NINE O’CLOCK AT BURGANDY
FADE IN:
EXT. – LOWER NINTH WARD – SUNSET
An ominous, dark and beautiful sunset sky zooms in to the number 927 on the porch column of Jake’s just purchased safe house in the lower ninth ward.
INT. – PRIEUR STREET HOUSE – SUNSET
Holding a shot glass with a green liquid, MONK offers a toast to JAKE, fitted in a classy dark suit, jazz hat and fitted with a fake goatee, for his plot to free RUBY from PALE LOUIE’S underground prison. Two women and seven men, all African American, join them in a circle, as Ruby’s bootleg recording plays in the background (Bessie Smith’s BACKWATER BLUES).
When it thunders and lightning and the wind begins to blow…
FADE OUT MONK’S BAR, FADE IN:
INT. – BURGANDY UNDERGROUND – NIGHT
RUBY on stage in a pool of light sings.
Well it thundered and lightened and the winds began to blow
Well it thundered and lightened and the winds began to blow
There was a thousand poor women, didn’t have no place to go…
Fade scene.
Monk made good on his word and Jake made good on his. Bones took him to the bus station, where he retrieved his bags and a briefcase full of cash, and returned him to his two-story safe house at 927 Prieur Street, where Monk and his people had cleaned and furnished the upstairs, leaving the street floor barren.
Money was counted and exchanged and Monk introduced six men (Bones was the seventh) and two women who could be counted on to carry out Jake’s plan – as long as it did not entail killing Pale Louie – on that they would have no part.
They were street people, musicians, hustlers and gophers, who got along just fine with a little help from their friend, the Monk. Consequently, they had a sense of loyalty bordering on devotion. If Monk ordered them to kill Pale Louie they would try to talk him out of it but failing that, they would give it their best shot.
Monk had too much respect for the ways of the underground to give such an order, no matter what Louie was rumored to have done. There was not enough money in New Orleans to order that hit and Louie knew it.
Monk had intimate connections with the underground of which Louie was a central figure and used them to collect three invitations to the Burgandy House underground where Ruby Daulton was being hailed as the new voice of New Orleans.
Monk provided Jake appropriate attire, a dark jazz funeral-style suit, with a fake goatee to serve as disguise, a couple of escorts in bright red gowns and a Cadillac limousine with Bones as the driver. He was required to appear at the street level entry of Burgandy House precisely at nine o’clock – three minutes later, he would not be admitted. It was Pale Louie’s way of keeping a low profile. There would never be a crowd outside his doors.
After a short lull, the rain resumed its pounding, jackhammer beat and the wind swept through the streets like a lost highway on the high plains, alternating from a whistle to a scream, foreshadowing the storm to come.
She had a name now and she was pounding the Yucatan peninsula, triggering mudslides that buried whole villages of poor people who were accustomed to disasters. With nowhere else to go and no one to welcome or assist them, they would build again until the next disaster struck. As always, it would only be a flicker on the nightly television screens of wealthy nations. Maybe the Red Cross would send aid, maybe not. Maybe that assistance would reach the people, more than likely not.
They would survive.
The boys on the corner of Reynes and Prieur, drenched and huddled against the wall of a local market, sang with the rhythm of the pounding storm, the words arriving with the wind and the pouring rain.
Rain came down like a runaway train
Listen to the pouring rain lord
Listen to the pouring rain
Jake and his escorts climbed in their limousine at precisely 8:30 and the driver measured his route, pausing at safe locations inside the Quarters, timing their arrival for an appointment with destiny.
Plaquemine preacher said a prayer today
Listen to the pouring rain lord
Listen to the pouring rain…
Jake presented his embossed invitations to the doorman and they were immediately directed through an expansive, chandeliered greeting room, furnished in seventeenth century New Orleans with magnificent erotic paintings, sculpture and objects of affection. They followed up a winding wrought iron staircase to an equally lavish waiting room, where they were seated and served cocktails while the eyes of Louie Marchant examined them through the magic of modern surveillance technology.
Louie insisted on personally approving every visitor to the underground, especially now that he possessed the most prized jewel of New Orleans.
Having seen nothing but a fleeting shadow of a ghost by the name of Jake Jones, Louie had no reason to be alarmed. He and his entourage were typical of the clientele that Monk sent his way.
The doors of an antique elevator opened, the attendant bowed and welcomed them to the underground. As they entered a cavernous concert hall, its walls lined with blue velvet curtains, its furnishings striking a contrast in carved wood and red velvet against a gray marble floor with gold and red oriental carpets, they were politely asked if they had any weapons and escorted through an x ray machine.
They were shown to a table half back from the stage and off center to the right. The attendant bowed again and refused a hundred dollar tip as an old black sax player in a jazz quartet finished a set inspired by John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman.
The dim lighting was raised a notch as Jake ordered two bottles of Cabernet and a liter of Absinthe, the elixir of poets and artists. The waiter accepted his gratuity with a smile and left them to their own means of pleasure.
Jake examined the surroundings, noting the exquisite balcony boxes high above the floor, each with a gentleman or two in evening attire and at least two pale skinned women of rare porcelain beauty, laughing politely and bathing their guests with gentle grace.
He noted where the velvet curtains parted, clearing a path for the ventilation system to pull smoke filled air out and pump clean air in.
The stage, where the musicians were busy loading their equipment as technicians prepared for the next act, was large and deep with elaborate theatre lighting and red velvet curtains.
The crowd, seated at tables and along two bars at either side of the hall, was mostly white while the stagehands and help, except for the attending porcelain women, was almost entirely black. The hall was nearly full and hushed with whispered anticipation.
Applause started and grew to an ovation as the master of ceremonies, a striking man familiar to everyone in the underground, a man who went by his title only, emerged from off stage and approached a standing mike.
Jake recognized him at a glance.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” announced the Marquis. His initial focus tipped the location of Pale Louie in his balcony perch to Jake’s right, close to the stage where three of his favorite porcelain beauties leaned out for a better view.
“We have arrived at that point in the evening you have all anticipated. I present for your pleasure, the wondrous, the exquisite, the incomparably passionate jewel of New Orleans: Ms Ruby Daulton!”
The curtains parted, exposing Ruby in a full blue velvet gown, leaning on a stool with her head bowed and her eyes closed. The crowd swooned and some began to cry before she even raised her head.
Ruby sang.
What has happened down here is the winds have changed
Clouds rolled in from the north and it started to rain
Rained real hard and it rained for a real long time
Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline…
For the first time Jake understood what was about to happen. Ruby had drilled beneath the layers of revelry and good times and jazz and centuries of culture tuned to moss and stone and secret knowledge of spirits and voodoo magic. Ruby, in her altered state, had arrived at the core, at the very heart of New Orleans. She knew without knowing that something very big was coming and her name was Katrina.
Ruby sang.
Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re trying to wash us away
They’re trying to wash us away…
He understood as well that Ruby was not in immediate danger from her captor. She was drugged or stoned and her feet were not planted on solid ground but Pale Louie would not harm her. She was his prize, his treasure, his most precious possession, and he would risk his own life to protect her or to stop anyone who tried to take her from him.
The river rose all day
And the river rose all night
Some people got lost in the flood
Some people got away alright…
By the time Ruby finished the song even the waiters were choking back tears, struggling to maintain decorum. In New Orleans, decorum must be maintained but they knew too well what was happening. They all knew. The Randy Newman song was written about the hurricane of 1927 but it might have been written in 1912, 1913, 1935, 1947, 1965, 1969 or tomorrow. Everyone knew.
Ruby composed herself, allowing her audience to regain its composure as well. She looked out across the sea of dark, barely visible faces and fixed for only a moment on Jake. A sorrow was drawn on her expression beyond anything he had seen before. She was reaching through the looking glass, swimming through the liquid green vision of an ancient brew, and trying to recall the face and the place but unable to remember anything beyond the feeling. She mouthed a song title to her piano man and he began to play.
Ruby sang.
It cost me a lot
But there’s one thing that I’ve got
It’s my man…
Cold or wet
Tired, you bet
All of this I’ll soon forget
With my man…
Jake pulled himself from a trance that threatened him with paralysis and politely asked a bartender to direct him to a restroom. He walked down a blue velvet corridor and came face to face with a familiar figure.
“We meet again,” said the Marquis.
Jake was startled but hardly surprised. He felt no fear. Whatever fears he once harbored, they were buried and transformed by his devotion and determination to his cause. The Marquis opened a curtain, revealing a stone chiseled passage that opened to the underground and led to virtually everywhere in the Quarters, extending outward like tentacles to the outer parishes.
They stepped behind the curtains before the Marquis continued.
“If you think Louie did not notice where Ruby fixed her gaze, you are a bigger fool than I am for helping you.”
Oh, my man, I love him so
He’ll never know
All my life is just a spare
But I don’t care
When he takes me in his arms
The world is bright
All right
What’s the difference if I say
I’ll go away
When I know I’ll come back
On my knees someday
For whatever my man is
I’m his forevermore
Ruby sang from the depths of her infinite soul and all of New Orleans welcomed her to its warm and loving eternal embrace.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Number Nine: Chapter 22
MICE AND MEN
FADE IN:
EXT. – KATRINA IN FLORIDA – DAY
Palms bend, cars float, rooftops and debris fly in a hurricane wind. An anonymous voice sings an adaptation of Randy Newman’s LOUISIANA 1927.
President Bush came down in a big airplane
Met a little white man with a notebook in his hand
President say to the little white man: Ain’t it a shame
What the storm has done to this poor jungle land…
Ruby’s voice takes over, singing.
Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re trying to wash us away
They’re trying to wash us away…
Scenes of destruction continue amidst media updates tracking the storm into the Gulf toward New Orleans. Fade slowly to black. We hear the rain like a jackhammer building to a crescendo.
Number nine, Number nine, Number nine…
It was not in Jake’s nature to abandon anyone in a crisis and even if it were, he would not abandon his companions now. They were Monk’s people and they were at risk.
