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Fables of the Reconstruction (cont.) I sat on a shaggy chaise lounge in the Quarter, the dry part. There was no electricity. Candles glowed for light. The Captain had a friend, a painter who was kind enough to offer us some refuge in the attic of his old Victorian while we did our thing. It was nice to be dry. There were 6 to 10 of us there, each claiming a temporary stake in documenting tragedy through expression: writing, painting, music, the spoken word. Just living. The Artist shouted about needing more Sharpies because he was an artist, and that was all he had with which to create. Like the rest of us, he did not want to lose his chance to document the situation at hand. The military kids were around, too with their guns and their garb. They were 18-year-old babies sent to motivate us to leave. They bummed smokes and beer and wanted to know if we had any weed. The Captain said that was like Vietnam, too -- the part where you are not running and shooting and defending your life and the liberty of the American people. He was asleep with an open switchblade on his stomach while Jonah, for once was actually being gonzo instead of just talking about it. He had his back-up camera turned upside down and snapped pictures of The Artist, who screamed at him for taking photos of The Artist. Also, Jonah had taken one of The Artist’s Sharpies and written on himself. From the top of his right shoulder to his wrist read: “If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.” His pupils were big as saucers. "Say Goodnight Gonzo," I said to Jonah and unrolled my sleeping bag. "Goodnight Gonzo," he said and waved his inked hand at me. At Kenny’s quip, The Captain stirred from his much needed shuteye. His switchblade fell to the floor, and on my way to bed I grabbed it from the floor like a woman who had never picked up a switchblade. Words came out of The Captain’s mouth like a river boat going down the Mississippi. His drawl was sugared, commanding. He said: “Come over here with dat. And try not to kill ya’self on the way.” I sat across from him and received some much needed survival tips. My display of ignorance meant I wasn't going to bed anytime soon. We were metal fold-up chair to shaggy chaise lounge, our elbows on our thighs and our eyes on each other. Like The Deerhunter, but my eyes had no violent desperation. The Captain held the knife opened up in the palm of his hand. It was a nine-inch Stiletto with a four-inch blade and five-inch handle. He showed me how and made me do it myself: close it, put it in my pocket and open it, flicking out the blade away from me and if need be, into whomever was trying to kill me. This was an important lesson, me not killing myself with the switchblade but instead killing someone else if I had to. It was also terrifying. Jonah danced and clicked away with his camera, shaking to the Bossanova and Kenny’s varied messages. In no time at all -- I don’t even remember him being that close to us -- Jonah stepped backwards onto a small cooler of beer, falling into the back of me holding the open knife and hunched in my chair. I, in turn fell forward as Jonah and the chair sandwiched me out and atop The Captain, who was also still hunched over. I hurled the knife over him, and it hit the Artist’s rendering, smack dab in the middle, leaving a substantial stab wound in the Sharpie installation. For the second time that day, Jonah dropped his camera. His old 35 mm fell to the floor, the door to the film carriage popped open and the exposed the film. Shit happened (again), but I at least I didn't walk away with nothing. I now knew how to stick somebody with a shiv. That was it. We came, we saw, I got freaked out and then I learned how to use a switchblade. And Jonah lost all the good pictures.
I decide it is not right to tell Clark to just come home, to find a job and buy a house where there is no reconstruction right in front of your face, or angry, displaced denizens, also right in front of your fucking face. New Orleans is her home (come hell and high water). Clark tells me she is wearing the NYPD cap she bought after the WTC disaster to remind herself that leaving New Orleans isn’t an option. You stay where you’re needed. You do what you have to do. I decide this is my story, and I'm sticking to it. It is like the song on the radio playing in Clark’s car while we are on the phone, asking us to choose between do or die, prodding about our plans to survive:
Were you born to
resist or be abused? I tell her not let that home-wrecking whore bring her down. She laughs. It is a start.
Jennifer Henley Daniel was raised as a
Southern belle before she became a writer.
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