The Waking (26 page)

“
We’ll only have a few hours to get to the French Quarter and back,” Rose tells me while we wait for Rufus and Penny.

“
Only a few hours?” I don’t have the crazy notion of finding my daddy in the crowd on my first night in New Orleans, but stranger things have happened to me already.

“
Don’t you worry, Emmanuel,” Rose says. “We’ll be back to New Orleans a couple more times this summer. You’ll have plenty of time to check it all out.”

And maybe Auntie June will come through with some of Mama’s friends by then. I know he’s out there somewhere just waiting to meet me.

We land at Riverwalk, and I see folks gawking at the
American Queen
just like I did up in Marietta. Either that or they’re looking at the four of us, quite a motley crew of adventurers.

“
We catchin’ a cab?” Rufus asks.

“
You kiddin’?” Rose says. “You can’t experience the Big Easy in a cab. The best way to get it all in is to walk.”

“
But we won’t have time to hit all the clubs,” Penny pouts.

“
We’ll just do this visit a la carte, okay?” Rose says.

If Beale Street in Memphis was a party, Bourbon Street and the French Quarter in New Orleans is a blowout. The French Quarter jumps with jazz, jambalaya, and juke joints, and though we’re all tired, we’re jumping, too. Rose has to listen to and give money to every trumpeter and saxophonist on the street, Penny has to talk her grandma through the place like she’s some tourist guide, and Rufus has to dance with anyone and everyone to the Gospel, jazz, rock, and R&B music that comes out of every red, purple, and blue brick building we walk past. Me, I’m kind of on guard, watching out for cops, pickpockets, and the occasional dealer. No one approaches me, which is good. I guess I don’t have the look anymore.

But The Voice won’t leave me alone.

Easy pickings in the Big Easy, boy. Liquid sunshine is probably cheap here, too, with so much competition. Easy to get lost in the crowd, right? Just fade away and fade back happy. And since you’ll be getting back on the boat so soon, you can even wait till Rufus goes on watch. Or maybe you’d rather have a little rise ‘n’ shine sunshine? Remember when you used to wake up to a liquid sunrise?

“
You okay?” Rose asks.

I touch my head. “The Voice. The ugly one.”

“
The ugly one? Here? Now?”

“
Yeah.”

She locks arms with me. “I’ll protect you.”

She can’t protect you, Manny. She’s an addict just like you are.

Shut up.

We eat everywhere we go, sharing oysters at Felix’s, crab cakes at Uglesich’s, and po’boy sandwiches at a corner market. I keep looking up at all the balconies, which Rose tells me were made by slaves. “Half the people in this town used to be slaves,” she tells me. “Can you imagine that?
Half.
”

It’s not hard to imagine because it’s like I’ve stepped back in time. Souvenir shops, antique shops, bars, art galleries, and clubs flow past me like blurry neon, but they’re all in old brick buildings at least a hundred years old. There is even a kaleidoscope of plastic beads hanging in the trees, leftovers from when they were tossed from floats during Mardi Gras. Rose points out the banana trees and azaleas and keeps handing us money.

“
Y’all are my chillens tonight,” she tells us.

It’s nice to feel like somebody’s son again. I just wish the night would last longer than a few hours.

I lose track of how many jazz joints we zip in and out of. We hear one set of jazz at Snug Harbor, watch some strange dancing to Zydeco music at Tipitinas, and stand outside Howlin’ Wolf just listening to the rumble of the blues.

“
Why don’t we just go in?” I ask.

“
Consider this a Bourbon Street sampler,” Rose says. “Anyway, now you can say you’ve been to all these places, right?”

By the time we get to the House of Blues, “In Blues We Trust” painted on the front of the building, I’m out of breath, and Rufus is still hungry. We share a huge order of crawfish and shrimp in front of the B. B. Blues Bar, and the crawfish definitely doesn’t taste like mudbugs. After paying a cover charge, we dance in the music hall on a sunken dance floor, lots of blue lights flashing all around us, many folks wearing sunglasses dancing on stage and even in the balconies.

It’s all too much for Rose, so we find a calmer place to rest behind the crowd in the back. But not Penny. The girl just wants to go, go, go! She wears Rufus out, and he has to come back stumbling to us.

“
She ain’t human,” he says, dripping sweat. “But I like her.” He wipes his face with yet another FUBU hat. “I need to get me some ice water,” he says, and he leaves.

Rose smiles at me. “There’s somethin’ goin’ on between these two, I can feel it.”

“
I know. He won’t stop talking about her.”

“
My, my, my, my, my,” Rose says. “Big ol’ Rufus has a thing for little ol’ Jessica Anne. Their kids are gonna be … No, that’s mean.”

“
Gonna be what?” I ask.

She leans close to my ear. “They gonna be small, pale … and hungry all the time.” She slaps my back and laughs. “You know it’s true!”

And in the middle of all this laughing and dancing and carrying on, I see a huge white boy with a neck as thick as my chest grabbing at Penny, and she isn’t liking it one bit. He’s practically lifting her off the ground. Since Rufus isn’t around to help, I force my way across the dance floor to Penny where the white boy’s pawing at her, grabbing at her some more, getting way too close for her comfort.

And mine. Penny’s my new sister. Nobody messes with my sister.

I squeeze through two sunglasses-wearing dancers and jump between the white boy and Penny. “You all right, girl?” I ask.

“
No,” she says.

Then I feel a brick on my shoulder, which turns out to be the white boy’s hand. “Step off!” he shouts.

I turn to him, shrugging his hand off my shoulder. “What did you say?”

He puts his hand on my chest and pushes. “I said, step off,
boy!
”

I look toward the back of the music hall and see Rufus moving toward us, but he won’t be able to get through the thick crowd in time to help me. “She’s with me,” I say instead of shout.