The last time he trusted the Marquis on the Mississippi Queen, he ended up unconscious in a Memphis hotel. He had little choice back then and he no better options now. This was supposed to be a trial run. His intention was to map the layout, scout security measures and observe their reaction to a staged disruption in the streets. His intention was to use their patterns of behavior and exploit their weaknesses. His intentions died with the realization that Pale Louie had spotted him.
He had no choice but to level with the Marquis and hope for the best. Despite their prior exchange or perhaps because of it, there was something about the Marquis that pulled him into his confidence. Jake did not trust many by raw instinct but he wanted to trust the Marquis. Even though he was drugged and planted in a Memphis hotel, it was not a betrayal of trust; it was business. The Marquis made good on his gambling debt and provided the clues he needed to track Ruby down. He had kept his faith with Pale Louie but he had also assisted Jake when he might have dumped him in a black water grave.
It was more than that. It was how the Marquis regarded Ruby – with as much respect and dignity as circumstances allowed. Like all of New Orleans, like Pale Louie himself, the Marquis was in love. Unlike his master, he did not wish to possess the object of his desire; he wished to win her by his manner and his deeds.
Jake quickly explained the situation and laid out a plan. He would return to the concert and take his seat. It was half past the hour. At precisely 9:45, there would be a series of explosions and a great deal of commotion on Burgandy Street. No one would be hurt but several explosives would be placed in sewer lines so it would register in the concert hall.
They were counting on a rush of security to street level and, in the ensuing commotion and panic, Jake would grab Ruby from the stage while the Marquis escorted his companions to the underground passage. They would count on the Marquis to lead them to the surface.
The Marquis did not like to improvise. He had survived in a chaotic and dangerous world by caution and methodical calculation but there was no time for contingencies. Against his better judgment, he agreed and Jake walked calmly back to his table.
He re-entered the hall, whispered instructions to his companions, who played it cool, as if it was understood, as if nothing could surprise them in the sorry world of chaos and disorder, a world of indifference to suffering, a world that dished out trouble more often than not, and a world that was going to get real hard real fast. Outside the rain was pounding like the drumbeat of destiny.
As the clock inched forward toward the moment of deliverance, Ruby began singing the same song he had heard on the streets in the lower ninth ward. She was in her own universe, sheltered and protected, but she was somehow connected to the outside world as if by a spiritual umbilical cord. Ruby sang and most everyone in the hall joined in. They were all connected. They were all one.
Rain come down like a runaway train
Listen to the pouring rain lord
Listen to the pouring rain…
Ruby saw what they saw, felt what they felt and knew what they knew.
Levees gonna break like a shotgun blast
Listen to the pouring rain lord
Listen to the pouring rain
Get out now and get out fast
Listen to the pouring rain
Listen to the pouring rain…
At that moment, as if on cue, an explosion rang out, sounding like it came from within the hall, shattering all sense of order and safety, leaving them a sliver away from total panic and anarchy.
The band stopped playing and Ruby stopped singing, her expression of wonder as if awakening from one dream and entering another where the pieces did not fit.
A large man with a private security badge took the stage and instructed the crowd to remain seated and calm when a volley of explosions, more muted and distant, rang out from above. The man repeated his orders as security personnel ran to hidden stairwells and a first wave of the crowd rushed toward the elevator. Punches thrown, screams, yelling and Jake saw his chance, breaking for the stage as the security chief joined his guards fighting back the mob.
He felt Pale Louie’s focus as he grabbed Ruby by the shoulders and stared into her eyes. She did not recognize him. She did not know who he was. She knew he was someone familiar and warm but she could not place him and she was unwilling to follow him.
“Number nine,” said Jake. “Number nine.”
Ruby remembered knights on white horses, princes in fairy tales and guardian angels. She remembered Jake and let go.
He carried her from the stage and dashed down the aisle, down the hallway and behind the curtain to the passage where he was pleased to find the Marquis and his companions waiting. He asked Ruby if she could walk, holding her as she stood. The Marquis produced a vial and instructed her to sniff. It steadied her and cleared her mind enough to answer “yes.” She could walk. If need be, she could run.
They began walking as fast as Ruby could manage through a maze of dark tunnels, illuminated by a small flashlight the Marquis garnered from the bar. In the distance behind them, they could hear someone yelling and someone pursuing. They quickened their pace, Ruby and Monk’s ladies hiking their skirts and holding their shoes in their hands.
They took a sudden turn and another until it seemed they were backtracking and Jake became wary. He grabbed the Marquis’ shoulder and pulled him close.
“On your honor,” demanded Jake. “Is this the way out?”
The Marquis nodded and Jake believed him. They were circling to lose the hunters who appeared to be closing the distance between them. On a gamble that Louie was not among them, the Marquis led them to a hiding place, a closed space with a false wall concealing its presence, he whispered for them to be silent and they waited until the sound of their pursuers came and went. They waited until they could be sure they were not returning, and then proceeded in another direction to a stairwell that lifted them from the underground into a back alley in the Quarters.
Monk’s women cursed and railed at the stars, the pounding rain and the howling wind. Ruby folded into Jake’s arms, painting his face with a lover’s kisses. The Marquis politely withdrew, descending once again into the underground where he would attempt to cover his trail.
He would now find out who was a better poker player: himself or Pale Louie.
They called Bones and stayed out of sight until the limousine showed and honked twice. The women took turns telling their stories on the ride back to the safe house on Prieur. Ruby fell asleep on Jake’s shoulder while Jake looked into the future.
He was worried: worried that things had not gone as planned, worried that Louie would track them down, worried that Monk and his people were in trouble because of him, and worried that the storm would destroy them all.
The boys were still singing when they reached Prieur Street and several more had joined them with rubber boots and yellow slickers. Ruby awakened and smiled as she heard them sing.
Floodwater trap like a ball and chain
Listen to the pouring rain lord
Listen to the pouring rain
It was too late to get out. The roads were closed off. The trains were not running. Everyone still in New Orleans was here for the long haul, for better or for worse.
No one here going to be the same
Katrina was her name lord
Katrina was her name…
Ruby was feeling fine. She was safe and secure in the arms of her lover, her hero, her guardian angel. Everything was right with the world and dreams really do come true.
FADE IN:
EXT. – KATRINA IN FLORIDA – DAY
Palms bend, cars float, rooftops and debris fly in a hurricane wind. An anonymous voice sings an adaptation of Randy Newman’s LOUISIANA 1927.
President Bush came down in a big airplane
Met a little white man with a notebook in his hand
President say to the little white man: Ain’t it a shame
What the storm has done to this poor jungle land…
Ruby’s voice takes over, singing.
Louisiana, Louisiana
They’re trying to wash us away
They’re trying to wash us away…
Scenes of destruction continue amidst media updates tracking the storm into the Gulf toward New Orleans. Fade slowly to black. We hear the rain like a jackhammer building to a crescendo.
Number nine, Number nine, Number nine…
It was not in Jake’s nature to abandon anyone in a crisis and even if it were, he would not abandon his companions now. They were Monk’s people and they were at risk.
The last time he trusted the Marquis on the Mississippi Queen, he ended up unconscious in a Memphis hotel. He had little choice back then and he no better options now. This was supposed to be a trial run. His intention was to map the layout, scout security measures and observe their reaction to a staged disruption in the streets. His intention was to use their patterns of behavior and exploit their weaknesses. His intentions died with the realization that Pale Louie had spotted him.
He had no choice but to level with the Marquis and hope for the best. Despite their prior exchange or perhaps because of it, there was something about the Marquis that pulled him into his confidence. Jake did not trust many by raw instinct but he wanted to trust the Marquis. Even though he was drugged and planted in a Memphis hotel, it was not a betrayal of trust; it was business. The Marquis made good on his gambling debt and provided the clues he needed to track Ruby down. He had kept his faith with Pale Louie but he had also assisted Jake when he might have dumped him in a black water grave.
It was more than that. It was how the Marquis regarded Ruby – with as much respect and dignity as circumstances allowed. Like all of New Orleans, like Pale Louie himself, the Marquis was in love. Unlike his master, he did not wish to possess the object of his desire; he wished to win her by his manner and his deeds.
Jake quickly explained the situation and laid out a plan. He would return to the concert and take his seat. It was half past the hour. At precisely 9:45, there would be a series of explosions and a great deal of commotion on Burgandy Street. No one would be hurt but several explosives would be placed in sewer lines so it would register in the concert hall.
They were counting on a rush of security to street level and, in the ensuing commotion and panic, Jake would grab Ruby from the stage while the Marquis escorted his companions to the underground passage. They would count on the Marquis to lead them to the surface.
The Marquis did not like to improvise. He had survived in a chaotic and dangerous world by caution and methodical calculation but there was no time for contingencies. Against his better judgment, he agreed and Jake walked calmly back to his table.
He re-entered the hall, whispered instructions to his companions, who played it cool, as if it was understood, as if nothing could surprise them in the sorry world of chaos and disorder, a world of indifference to suffering, a world that dished out trouble more often than not, and a world that was going to get real hard real fast. Outside the rain was pounding like the drumbeat of destiny.
As the clock inched forward toward the moment of deliverance, Ruby began singing the same song he had heard on the streets in the lower ninth ward. She was in her own universe, sheltered and protected, but she was somehow connected to the outside world as if by a spiritual umbilical cord. Ruby sang and most everyone in the hall joined in. They were all connected. They were all one.
Rain come down like a runaway train
Listen to the pouring rain lord
Listen to the pouring rain…
Ruby saw what they saw, felt what they felt and knew what they knew.
Levees gonna break like a shotgun blast
Listen to the pouring rain lord
Listen to the pouring rain
Get out now and get out fast
Listen to the pouring rain
Listen to the pouring rain…
At that moment, as if on cue, an explosion rang out, sounding like it came from within the hall, shattering all sense of order and safety, leaving them a sliver away from total panic and anarchy.
The band stopped playing and Ruby stopped singing, her expression of wonder as if awakening from one dream and entering another where the pieces did not fit.
A large man with a private security badge took the stage and instructed the crowd to remain seated and calm when a volley of explosions, more muted and distant, rang out from above. The man repeated his orders as security personnel ran to hidden stairwells and a first wave of the crowd rushed toward the elevator. Punches thrown, screams, yelling and Jake saw his chance, breaking for the stage as the security chief joined his guards fighting back the mob.
