Ace Atkins - New Orleans Noir - The Classics

Elenor touched her sister’s shoulder shyly. Irma was watching me, something close to a smile on her lips. — Well, Elenor said, — We’ve prayed together since then, ain’t we, hon? Irma took her sister’s hand and pressed it against her cheek.

— We been close since then, Charlie, Elenor’s husband said. — Done us all good. Except for poor Howard.

It seemed Howard had hardened his heart from the first. Charlie had worked for him in the Rambler franchise, manager of the service department. One day they had had words and Charlie quit, left New Orleans which was a plague to him anyway, and set up this little backyard place in Alex.

Why the fight? I asked Charlie. He was getting up to go out to work. — Never mind that, he said. — It... didn’t have nothing to do with... this.

Elenor watched him go. — Yes it did, she began.

— Elenor, Irma stopped her. — Maybe you ought not... Charlie’s...

Elenor was wiping her cheeks with her apron. — This man’s a lawyer, ain’t he? He knows what’s right and wrong.

I winced and felt tired all at once, but you cannot ask for a pitcher of martinis at seven thirty in the morning in a Louisiana country house. That was the extent of my knowledge of right and wrong.

— A couple of months after Albert Sidney was born, I was at their place, Elenor went on. — Trying to help out. I was making the beds when Howard come in. It was early, but Howard was drunk and he talked funny, and before I knew, he pulled me down on the bed, and... I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t. Irma had the baby in the kitchen... and he couldn’t. He tried to... make me... help him, but he couldn’t anyhow. And I told Charlie, because a man ought to know. And they had words, and after that Charlie whipped him, and we moved up here...

Elenor sat looking out of the window where the sun was beginning to show over the trees. — And we come on up here.

Irma looked at her sister tenderly. — Elly, we got to go on over to the hospital now.

As we reached the door, Elenor called out. — Irma...

— Yes...?

— Honey, you know how much I love you, don’t you?

— I always did know, silly. You were the one didn’t know.

We took the old station wagon and huffed slowly out of the yard. Charlie waved at us and his eyes followed us out of sight down the blacktop.

Irma was smiling at me as we coughed along the road. — I feel kind of good, she said.

— I’m glad. Why?

— Like some kind of washday. It’s long and hard, but comes the end, and you’ve got everything hanging out in the fresh air. Clean.

— It’ll be dirty again, I said, and wished I could swallow the words almost before they were out.

Her hand touched my arm, and I almost lost control of the car. I kept my eyes on the road to Pineville. I was here to help her, not the other way around. There was too much contact between us already, too much emptiness in me, and what the hell I was doing halfway up the state with the wife of a man who could make out a showing that he was my client was more than I could figure out. Something to do with the Gulf. — There’s another washday coming, she whispered, her lips close to my ear.

Will I be ready for washday? I wondered. Lord, how is it that we get ready for washday?

The Louisiana State Hospital is divided into several parts. There is one section for the criminally insane, and another for the feebleminded. This second section is, in turn, divided into what are called “tidy” and “untidy” wards. The difference is vast in terms of logistics and care. The difference in the moral realm is simply that between the seventh and the first circles. Hell is where we are.

Dr. Tumulty met us outside his office. He was a small man with a large nose and glasses which looked rather like those you can buy in a novelty shop — outsized nose attached. Behind the glasses, his eyes were weak and watery. His mouth was very small, and his hair thin, the color of corn shucks. I remember wondering then, at the start of our visit, whether one of the inmates had been promoted. It was a very bad idea, but only one of many.

— Hello, Irma, he said. He did not seem unhappy to see her.

— Hello, Monte, she said.

— He had a little respiratory trouble last week. It seems cleared up now.

Irma introduced us and Dr. Tumulty studied me quizzically. — A lawyer...?

— Counselor, she said. — A good listener. Do you have time to show him around?

He looked at me, Charon sizing up a strange passenger, one who it seemed would be making a round trip. — Sure, all right. You coming?

— No, Irma said softly. — You can bring him to me afterward.

So Dr. Tumulty took me through the wards alone. I will not say everything I saw. There were mysteries in that initiation that will not go down into words. It is all the soul is worth and more to say less than all when you have come back from that place where, if only they knew, what men live and do asleep is done waking and in truth each endless day.

Yes, there were extreme cases of mongolism, cretins and imbeciles, dwarfs and things with enormous heads and bulging eyes, ears like tubes, mouths placed on the sides of their heads. There was an albino without nose or eyes or lips, and it sat in a chair, teeth exposed in a grin that could not be erased, its hands making a series of extremely complicated gestures over and over again, each lengthy sequence a perfect reproduction of the preceding one. The gestures were perfectly symmetrical and the repetition exact and made without pause, a formalism of mindlessness worthy of a Balinese dancer or a penance — performance of a secret prayer — played out before the catatonic admiration of three small blacks who sat on the floor before the albino watching its art with a concentration unknown among those who imagine themselves without defect.

This was the tidy ward, and all these inventions of a Bosch whose medium is flesh wore coveralls of dark gray cloth with a name patch on the left breast. This is Paul whose tongue, abnormally long and almost black and dry, hangs down his chin, and that, the hairless one with the enormous head and tiny face, who coughs and pets a filthy toy elephant, that is Larry. The dead-white one, the maker of rituals, is Anthony. Watching him are Edward and Joseph and Michael, microcephalics all, looking almost identical in their shared malady.

— Does... Anthony, I began.

— All day. Every day, Dr. Tumulty said. — And the others watch. We give him tranquilizers at night. It used to be... all night too.

In another ward they kept the females. It was much the same there, except that wandering from one chair to another, watching the others, was a young girl, perhaps sixteen. She would have been pretty — no, she was pretty, despite the gray coverall and the pallor of her skin. — Hello, doctor, she said. Her voice sounded as if it had been recorded — cracked and scratchy. But her body seemed sound, her face normal except for small patches of what looked like eczema on her face. That, and her eyes were a little out of focus. She was carrying a small book covered in imitation red leather. My Diary , it said on the cover.

— Does she belong here? I asked Tumulty.

He nodded. — She’s been here over a year.

The girl cuddled against him, and I could see that she was trying to press her breasts against him. Her hand wandered down toward his leg. He took her hand gently and stroked her hair. — Hello, doctor, she croaked again.

— Hi, Nancy, he answered. — Are you keeping up your diary?

She smiled. — For home. Hello, doctor.

— For home, sure, he said, and sat her down in a chair opposite an ancient television locked in a wire cage and tuned, I remember, to Underdog . She seemed to lose interest in us, to find her way quickly into the role of Sweet Polly, awaiting the inevitable rescue. Around her on the floor were scattered others of the less desperate cases. They watched the animated comedy on the snow-flecked, badly focused screen with absolute concentration. As we moved on, I heard Nancy whisper, — There’s no need to fear...