Ninety mock soldiers dwindled to eighty, seventy-five, seventy-three.
The procession slowed to a country stroll where Santiago bent steeper at 40th Avenue. The men cursed and spat, spat and cursed, half-English rants buffeted with exhaustion. In the last platoon, a bottle broke against the pavement. This was far enough, they were out of juice; they hadn’t been trained or built up or given decent supplies; and anyhow what was their objective, what the fuck was the point?
At 10:45 a trash can between the second and third units started steaming. A police officer was jogging toward it when a thunderclap boomed, men hit the deck, children cried out, and chaos arrived. In the smoke troops lit firecrackers as instructed and fired their fake weapons at each other, civilians, police officers, the skies. Noises churned together, crossfire pops from weapons, war cries, hissing steam, cops’ emergency reaction shouts, the slaps of sprinting shoes. Mothers grabbed their children from strollers and pulled their shirts over their noses. Normally sedate spectators started flailing, shoving, and throwing elbows, trampling and kicking. Car windows shattered, sounding alarms. Mist billowed through the avenue, a tipped column of white smoke bleeding into alleys and cross streets. Some in the crowd gave up and lay on the ground, unable to react; some broke into homes and searched for knives, shovels, vases, heavy chairs. A plurality ran like hell, fingers firing across cellphone keypads. A news chopper dipped down for a closer look, cameras rolling, wind-whipping blades impressing the beat of war. Among the uniformed militants, a handful began to bawl—even though the attack had been detailed in their contract, the briefing, the reminder phone call, the predawn briefing, they’d forgotten about it, or it was worse than expected—while the real vets among them took cover behind parked cars and started planning exit strategies.
Then the liquid hit them. Some kind of magenta juice on their clothes and hair and skin, fired from invisible artillery, salt-flavored shrapnel dripping down their faces. It landed in lines, painless, easy, discoloring contact lenses and staining socks. The sounds of pumped water, hidden sprinklers shooting red tracer fire, painless bullets blanked by shock. The crowd ran calling for medical attention, shelter, a goddamn explanation, but instead found unrepentant Van Twinkle volunteers a block away handing out campaign literature and coupons for free dry cleaning.
On Santiago a cluster of troops fought through it, baring
shanks hidden in their socks, lengths of hard plastic pipe, a crowbar. Bottles flew through the air, at the smoke, at cops, and then the police backup units arrived and it ended. Cops flung soldiers’ faces onto asphalt, clubbed necks, chained wrists, kicked knees, shoved punched disarmed, threw them in the paddy wagon and hauled them off to jail.
Five minutes later Robespierre’s campaign released a statement and the city caught on fire.
Robespierre Van Twinkle was incarcerated in short order, fervently booed on her perp walk. Bail was not posted. Her money had run out.
She won no endorsements, a condemnation in the
Chronicle
, dismissive remarks from Violet Chin, an ocean of hate mail and scathing online chatter, rebukes from mothers and fathers who claimed to want her corrosive gimmicks gone—she didn’t respect the law and had ruined a good outfit and scared the crap out of the kids and besides what could she do about that war anyway? When did lawlessness become a virtue? How’s inciting a riot for bad judgment? Why give the conservatives more ammunition, a left-wing lunatic soiling the Progressive name?
But within many homes they thought it out, the tension turned, and they knew she was right, and they were ashamed for not having the courage to bring it home like she did.
The guards updated Robespierre with poll results every hour on Election Day, falsely reporting a blowout loss to fuck with the bitch. Her life took on apocalyptic qualities; she saw it in red and black insects that flashed on the insides of her eyes; all that money thrown away and nobody changed; a wasteful, painful exercise purely for her own entertainment. At least she’d grown as a person, she tried to console herself, but all that stuck with her was the futility of it all, the impossible planetary inertia, how little there was worth getting out of bed for.
She slept in angry bunches, wriggling through demented dreams involving blood-soaked Iranian battlefields and whirling
red wheelbarrows and driving Violet Chin’s Corvette off a pier into the sea. At some point the door to her cell clanged open, that lawyer guy was there, somebody was telling her something, whispers chewed her brain. “You again,” Robespierre mumbled. “How bad was it?”
“Ma’am, it’s a pleasure.” J. Malcolm Fletcher removed his hat and handed her a bouquet of roses.