He felt Pale Louie’s focus as he grabbed Ruby by the shoulders and stared into her eyes. She did not recognize him. She did not know who he was. She knew he was someone familiar and warm but she could not place him and she was unwilling to follow him.
“Number nine,” said Jake. “Number nine.”
Ruby remembered knights on white horses, princes in fairy tales and guardian angels. She remembered Jake and let go.
He carried her from the stage and dashed down the aisle, down the hallway and behind the curtain to the passage where he was pleased to find the Marquis and his companions waiting. He asked Ruby if she could walk, holding her as she stood. The Marquis produced a vial and instructed her to sniff. It steadied her and cleared her mind enough to answer “yes.” She could walk. If need be, she could run.
They began walking as fast as Ruby could manage through a maze of dark tunnels, illuminated by a small flashlight the Marquis garnered from the bar. In the distance behind them, they could hear someone yelling and someone pursuing. They quickened their pace, Ruby and Monk’s ladies hiking their skirts and holding their shoes in their hands.
They took a sudden turn and another until it seemed they were backtracking and Jake became wary. He grabbed the Marquis’ shoulder and pulled him close.
“On your honor,” demanded Jake. “Is this the way out?”
The Marquis nodded and Jake believed him. They were circling to lose the hunters who appeared to be closing the distance between them. On a gamble that Louie was not among them, the Marquis led them to a hiding place, a closed space with a false wall concealing its presence, he whispered for them to be silent and they waited until the sound of their pursuers came and went. They waited until they could be sure they were not returning, and then proceeded in another direction to a stairwell that lifted them from the underground into a back alley in the Quarters.
Monk’s women cursed and railed at the stars, the pounding rain and the howling wind. Ruby folded into Jake’s arms, painting his face with a lover’s kisses. The Marquis politely withdrew, descending once again into the underground where he would attempt to cover his trail.
He would now find out who was a better poker player: himself or Pale Louie.
They called Bones and stayed out of sight until the limousine showed and honked twice. The women took turns telling their stories on the ride back to the safe house on Prieur. Ruby fell asleep on Jake’s shoulder while Jake looked into the future.
He was worried: worried that things had not gone as planned, worried that Louie would track them down, worried that Monk and his people were in trouble because of him, and worried that the storm would destroy them all.
The boys were still singing when they reached Prieur Street and several more had joined them with rubber boots and yellow slickers. Ruby awakened and smiled as she heard them sing.
Floodwater trap like a ball and chain
Listen to the pouring rain lord
Listen to the pouring rain
It was too late to get out. The roads were closed off. The trains were not running. Everyone still in New Orleans was here for the long haul, for better or for worse.
No one here going to be the same
Katrina was her name lord
Katrina was her name…
Ruby was feeling fine. She was safe and secure in the arms of her lover, her hero, her guardian angel. Everything was right with the world and dreams really do come true.
Number Nine: Chapter 23
KATRINA’S WRATH
FADE IN:
EXT. – GREATER NEW ORLEANS – ARIEL VIEW – NIGHT
Hurricane Katrina approaches New Orleans and Gulf coast. ZOOM IN on the lower ninth ward: A house on North Prieur Street where RUBY rests in JAKE’S arms on a tattered sofa, an eerie silence and the illumination of a single lantern.
EXT. – MONTAGE: WAR AND PEACE – NIGHT AND DAY
The wet, glimmering, silent streets of New Orleans, subdued drinking in the Quarters, blackouts in the outer parishes, juxtaposed by scenes from the Iraq War, the Golden Mosque shattered, Abu Ghraib, Humvees exploding, wailing mothers, blood, death and destruction contrasting with presidential addresses and retired generals pimping the war effort.
We hear Ruby singing a slow, dark version of Cat Steven’s PEACE TRAIN.
I’ve been crying lately
Thinking about the world as it is
Why must we go on hating?
Why can’t we live in bliss?
Fade to the sound of the wind and rain slowly becoming calm.
They say there is a calm before a storm takes the full measure of her wrath and so it was in the lower ninth ward on the night Katrina hit. Before the lights went out, before the television screens went blank, before the radios went silent and all electronic forms of communication went dead, the news was good.
At the last moment, Katrina veered north, hitting sparsely populated land between New Orleans and Biloxi. One man’s good fortune is another’s bad but, in terms of sheer numbers, it was a majestic blessing that New Orleans would be spared.
On any other night, with rumors of Armageddon, a city on the edge of panic, and every criminal mind looking for advantage, Pale Louie would have remained in the dry and secure confines of castle in the Quarters until the storm passed and order was restored.
But this was not any other night. Louie’s rage rattled the chandeliers and sparked a fury of activity in Burgandy House. Ruby was gone, stolen from him while he watched helplessly from his balcony perch. His pride, his wonder, his second lease on life, his jewel, his one true glimpse of perfection was gone and he could not shake the nauseating sense that someone on the inside had to assist this Indian voodoo spirit guide.
How did they escape the underground so quickly and so sure?
He had already reviewed the surveillance tapes. It was not difficult to spot Jake Jones and his companions. Despite some effort at disguise – false plates, wigs, phony moustache – it was not difficult to identify the driver of the Cadillac limousine that deposited him at Burgandy House as a man who often served the interests of the Monk.
Louie’s contacts on the streets reported a black Cadillac limousine heading out of the Quarters not long after the explosion shook the underground.
All signs pointed to the lower ninth ward.
With the storm and all that had transpired, it would not be possible to track down the Monk tonight. He would be in hiding, as concerned for Katrina and the lawlessness that would surely follow, as he was for Louie.
Revenge would have to wait.
Aside from everything else, his best man the Marquis had taken it on his own initiative to seek refuge on the Queen. By the time Louie contacted him, he was already heading north to wait out the storm.
He would settle that score later as well.
Louie personally led a small army of loyal soldiers down to the lower ninth. They pounded on doors, knocking them down when necessary, looking for Jake or Ruby or Bones or the Monk or anyone who knew, saw or heard anything about the black Cadillac limousine that carried Ruby away.
The people were already frightened, huddled together in bathrooms, closets, beneath tables and door jams, anywhere they thought would protect them from Katrina’s wrath. They knew Pale Louie or they knew of him and when they saw his face, like a vampire in their darkest nightmare, they took it as an omen, a foreshadowing of doom.
They would have told him anything.
“I ain’t seen nothing, boss,” said a woman with three small children, cramped in a hall closet when Louie’s men broke in.
A towering black man, whose empathy had long ago abandoned him in Louie’s charge, raised the back of his hand and a child spoke up.
“I did,” he said. “Down on Prieur Street. We seen ‘em driving down on Prieur, a big black limo.”
He pointed in the direction of Reynes Street and Louie narrowed his search.
It was long past midnight when Louie and his men in a small fleet of sports utility vehicles arrived at the corner of Reynes and Prieur. The neighborhood was almost entirely dark and silent except for the wind and the pounding rain.
Louie walked to the center of the intersection, looked up and saw him: The shadow of a man pacing on the second story of a house at 927 Prieur. He smiled at how easily he had hunted down his prey.
Revenge would carry a heavy price. Jake Jones would not die quickly. He would know the kind of pain no man should ever know, even in his darkest dreams, until he told everything he could tell. Then he would suffer more.
Louie rationalized that it was only good business. Those who crossed him, defied his wishes, insulted or betrayed him would know that the consequences were merciless and severe. The truth was: Louie was a sadistic monster who enjoyed the face, the sounds and the vision of pain.
He savored the moment, anticipating, visualizing what was about to happen, raising his hand and instructing his men to close ranks behind him.
Jake opened the curtain above and felt a river of terror wash over him.
Louie smiled as their eyes met for the first time.
Something was happening. A sound like a ship ripped from its bearings broke through the howling wind and the rain. Louie’s men looked around in horror. The high pitched, screaming sound of metal beams twisting and bending rose and the ground beneath the street, beneath the houses and buildings began to quake.
Jake saw the terror that only moments ago entered his soul, rendering him helpless, filling him with paralyzing fear, transferred to the soul of Pale Louie.
He could not move as a blast shattered the quiet, unsuspecting neighborhood. It was the sound of the levee breaking replaced in an instant with the sound of a river swallowing the streets of the lower ninth.
Louie and all his men were swept away like rats in sewer water. The floodwaters of the Industrial Canal would batter them against concrete, brick walls, road signs, houses, cars and uprooted trees, until it found its crest and backtracked, carrying Louie in the undercurrent back down the canal, depositing his lifeless corpse in the waters of Lake Pontchartrain where a thousand souls, victims of Louie’s life of revenge, waited to welcome him home.
Ruby awakened in horror and rushed to Jake’s side, clinging to him for strength and courage as they watched the floodwaters roll in like a thundering train, rising until it seemed no one would get out alive.
When the rising waters stopped short of sweeping them away, when it seemed the house would hold on to its foundation, when the shaking and roar subsided, Ruby cried and Jake held her firm. Ruby cried for New Orleans and all the people who were not as lucky as they were and would not survive the night. Ruby cried for a world and a god and a lifetime that could create such an endless chain of nightmares and suffering.
Ruby cried and all of New Orleans went into mourning.
Someday, not so far into the future, when the wounds of that night were beginning to heal, the boys of Prieur Street would hear the story and sing:
Pale Louie dead and gone
Didn’t leave no one to moan
Pale Louie dead and gone
Didn’t leave no one to mourn
Look out yonder where the levee gave way
Pale Louie dead and gone
You can see Pale Louie floating away
Pale Louie dead and gone
Look out yonder where the levee gave way
Pale Louie dead and gone
You can see Pale Louie in a watery grave
Pale Louie dead and gone
Pale Louie dead and gone
Didn’t leave no one to pray
Pale Louie dead and gone
There ain’t much more to say…
FADE IN:
EXT. – GREATER NEW ORLEANS – ARIEL VIEW – NIGHT
Hurricane Katrina approaches New Orleans and Gulf coast. ZOOM IN on the lower ninth ward: A house on North Prieur Street where RUBY rests in JAKE’S arms on a tattered sofa, an eerie silence and the illumination of a single lantern.
