George Martin - Suicide Kings

A more emphatic shake.

Finn sighed. “All right.” He tapped Noel on the shoulder. “Take her home and keep her happy, okay?”

Noel nodded, and acknowledged to himself that going off to Baghdad would definitely not keep her happy.

Louis B. Armstrong

International Airport

New Orleans, Louisiana

The first thing wally noticed as he tromped down the jetway was the smell.

New Orleans smelled different from Manhattan. It didn’t smell like sidewalk garbage and truck exhaust; it smelled, faintly, of earth and water. There was humidity in the air, too, which along with the wet smell reminded him of summers at the lake cabin, back home in Minnesota. It had been that way the first time he came here, too, back when Bubbles saved the city.

Thinking about Michelle saddened him. Part of him had never wanted to come back here, and part of him felt badly for not visiting Michelle.

He waited in the airport, watching people buff the floors for an hour, before calling Jerusha. He figured she might not be that happy to hear from him again, and that would only be worse if he woke her up. Was she an early riser? They hadn’t shared a tent in Timor, like he and DB had done a number of times, so he had no idea. DB snored.

“Hello?” Her voice didn’t sound gravelly, like most people when awakened by the phone. Whew.

“Jerusha? This is Wally.”

“Oh, hey, Wally. Look, I hope you’re not upset about yesterday-”

“Nah, I understand. I did sorta spring the whole thing on you outta the blue.”

“Well, yeah. I’m glad you understand.”

“Sure. But hey, can I show you something? It’ll be real quick, I promise.” Farther down the terminal, a buzzer launched into a series of short, loud bursts. A baggage carousel creaked to life.

Jerusha heard it, too. “Where are you right now?”

“I’m at the airport. I caught a flight.”

“Wally…” She was doing it again-cradling her head. He could tell.

He said, “It won’t take long.”

A sigh. And then: “I don’t know why, but I spent a lot of time yesterday thinking about your trip. So, I do have some advice for you.”

Wally sat up straighter. “Wow! That’s great!” His voice echoed through the carousels. A few heads turned among the people waiting for their bags to come tumbling down the conveyor belt. “Um, where should I meet ya?”

“I’m with Michelle right now, in Jackson Square. Any taxi driver can take you here.”

Wally thanked her and rang off. He hiked his backpack over his shoulder and tromped off in search of a taxi stand.

As often happened when Wally used a taxi, the driver heard his accent and immediately assumed Wally was an easy way to make a few extra bucks. Wally’s taxi drivers tended to take long, circuitous routes that ran up the meter. Usually he didn’t mind; he liked seeing the sights in unfamiliar places. He’d been here before, so he got impatient when the driver tried pointing out some of the sights in the French Quarter. But the driver waived the fare when he learned that Wally knew Michelle.

Jackson Square was a little different than he’d last seen it. For one thing, it looked like they’d had a pretty bad kudzu infestation not too long ago. Most of it had been cut away, but he could see tendrils here and there on the sides of booths and poking up through cracks in the pavement. Weird.

But the main change was the wooden enclosure beneath the statue in the center of the square. It was covered with flowers, candles, cards, and homemade signs. Prayers and thank yous. The flowers and signs fluttered in the breeze; Wally caught a whiff of magnolias. The wind rattled the slats of the shrine where a pair of nails had come loose. Wally peered through the gap. He glimpsed something pale. It took a few seconds before he realized that he was staring at the white cloth draped over Michelle’s body. That made him want to cry.

Wally strolled around the shrine, reading signs and cards until he found the entrance. A cop waved him through the gate. Jerusha must have told her he was coming.

If the tiny glimpse he’d had of Michelle from outside made him feel sad, what he saw inside made him feel rotten. Her body-she wasn’t recognizable, but who else would it be?-quivered beneath bolts of cloth, like the biggest dress he’d ever seen. She smelled… not good. A water pump hummed to itself, sucking away the water that continually seeped into Michelle’s crater.

There were bundles of pipes, too, draped across her. Feeding tubes, he realized. They were still. Silent.

“Hey, Wally. Over here.” Jerusha waved at him from halfway around the enclosure.

Wally waved back. He trotted over to her, his iron feet echoing on what had once been a sidewalk and was now the floor of Michelle’s shrine. “Holy cripes,” he said. “Poor Michelle. How is she?”

Jerusha frowned at him. “She’s still alive, if that’s what you mean. But she’s still unresponsive, too.”

“I wish there was something we could do,” he said.

“I like to think that deep down she knows we’re here.”

Huh. “Hey, Michelle,” he said. “Hang in there.”

Jerusha looked at him sideways, a funny look in her eye. “Come on. Let’s get something to eat,” she said.

She led him across Decatur Street, to a place called Cafe du Monde. It smelled like chicory and fresh doughnuts. They took a seat outside, at a small round table that gave them a clear view of Michelle’s enclosure. There wasn’t room for his legs under their table, so he sat sideways. Wally ordered hot chocolate and a plate of fancy French doughnuts heaped with powdered sugar. Jerusha got coffee.

“Okay,” she said, after they’d settled in. “What’s so important you had to fly all the way down here to show me?”

Powdered sugar from Wally’s lips snowed into his backpack as he fumbled with the zipper. He pulled out the three-ring binder where he kept the letters from his pen pals. Wally chanted off their names as he flipped through the binder. “Marcel, Antoinette, Nicolas…” He found the first page of Lucien’s section, and held it out to Jerusha. “This is my friend Lucien,” he said. In the photo, a little boy treated the camera to a wide, gap-toothed grin. He wore a brown-and-white-striped T-shirt that was easily three sizes too big for him. He had knobby knees, and his shaved head made his ears look ridiculously large. He was giving the camera a thumbs-up.

Jerusha looked at the photo. She asked, “Did you put this binder together just for the purpose of coming down here and showing it to me?” She sounded surprised, but not in a bad way. Almost like he’d done something good but he didn’t know what. If anything, she’d sounded a little bit annoyed when he’d said he was in town.

“Nah. I didn’t want to lose any letters.” Wally turned the page. “This is the first one I received from Lucien.” Like the photo, he kept the letter in a laminated sheet protector. He mentally recited the letter while Jerusha read the scrawly handwriting. Dear Wally, My name is Lucien I am ate years old. I live in Kalemie…

Quietly, almost to herself, Jerusha said, “Huh. Smart kid.” She asked, “When did you start doing all this?”

“A while back. After me and DB went to the Caliphate.”

A memory grabbed him. Instead of sitting in a cafe, he was on the deck of an aircraft carrier, drinking beer with DB while the sun set over the Persian Gulf.

Hey, Rusty.

Bad deal, huh.

Yeah. The fucking worst.

Kids. I don’t want to fight kids.

None of us should have had to.

Jerusha’s voice brought him back to the present. “Okay, I’ll bite. Can I see the last letter he sent?”

Wally found the page for her. Jerusha read it, looking thoughtful.