Louis Maistros - The Sound of Building Coffins

The boy was sitting up in his crib, pulling leeches from himself and throwing them in the direction of the doctor. Shielding his face with one hand while hurriedly packing his medical equipment with the other, the doctor paused only to stomp a stray leech before running out the door. The mother was screaming.

The child then vaulted over the side of his crib and did what appeared to be a dance before stopping suddenly to face Trumbo. Said what sounded like:

“Lakjufa doir estay?”

Trumbo turned to the mother-“Madame, do you speak English?”

“Yes. Some.” Her voice was shaken, but she made an attempt to calm herself for the benefit of her uninvited guest.

Trumbo spoke slowly and precisely: “Is your son speaking in a language that you know?”

“It is not Sicilian if that is what you ask.”

“How long has he been speaking?”

“He only one. Before today, he no speak.”

“Not at all?”

Tears flowed freely down her cheeks as she replied:

“Before today he no walk either. Only crawl. Now he run. Dance.”

The pair looked back at the boy, who’d begun clucking like a rooster. Trumbo instinctively backed away from him-to his horror, he noted the child’s mother had done the same.

The child interrupted his performance to take another step towards the reporter.

“Lakjufa doir estay?” His voice was high in timber, but still far too deep for a child his age.

“I…don’t understand.”

“ Lakjufa doir estay? Lakjufa doir estay? Lakjufa doir estay?” the child insisted, stepping closer with each reprise. Trumbo felt a strong urge to make a dash for the door as the doctor and preacher had done, but the pathetically desperate eyes of the mother paralyzed his movement.

“I’m sorry,” he said finally.

The child rolled his eyes and let out a final squawk before quickly extracting a piece of charcoal from the stove’s belly with pink little fingers. Dropping to all fours, he rapidly scratched seemingly random letters and numbers to the floor with the coal:

U UERI NAD PTEL FUYQ LORD

EAF VULCFOL IYLRLCO AFN

EFEHDS SNUB STGSY ORTET

HSONU ETKDS BCSHE EOAOK

EREH ESRE PEYR EVWE

4X5X4/4X4X1

The boy then leapt into the air and back over the rail of the crib, landing in a fetal position with a soft thud, immediately falling into a deep sleep. Mutually dumbfounded, the two could only stare at the child’s still form for several moments, not knowing what to expect next.

Trumbo took pencil and paper from his bag to write down, for the record, the nonsense message the child had so frantically scribbled on the floor.

After several moments of no new horrors, Anabella Carolla dissolved into a fresh wave of tears. Not knowing what else to do, Trumbo cautiously placed his arms around her. She did not resist; in fact, she hardly seemed to notice he was there.

“Ma’am,” Trumbo offered uncertainly, “I will summon another doctor…”

“No, no, no. It no use. This is third doctor. And fourth priest. Catholic priests no longer come. Is why this one a negro. He my baby’s last hope. And he go too.”

“Listen. I will be back. And I will bring help. Trust me, dear, I will be back.”

“You will not be back. Is all right. Understand.”

“No. I will be back. I swear it.” Trumbo turned towards the door and added, “My name is Marshall Trumbo, reporter for The Item .” To his surprise he felt no sting of shame in stating his credentials.

She smiled weakly, “You are good man, Marshall Trumbo, reporter for The Item . You come back.” And then, after a moment, “I am Anabella Carolla. My boy is Dominick. He is good boy.”

“I know who you are, dear. Stay with your son and don’t lose hope.”

He left her, strange thoughts whirring in his head on the long walk home. Trumbo had gone to the Carolla house that morning in search of redemption, but the current workings of his mind seemed only to spell damnation.

He’d heard strange stories from reliable sources about an abortion doctor in the red-light district who went by the name of Doctor Jack. As the stories went, Doctor Jack was a medical doctor of the lowest possible esteem; not only was he a negro who made his living snuffing the hapless unborn from the wombs of whores, he was also a known witch doctor, catering to the superstitious needs of the city’s voodoo-worshipping African population. Trumbo considered himself a good Christian who never took stock in such things, but what he had seen today was not possible. A witch doctor, he conceded to himself, may be this poor family’s last hope.

Convinced it would be wrong not to help-by any means-an innocent mother and child victimized by matters so clearly beyond the reach of scientific or Christian methods, Trumbo resolved to risk damnation. Perhaps, he thought, it is not wrong to fly in the face of a God who would allow such an abomination to occur on this earth. Perhaps, he nearly concluded, God is not at all the benevolent being that his well-meaning parents had taught him to believe in so unquestioningly as a child.

Marshall Trumbo lowered to his knees. He wanted desperately to pray. He found that he could not.

Instead, he wept.

Furnished with crates meant for produce and one square table salvaged from a junked riverboat and bought with a dollar, Charley’s gin joint always managed an empty feeling about it, even on weekends when the crowds pushed in. Wooden crates filled with barber supplies (along with others containing cheap booze) pressed tight and high against the back wall near a pump, basin, and pail; the three purposefully grouped together at the ready. The air was hot and hazy from home-rolled cigars, eight flickering oil lamps giving smoke an appearance of impossible weight.

A fourteen-year-old boy played cornet every night of the week at Charley’s, the sound of it being mostly sour, unrefined, crazy in pitch. The kind of noise people don’t get paid to make.

Real musicians played for real dollar bills in a section of town centering approximately around and gravitating towards the point where Customhouse Street met Basin. Played for real dollar bills while pretty girls danced with little or no clothes on, enticing rich white men from out-of-town to put paper money in a hat, make their choice, bring a girl up the stairs for an hour or a night. This boy was not a real musician-and too young to be a part of that scene, anyway. So he blew for nothing at Charley Hall’s every night, infringing on the ears and sensibilities of card players who were just drunk enough not to care.

A girl about the same age as the boy but three inches shorter sat cross-legged near his feet; the only female in New Orleans in-love-enough to venture into a joint like Charley’s. The whites of her eyes: nearly as yellow as her dress. Her hair: long, straight, black. Her skin: the color of coffee with a generous splash of cow’s milk. Sucking on a cigar butt and looking sick, she appeared utterly lost in the god-awful noise of the boy’s horn.

Being payday, the players were betting real money. Some pulled up ahead and some kept losing, but even on payday there’s never enough money to make anyone significantly richer or poorer in Orleans Parish. This was one of the few blessings of being poor in the Parish; not enough money to get mad about.

Marcus Nobody Special rarely had the cash to pay for his swallows, and so was fussing with Charley again. “This damn rotgut liquor ain’t worth more than a gravedigger’s bad credit anyhow.”

“If ya don’t like it ya can drink and not pay some-other-damn-where,” countered Charley, who poured Marcus a fresh snort just the same.