EXT. – MONTAGE: WAR AND PEACE – NIGHT AND DAY
The wet, glimmering, silent streets of New Orleans, subdued drinking in the Quarters, blackouts in the outer parishes, juxtaposed by scenes from the Iraq War, the Golden Mosque shattered, Abu Ghraib, Humvees exploding, wailing mothers, blood, death and destruction contrasting with presidential addresses and retired generals pimping the war effort.
We hear Ruby singing a slow, dark version of Cat Steven’s PEACE TRAIN.
I’ve been crying lately
Thinking about the world as it is
Why must we go on hating?
Why can’t we live in bliss?
Fade to the sound of the wind and rain slowly becoming calm.
They say there is a calm before a storm takes the full measure of her wrath and so it was in the lower ninth ward on the night Katrina hit. Before the lights went out, before the television screens went blank, before the radios went silent and all electronic forms of communication went dead, the news was good.
At the last moment, Katrina veered north, hitting sparsely populated land between New Orleans and Biloxi. One man’s good fortune is another’s bad but, in terms of sheer numbers, it was a majestic blessing that New Orleans would be spared.
On any other night, with rumors of Armageddon, a city on the edge of panic, and every criminal mind looking for advantage, Pale Louie would have remained in the dry and secure confines of castle in the Quarters until the storm passed and order was restored.
But this was not any other night. Louie’s rage rattled the chandeliers and sparked a fury of activity in Burgandy House. Ruby was gone, stolen from him while he watched helplessly from his balcony perch. His pride, his wonder, his second lease on life, his jewel, his one true glimpse of perfection was gone and he could not shake the nauseating sense that someone on the inside had to assist this Indian voodoo spirit guide.
How did they escape the underground so quickly and so sure?
He had already reviewed the surveillance tapes. It was not difficult to spot Jake Jones and his companions. Despite some effort at disguise – false plates, wigs, phony moustache – it was not difficult to identify the driver of the Cadillac limousine that deposited him at Burgandy House as a man who often served the interests of the Monk.
Louie’s contacts on the streets reported a black Cadillac limousine heading out of the Quarters not long after the explosion shook the underground.
All signs pointed to the lower ninth ward.
With the storm and all that had transpired, it would not be possible to track down the Monk tonight. He would be in hiding, as concerned for Katrina and the lawlessness that would surely follow, as he was for Louie.
Revenge would have to wait.
Aside from everything else, his best man the Marquis had taken it on his own initiative to seek refuge on the Queen. By the time Louie contacted him, he was already heading north to wait out the storm.
He would settle that score later as well.
Louie personally led a small army of loyal soldiers down to the lower ninth. They pounded on doors, knocking them down when necessary, looking for Jake or Ruby or Bones or the Monk or anyone who knew, saw or heard anything about the black Cadillac limousine that carried Ruby away.
The people were already frightened, huddled together in bathrooms, closets, beneath tables and door jams, anywhere they thought would protect them from Katrina’s wrath. They knew Pale Louie or they knew of him and when they saw his face, like a vampire in their darkest nightmare, they took it as an omen, a foreshadowing of doom.
They would have told him anything.
“I ain’t seen nothing, boss,” said a woman with three small children, cramped in a hall closet when Louie’s men broke in.
A towering black man, whose empathy had long ago abandoned him in Louie’s charge, raised the back of his hand and a child spoke up.
“I did,” he said. “Down on Prieur Street. We seen ‘em driving down on Prieur, a big black limo.”
He pointed in the direction of Reynes Street and Louie narrowed his search.
It was long past midnight when Louie and his men in a small fleet of sports utility vehicles arrived at the corner of Reynes and Prieur. The neighborhood was almost entirely dark and silent except for the wind and the pounding rain.
Louie walked to the center of the intersection, looked up and saw him: The shadow of a man pacing on the second story of a house at 927 Prieur. He smiled at how easily he had hunted down his prey.
Revenge would carry a heavy price. Jake Jones would not die quickly. He would know the kind of pain no man should ever know, even in his darkest dreams, until he told everything he could tell. Then he would suffer more.
Louie rationalized that it was only good business. Those who crossed him, defied his wishes, insulted or betrayed him would know that the consequences were merciless and severe. The truth was: Louie was a sadistic monster who enjoyed the face, the sounds and the vision of pain.
He savored the moment, anticipating, visualizing what was about to happen, raising his hand and instructing his men to close ranks behind him.
Jake opened the curtain above and felt a river of terror wash over him.
Louie smiled as their eyes met for the first time.
Something was happening. A sound like a ship ripped from its bearings broke through the howling wind and the rain. Louie’s men looked around in horror. The high pitched, screaming sound of metal beams twisting and bending rose and the ground beneath the street, beneath the houses and buildings began to quake.
Jake saw the terror that only moments ago entered his soul, rendering him helpless, filling him with paralyzing fear, transferred to the soul of Pale Louie.
He could not move as a blast shattered the quiet, unsuspecting neighborhood. It was the sound of the levee breaking replaced in an instant with the sound of a river swallowing the streets of the lower ninth.
Louie and all his men were swept away like rats in sewer water. The floodwaters of the Industrial Canal would batter them against concrete, brick walls, road signs, houses, cars and uprooted trees, until it found its crest and backtracked, carrying Louie in the undercurrent back down the canal, depositing his lifeless corpse in the waters of Lake Pontchartrain where a thousand souls, victims of Louie’s life of revenge, waited to welcome him home.
Ruby awakened in horror and rushed to Jake’s side, clinging to him for strength and courage as they watched the floodwaters roll in like a thundering train, rising until it seemed no one would get out alive.
When the rising waters stopped short of sweeping them away, when it seemed the house would hold on to its foundation, when the shaking and roar subsided, Ruby cried and Jake held her firm. Ruby cried for New Orleans and all the people who were not as lucky as they were and would not survive the night. Ruby cried for a world and a god and a lifetime that could create such an endless chain of nightmares and suffering.
Ruby cried and all of New Orleans went into mourning.
Someday, not so far into the future, when the wounds of that night were beginning to heal, the boys of Prieur Street would hear the story and sing:
Pale Louie dead and gone
Didn’t leave no one to moan
Pale Louie dead and gone
Didn’t leave no one to mourn
Look out yonder where the levee gave way
Pale Louie dead and gone
You can see Pale Louie floating away
Pale Louie dead and gone
Look out yonder where the levee gave way
Pale Louie dead and gone
You can see Pale Louie in a watery grave
Pale Louie dead and gone
Pale Louie dead and gone
Didn’t leave no one to pray
Pale Louie dead and gone
There ain’t much more to say…
Number Nine: Chapter 24
WAR ZONE
FADE IN:
EXT, -- NEW ORLEANS – DAY
We see scenes of destruction, disorder and chaos in the aftermath of Katrina: Bodies floating, women crying, dogs running, children pleading for help, cars overturned, trees uprooted, homes destroyed, on and on.
INT. – AIR FORCE ONE – DAY
We see the president looking out the window of Air Force 1, surveying the damage below. Cut to the president with FEMA Director Michael Brown. The president says, “You’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie.”
EXT. – SUPERDOME – DAY
The people, ushered to the Superdome, are pleading for water and food. A CNN reporter looks into the camera, shaking his head: “Where is the National Guard?” Footage of Katrina destruction continues as we hear John Fogerty’s FORTUNATE SON.
Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Ooh, they’re red white and blue.
And when the band plays hail to the chief
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, lord
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son, son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no…
Fade song. Fade scene to black.
The politicians kept warning the people that the war would follow us home someday. Looking out over the destruction in morning light, Jake wondered if it already had.
It was a war zone. The decimation was so complete, it was a miracle anyone had survived. It was a miracle their house was left standing. All around them, block after block in the lower ninth, from the Claiborne Bridge to Florida Avenue and beyond, homes were reduced to rubble, cars overturned in fallen trees, bodies floating face down in waters mixed with a toxic brew of sewage, gas and chemicals. Power lines were down and barges from the Industrial Canal deposited where homes used to be.
Ruby stood by Jake’s side, holding tight to choke back her tears. She had already spent them all in a night of horrors, when the only sounds were people crying, dogs yelping and isolated gunshots against a wall of thick, watery silence. Nobody slept.
They spent most of the morning sitting on the upstairs balcony, absorbing the breadth of destruction, watching planes and helicopters survey the damage and survivors making their way to nearby Claiborne Bridge. They were too near the levee break for casual visitors, the putrid water settling at six or more feet and brewing in the lilting sun. There were no rescue efforts here, not in lower ninth where the people were mostly black and poor.
Here in the lower ninth, they were safe from looters and criminal gangs. Of the seven parishes of Greater New Orleans, St. Bernard was low on the list of treasures to be looted and the lower ninth was in a class by itself.
By noon, the liquid heat was debilitating and they knew they had to get out. If they remained where they were, they would die of hunger, thirst or disease. They would die because no one thought or cared to rescue them.
With only cursory knowledge of the terrain, they were mapping out a plan with pencil on paper when Bones floated up on a yellow life raft with another in tow. He looked a hundred years older but he wore a smile of deep relief that Jake and Ruby were still alive.
He threw a rope ladder up and climbed it rather than wade through the toxic mix. He offered bottles of drinking water before he sat down with an expression of doom.
“Well, I’ve got good news and bad but I won’t lie, it’s mostly bad.”
“What could be worse than this,” said Ruby with a gesture to the desolation surrounding them, stretching as far as they could see.
Bones gazed at her with genuine admiration. Like most of the jazz legends that made their mark in the Big Easy, she was even more impressive up close and in the flesh.
“Looking at you and Jake here,” he replied, “ I am reminded it could be a lot worse. We all heard what happened with Pale Louie and we’re hoping its true.”
Jake assured him Louie was as dead as a fly wrapped in a widow’s web.
“That’s the good news,” said Bones. “Here’s the bad.”
He gave them the lowdown, straight and sober. Most of New Orleans, all of St. Bernard and Orleans parishes, was under water. Monk had survived but a lot of his people were dead. His mama was sick and hurt. His grandma was old, weak and needed her medicine.
