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Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Hebrews13:2
In the comings and goings of fugee friends, I’ve found myself in places I would never usually frequent. Markey’s always struck me pre-k as the sort of bar my father used to drag me into when I was a kid: red-neck dives where I would sit on a stool eating Slimjims or play bumper pool while Daddy drank Schlitz and chain smoked Pall Malls with sweat-smelling salt of the earth. Marky’s is filled most nights with a combination of Bywater/Marigny hipsters eager for just such authenticity and the shrimpers, construction workers, and other blue collars that provide it. The bar has a much better record on race than the notorious Bud Rips, but still dark faces are rare, though a house of Mexicans who have moved in across the street in the latter days has added a certain note of color when they come over and stand at the bar waiting for to-go beer.
The other night I met up with Doc, allegedly the heir to an adult toys empire, coworkers from the saltmines of Academe, and a friend back to clean out his house before going West. We drank and told our stories and speculated as the smoke roiled up from a couple dozen ashtrays to fill the room downward from the obscure ceiling.
A fellow came in with a bike; fiftyish, gray and brawny, bleary eyed. I tried to figure which class of biker he belonged to, the “too many DUIs to even risk it” crew, or the “lost it all in the storm” bunch. The other Bywater bike type excluded him by age and haircut. I refer of course to the “save the planet, love the earth and hate soap” bikers who favor oddly constructed uncomfortable bikes (or even unicycles) that draw maximum attention while providing minimal convenience and ease.
The guy saw me making eye contact as I tried to place him and came over to talk. I knew better than to engage, but he said he needed air and I had just been thinking the same myself. Turns out he meant for his tire, but I figured what the hell, we could walk up to my house a few blocks away and I’d let him use my pump, meanwhile getting a fresh breath or two myself. I let someone know where I was going in case he was a serial killer and we walked out. We went about a block or so into increasing shadows before the serial killer idea seemed to occur to him to, because he began to talk about kicking asses and how he had nothing to lose, the water had come up into his house in Chalmette and taken everything, drowning two neighbors and leaving him stranded on a roof with a dozen others.
Chalmette has been the butt of jokes since long before it became a predominantly white- flight suburb of the 9th Ward. It is one of those Southern towns where the cloud of evil rests as often as not, manifesting in such forms as the St. Bernard Parish sherrif’s SNAP program. Now that the deluge has taken the town, many Chalmatians have come home to roost in the Ward, drifting through the local bars, beatified by tragedy and loss.
I was keeping an eye on the shadows and glad he had both hands on the handlebars as he rattled along, and I have to say that even though the outpouring of his story was apropos of kicking my ass if he had to, it still stirred some sympathy in a city that has produced enough sad stories in the last few months to try anyone’s sympathies. He told of being bilked by his last two employers, working a week for each and being screwed out of exactly 180 dollars by each one. He spotted what he swore was one of those employers’ trucks parked by the curb and stood casting about for some course of action, violent action judging by his tone and the rolling of his eyes. Looked like he might be trying to find a brick to put through the window. I kept walking and he moved on from the truck to catch up.
We arrived at my house and I brought out the pump and pumped a few breaths into the front tire, which didn’t need it much, and one to the back, which didn’t need it at all. As I pumped he warmed to the tragedy of the drownings and the possible ass-kicking he might need to give me. I was starting to see that he was more than just drunk, he was disturbed in both the obvious way and in the way intended by folks who stage whisper the word in your presence as if you were not in the room.
We walked back and when we got inside he took out a wad of bills from his wallet and tried to force them on me, then offered me a drink on him. I told him next time and he started to tell me about the neighbors again, then clasped me to him with tears streaming down his face and told me it was awful, God awful.
Then he told me that it was all those looting niggers’ fault and that he would kill the next nigger he saw, swear to God. I pulled away from his embrace and looked at his face, and whether the tears in his eyes now were of sorrow or rage or a combination I didn’t care. We discover now that enduring tragedy might not always have the ennobling effect we want to believe is one of its products and consolations.