“This some kind of asshole joke?”
“They’re for you.” He gyrated his head and bunched up his lips, a look of conquered emotion, fighting back tears or pain or last night’s undercooked chicken pesto. “Allow me to offer my congratulations,” he allowed.
This set off laughter, loads of it, at the absurd situation and the preposterousness of the claim and this guy’s asshole charm, not only dressed like a 1950s gumshoe but playing the part too. Briefly she admired his acting. “Blow off,” she giggled.
“Certainly.” Even as a cold glass of water. “May I buy you breakfast?”
“Go for it. Got a muffin with a file baked in?”
A guard appeared in her field of vision, microfiber mustache and shaved head. “Bail’s posted,” he reported, “you can go.”
“What?”
“Correct,” the lawyer said. “Additionally, I thought you would be interested in this morning’s newspaper.” He passed over the
Chronicle
late edition, a block of election results with one circled in marker.
VAN TWINKLE 47%—CHIN 44%
“No shit.” Color vacated Robespierre’s face as errata compiled in her head, to-do lists and program initiatives, applications of the unbelievable.
“All right, you won,” the guard said. “Now get out.”
“I won.” This was the only fact that mattered, barred windows and jail jumpsuits nothing compared to the truth of victory. At
age twenty-two, fresh out of college, she’d fucking won a city election.
She wanted to kiss J. Malcolm Fletcher more than anything on earth, and did with a full-tongue treatment that got the whole cellblock whooping.
The lawyer dabbed his face with a handkerchief and replaced his fedora on his head. “Shall we go?” he asked. He looked over his glasses at Robespierre and was struck silent by her slivered eyebrows, bleak mouth, pores clogged from nerves. She was shutting down, eyes sinking gumballs, cheeks the color of skim milk. He stepped over and caught her before she fell, then helped her hobble out with a hand from the guard, her jailhouse slippers dragging with a war’s worth of fatigue.
NAPOLEON
He had no scruples and he had no manners. He was ill-bred, as was shown in his relations with women, of whom he had a low opinion. His language, whether Italian or French, lacked distinction, finish, correctness, but never lacked saliency or interest. The Graces had not presided over his birth, but the Fates had. He had a magnificent talent as stage manager and actor . . . He could cajole in the silkiest tones, could threaten in the iciest, could shed tears or burst into violence, smashing furniture and bric-a-brac when he felt such actions would produce the effect desired.
—CHARLES HAZEN,
The French Revolution and Napoleon
I found the crown of France lying on the ground, and I picked it up with my sword.
—NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
She say she love me, say she want me around
I put up my dukes
But that woman done break me down
Werewolf became famous in
the months after Katrina, lying on a flooded-out Buick in St. Bernard Parish and singing to the sky. For months he was ignored, hollered to, shot at, and busted while he sang hymns and love songs, doo-wopped and bluesed.
His voice was reedy and soft with depression, a man with everything already lost but pushing on anyhow, not really sure why.
He appeared with a bottle of vodka when the moon lifted over the horizon at night. He wore pink plastic sunglasses, a red fez, a checked tie that barely reached his third rib, crusty overalls, an eggshell-blue velour jacket with yellow zebra stripes, cheap flip-flops. Spun out and wiry, he groped down a gravel driveway and eased onto the hood of an abandoned ’96 Skylark. He waited until he felt the moonlight break on his brow, a slash of warmth across his forehead that unzipped his mouth and delivered his lyrics, holding notes for eons, music without breathing, the only slight breaks in sound coming on the quarter hour when he twisted sideways for a slug of vodka. By the time the moon went down he was wasted with tears, his voice strong and terrible. He always finished with “Amazing Grace,” then rolled off the hood and passed out in the backseat.
He became an attraction when Tiny Jake Haddox started playing with him. Air-conditioning unit salesman by day and jazz drummer by night, Tiny Jake lost his house in the hurricane, then his job, then his band said they were moving to Houston and he wasn’t invited. He started drinking all day and all night, until his wife took off for Canada and he moved on to drugs. A month later he was driving through the abandoned blocks of St. Bernard Parish, shooting out windows and smoking PCP-dipped cigs two at a time when he heard the lonesome call come to him from a driveway, the saddest, scrawniest thing he’d ever heard, bloated with grief, a dirge to bury them all.