“He got to get down there,” said Bones.
Jake and Ruby understood. They were on their own.
They all felt bad there wasn’t more they could do but in New Orleans blood family came first. Bones himself had family scattered in the flood zones and figured he would spend the better part of a week tracking them down and seeing to their needs.
The word on the street was the police were no different than anyone else was: They abandoned their duty to take care of their own. The police were only a sliver better than street thugs anyways. It was anarchy. It was everyman and everywoman for themselves.
“Monk says if you live through it, he’ll do all he can to help you rebuild. He sent you these here things.”
He pulled up a large bundle with bottled water, a change of clothes and walking shoes for Ruby, a good flashlight, a canister of butane, canned food, a Swiss army knife and a battery powered pump for the raft.
“You’re going to need these here things,” he explained. “Whatever you do, you don’t want to stay here. If you ain’t dead already when the water dries up, they just as soon bulldoze your house with you in it. You want to live and you damn well better, you got to get out of the lower ninth. They don’t call this Arabi for nothing.”
Jake and Ruby did not ask what he meant. They knew. Anyone in the lower ninth was presumed a criminal low life just like anyone Arab was presumed a terrorist. Time was too short to fully appreciate the ironies but they were as rich as an insurance executive’s bank account.
“Most of the people is heading for the Superdome or the Convention Center.”
Bones stretched out a map and laid out a route down Claiborne to Interstate 10, explaining that the interstate was high enough to be dry but everything else except the bridge over the Industrial Canal was flooded. They could walk down the interstate to the Superdome.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Heard some bad things but I don’t know any other alternatives. Soon as I round up my own, we’ll be heading out the same way.”
Ruby suggested that they team up and go together but Bones was still shaking his head only more so.
“Family ain’t like me,” he said. “They don’t trust no strangers and they ain’t about to travel with a white woman as pretty as you. Don’t matter who you are.
“One more thing,” he said quietly. “You got a gun?”
Jake pulled Ruby’s small caliber pistol out of his pocket.
“That’s nice,” said Bones as he unwrapped a .350 magnum with a box of bullets.
“Take it,” he demanded. “You’re going to need it. You don’t know what New Orleans is like when the lights go down. Don’t trust nobody. Not the police, not the rescue workers, not the army, no one.
“Monk says hide your money – if you got any left – but take it with you. Don’t let nobody be searching you and if you got to show your gun, be ready to use it.”
It was a hard lesson but it had to be said and there was no time to put it in gentle terms. If they wanted to live, they would have to get hard fast. What else was new? Their whole lives seemed a preparation for the next trial, the next crisis or the next tragedy.
They shared a moment of clarity, looking out at the devastation and Bones choked up, his eyes welling with tears. Ruby embraced him, steadied him and held him to the solid ground of his people. They all understood. It was time to be strong for all the people who could not be strong, for all the ones that would break under the strain. It was time for the strong to stand.
Bones must have apologized a dozen times before he was satisfied they understood and would do the same. He left with the smile that set him apart from most everyone else, feeling a lot better than when he came.
Ruby had the shakes of withdrawal from the drugs Pale Louie fed her but she would do her share. She could always count on an inner strength when she needed it and it seemed she needed it often.
It was near dusk when they were packed and ready to roll: a crescent moon over the crescent city and a mix of swarming insects with the still sweltering heat was almost unbearable yet it would only get worse.
They floated over to the Claiborne Bridge. The currents of the canal were much too strong to ford so they dragged the raft over the bridge and resumed paddling east through the streets of St. Bernard, stopping to talk and exchange stories along the way.
They refused to take on passengers. It was hard but the people who asked, always for someone else, an elderly woman or a child, always understood. It was the danger of rescuing a drowning man. It was the uncertainty of where they were headed and whether it would be any better than where they were. If a child or an old woman is going to die anyway, it was better they should die in the arms of someone they knew and loved. The people knew but they had to ask and Jake and Ruby had to refuse with a promise to send help if they could.
It was late and they were dragging when they reached the interstate. Even in the dim light of a last quarter moon, what they had seen filled their hearts with sorrow. They traded the raft for a shopping cart and made camp with hundreds, maybe thousands of others, on the high, dry concrete ground over New Orleans.
Huddled together, Ruby’s shakes ebbing and flowing without a word of complaint, they heard explosions and saw dark clouds rising over the darkened city. The only sign of life, beside the abandoned masses, came from the south where the French Quarters and the Garden District illuminated like a beacon of hope.
Isolated bursts of gunfire and darkness reigned. Fear and helplessness were palpable. The heartbeat of the city of jazz was muted and dim. They took turns pretending to sleep, all the while reflecting, absorbing, comprehending and knowing:
This was what it was like to live with war.
Number nine, Number nine, Number nine…
FADE IN:
EXT, -- NEW ORLEANS – DAY
We see scenes of destruction, disorder and chaos in the aftermath of Katrina: Bodies floating, women crying, dogs running, children pleading for help, cars overturned, trees uprooted, homes destroyed, on and on.
INT. – AIR FORCE ONE – DAY
We see the president looking out the window of Air Force 1, surveying the damage below. Cut to the president with FEMA Director Michael Brown. The president says, “You’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie.”
EXT. – SUPERDOME – DAY
The people, ushered to the Superdome, are pleading for water and food. A CNN reporter looks into the camera, shaking his head: “Where is the National Guard?” Footage of Katrina destruction continues as we hear John Fogerty’s FORTUNATE SON.
Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Ooh, they’re red white and blue.
And when the band plays hail to the chief
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, lord
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son, son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no…
Fade song. Fade scene to black.
The politicians kept warning the people that the war would follow us home someday. Looking out over the destruction in morning light, Jake wondered if it already had.
It was a war zone. The decimation was so complete, it was a miracle anyone had survived. It was a miracle their house was left standing. All around them, block after block in the lower ninth, from the Claiborne Bridge to Florida Avenue and beyond, homes were reduced to rubble, cars overturned in fallen trees, bodies floating face down in waters mixed with a toxic brew of sewage, gas and chemicals. Power lines were down and barges from the Industrial Canal deposited where homes used to be.
Ruby stood by Jake’s side, holding tight to choke back her tears. She had already spent them all in a night of horrors, when the only sounds were people crying, dogs yelping and isolated gunshots against a wall of thick, watery silence. Nobody slept.
They spent most of the morning sitting on the upstairs balcony, absorbing the breadth of destruction, watching planes and helicopters survey the damage and survivors making their way to nearby Claiborne Bridge. They were too near the levee break for casual visitors, the putrid water settling at six or more feet and brewing in the lilting sun. There were no rescue efforts here, not in lower ninth where the people were mostly black and poor.
Here in the lower ninth, they were safe from looters and criminal gangs. Of the seven parishes of Greater New Orleans, St. Bernard was low on the list of treasures to be looted and the lower ninth was in a class by itself.
By noon, the liquid heat was debilitating and they knew they had to get out. If they remained where they were, they would die of hunger, thirst or disease. They would die because no one thought or cared to rescue them.
With only cursory knowledge of the terrain, they were mapping out a plan with pencil on paper when Bones floated up on a yellow life raft with another in tow. He looked a hundred years older but he wore a smile of deep relief that Jake and Ruby were still alive.
He threw a rope ladder up and climbed it rather than wade through the toxic mix. He offered bottles of drinking water before he sat down with an expression of doom.
“Well, I’ve got good news and bad but I won’t lie, it’s mostly bad.”
“What could be worse than this,” said Ruby with a gesture to the desolation surrounding them, stretching as far as they could see.
Bones gazed at her with genuine admiration. Like most of the jazz legends that made their mark in the Big Easy, she was even more impressive up close and in the flesh.
“Looking at you and Jake here,” he replied, “ I am reminded it could be a lot worse. We all heard what happened with Pale Louie and we’re hoping its true.”
Jake assured him Louie was as dead as a fly wrapped in a widow’s web.
“That’s the good news,” said Bones. “Here’s the bad.”
He gave them the lowdown, straight and sober. Most of New Orleans, all of St. Bernard and Orleans parishes, was under water. Monk had survived but a lot of his people were dead. His mama was sick and hurt. His grandma was old, weak and needed her medicine.
“He got to get down there,” said Bones.
Jake and Ruby understood. They were on their own.
They all felt bad there wasn’t more they could do but in New Orleans blood family came first. Bones himself had family scattered in the flood zones and figured he would spend the better part of a week tracking them down and seeing to their needs.
The word on the street was the police were no different than anyone else was: They abandoned their duty to take care of their own. The police were only a sliver better than street thugs anyways. It was anarchy. It was everyman and everywoman for themselves.
“Monk says if you live through it, he’ll do all he can to help you rebuild. He sent you these here things.”
He pulled up a large bundle with bottled water, a change of clothes and walking shoes for Ruby, a good flashlight, a canister of butane, canned food, a Swiss army knife and a battery powered pump for the raft.
“You’re going to need these here things,” he explained. “Whatever you do, you don’t want to stay here. If you ain’t dead already when the water dries up, they just as soon bulldoze your house with you in it. You want to live and you damn well better, you got to get out of the lower ninth. They don’t call this Arabi for nothing.”
Jake and Ruby did not ask what he meant. They knew. Anyone in the lower ninth was presumed a criminal low life just like anyone Arab was presumed a terrorist. Time was too short to fully appreciate the ironies but they were as rich as an insurance executive’s bank account.
“Most of the people is heading for the Superdome or the Convention Center.”
Bones stretched out a map and laid out a route down Claiborne to Interstate 10, explaining that the interstate was high enough to be dry but everything else except the bridge over the Industrial Canal was flooded. They could walk down the interstate to the Superdome.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Heard some bad things but I don’t know any other alternatives. Soon as I round up my own, we’ll be heading out the same way.”
Ruby suggested that they team up and go together but Bones was still shaking his head only more so.
“Family ain’t like me,” he said. “They don’t trust no strangers and they ain’t about to travel with a white woman as pretty as you. Don’t matter who you are.
“One more thing,” he said quietly. “You got a gun?”
Jake pulled Ruby’s small caliber pistol out of his pocket.
“That’s nice,” said Bones as he unwrapped a .350 magnum with a box of bullets.
