Louis Maistros - The Sound of Building Coffins

Mo maman li couri peche crab

Dodo, mo fille, crab dans calalou

Dodo, mo fille, crab dans calalou

March 15, 1906-New Orleans Item-page 9, column3:

VOODOO QUEEN MALVINA LATOUR DEAD AT AGE 100

Body remained undiscovered in Treme neighborhood for 10 days, says coroner

THE BODY of famed Voodoo Queen Malvina Latour was discovered in her Sixth Ward home on Monday. Badly decomposed, the Orleans Parish Coroner estimated that it remained undiscovered for up to ten days.

At 100 years of age, Miss Latour had become reclusive during the latter half of her life due to failing health. Malvina Latour had gained mild fame as the successor to the better known and more flamboyant Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, Marie Laveau. Miss Latour was the last of the great Voodoo Queens, an institution which has contributed significantly to the city’s tourism trade.

Miss Latour died with no surviving kin, her last living relation being a sister, Frances Latour, who died 53 years previously during the great yellow fever epidemic of 1853.

Services for Malvina Latour were carried out on Wednesday by Father Tony McFee, a Catholic priest, before a small group of neighbors and tourists at the Girod Street Potter’s Field. A light brunch was served afterwards featuring regional performers who donned Mardi Gras masks, danced with snakes, and played drums to commemorate the passing of this celebrated regional character.

March 28, 1906-New Orleans Item-page 8, column 4:

STRIKES MOTHER WITH PITCHER

Thinking that he was being drugged by his mother, Charles Bolden, a negro, living at 2302 First street, jumped out of bed yesterday afternoon while in a state of dementia and struck her over the head with a water pitcher.

Bolden, who is a musician, has been sick for some time. His mother was by his bedside yesterday afternoon giving him what succor she could when suddenly his mind was carried away with the belief that she was administering some deadly drug to him. Grabbing the water pitcher, he broke it over his mother’s head, inflicting a scalp wound, which was pronounced not serious.

In all his years on this earth, Marcus Nobody Special could not remember a more beautiful sunrise.

Deep orange clouds hung low in a frozen swirl to the east, with elaborate spatters flung overhead like wisps of disembodied flame, the sky itself bruised and yellow in streaks as if from the brush of a brilliant madman. The swirl of clouds did not look natural to Marcus, or perhaps looked too natural.

As natural as the hammer of God?

He pondered the question mightily and continued to do so until a sudden tug at his fishing line gave him a start. Getting jumpy in my old age , he thought.

“Trouble comin’,” he said aloud.

Marcus was suddenly aware of the sound of hammering, relentless and orderly as it echoed off the water from both sides of the river, combining into an uneasy rhythm, somehow familiar-

Bap. Bap-bap. Buh-bap, bap, buh-bap.

– and that rhythm caused his heart to sink. He knew it was only the sound of concerned fathers and husbands nailing boards over glass windowpanes, but to his tormented imagination it was the sound of building coffins.

He fixed his gaze purposefully on the salient clouds, paying no mind to the gentle but urgent activity at the other end of his fishing line. Just then, a wind began. The speed and force of it was mild like a breeze, but there was a heavy firmness to it, a certain change in atmosphere heralded by it, a change in the air itself associated with it. An electricity. A static warmth. It felt good on his cheek, like a mother’s caress.

“Trouble comin’. Lord, Lord.”

Time to move on. He had to get back to the potter’s field and make certain preparations. The tug at his line urged him to stay; just for a little while, just long enough to reel it in and have a look, check to see if it was his fish. After all these years he knew the possibility was slight. But there was still the possibility.

He pulled a small knife from his hip pocket and cut the line. “Sorry, son, if that’s you. Gotta go tend yer ma now. Gotta make sure she stay put if the water come.” A pause and a sniff. “Can’t risk losing you both.” The fish dived down deep with Marcus’ hook still in its mouth, the cut line trailing behind it like an endless tail.

When Marcus was a young man, before the War of the States, he’d seen his first flood in the Parish. The dead had risen that time-he among them-and for once the resurrection of water had been a blessing, not a curse. This time there would be no blessing. Today and tomorrow the dead must stay down. If not all, then at least one. He must tend to Maria’s grave, the mother of his only child. He must be there for her as she had been for him.

Marcus Nobody Special walked as briskly as his old legs would carry him towards the cemetery, his head hung low with worry. The storm was coming up fast with the rising sun, the wind gaining enough force that he nearly took a tumble once or twice along the way. By tomorrow afternoon, he reckoned, this city might be a different place altogether. By tomorrow evening, he reckoned, this place might be gone.

When he reached the cemetery’s lip he tipped his head to take one last glance at the sky. The strange turnings of his mind had melted the clouds into a screaming mouth-but no scream issued from its center, just the gentle hum of steady wind from all around.

And the sound of hammering.

Before the troubles, Malaria Morningstar had prided herself on being an early riser. Before the troubles, she’d witnessed each and every sunrise, had watched every morning fog lift with the rising sun. These were not things she missed now that she had discovered the drink.

The drink had turned her routine on its head-late to bed, late to rise. But also, the drink had protected her from the treacherous workings of her own mind. So much had been lost in one week, her family now removed from her completely. It was just too much.

Nearly noon, she stepped outside to discover a thick gray sky that retained a dim swath of orange; a gentle reminder of past sunrises, of who she once was. The same sky that had been wild and beautiful in the eyes of Marcus Nobody Special was unremarkable to her own-the inoffensive hue of an old dirty peach. What she did find remarkable was that the fog had remained kissing swamp so late in the morning, silently and stubbornly unlifted. The air was warm and moist against her skin, but she felt a dry chill. There’d been a time not long ago that she’d wished for a morning like this to come along; a morning that would begin a series of new and different mornings, no morning ever again the same-and she’d imagined that such a morning would be marked by unlifted fog. She shook the thought from her mind and went back inside.

The home she’d loved all her life had acquired new weight in recent days that now pressed down hard upon her soul, and so she found herself frequently leaving early for work; parking herself downstairs at the Eagle Saloon for long afternoons, sipping short glasses of rye till five o’clock rolled around and her shift upstairs at Odd Fellows began.

Today would be no different. She methodically folded and placed her work clothes in a canvas sack-short red dress, black high heels, a pair of six dollar stockings (one of nine pairs left behind at the Arlington House by Diphtheria)-then put on her mud-walking boots and left for the district, trudging through muck and unlifted fog, focused only on the thought of how wonderful the touch of a glass to her lips would feel once inside the bar.