The white boy laughs through his thin lips, showing me a full set of yellow buckteeth, leaning all that whiteness into my face. “What did you say,
boy?
”

“
I said, she’s with me.”

“
Bullshit!”

I feel a fleck of spit on my cheek, but I don’t wipe it off. I also smell at least a pitcher of beer on his breath.

The white boy tries to step past me, but I step with him, blocking his path.

“
You with him, honey?” he asks.

Penny takes my arm but scoots behind me. “Yeah.”

The white boy seems perplexed, to say the least. “What the— You do
niggers?
”

He put his hands on me twice, pushed me, spit on me, and now he’s calling me a nigger, but I have to fight to keep
Penny
back.

“
You
wanted to!” she shouts.

The white boy looks even more perplexed. “Huh?”

“
You wanted to do me,” Penny says, “and I’m black, yo, you cracker ofay redneck!”

Penny has definitely done her whitey slang homework.

“
What the—
”
Then the white boy lunges at her with his big brick hands like I’m not even there, swinging his brick hands past my head to get at Penny. That’s when almost thirty years of frustration and pain come firing out of my fists onto that white boy’s head, uppercuts cracking that jaw, roundhouses thudding his cheeks, and a left hook that connects with his nose until I see lots of bright red blood pouring out of his face in the bright blue darkness with the blues rumbling like a freight train all around me and he’s down and gasping and holding his nose and I’m standing over him and it feels good, oh so good, and I’m yelling, “Get up! Get up!” until I see Mary’s face in all that blur of blue and stop to catch my breath and Rufus is carrying me and Penny out and Penny’s shouting to be let go and Rose is holding the door open and we’re outside in the street and hustling back toward the
American Queen
and my knuckles are raw and bloody.

“
Why’d you stop me?” I yell at Rufus when he drops me in the street.

“
You scared me, Manny. You coulda killed him.”

I could have. I wanted to.

Yes, you did. You weren’t this way when you had liquid sunshine in your veins. Reality has its price, Manny. You need to relax somewhere, you know, go off by yourself, just you and me, go off where crew-cutted, bad-breathed rednecks won’t bother us.

“
Manny,” Rufus says, “you might not look like much, but you’re half alligator and half pit bull.”

“
Is that a compliment?” Rose asks.

“
Long as I’m not in his way it is,” Rufus says with a laugh.

Penny’s still on my arm, whispering something about “You’re my hero,” but I’m not feeling that.

“
I’m no one’s hero,” I tell her.

“
You got that right,” Rose says, keeping her distance from me.

I turn to Rose. “I was protecting her honor,
our
honor from that prejudiced redneck.”

“
Yeah,” Penny says.

Rufus doesn’t look so sure.

“
And you just gave him another reason to keep his prejudices,” Rose says.

I break away from Penny’s grasp and stop Rose from walking any further. “What was I supposed to do then, Rose? Let him molest Penny right there in front of my eyes? Let him take advantage of her for all the world to see? He was trying to hit her. No one hits my family. No one.”

I walk on ahead with tears of rage forming in my eyes. I can’t believe Rose would say that stuff to me! I just can’t— Where’s the water? I can smell it. She had the
nerve
to question me for protecting Penny. Where does she get the right— There’s the boat. I can’t believe Rose, of all people, would say anything like that to me!

Once up the gangplank, I turn, and they’re all right in step behind me with big grins on their faces. Penny squeezes my hand and kisses my cheek, and Rufus smiles, giving me a bear hug.

“
See you up at the room, brother Manny,” he says.

I can barely breathe, Rufus squeezed me so hard. And I don’t feel like going up to hear him mooning over Penny, so I drift back to the motionless paddlewheel, Rose trailing behind. I have trouble looking at her.

“
You mad at me?” she asks.

Yes. “I’m sorry about what happened back there.”

“
You got nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who should be sorry. You did the right thing, Manny. The honorable thing.”

“
Then why do I feel so guilty about it? He got what he deserved, but after what you said …” I sigh.

“
I can’t help you there. I just wish you had only hit him once to shake him up some. Rufus was closing in for the big squeeze, and no one would have gotten hurt.” She takes my hands in hers. “You’ll be pretty useless for maybe a couple days.”

“
Hitting him once wouldn’t have been enough. He was huge.”

“
Yeah, I know. While I was hoping that you would stop, I was rooting for you to win, to lay him low.”

I turn to look into her eyes. “Then why’d you say what you said?”

“
Mainly because I know it won’t change a thing for anybody. That boy’s still gonna be prejudiced, maybe even more because you embarrassed him so much in public at the House of Blues, and
you’re
still going to be angry. Tell me, were you waiting for him to say or do the wrong thing, maybe even
hoping
he’d say or do the wrong thing?”

“
I
knew
he’d say the wrong thing.” It’s only a matter of time for some people.

Rose smiles. “Maybe you ain’t Cajun at all. Maybe you got some Irish in you.”

“
I doubt it. I don’t look good in green.”

Rose looks out over the river. “We may have a problem, though. There could be some trouble over this. Public place, the four of us. Rufus kind of stands out. And your hands are a dead giveaway. It wouldn’t take long for the police to trace us down if that boy decides to press charges.”

“
Let him.”

“
Did it ever occur to you that you could have walked away?” she asks.

“
No.” Where I come from, walking away from a fight is the surest sign of weakness. “I ain’t no punk.”

“
You know, he didn’t actually
do
anything to Penny.”

“
He was all over her.”

“
He’ll say he was dancing, that she shook it in front of him, that she liked it, that she wanted his attention. You know how they do. And a jury of
his
peers, not ours, is gonna believe him over you and her and me and Rufus. A New Orleans, Louisiana, jury, Manny. We’re not from here, remember?”