“Take it,” he demanded. “You’re going to need it. You don’t know what New Orleans is like when the lights go down. Don’t trust nobody. Not the police, not the rescue workers, not the army, no one.
“Monk says hide your money – if you got any left – but take it with you. Don’t let nobody be searching you and if you got to show your gun, be ready to use it.”
It was a hard lesson but it had to be said and there was no time to put it in gentle terms. If they wanted to live, they would have to get hard fast. What else was new? Their whole lives seemed a preparation for the next trial, the next crisis or the next tragedy.
They shared a moment of clarity, looking out at the devastation and Bones choked up, his eyes welling with tears. Ruby embraced him, steadied him and held him to the solid ground of his people. They all understood. It was time to be strong for all the people who could not be strong, for all the ones that would break under the strain. It was time for the strong to stand.
Bones must have apologized a dozen times before he was satisfied they understood and would do the same. He left with the smile that set him apart from most everyone else, feeling a lot better than when he came.
Ruby had the shakes of withdrawal from the drugs Pale Louie fed her but she would do her share. She could always count on an inner strength when she needed it and it seemed she needed it often.
It was near dusk when they were packed and ready to roll: a crescent moon over the crescent city and a mix of swarming insects with the still sweltering heat was almost unbearable yet it would only get worse.
They floated over to the Claiborne Bridge. The currents of the canal were much too strong to ford so they dragged the raft over the bridge and resumed paddling east through the streets of St. Bernard, stopping to talk and exchange stories along the way.
They refused to take on passengers. It was hard but the people who asked, always for someone else, an elderly woman or a child, always understood. It was the danger of rescuing a drowning man. It was the uncertainty of where they were headed and whether it would be any better than where they were. If a child or an old woman is going to die anyway, it was better they should die in the arms of someone they knew and loved. The people knew but they had to ask and Jake and Ruby had to refuse with a promise to send help if they could.
It was late and they were dragging when they reached the interstate. Even in the dim light of a last quarter moon, what they had seen filled their hearts with sorrow. They traded the raft for a shopping cart and made camp with hundreds, maybe thousands of others, on the high, dry concrete ground over New Orleans.
Huddled together, Ruby’s shakes ebbing and flowing without a word of complaint, they heard explosions and saw dark clouds rising over the darkened city. The only sign of life, beside the abandoned masses, came from the south where the French Quarters and the Garden District illuminated like a beacon of hope.
Isolated bursts of gunfire and darkness reigned. Fear and helplessness were palpable. The heartbeat of the city of jazz was muted and dim. They took turns pretending to sleep, all the while reflecting, absorbing, comprehending and knowing:
This was what it was like to live with war.
Number nine, Number nine, Number nine…
Number Nine: Chapter 25
BRIDGE TO FREEDOM
FADE IN:
EXT. – DISASTER-WAR MONTAGE – NIGHT AND DAY
As before, we see scenes of devastation from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan juxtaposed with scenes of desperation in New Orleans after Katrina. We hear the voice of Neil Young from the album LIVING WITH WAR.
I’m living with war in my heart
I’m living with war in my heart in my mind
I’m living with war right now
Don’t take no tidal wave
Don’t take no mass grave
Don’t take no smoking gun
To show how the west was won
But when the curtain falls, I pray for peace
Try to remember peace…
The song fades, replaced by John Lennon’s YER BLUES from the White Album.
EXT. – INTERSTATE 10 – ARIEL VIEW – DAY
We see the abandoned multitudes of Katrina victims walking toward the Superdome. ZOOM IN to Jake and Ruby among them.
Yes, I’m lonely wanna die
Yes, I’m lonely wanna die
If I ain’t dead already
Girl you know the reason why
The eagle picks my eye
The worm he licks my bone
I feel so suicidal
Just like Dylan’s Mr. Jones…
EXT. – SUPERDOME – DAY
The masses, standing outside the Superdome, plead desperately for help.
Jake and Ruby walked with the multitudes, like a giant serpent, in one direction, one mind, one heart, one soul, toward the Superdome, towering in the distance like a desperate prayer.
Along the previous day’s journey and during the night, they heard stories, each grimmer than the last, about what was going down in the Superdome.
In the back of his mind, Jake knew it was a false prayer, a prayer to a false god or rather to men in power that did not carry the interests of the people in their hearts. One look at Ruby and he knew she was thinking the same thing: They had to find another way.
They had to get away from the mindless throng being herded like cattle to an enclosed space where they could be watched and controlled. It was like the Cherokee, rounded up and herded into cattle yards before the long walk on the trail of tears to the unwanted lands of Oklahoma. The scattered police and guards were not there to protect them or show them the way; they were there to keep them from escaping.
The last thing the authorities wanted was a mass infusion of desperately poor, homeless, sick and dying people into the French Quarters, where adventuresome tourists celebrated Katrina’s wrath, or the Garden District where the privileged remained relatively dry and well.
When they came to where the people were being ushered off the highway, Jake and Ruby kept going. A guard in plain clothes ordered them to stop. Ruby offered an excuse that they had relatives in Audubon and when Jake slipped him a hundred dollar bill, he let them pass.
They headed south by southeast along the expressway, the liquid heat pounding them down with every step until they had to stop, get off the concrete furnace, rest, drink and eat from their diminishing supplies.
Leaving the expressway, they traveled west into the lush, green grounds of the Garden District where private security guards constantly questioned them and warned them to keep walking.
They were joined along the way by others who had managed to evade the blockades. They were told that the only way out of New Orleans, where they could cross the Mississippi to relative safety on the West Bank outside the disaster zone, was the Crescent City Bridge to Gretna. Word was the Gretna authorities were increasingly concerned. It seemed the escape route would not be open long so they should take it while they still could.
The light of day was fading but the relentless humidity was not and their bodies were stiff and trembling. They chose a moment when no one seemed to be watching, ducking into a garden where they slept like exhausted children through the lonely night.
In the morning, they ate a can of cold soup and discovered that they were no more than half a mile from their new destination: the bridge to freedom.
Jake still had plenty enough money to buy transport out if only they could get out of New Orleans. They could take refuge for a week or two, count their blessings and make a plan for the rest of their lives.
After all this time and all they had been through, they had nearly forgotten that Ruby was no longer a wanted woman. She was free of the mob, free of Pale Louie and as free of her past as it was possible to be. She had a career as a singer and a universe of possibilities were opening to her like a rose in magnificent bloom. Ruby had a home, a family and roots that ran deeper than she could ever have dreamed.
As they approached the bridge, they found dozens of people with the same idea, all relieved to have come this far, convinced that the nightmare would end on the other side of the river, all wearing smiles of weary satisfaction.
Half way across, their smiles were wiped away. A mob of armed, grim-faced men, some uniformed, many more in civilian clothes, stopped them in their tracks with rifles and shotguns poised for action.
What happened next no one would ever decipher. A shot rang out and a volley of gunfire followed. The people panicked and ran. Jake stepped in front of Ruby, taking a bullet in the chest. The law and order mob on the Gretna side of the bridge moved forward and the rabble on the New Orleans side retreated, leaving Jake bleeding on the pavement and Ruby hovering over him, crying, cursing and comforting.
A man Ruby had never seen before, a short but broad shouldered black man with the hands of a workingman, kneeled beside her.
“I don’t know who this man is but I do know one thing,” he said. “He put his life on the line so you could live.”
Her mind truly clear for the first time in days, maybe weeks (she could not tell), tears streaming from her eyes, falling on the wound of her fallen lover, her savior, her guardian protector, she looked at the angry mob fronted by officers of the law, marching forward, she looked back at the retreating, beleaguered citizens of an abandoned city, she gazed into Jake’s eyes, life still clinging to his broken body, and found the strength that enabled her to survive a thousand crises, a thousand assaults on her dignity, an endless chain of attempts to break her spirit and she refused to give in.
“I can’t leave him,” she said. “I won’t.”
The man knew by raw instinct there was no point in arguing. At a time like this, after all they had suffered, common sense made no sense at all.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
“Hell, yes!” she replied.
“Then help me stand him up. We got to get off this bridge.”
He hoisted Jake over his shoulder and they began to walk at a measured pace back to the city of misery, disease and death, where even dogs were shot down in the streets for having the audacity to survive and roam freely, where human beings fared little better, abandoned on rooftops, left for dead, wandering the streets through toxic waters, abandoned in the crushing heat of hospitals and old folks homes, abandoned in the city of jazz to reform an ancient bond to the music that defined them: gospel and the blues.
Bullets still flying overhead but no longer aimed at human flesh, the message received loud and clear: no visitors allowed, no lost souls, no black trash, no abandoned, needy people, they made their way to a sheltered refuge away from the docks, away from the madness, where Ruby struggled to keep Jake conscious.
The man went out to beg, hustle and steal what he thought they needed and came back with a roll of gauze, duct tape, iodine, a bottle of whiskey and a pair of needle-nose pliers. They started a fire, grateful that it was still daylight so it would not attract attention, and heated the pliers.
“Hold him,” the man said as he placed a stick in Jake’s mouth and plied him with whiskey.
Jake’s body lifted off the ground, taut and trembling, as the man pulled the bullet out. They used Jake’s knife, heated in fire, to seal the wound, bound him with gauze and tape, and treated his fever with cold rags through the remains of the day.
As the sun was setting on yet another terrifying day in New Orleans, where so much of the outer parishes were under siege, where the poor were allowed to live and buy homes under a cloud of inevitable doom, this man with tear-stained eyes, a man who might have lost everything he had and loved, apologized for having to leave them.
“I got to take care of my own,” he cried.
Ruby hugged him, kissed and thanked him from the depths of her soul. She promised they would be all right.
“What’s your name?” she called out as he walked back into the endless nightmare.
“They call me Bubba,” he replied. “If we live through this, I’ll look you up.”
It was the first real glimmer of hope she had heard or seen since the ordeal began and it warmed her heart.
She had bottled water, candles and everything she could think of to treat Jake’s wound. There was little more to do but hunt down food and wait by his side.
