Number Nine: Chapter 26

THE HEALING



FADE IN:

EXT. – NEW ORLEANS – UNDER A FREEWAY OVERPASS – NIGHT

We hear the boys from the lower ninth ward circled around a fire in a barrel singing.

Whole world tumbling like a rolling stone
Got to be peace someday
Every man for himself, every woman alone
Got to be peace someday

Whole world is crying
Too many people are dying…

EXT. – NEW ORLEANS – DISASTER MONTAGE – NIGHT AND DAY

Recovery efforts, helicopter rescues, and floating search and rescue teams interspersed with scenes of looting, crime, police abuse and general devastation. The boys are singing:

Our leaders promise to deliver hope
Got to be peace someday
But all they give us is a little rope
Got to be peace someday

Oh lord, won’t you hear my prayer
Whole world is crying
Don’t want a free ride, just a modest fare
Too many people are dying

Got to be peace someday
Got to be peace someday…



Like most everything else in New Orleans, the hospitals were not functioning. Ruby had to keep Jake alive the best she could until help arrived. On the third day, when she thought she would lose him, she met someone from the lower ninth who promised to deliver a message to the Monk that they desperately needed help.

Ruby prayed and Jake held on. Ruby sang and people recognized her voice. They gathered around her, gave her clean water, food, medicine, whiskey, advice – anything she thought Jake needed, anything that would ease the pain.

On the fourth day, a doctor from the lower ninth came calling. Unlike government officials, politicians or federal agencies, Monk was a man of his word. A couple of his men put Jake on a stretcher and carried him to a riverfront warehouse that was being converted to a makeshift clinic. Jake was its first patient.

“If he ain’t dead yet,” the doctor assured Ruby, “he ain’t going to die.”

Ruby stayed by his side until he could stand, until he could walk, and until he could be moved safely to a home in Gentilly. No one would be returning to the ninth ward for a very long time but the Monk was a man of his word.

Jake’s wound healed. The wounds of Katrina would not. Every man, woman and child who witnessed the tragic chain of events, took a solemn vow not to forget. The more they learned, the greater their discontent. People died, lost their homes, their livelihoods and the city that nurtured and defined them as much from government indifference and neglect as from a natural disaster. Shoddy engineering, substandard materials, negligent maintenance and politics as usual (poor people did not vote) led to levee failures and mass flooding that Katrina herself should not have caused. Rumors persisted that the levees were blown to relieve pressure and save the rich neighborhoods.

When they learned that a hurricane hitting New Orleans was among the highest ranking potential disasters in the nation yet little or nothing was done while billions went to a war that should never have been, they knew the war had come home.

The war had come home but the people of the lower ninth, Jefferson and Orleans parish were scattered with the four winds. For those lucky enough to land a substandard emergency trailer on a concrete lot outside Baton Rouge, Houston or Salt Lake City, New Orleans was a tortured memory and an open wound.

The city of jazz would never be the same.

For Jake, New Orleans was always foreign terrain. He respected her by instinct and loved her by necessity but only in time would she invade his desert soul and capture his heart. In time, he understood that the people of New Orleans were his brothers and sisters. Like the indigenous tribes of all nations, the land belonged to the people who lived, worked, cherished, suffered and died on it far more than their conquerors could comprehend.

They were the fruits of the land and their seeds had taken root. Their souls, their culture and ancestry, were intimately entwined with the land itself. New Orleans could not exist without them and they could not exist without New Orleans.

In time he came to love them as he did his blood family and they welcomed him as one of their own. In time he would come to know New Orleans as his home and though he would always return to the land that shaped and nurtured his soul, he would carry her with him wherever he went and she would never leave him alone.

When he was well enough, Jake lent his hand in rebuilding New Orleans from the ground up, repairing her broken bones, closing her wounds, easing her mind, soothing her soul, and as she regained her strength, he regained his and Ruby regained her own.

She was legendary before Katrina; after Katrina, her legend soared like an eagle in Grand Canyon. She turned down offers from record executives and high-powered Madison Avenue agents. She gave her career to the man who saved her man. Monk was a man of his word.

She refused money gigs at casinos and tourist traps, preferring a little jazz joint just outside the Quarters. If people wanted to see and hear Ruby Daulton, they had to find their way; they had to visit the real New Orleans. They had to be guided by a local or a cabbie who would look them over, sound them out and either show them the way or tell them she was a ghost, a legend who did not really exist.

Some said she channeled the soul of Lady Day but, like Billie and Bessie and Ella and Etta, she had a style all her own. Her versions of Don’t Explain, My Man, Blind Girl, St. Louis Blues, Backwater Blues and Strange Fruit carried a quiet, lilting quality that soothed and comforted the beaten, downtrodden and dispossessed souls of survivors.

Southern trees bear strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees…

Ruby sang the blues and New Orleans slowly healed.

On quiet nights, with the ghosts of Katrina still hovering in the liquid darkness, all of New Orleans turned out the lights and listened with their collective heart. Jake took his seat at a corner table, joining Bones, Monk and the Marquis, and cried for a city still struggling to survive.

The city cried with him.

There were tears of sorrow for all the hardships that had befallen them, tears of mourning for those who were lost, and tears of joy in knowing they had survived to lead the country in the great healing.

The people would not allow New Orleans to die.

Ruby was New Orleans and she could not be defeated by a hundred hurricanes or a thousand years of misfortune. After all that had happened, she was still standing, defiant and strong. She survived to thrive and prosper with Jake by her side.

Them that’s got shall get
Them that’s not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news
Mama may have, papa may have
But God bless the child that’s got his own…

Ruby sang and the seed of hope, the seed of courage and endurance, was planted in fertile ground.