and he pull out some costumes and go riding through the streets. Just one man holding up a lantern, saying ‘We still here, we still here, thank Lord almighty, we still here.’ I know somebody said he seen the man, riding like a damn fool, chest-deep through the floodwaters. And he couldn’t help but follow. And other people started, too, ’til they all been wading along, with they flashlights and torches and all kinds of things, and they start singing and dancing, ’cause ‘this be New Orleans and that be what we do,’ he say. And every year, when the season for storms be over, somebody get out there and take up a torch and find theyselves a horse and do it all over again.”

I ain’t talked this much in a long time. Daniel looking at me like he got too much on his plate and don’t know how to eat it all.

“You got anything like that in the Outer States?”

Daniel don’t answer.

“It be a good sign,” I tell him again. “We gonna both get out of here okay.”

I can see he don’t believe me. He ain’t got no tribe, no decent map, and nothing but me telling him so, but it gonna work out. Baby Girl back to sleeping in her sling again. Ain’t no better time than now, so I stand up, stretch, and lead the way outside.

Night be thick around us. Daniel and I stick to the neutral ground. I tell him to watch for the trolley tracks running down the middle of the grass in either direction. Ain’t been a trolley in more years than I been alive, but I seen pictures—pretty green boxes trimmed in red, used to carry a body from one end of the city to the other. Could use something like that now. A trolley’d take us right through A territory
and
La Bête’s stomping grounds, drop us off right in front of the Professors’ old school. But that ain’t the way it be. We got to go on foot through the heart of it.

The As in the McDonald’s don’t stir. They ain’t looking for trouble tonight. Maybe it be the sight of the krewe, or maybe enough folks be passing through on the way to and from the Market that they ain’t trying to jump everybody that walk by. La Bête’s people ain’t quite so lenient.

Rain cleared up a while ago, but there still be clouds scudding across the sky. I hold up my hand to make Daniel wait and I think back to the last time I been here, with Lydia for another powwow, months ago, one that failed. This side of the road be mostly small trees, myrtle and magnolia, but once you cross into Uptown, St. Charles be a lot like a green cave. The road be lined with big old live oaks that done withstood even the worst of the storms. They make it darker than dark under there. La Bête had his people run signal torches all up and down the street, between the trees. Dried ropes soaked in pine tar and fat strung between them for fuses. One of his people have half a reason to suspect us, they light a torch and the whole place be bonfire-bright in minutes. I got good night eyes, but I ain’t a cat. I pull Daniel back into the shadow of a crape myrtle.

“Daniel, listen. When I say run, we run. Cross the intersection to them trees on the other side. It gonna be dark over there, real dark. And I ain’t got fancy goggles like you. I tell you where to go, you think you can lead us?”

He nod, but I know he ain’t sure. He open his mouth, but I stop him.

“No. We can’t wait ’til morning. Listen to me,” I hiss. “They know we here. I guarantee La Bête got folks watching the street. We wait for a cloud to cross the moon and we run. Then it up to you. We heading to a big brick building on the right side, got an archway overhead say
Sacre Coeur.
”

“Sacred Heart?” he ask. “What’s that got to do with the Institute?”

“That
be
the Institute.”

I can see Daniel got questions, but we ain’t got time.

“Okay. We going straight up the middle on the neutral ground, just like we been doing. Quiet but quick. They got torches up and down this street, and if they hear us, they light them and it all be over. I’ma put my hand on your shoulder and follow you. But they come after us, you on your own. I got this baby to look after, and I’ll do it however I can.”

The All Saints’ krewe feel like a fever dream now, the good omen feel more like wishful thinking. I look up at the sky. A fat mass of clouds be drifting right toward the moon. I hold up my hand, wait for them to block the moonlight. The intersection fall dark.

I grab Daniel with one hand, hold Baby Girl with the other, and we run, quiet as we can. Daniel be breathing heavy behind me, or maybe that my own breath in my ears. My heart pounding, that for sure.