Ruby prayed to every deity she could think of or imagine. She prayed for the city, for the poor and disabled, for the nation that allowed it to happen, and for Jake – mostly for Jake.
Fifteen hundred miles away, a wise old man awakened from an afternoon nap and sent his spirit to look after his favorite son. In the spirit world, where Jake now resided, he heard his mentor’s chant and Ruby’s prayers and he was not afraid. He was worried and consumed with sorrow but he was not afraid.
It was as if all of New Orleans had been transported back to a long lost era – before technology, before industry, before electricity and indoor plumbing. With each day and every sweltering night, more bodies would be seen floating face down in the water filled streets, more would be sick and dying from the putrid water, more would be trapped, gunned down or terrorized and the further they would move back in time.
Most would refuse to give up the civilized nature of their beings. Most would refuse to yield to the law of the jungle, survival of the strongest, kill or be killed, but few could not understand those who fell short.
Beneath the misery and misfortune, there was rage. There was a promise broken. There was a bloodline and a vow of belonging to the greatest nation on earth, torn and shattered.
FADE IN:
EXT. – DISASTER-WAR MONTAGE – NIGHT AND DAY
As before, we see scenes of devastation from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan juxtaposed with scenes of desperation in New Orleans after Katrina. We hear the voice of Neil Young from the album LIVING WITH WAR.
I’m living with war in my heart
I’m living with war in my heart in my mind
I’m living with war right now
Don’t take no tidal wave
Don’t take no mass grave
Don’t take no smoking gun
To show how the west was won
But when the curtain falls, I pray for peace
Try to remember peace…
The song fades, replaced by John Lennon’s YER BLUES from the White Album.
EXT. – INTERSTATE 10 – ARIEL VIEW – DAY
We see the abandoned multitudes of Katrina victims walking toward the Superdome. ZOOM IN to Jake and Ruby among them.
Yes, I’m lonely wanna die
Yes, I’m lonely wanna die
If I ain’t dead already
Girl you know the reason why
The eagle picks my eye
The worm he licks my bone
I feel so suicidal
Just like Dylan’s Mr. Jones…
EXT. – SUPERDOME – DAY
The masses, standing outside the Superdome, plead desperately for help.
Jake and Ruby walked with the multitudes, like a giant serpent, in one direction, one mind, one heart, one soul, toward the Superdome, towering in the distance like a desperate prayer.
Along the previous day’s journey and during the night, they heard stories, each grimmer than the last, about what was going down in the Superdome.
In the back of his mind, Jake knew it was a false prayer, a prayer to a false god or rather to men in power that did not carry the interests of the people in their hearts. One look at Ruby and he knew she was thinking the same thing: They had to find another way.
They had to get away from the mindless throng being herded like cattle to an enclosed space where they could be watched and controlled. It was like the Cherokee, rounded up and herded into cattle yards before the long walk on the trail of tears to the unwanted lands of Oklahoma. The scattered police and guards were not there to protect them or show them the way; they were there to keep them from escaping.
The last thing the authorities wanted was a mass infusion of desperately poor, homeless, sick and dying people into the French Quarters, where adventuresome tourists celebrated Katrina’s wrath, or the Garden District where the privileged remained relatively dry and well.
When they came to where the people were being ushered off the highway, Jake and Ruby kept going. A guard in plain clothes ordered them to stop. Ruby offered an excuse that they had relatives in Audubon and when Jake slipped him a hundred dollar bill, he let them pass.
They headed south by southeast along the expressway, the liquid heat pounding them down with every step until they had to stop, get off the concrete furnace, rest, drink and eat from their diminishing supplies.
Leaving the expressway, they traveled west into the lush, green grounds of the Garden District where private security guards constantly questioned them and warned them to keep walking.
They were joined along the way by others who had managed to evade the blockades. They were told that the only way out of New Orleans, where they could cross the Mississippi to relative safety on the West Bank outside the disaster zone, was the Crescent City Bridge to Gretna. Word was the Gretna authorities were increasingly concerned. It seemed the escape route would not be open long so they should take it while they still could.
The light of day was fading but the relentless humidity was not and their bodies were stiff and trembling. They chose a moment when no one seemed to be watching, ducking into a garden where they slept like exhausted children through the lonely night.
In the morning, they ate a can of cold soup and discovered that they were no more than half a mile from their new destination: the bridge to freedom.
Jake still had plenty enough money to buy transport out if only they could get out of New Orleans. They could take refuge for a week or two, count their blessings and make a plan for the rest of their lives.
After all this time and all they had been through, they had nearly forgotten that Ruby was no longer a wanted woman. She was free of the mob, free of Pale Louie and as free of her past as it was possible to be. She had a career as a singer and a universe of possibilities were opening to her like a rose in magnificent bloom. Ruby had a home, a family and roots that ran deeper than she could ever have dreamed.
As they approached the bridge, they found dozens of people with the same idea, all relieved to have come this far, convinced that the nightmare would end on the other side of the river, all wearing smiles of weary satisfaction.
Half way across, their smiles were wiped away. A mob of armed, grim-faced men, some uniformed, many more in civilian clothes, stopped them in their tracks with rifles and shotguns poised for action.
What happened next no one would ever decipher. A shot rang out and a volley of gunfire followed. The people panicked and ran. Jake stepped in front of Ruby, taking a bullet in the chest. The law and order mob on the Gretna side of the bridge moved forward and the rabble on the New Orleans side retreated, leaving Jake bleeding on the pavement and Ruby hovering over him, crying, cursing and comforting.
A man Ruby had never seen before, a short but broad shouldered black man with the hands of a workingman, kneeled beside her.
“I don’t know who this man is but I do know one thing,” he said. “He put his life on the line so you could live.”
Her mind truly clear for the first time in days, maybe weeks (she could not tell), tears streaming from her eyes, falling on the wound of her fallen lover, her savior, her guardian protector, she looked at the angry mob fronted by officers of the law, marching forward, she looked back at the retreating, beleaguered citizens of an abandoned city, she gazed into Jake’s eyes, life still clinging to his broken body, and found the strength that enabled her to survive a thousand crises, a thousand assaults on her dignity, an endless chain of attempts to break her spirit and she refused to give in.
“I can’t leave him,” she said. “I won’t.”
The man knew by raw instinct there was no point in arguing. At a time like this, after all they had suffered, common sense made no sense at all.
“Can you walk?” he asked.
“Hell, yes!” she replied.
“Then help me stand him up. We got to get off this bridge.”
He hoisted Jake over his shoulder and they began to walk at a measured pace back to the city of misery, disease and death, where even dogs were shot down in the streets for having the audacity to survive and roam freely, where human beings fared little better, abandoned on rooftops, left for dead, wandering the streets through toxic waters, abandoned in the crushing heat of hospitals and old folks homes, abandoned in the city of jazz to reform an ancient bond to the music that defined them: gospel and the blues.
Bullets still flying overhead but no longer aimed at human flesh, the message received loud and clear: no visitors allowed, no lost souls, no black trash, no abandoned, needy people, they made their way to a sheltered refuge away from the docks, away from the madness, where Ruby struggled to keep Jake conscious.
The man went out to beg, hustle and steal what he thought they needed and came back with a roll of gauze, duct tape, iodine, a bottle of whiskey and a pair of needle-nose pliers. They started a fire, grateful that it was still daylight so it would not attract attention, and heated the pliers.
“Hold him,” the man said as he placed a stick in Jake’s mouth and plied him with whiskey.
Jake’s body lifted off the ground, taut and trembling, as the man pulled the bullet out. They used Jake’s knife, heated in fire, to seal the wound, bound him with gauze and tape, and treated his fever with cold rags through the remains of the day.
As the sun was setting on yet another terrifying day in New Orleans, where so much of the outer parishes were under siege, where the poor were allowed to live and buy homes under a cloud of inevitable doom, this man with tear-stained eyes, a man who might have lost everything he had and loved, apologized for having to leave them.
“I got to take care of my own,” he cried.
Ruby hugged him, kissed and thanked him from the depths of her soul. She promised they would be all right.
“What’s your name?” she called out as he walked back into the endless nightmare.
“They call me Bubba,” he replied. “If we live through this, I’ll look you up.”
It was the first real glimmer of hope she had heard or seen since the ordeal began and it warmed her heart.
She had bottled water, candles and everything she could think of to treat Jake’s wound. There was little more to do but hunt down food and wait by his side.
Ruby prayed to every deity she could think of or imagine. She prayed for the city, for the poor and disabled, for the nation that allowed it to happen, and for Jake – mostly for Jake.
Fifteen hundred miles away, a wise old man awakened from an afternoon nap and sent his spirit to look after his favorite son. In the spirit world, where Jake now resided, he heard his mentor’s chant and Ruby’s prayers and he was not afraid. He was worried and consumed with sorrow but he was not afraid.
It was as if all of New Orleans had been transported back to a long lost era – before technology, before industry, before electricity and indoor plumbing. With each day and every sweltering night, more bodies would be seen floating face down in the water filled streets, more would be sick and dying from the putrid water, more would be trapped, gunned down or terrorized and the further they would move back in time.
Most would refuse to give up the civilized nature of their beings. Most would refuse to yield to the law of the jungle, survival of the strongest, kill or be killed, but few could not understand those who fell short.
Beneath the misery and misfortune, there was rage. There was a promise broken. There was a bloodline and a vow of belonging to the greatest nation on earth, torn and shattered.
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.
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.
Number Nine: Chapter 27
9 + 9 = DESTINY
FADE IN:
INT. – MONK’S PLACE – NIGHT
Ruby sings in spotlight on stage.
When I was a child, I let my spirit run wild
When I was fully grown, I let my spirit find a home
In the sweet summer time ‘neath the Sycamore trees
A sweet summer wine in a gentle summer breeze
In the sweet summer time ‘neath the Sycamore trees
In the arms of my love with a dream of seven seas
When I was a child, I let my spirit run wild…
The song fades and the screen goes black. We hear the voice of John Lennon.
Number nine, number nine, number nine…
The Marquis was a perfect gentleman. Like the Monk, he felt a solemn obligation to protect Jake and Ruby. Having assumed authority of the underground kingdom of the House of Burgandy, he sent a message to Guido Lazerri in Las Vegas, informing him that recent events had rendered all previous understandings regarding Ruby null and void.
