Louis Maistros - The Sound of Building Coffins

Diphtheria suddenly found the energy required for long sentences: “You sicken me. You don’t even bother to come to the boy’s send-off, you show up here drunk as a skunk, you grope my friend’s fat backside right in front of me, wave around a fistful of ten dollar bills like the King of France, then act as if the last nine years never happened. Get out .”

“Now, look here.” The charming smile, now gone. “I ain’t gonna stand for that kinda talk. I’m somebody now. I’m an important man around-”

“Get out! Out, damn you, out!”

“Don’t worry, un petit , I get it. Workin’ girl like you don’t cotton to the idea of givin’ it away. Maybe you’ll appreciate a little business. Well, I can pay. Don’t you worry ’bout that-”

“You bastard! Leave me alone! Get out of here or I’ll-”

“What? What you gonna do? Huh?”

“I’ll, I’ll-”

“Fancy whore like you probably gettin’ two hunnert dollars a fuck anyhow. No wonder you ain’t impressed.” Buddy threw the twenty tens on the bed and pulled the covers off Diphtheria. She struggled, but he was stronger than she.

Yanking open his pants with one hand and pulling her nightgown up with the other, Buddy balanced his weight between straddling knees as his head pressed against the pillow blowing rye-heavy air into her eyes and nostrils. The smell of it made her queasy.

Diphtheria hit and kicked and squirmed and tried to push him off, but he only seemed energized by the struggle, by the friction of mutual rage. As he clamped his mouth over her own, she thought for sure she would throw up-but not having eaten in two days, she had nothing but dry heaves to offer. Successfully loosening a wrist from his hard grip, she grabbed a wine glass from the bedside table as he penetrated her, shattering it against the side of his head. His eyes went dead with rage as blood trickled down his cheek to the corner of his mouth. His hands slammed to her throat, his lips pulled back over clenched teeth like a mad dog. Yellow teeth, mixed with red.

The pressure against her throat intensified with each thrust of his hips; into her, into her. She felt her eyes bulge and her tongue swell as her lungs pulled for air, getting none. Her fists bounced off his shoulders and head as she twisted her body violently, thinking that in his drunken state he might lose his balance and topple to the floor-but he remained steady.

A drop of blood fell from his lower lip into her open mouth. Her mind raced. And she thought of a sailor. Diphtheria’s left hand pulled at the inch and a half of hair on Buddy’s head. Her right hand reached beneath the mattress.

At first she couldn’t feel it-but she stretched and wiggled her fingers till she found the handle’s edge. It was the same knife she’d used to deliver the sailor, back in her crib days. She’d never needed it since her arrival on Basin Street, but she’d always kept it at the ready, just in case.

Touching its handle while staring into Buddy’s cold eyes made her remember-his eyes as black now as the sailor’s had been then. When the sailor had come to end her life, she’d been ready to die. In that moment she’d seen the sailor as an angel of mercy, an angel come to deliver her from a miserable existence-but something had kept her from letting go. A thought or a sound had told her to use the knife. She struggled to remember what her reason had been for living then-back when things weren’t nearly so bad as they were now.

touching death with fingertips, caressing its cheek, kissing its nose, its music tickling her ears. The music was familiar and telling, its voice gentle and firm. It was the sound of Buddy’s horn…

Remembering.

Buddy had been her saving grace the night the sailor came to call. The sound of his horn, lingering in her mind, had whispered unprovable wisdoms and promises of love. Buddy had been her angel, not the sailor.

Buddy was her angel today, too-but a different kind.

The horn was gone now, its music too. Diphtheria could not recall a note of it, maintained no real recollection of it whatsoever. There was no miraculous melody left, no wisdoms or promises to give voice. Her only child was dead. Her love all spent. But her angel had returned to deliver a final mercy.

She gave the knife handle a gentle stroke with her index finger, but left it where it lay beneath the mattress. No longer did she struggle or pull at Buddy’s hair. Instead she caressed him, wishing he didn’t look so angry, that he might understand everything was all right.

That he might kiss her goodbye. Gently, one last time.

Unaware of her heart’s acceptance, Diphtheria Morningstar’s stubborn lungs resolved to pull in one last breath.

As the calisaya tea wrought its havoc upon his body, Typhus’ bike became increasingly difficult to maneuver. By the time he’d rolled onto Chartres Street he found himself forced to abandon it altogether and complete his journey on foot. Typhus had always been very protective of his beloved bicycle, but today such protective inclinations felt the stuff of fools. Nothing mattered now but the matter at hand. He pulled the burlap sack from the basket of the fallen bicycle and got moving.

The small hill of the levee seemed steeper today than Typhus remembered it, and from its toppermost point he noted just how far down the pier his little rebirthing island was. It’d seemed so much closer before, but before today he’d always made his approach on bicycle-and with a body not full of poison. Descending the river side of the levee, he silently thanked his father’s God for the added speed offered by gravity-but gratitude quickly tempered with regret as his feet tangled beneath him. The weird pain of calisaya amplified excruciatingly in the subsequent tumble.

Even in the fall, the burlap bag never loosened from Typhus’ grip. When he finally found himself standing above the island’s edge, Typhus lay flat on his stomach with his chin resting at the boardwalk’s edge. Staring at sand and grass four and a half feet below, he worked out various scenarios of lowering himself to the island with minimal pain. The sad verdict came quickly-in his present condition there was no way down but to fall, and so fall he did. Mercifully, he landed on his back, but the deceptively soft-looking patch of saw grass met him with a stinging collection of thin, red lines that streaked his naked back and shoulders. Finding he could no longer support himself on his feet, Typhus shoved his way through the brush of the sandbank on all fours. Bleeding from the outside and dying from the inside, he was now more determined than ever to reach his sacred spot before letting go the second little life inside him.

To his little beach by the river, to his rebirthing beach.

A song in his head played along the way:

Jesus I’m troubled about my soul…

Vegetation soon thinned and sand prevailed. Typhus’ vision was failing, but the clear and soothing hum of river-along with the accompanying warmth of its breeze-told him he’d reached his destination. He let himself fall to his side in a fetal position; breathing hard, the sweat of his body mixing with his blood, the mixture turning sticky-brown beneath the beating sun. A shallow tide swelled meekly from the river, sending a cool sheet of water across sand to kiss his grounded shoulder. Typhus felt peace for a moment, but the moment soon dissolved into a sharp, percussive shriek that shot up through his throat. The pain in his belly crescendoed then receded with the tide, and during those moments in-between where water and agony fell away, Typhus mustered the strength to reach into his bag. With careful but shaking hands, he placed torn bits of photographic paper face up on the smooth sand, just out of the tide’s reach. He assembled Lily quickly-more quickly than he imagined he could-then lay the bag over top to protect her from wind and river spray. The tide would take Lily tonight in its own sweet time. Typhus had done what he could.