Louis Maistros - The Sound of Building Coffins

This is neither the first nor the worst of the dying times in New Orleans. Nor will it be the last.

In this city there is a long and curious relationship with death, a closeness, a delicate truce. They say in New Orleans death is so close that the dead are mostly buried above ground, that the dead share altitude with the living. Death is so close here that parades are thrown in place of funerals, parades that begin with the solemnity of a dirge only to explode into joyous send-offs to God knows where. Reminders of life’s brevity are constant here, they are in the waters that surround, waters filled with glowing lights of joy and dread, invisible but there just the same. These lights are not visible for they are music; the music not audible in the usual way for it is a touch of the soul, both human and immortal. It’s a song that begins like all melodies, with a single note. It’s a song that resolves like all melodies, with a single note. Then starting again, a circle. And so they sing. Sing while there’s time. Life is short the world over, but the truth is more acute here and so life is lived as if endless. Here is where bad hands are played for all they’re worth. Here is where miracles come up from mud.

Marcus Nobody Special is very old and has acquired hard-earned knowledge of miracles and mud. He has long-known about the circle of the river, has witnessed its truth firsthand. There is a secret he has kept. He knows that in this place where death remains close there is no death at all, only rebirth.

The river flows on. Always, always.

Well, I’ll tell you since you asked nice, young fella. But truly, it ain’t no one’s damn ta-do except fer my own. Mm hmm.

Mostly what I’ll say is this here, so listen up:

Trouble ’round the potter’s field always start when folks get to dyin’ too quick. Come down to simple math, sonny. Too many bodies in too short a time equals bad news in the City of New Orleans.

I suppose it’s about time someone set the record straight on all that crazy talk anyhow, seeing’s how even the damn papers never got it right. Big fancy damn newspapers with all them fancy damn edjucated reporters writing words big enough to smash out a fella’s teeth and still can’t help but make it all up. Trine to make a dollar and a dime is all. So write it down and get it straight, mister. Sharpen up that damn pencil and get it right, yessir. Mm hmm.

Folks’ll try and tell ya I’s dead awhile.

Like to say being dead made me crazy, made me spend not enough time working in that potter’s field and too much time on this little piece of levee looking for a certain fish. Well, I’m looking fer that fish, yessir-most always will, I guess. But I ain’t been dead yet, me. It’s fun to believe in the spooky stuff and folks like to have their fun. The truth ain’t so dern spooky a’tall, really-but plenny ugly just the same.

I remember the day it start, the real bad dyin’ times. Yella fever times. Yessir. Walking home from the river one night in eighteen fitty-two, looped longways back to the semma-tree so’s I could pass by the cathouses on the Rue Dauphine. This a habit I been in since I done made the worst mistake of my life in breaking the heart of Coffee Maria. A mistake mostly because a sweeter, kinder, prettier little thing never did I see, but also because that same little Coffee Maria was the niece of Malvina Latour, a local hoodoo mambo in them days. I only broke things off with Maria on accounta the kinda work she be doing; laying down with other fellas in Auntie Jin’s sportin’ house. But hoodoo folk don’t take kindly to the broken hearts of their kin, no matter what the reasoning. So I figured ol’ Malvina had me marked for some mischief.

Weren’t no crib by a mile, that place. Real clean for a whorehouse and good enough money-but it still felt like sharing the woman I loved, which ain’t something I could ever cotton to with any sensa comfort.

Maria was working that night, and sitting on the steps outside when I passed. Pretty little head down in her hands, my Coffee Maria. Looking mighty blue, she.

“Evenin’, sweet child,” say me. “Some bad man treating you mean tonight? Want I should smash his head fer ya, lil darlin’?”

I startled her, but her mind always quick: “You mean someone meaner ’n you, Mr. Marcus Nobody Special?” First time anyone ever called me that.

“Doan be thataway, darlin’. You know yer my special gal. Always will.” True enough, that.

The hardness left her eyes: “Mama dead.”

“Ah, darlin’…”

“Got sick, died. Skin turned yella and hot. Talkin’ crazy then…I…I…just dunno…she got worse quick, stopped breathin’…oh, Marcus!”

“Oh, little baby.” I held her in my arms. Holding her close felt special good, made me feel like a regular heel enjoying it under the circumstances. But that little Coffee Maria sure was sweet; her tiny body trembling against my chest like a scared sparrow.

This was the first dyin’ from the yella fever sickness I heard of that year. But not the last. Wouldn’t stop ner slow by summer’s end. No sir, that killin’ fever’d keep up strong and steady straight through the year eighteen hunnert’n fitty-three, sure ’nuff. Mercy .

Well, eight months passed since the day Coffee Maria cried in my arms, that day her mama died. I kept wanting to go back to visit that little girl, to pay my respects and offer up some comfort. But I been busy. Bodies pilin’ up. Yella fever bodies.

Bodies.

Me and Black Jake handling things pretty good awhile, then it just got too much. Fever spread a lot quicker than usual that year, spread like wildfire; le quatres paroisses. Mayor Crossman lent a hand by loaning some chain gangs to work the semma-trees in the city proper. Nice to have the help, but those convicts sure is ornery. If that fool mayor really wanted to help, he’d let us burn ’em up, do it right. Be better for everyone. Burn ’em up and there ain’t no diggin’. Burn ’em up and they’s only ash. Burn ’em up and you don’t have to worry about the rain so much.

I hated to think of what’d happen to all those shallow buried bodies if a real good rain come up. Tried not to think about it, but I know the rains a-comin’. Then what?

I worried real hard on that one.

Bodies in the potter’s field ain’t so much buried as sunk, sonny. Hard enough to get ’em down, then you gotta worry bout keeping ’em down when the rain come. Sometimes keeping ’em down ain’t too hard-and sometimes ain’t too easy. Folks with money keep their dead above ground. Seal ’em in the fancy ’spensive tombs or shove ’em back in oven slabs. Ovens are best if a fella got some money but ain’t exactly rich. Year and a day’ll burn them bodies to dust nice and clean. You got a good oven slab, you can fit a whole lotta folks in one tomb, save yerself a pile of money over time.

One of them chain gang fellas a sin-ugly Frenchman called Girton. Short, stocky, mean fella. Real rabougri bajoe , he. Ugly and full of hate. Mm mm. Especially hate niggras-and really hate ol’ Marcus for being the field boss. When it come time to break up the chains to pick up the pace, I watch that Girton real close. Train that rifle on him good. Something about that boy just set my nerves to twitchin’.

Every morning me and Jake took turns going through the poor parts of town with the funeral cart, pickin’ up dead. Usually get a whole new batch every sun-up. Most folks pass at night, sonny. I guess it just feel more like quitting time with the sun down and gone.

Certain things I seen while collecting up dead from those country shacks sent me a chill. Seen whole little families holdin’ on tight to one another in a bed; deader’n coal, birds pickin’ at their shoulders. Little chilluns with looks of terror in their eyes, frozen in the heat, like they could see something terrible coming at ’em in their dyin’ moments. Lawdy.