Ruby was a free woman, free to remain in New Orleans and free to travel anywhere she desired. If she wished, he would personally escort her to every gambling hall on the strip. If anyone offered so much as an unkind word or a derisive glance, the underground would come to Vegas and the war would leave no one standing.
Guido wired back that he no longer had any interest in Ruby Daulton except as a singer. If she came to Vegas, he assured the Marquis, she would be treated as a queen.
On a quiet night in Monk’s Place, when Ruby finished her last song, the Marquis revealed his given name and a great deal about whom he was.
His name was Anthony La Roche (la row shay). He was a bayou boy who spent his youth known as Tony the Roach, getting into trouble with drugs and petty crime. On one of his forays into the Easy, he was walking through St. Louis Cemetery around dusk when he happened across four thugs accosting a pale-skinned man in a black cape.
On any other night, he might have been one of them but on this night, he identified with the victim. His uncle, a kind and gentle soul, had been mugged a few nights before and Tony was in the process of re-examining his life. He wore a chain around his waist and carried a crowbar for his own protection. Without a moment’s hesitation, he waded in with the strength of vengeance, knocking two of the thugs unconscious and sending the others running for cover. In the rush of adrenalin, he did not notice he had taken a knife wound to the gut.
A childless Pale Louie took him in, cared for him, provided an education, trained him in business and the darker arts, and when the time came, he made an offer: He would hold the title of Marquis and become heir to the House of Burgandy. In exchange, he would have to promise never to see his family again.
From that time forward, Tony the Roach became the Marquis and his family would never know what happened to their boy. Years later, he tried to track them down without success. He heard stories and would always wonder if Louie had sealed their fate in a wetland grave.
The Marquis was deeply in love with Ruby but he never said so. Everyone knew, including Jake and Ruby herself.
Jake was not a jealous man. Ruby gave him no reason. Their love sprang from the deepest well where bonds cannot be broken.
For nine years, he lived a fulfilling and contented life, rebuilding the city by day, listening to Ruby by night, and holding her in his arms until the morning light.
Every year, he made pilgrimage back to Third Mesa and every year he stayed a little longer. The pull of the desert was strong and tied to his soul just as Ruby’s was tied to New Orleans. Though there was no disaster to attract the attention of media and politicians, his people were also suffering. Their catastrophe was a daily grind of poverty, homelessness, alcohol, drugs and a new disease born of their culture as warriors in the age of terror: their young were going to war and returning with dark hearts and broken spirits.
On the ninth anniversary of Katrina, lying in each other’s arms, Jake explained that White Wolf was dying and he was returning to stay. They shed tears of sorrow and loss mixed with an understanding that comes when two souls have shared a life in all its richness. They had known the greatest glories and the most profound grief. They had survived the darkest hours and climbed the tallest peaks. They had laughed, cried, fought, mourned and discovered in each other the meaning of existence. They knew love. They knew a love that would never fail, that would always answer the call, that would bind their souls and their destinies together forever.
Jake promised to return as often as he could and every year on the anniversary of Katrina.
For nine years, he kept his promise and Ruby welcomed him, always making sure that no one interfered. For an evening or a few days or a week, her home, her attentions, her love and her bed belonged to Jake.
On those rare occasions when Ruby left New Orleans to visit Jake and White Wolf at Third Mesa, Jake returned the favor.
At all other times, they were free. They were intelligent people and knew better than to exchange vows of chastity. They had human needs and did not wish to transform their love into martyrdom.
Ruby’s last visit was to be at Jake’s side for the death of White Wolf. The old man embraced Ruby as his daughter and Jake as his son. On his dying bed, he cried for all the suffering people he could not help. He asked Jake and Ruby to take care of them as best they could. He made them promise to be true to their own destinies and, then, he let go, his eyes wide open, a picture of the spirit world still fresh in his eyes and a smile of deep satisfaction implanted his lips.
On the ninth year since returning home, approaching the eighteenth anniversary of Katrina, Jake wrote Ruby to ask permission to bring a guest to New Orleans. There was someone he would like her to meet, someone who somehow needed her blessing to find her own destiny.
On the ninth year of living alone in New Orleans, on the eighteenth anniversary of Katrina, Ruby Daulton and Anthony La Roche welcomed Jake Jones and Marie Morning Star to the Big Easy.
They were older now but still eager and thirsting for life. Their adventures were just beginning.
INT. – MONK’S PLACE – NIGHT
We see Ruby on stage and Jake, Marie, Anthony (Marquis), Bones and Monk seated at a corner table. Ruby sings BLACKBIRD from the White Album.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arrive…
Fade BLACKBIRD. We hear:
Number nine, number nine, number nine…
END.
FADE IN:
INT. – MONK’S PLACE – NIGHT
Ruby sings in spotlight on stage.
When I was a child, I let my spirit run wild
When I was fully grown, I let my spirit find a home
In the sweet summer time ‘neath the Sycamore trees
A sweet summer wine in a gentle summer breeze
In the sweet summer time ‘neath the Sycamore trees
In the arms of my love with a dream of seven seas
When I was a child, I let my spirit run wild…
The song fades and the screen goes black. We hear the voice of John Lennon.
Number nine, number nine, number nine…
The Marquis was a perfect gentleman. Like the Monk, he felt a solemn obligation to protect Jake and Ruby. Having assumed authority of the underground kingdom of the House of Burgandy, he sent a message to Guido Lazerri in Las Vegas, informing him that recent events had rendered all previous understandings regarding Ruby null and void.
Ruby was a free woman, free to remain in New Orleans and free to travel anywhere she desired. If she wished, he would personally escort her to every gambling hall on the strip. If anyone offered so much as an unkind word or a derisive glance, the underground would come to Vegas and the war would leave no one standing.
Guido wired back that he no longer had any interest in Ruby Daulton except as a singer. If she came to Vegas, he assured the Marquis, she would be treated as a queen.
On a quiet night in Monk’s Place, when Ruby finished her last song, the Marquis revealed his given name and a great deal about whom he was.
His name was Anthony La Roche (la row shay). He was a bayou boy who spent his youth known as Tony the Roach, getting into trouble with drugs and petty crime. On one of his forays into the Easy, he was walking through St. Louis Cemetery around dusk when he happened across four thugs accosting a pale-skinned man in a black cape.
On any other night, he might have been one of them but on this night, he identified with the victim. His uncle, a kind and gentle soul, had been mugged a few nights before and Tony was in the process of re-examining his life. He wore a chain around his waist and carried a crowbar for his own protection. Without a moment’s hesitation, he waded in with the strength of vengeance, knocking two of the thugs unconscious and sending the others running for cover. In the rush of adrenalin, he did not notice he had taken a knife wound to the gut.
A childless Pale Louie took him in, cared for him, provided an education, trained him in business and the darker arts, and when the time came, he made an offer: He would hold the title of Marquis and become heir to the House of Burgandy. In exchange, he would have to promise never to see his family again.
From that time forward, Tony the Roach became the Marquis and his family would never know what happened to their boy. Years later, he tried to track them down without success. He heard stories and would always wonder if Louie had sealed their fate in a wetland grave.
The Marquis was deeply in love with Ruby but he never said so. Everyone knew, including Jake and Ruby herself.
Jake was not a jealous man. Ruby gave him no reason. Their love sprang from the deepest well where bonds cannot be broken.
For nine years, he lived a fulfilling and contented life, rebuilding the city by day, listening to Ruby by night, and holding her in his arms until the morning light.
Every year, he made pilgrimage back to Third Mesa and every year he stayed a little longer. The pull of the desert was strong and tied to his soul just as Ruby’s was tied to New Orleans. Though there was no disaster to attract the attention of media and politicians, his people were also suffering. Their catastrophe was a daily grind of poverty, homelessness, alcohol, drugs and a new disease born of their culture as warriors in the age of terror: their young were going to war and returning with dark hearts and broken spirits.
On the ninth anniversary of Katrina, lying in each other’s arms, Jake explained that White Wolf was dying and he was returning to stay. They shed tears of sorrow and loss mixed with an understanding that comes when two souls have shared a life in all its richness. They had known the greatest glories and the most profound grief. They had survived the darkest hours and climbed the tallest peaks. They had laughed, cried, fought, mourned and discovered in each other the meaning of existence. They knew love. They knew a love that would never fail, that would always answer the call, that would bind their souls and their destinies together forever.
Jake promised to return as often as he could and every year on the anniversary of Katrina.
For nine years, he kept his promise and Ruby welcomed him, always making sure that no one interfered. For an evening or a few days or a week, her home, her attentions, her love and her bed belonged to Jake.
On those rare occasions when Ruby left New Orleans to visit Jake and White Wolf at Third Mesa, Jake returned the favor.
At all other times, they were free. They were intelligent people and knew better than to exchange vows of chastity. They had human needs and did not wish to transform their love into martyrdom.
Ruby’s last visit was to be at Jake’s side for the death of White Wolf. The old man embraced Ruby as his daughter and Jake as his son. On his dying bed, he cried for all the suffering people he could not help. He asked Jake and Ruby to take care of them as best they could. He made them promise to be true to their own destinies and, then, he let go, his eyes wide open, a picture of the spirit world still fresh in his eyes and a smile of deep satisfaction implanted his lips.
On the ninth year since returning home, approaching the eighteenth anniversary of Katrina, Jake wrote Ruby to ask permission to bring a guest to New Orleans. There was someone he would like her to meet, someone who somehow needed her blessing to find her own destiny.
On the ninth year of living alone in New Orleans, on the eighteenth anniversary of Katrina, Ruby Daulton and Anthony La Roche welcomed Jake Jones and Marie Morning Star to the Big Easy.
They were older now but still eager and thirsting for life. Their adventures were just beginning.
INT. – MONK’S PLACE – NIGHT
We see Ruby on stage and Jake, Marie, Anthony (Marquis), Bones and Monk seated at a corner table. Ruby sings BLACKBIRD from the White Album.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arrive…
Fade BLACKBIRD. We hear:
Number nine, number nine, number nine…
END.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