He pulled over, sipped the froth off the man’s vodka, and set up his drums.
When the people trickled back they didn’t ask questions.
Ragtag bopop a boom ba husss
filled the driveway once the bulldozers quit for the day.
Poppoppoppaloppalop yah
they tore out dry rot, hauled scrap, painted, and upholstered.
Spewy de leelee shambam babababam
they drove home from night jobs working security and fast food, cat burglary, fucking. Occasional potshots whizzed
over the Buick’s bow, intending to miss and accomplishing it as the man in the blue jacket was thin as a twig and near impossible to hit keeled on his back. His voice hung by a stitch, dry and trebly and a little flat on the high notes, but his words came true like bombs and bridges, the despair caught in his tremolo, and people understood how it helped carve out their home. After a few weeks they stopped messing with him altogether; the music was part of the city’s fabric, a train rolling through the night.
It ain’t the rain ’pon my shoulders
Or the world hangin’ round my head
But when she pushed me
Out that window
Ain’t a thing she coulda said
On the first anniversary of Katrina, a reporter found them assembled in the driveway under a waxing crescent, the singer splayed out and cornhole drunk, Tiny Jake using brushes on one of their slower numbers, a melancholy tune that usually came on late in the night when the man on the Buick was two-thirds out and falling.
Hiss hiss
That’s what I get for a kiss?
Why not slap my face?
Why not split my lip?
If you won’t have me
Stab me
Because I ain’t here no more
Warbling and scattered, the words came like a sacred spell. Then he launched into “Amazing Grace,” slithered into the backseat, and punched down the locks. The reporter caught Tiny Jake while he was packing up his cymbals, a doobie stuck in his lips.
“Excuse me,” the reporter said. “What was that?”
Tiny Jake glared at her. It was the first time anyone had spoken to him at the driveway.
“Can you tell me about the music? How long have you been playing here? And why?”
He loaded the rest of his drum set into the trunk as she repeated her questions. The presence of her voice felt profane. He climbed into his truck and started the engine, but she stood in his way with both hands up like a traffic cop, a pushy, bitchy move that kind of turned him on. He rolled down his window.
“It’s jus’ our thing. Ain’t nothin to say. Come, play. Tha’s it.”
“How did you two start up?” she asked.
“Ask him,” he said, nodding to the decrepit Skylark’s backseat, the stench in the sealed chamber palpable a few yards away. “Werewolf here come out with the moon and sing to his woman. I jus’ play drums.”
When Tiny Jake came by the next night, he had to lay on the horn to part the crowd. The street was stopped up, the sidewalks overrun with folding chairs and blankets. People chugged cans of beer, tossed footballs, smoked cigarettes, laughed on cellphones, scratched dogs, threw garbage in the bushes, tickled kids. Combating subwoofers birthed wet, heavy bass lines. The aroma of fried chicken mingled with the night’s mildewed heat. Some kind of fucking picnic, he thought, some kind of disrespect.
The driveway was lit up like a car dealership, stuffed with people and hot. Reporters encircled him as he stepped onto the street, capturing exclusive shots of his raised middle finger. “Shithogs,” he whispered, then pulled his snare out of the truck bed and set it up on the driveway.
He started back to the truck, but the rest of his drums were already floating toward him, portaged by a band of twelve-year-old boys. Somebody handed him a Corona. He heard Teddy Pendergrass on the sound system, watched an acrobatic one-handed football reception. The journalists receded. He cracked open the beer and watched a Chinese girl in a tank top blow him a kiss.
Suddenly it was the best day he’d had in years.
A fat slit of moonlight washed in from the east, creeping over portable Dumpsters and decimated homes, water-sunk land. The crowd hushed. Ten minutes slugged by. Tiny Jake tightened his skins and finished his beer and wondered what his wife was doing. He’d last seen her three months ago from under a bar-stool, high heels kicking aside beer cans and stomping toward the exit, prattling on about Vancouver. He couldn’t really remember, it might have been Montreal, he’d been in a bind then, eight sheets to the wind and then some, drowned in Jack Daniels, his rhythm off for weeks. He looked over at his truck, technically half of it still hers, insurance past due and a leaky transmission but there when you needed it worst. Kinda like Werewolf, he thought, sticking around.