The bus made a squealing noise as it pulled
into the New Orleans station. Foy’s face was very close to the glass.
Every place has its own look.
San Antonio looked dusty, with muted colors.
Like it was the first hint of the West. New Orleans looked dark and rich to him,
with deep colors and humid air. It was green and wet, and there were black
people everywhere.
This is the beginning of the deep South.
Everything east of here is like this.
Getting off the bus was a moment Foy had
fantasized about for many years. Absolute freedom. No ties, no responsibilities,
no one waiting for him, no one watching him to see how a minister would behave,
no one to take care of, no schedule or agenda. He stood on the sidewalk outside
the bus station. People were moving past him hurriedly. They had places to go
and things to do. Foy’s destiny and direction were his own to choose. It was
like a movie.
So how does it feel?
He stopped and his mouth opened a little. He
lowered his chin and let it drift to the right and tried to pay attention to
what was going on inside him. What he felt was a tinge of anxiety. Also a
nagging and familiar need to know what he was going to do. He felt a strong,
inner longing for a schedule and a purpose. This feeling disgusted him, but he
tried to be gentle with himself.
It takes awhile to get used to this. It’s
like going on vacation, but even harder. Just settle down; you'll be fine.
A college friend with some connections had
gotten him a room above some retail space in the French Quarter. He had the
address in his pocket but was self-conscious about hailing a cab since he had
never done that before. Plus he wanted to see and feel everything. That was part
of the deal. Someone pointed down a street and said he could get to the French
Quarter on foot. He slung his duffel bag over one shoulder and his backpack over
the other and started walking.
A few streets down, a man was sitting on piece
of carpet, twisting and bending his body into extreme positions. There was a hat
on the ground with some change in it. Most people were walking by without even
glancing at him. Foy was fascinated and watched him for a few minutes.
So you get up in the morning and walk out of
your house carrying your carpet for a day of yoga or whatever and people give
you money.
There wasn’t much money in the hat. Foy dropped
in some change and nodded at the man to show him that his odd skills were
appreciated. The man saw his nod but gave no response, which amused Foy.
Nearby some young boys were breakdancing on
flattened, cardboard boxes. They also had a hat on the ground. A large pile of
discarded batteries behind their boom box indicated they had been at it for some
time. It didn’t seem that the money in the hat would be able to keep up with
the expense of the batteries, which bothered Foy. He looked around for an
electric outlet and spotted one on the external wall of a nearby shop. He had a
brief fantasy of bringing them an extension cord and being something of a hero,
but he played out the fantasy and it ended with the shopkeeper jerking the cord
out of the wall and using it to drive the boys away from the front of his store.
He decided they probably knew what they were doing and moved away.
In the French Quarter he was charmed to find
that the streets were lined with two-story buildings that had wrought-iron
balcony railings, just like in the photographs. He found his room and spent the
afternoon doing things that people like to do in New Orleans. He had mile-high
pie at The Pontchartrain and listened to jazz in a little club while drinking
coffee with chicory in it. He went into a cigar store and asked for a really
good cigar. He didn’t know how to answer the shopkeeper’s questions, so he just
bought one that the man said was good. It was eleven dollars.
He found a café that looked right and sat
outside smoking his cigar, drinking beer, and watching people walk down the
street. It seemed strange to him, for some reason, that everyone had somewhere
to go. The crowd flowed by the café like a river. People were in groups,
laughing, drinking, and purposeful. For the first time he felt relaxed and at
ease. He was not a part of the scene. He was only watching.
So this is what you do. You go into the
streets with your friends and walk up and down. You drink and talk and maybe
you’ll see something interesting. You do this a lot and eventually you’re there
when something interesting happens and you can tell the story at work or
whatever. You have to be in this. This has to be your life. Natural. Just what
you do.
The cigar started making him feel sick, so he
stubbed it out and left it on the table with some money. He got his beer and
moved out into the street to walk with everyone else. He paused at a strip club
and peeked inside. The music was tacky and the woman on the stage looked tired.
He grimaced and pulled his head out of the door quickly.
There was a throng of people moving down the
street and he allowed himself to get caught up in it. A woman was throwing beads
from a balcony and he caught some. The young men around him started yelling,
“Show us your tits!” They said it over and over, and the woman looked like she
was considering the proposition. He felt giddy for a moment and looked around.
I can do this if I want.
He joined the crowd and shouted, “Show us your
tits!” but he was immediately uncomfortable and self-conscious. He only said it
once. The woman quickly lifted her shirt, and Foy yelled along with everyone
else and lifted his beer. He hated the feel of it even before he lowered his
arm. It was like being impotent. This is the stuff that should work but it
didn't. Nothing felt right. He was on the outside, looking in.
Shit, I don’t even remember how to have fun.
Maybe religion sucked the life right out of me, just the ability to hang out
with some friends, get a little drunk, and enjoy whatever it is that they are
enjoying. God, am I that lost?
