Louis Maistros - The Sound of Building Coffins

“Wake up, now,” said Buddy Bolden as he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her from the precipice. With Malaria safely behind him, he held up his weapon-a battered cornet-and waved it wildly at Jim’s floundering figure in the waters below.

“I ain’t consented to the sale of this horn!” he shouted.

Jim’s head bobbed in and out of the turbulent surf, his arms splashing wildly. His mouth opened to say something but was muffled by a low wave as the current carried him sideways to Perdido Street, then off towards Basin before the undercurrent pulled him down and under.

Buddy followed Malaria to the front of the building where the others had grouped together in a shivering clump. She pulled Buddy’s head down to her own, kissed his forehead and said, “Thank you, my God, thank you.”

Buddy pulled away. “Don’t thank me, Malaria. I owe your sister at least that much.” His eyes wandered briefly, searchingly. “You got no idea what I done.”

“I always thought so poorly of you,” Malaria confessed. “I never thought that you had it in you to-”

“If you want to thank me, just get through this.” Buddy glanced up at the deteriorating section of roof above their heads. “I’m afraid this old building about to come down altogether. Hope you can swim all right.”

“I can swim,” she confirmed.

Black Benny hunkered down to Buddy’s side and said with a rare smile, “Man, you sure whacked that kid good!”

Buddy smiled faintly and lifted Malaria’s hand into Benny’s. “Take care of this one,” he told Benny. “She’s last of the good hearts. The last of the Morningstars.” Then he turned to Malaria. “Your father’s house likely done and gone now. But you gotta make it through this so’s you can build it back up, make some new Morningstars and go on.”

“Okay, Buddy. All right, but-”

“Now, if you’ll pardon me,” he interrupted, “I got some business to tend.”

Buddy inched his way towards the precipice, staying close to what remained of the inside wall.

“What’s he doing?” Malaria’s eyes widened with concern.

“Hell if I know,” said Benny.

With cornet in hand, Buddy furthered himself across the narrow remainder of floor that led to the building’s missing rear section. A cast iron spiral staircase that normally led to the roof’s railed observation deck dangled loosely from the remaining side wall, and Buddy waited for a steady gust to help carry him across before attempting the leap.

Malaria screamed as he jumped, tried to get up and after him-but Benny held her firm.

Buddy clung expertly to the swinging stairs without dropping the cornet, then carefully ascended to the wall’s top edge. He crawled with his chest low, snaking his way to the flat roof of the adjoining building next door. Gradually making his way back to the Rampart Street side, he crossed back over to the Oddfellows’ building-positioning himself protectively on the section of remaining roof that hung over the heads of Malaria and the others. The decorative concrete railing that framed the front of the building like a crown remained wholly intact, and Buddy braced himself against it, pulling himself up to one knee.

The view from here was arresting. With fists of rain pelting his back, he watched helplessly as the storm ripped wood and brick structures asunder before him, nothing untouched or unharmed as far as the eye could see.

He watched the city disassemble and drown, but felt no despair at the sight of it. What went through his mind was not, “Everything is gone.” What went through his mind was, “How long to return?” What he saw before him was an open question, not a final statement. The question itself not a mere manifestation of hope, but a realization:

As the city dies, so the city is reborn.

Buddy held tight to his cornet, gave her a gentle kiss. Then he remembered why he’d climbed to this precarious spot.

“Can’t undo what’s done anymore than I can bring my family back, but maybe can have a hand in keeping things from getting any worse.” He held the cornet near his lips. “Now, if I can just remember that tune.”

The song came out.

The melody soared above him into the tumultuous gray, and he thought of Typhus, the youngest of the Morningstars, a man in the shape of a boy. Remembered his troubled eyes, the eternal longing in them. Buddy hadn’t known Typhus well, but he knew the meaning of eyes like that.

He blew on:

Jesus I’m troubled about my soul

Ride on Jesus come this way

Troubled about my soul

The notes came out two octaves higher than he had intended.

The notes held, dipped, leapt and crashed. But didn’t crash.

Saved .

The sky moaned angrily as the rolling tide belched up the bobbing head of Jim Jam Jump once more. The kid shouted up to Buddy, frothing like a lunatic; “Rat clap-a-tap map flap cut cat! Yeah, Buddy, I got my eye on you, got my ding dang eye all over yer sorry drunken ass! Gimme back my dang horn, you! I paid fer it fair and square! Jim jam scram hucka lucka zucka zig! Jeeka bye boo times two!”

Buddy lowered the horn from his lips in wonder. “Well, if that don’t beat all,” he said. “The tenaciousness of that brat.” Then, for the benefit of the kid:

“I ain’t consented to the sale of this horn, so I’m keepin’ her! Just you try and stop me!”

The wind died momentarily, enough for Buddy to rise up on two feet before resuming play:

The devil is mad and I am glad

He lost one soul that he thought he had

Troubled about my soul, Lord

Troubled about my soul

The waters around Jim came alight; diffused at first, then focused and gathering to a point of orange intensity directly behind him. Buddy shielded his eyes against the glare, unable to look away. From the light’s center burst the shape of a man, rising up as a phoenix from the foam.

The able but slightly transparent arms of Dropsy Morningstar wrapped hard around the neck and shoulders of Jim Jam Jump. Dropsy put his lips close to Jim’s ear, whispered, “That’ll be quite enough, pardna,” then pulled down. Orange light blinked out entirely as the two went under. Buddy collapsed across the roof, the cornet loosely in his grasp, the thing formerly ripped from his soul having returned in force-as a lost melody is recalled in time.

A ray of moonlight pierced the clouds, but the storm raged on.

The first of them to rise were among the cemetery’s newest residents; casualties of loose soil not yet packed down by sun and years. Less than a hundred yards from the spot where Marcus Nobody Special had cursed, threatened and prayed to the spirit of Malvina Latour, the body of young West Bolden slipped up and into the rolling muddy surf.

The dead rose by the dozen that night and continued to do so on the morning after, their faces muddy, blank, violated, lost-but not Maria.

Maria stayed down.

The river flows on, as it always has and will.

Beneath bright blue sky a cloud like an immense dome mushrooms above the Girod Street Potter’s Field, formerly known as Cimetiere des Heretiques due to its Protestant history. The fishing pole of Marcus Nobody Special lies temporarily unattended, waiting. There is much to be done. The storm has made it so. So much is changed, so much the same. The search for a certain fish is interrupted but not ended.

In New Orleans, bodies buried in the ground come up in times of hard rain and flooding. After the storm there is much work needs doing, but it is cleansing work. Long-term wounds have festered, neglected for decades, their washing now begun as there is no other way but to move forward when so much is lost. Finally to heal, to begin again. As the waters subside, bodies of the living and the half-living are mingled with those of the dead. Communities near and far have banded together to search for and retrieve souls nearly lost, those clinging to life, waiting for their turn to be recalled or sent on to reward. The dead, new and old, will be tended to later-buried, burned or sunk-and will be tended then only by family and friends, by survivors, by the ones who knew them, who loved them, who hated them, who had forgotten them, but are reminded. Never to forget again, not until their own dying time.