Foy stopped in the middle of the street and
became like an island with people flowing around him. He began to push through
the crowd, heading for the curb. As he moved he began to feel frantic. He had to
get out of the street and over to the sidewalk where he could get his back
against a building and watch things again. He wanted to feel the way he felt in
the café earlier.
When he got to the edge of the street,
something against the curb got his attention. It was a battered Bible with no
cover lying in a pile of leaves. It was open but in disarray, as if someone had
dropped it. The left side was rolled under and had a wet shoestring draped
across it. A cigarette butt was wedged into the valley between the pages. A
muddy imprint from a tennis shoe obscured the page on the right.
It was such an ugly thing, like a corpse, and
he could not control his reaction. He groaned and bent over it like it was a
wounded puppy. He lifted a few of the pages and flopped them back and forth.
It was a generic King James, the kind that are
printed by the millions and spread all over the world like cheap toys and
good-luck charms. The kind you find in motels, homeless shelters, and used book
stores. The kind of Bible that people who never read the Bible own. If someone
asks them if they have a Bible, they will think for a moment and say, “Yeah, I
might have one somewhere.”
Foy stood up and looked down at the Bible,
wiping his hands on his jeans. He felt a little resentful of its sudden
appearance that evening.
This doesn’t mean shit. Those cheap Bibles
are everywhere.
He stood on the curb and looked back into the
street. It was getting late and the crowd had grown. There were so many people
now that the street was almost full. The movement of the crowd was more
sluggish. It stopped and started and surged here and there. Suddenly there was a
commotion across the street and about half a block down. There were angry voices
and a burst of wild laughter. The movement in the street slowed and then stopped
as people tried to see what was happening. By some miracle, the crowd parted
unevenly and he could see all the way to the curb on the other side.
Perfectly framed in the division of the crowd
was a small, preteen girl sitting on the curb. She was wearing jeans and a worn,
faded t-shirt. Her tennis shoes were filthy and had no laces. In her hands was a
flat box hanging from a rope tied around her neck, like the cigarette-girl boxes
from the old movies. Foy had never seen one of these boxes in real life and he
froze, staring at it. In the box were a few bags of potato chips and several
varieties of candy. Her right heel was up off the ground and she was fidgeting,
bumping it repeatedly against her left ankle. Her shoulders were curved and
slumped and she had a vacant expression that looked as though it had settled
into her face for good.
Foy felt a surge of emotion as he realized that
this poor child was selling things in the middle of the French Quarter, all
alone, late at night. He stepped off the curb into the street just as the crowd
began to move again. The people flooded together, blocking his view of the girl.
He fought his way through the crowd but was dragged along, so that when he got
across the street he was about ten yards down from her. He turned his shoulders
to the side and walked hurriedly through the crowd, digging a hand into his
jeans pocket.
I’ll buy everything she has in that box and
just give her whatever cash I’ve got left. Maybe I should find out where she
lives and take her home. She shouldn’t be out here this late, working, selling
stuff, whatever. That’s gotta be against the law or something.
When he got to the place where he had seen the
girl, she was gone. He looked around quickly, then sprang up on the base of a
lamppost, like that guy in Singing in the Rain. He could see nothing but a river
of bobbing heads. Across the street another young woman on a balcony pulled up
her shirt. The crowd hooted and surged in that direction. Foy looked up at her.
Her breasts were bouncing freely and she had a huge smile on her face. She
looked so happy, like she was having the time of her life. Below her there was a
chorus of cheers and dozens of hands raised beer bottles in a raucous toast.
Foy held onto the post with his right hand and
swung around it, looking everywhere for the girl, but she was gone. Then for
some reason he didn’t like the idea of getting down, so he stayed on the
lamppost, looking around in amazement.
I know nothing of this world. Nothing.
And then everything began to close in on him.
The movement of the people below was repulsive, and he didn’t want anyone to
touch him. The sounds from the balcony were screeching and sharp, clawing at his
mind. There was too much of everything, and he began to panic. He wanted to feel his back pressed against
something large and solid. He wanted a safe place – his home or a room, just a
small place with maybe one friend there to laugh with him. He wanted something
familiar.
I don’t want to be here. I don’t like it
here. I’m leaving and going to a place where I want to be.
He climbed down and started walking, and then
the truth hit him. He had nowhere to go. He had no home and no family and no
job. There was no one in the world for him. Not one person to know him and to
know what he was feeling right now. He would not sit down with a friend tomorrow
and say, “You can’t believe what it was like out there on the street last night.
There was this Bible and a little girl I saw.” No one would hear this story.
Foy pressed his back against the front of a
store. He was breathing hard, as if he had been running. A thought came to him
that was cruel and mocking.
This is what it means to be lonely. And you
are going to know what loneliness means.
rlp
Note: This story is the third in a threesome of
Foy Davis stories. The first is "Extreme Unction," and the second is "De Nada."
