Drink for the Thirst to Come (33 page)

When he could, Jeremy walked Robideaux to the fore. There, the air was not yet steeped in boat stench. There, the bow wave rose from the flat iron face of the fore-barges. Smooth and green, the 10-foot-high liquid snakes curled into morning mist or evening dark, both sides.

Robideaux was two ways. Times were, Jeremy had to grip, keep Preach’ from throwing himself overboard with the despair. These times, the man’d moan and sigh, preach on his sins and cry the casting out of devils.

The other men shook their heads.

Other times, Robideaux walked smug and chuckling. Those times, Jeremy purely wanted to jump into another someone entirely, bash Robideaux’s big black face with his own wrench,
Wham
. That notion had its wonders. A long while had come since Jeremy’d done the murder game and been hung up to swing for it or got sat down to sizzle before jumping out and into another blinking face nearby.
Ah, yes
.

But this one, this preacher? Jeremy wanted to burn him out from his dick inward.
Whoo-ee
. Sometimes, midnights, after day had frictioned Robideaux scant, Jeremy latched tight. They sat in the fore-barge while night swallowed them. Small towns came and passed sparkling with life and silence along the dark shores then winked out around a riverbend. Jeremy played and preached with his old guitar. The men in their bunks, aft, or in the wheelhouse, heard the music from the dark, ahead. He knew that, knew they shook heads, wondering what going on in that nappy haid of Robideaux’s since Cairo?

Fuck them.

Bad disaster almost got them just once. The way it happened: Robideaux, walking barge, checking lines, fore to aft, staring down at oily cable, rusty steel and big-toothed pawls, paying no heed to the one beautiful bright blue and golden day around. Nothing happening. Then something happened. Jeremy looked up and saw a thing. Thing sparked and gave him wonder. High and all ’round, the air was filled with bright threads. Little things. They drifted over, ahead, across their bow, their wake. How long had they been barging through them? He didn’t know, he’d been looking down at cables, chains and such. Mile on mile they shoved through the pretty things on the wind, so silver-flashing, way, way up.

“What is that?”
Jeremy said.

Robideaux didn’t say.

Jeremy tasted, touched life around him. They lived, each thread a little life, an urge, a yen to go, to be. He stood dumb wondering, said, “What IS that?” He tried to catch one as the boat floated through like a dream. “What the fuck is that?” He jumped and yelled but couldn’t catch-hold.

Aft, in near-disaster, none of the others noted the crazy Preach’ jumping, yelling.

At just that time, the tow was riding the chop of the main channel, a busy stretch of water. Just prior, they’d woven through a delta-maze of chutes and runs. They’d dodged other tows, northbound, and slipped by slower moving southbound commerce. To that, add the tidal rush running upriver from the Gulf; its easy swell flexed them, soft and dreamy, along their thousand-feet of bound-together parts and pieces.

In all that, one cable worked loose, enough to put a gap between three barge and number six. This little whoopsie slip, a hundred-ton steel mouth, opened man-wide slow, then closed down,
chop
, like that.

And there’s Jeremy, wondering into the sky, reaching for bright threads and Robideaux, not tending barge business underfoot.

Then of course, it was Swede Lewis near got himself gummed in half by that steel maw. Would have if he hadn’t slipped all way through and only caught himself, last second, by a dangling chain, feet dragging almost in the rushing river till the other men could pull him out, portside.

Robideaux’s fault. Ratchet man. He allowed the slip get loose. Big dumb nigger.

On the dock at payoff, the men were eyes and growls, Swede Lewis, worse than most.

The Captain, Mister Raymond StDenis, thank you very much, jostled Robideaux aside. “Have woids wit you, Robideaux,” he said. He held the fat pay envelope saying “Robideaux” in big letters out of reach. Snapping and breathing, Captain said, “You tink we takin’ you, come next trip up and back? You tink I’m takin’ a man who leaves he cables woik loose between my numbers tree and six bahges and looses me almost a man’s laig,
snip,
off like dat?” He snapped his fingers under the big man’s nose. With a bit less snap, Captain added, “Even if it was a bitty dumb-sumbitch Swede who’d have gone chop off his
udder
laig later, jess showin’ the story, how it happen.” Captain was a bitty guy, too, but he could be big with mean. Then the snap was back. “Even so. You tink I gone take you back?” he said right in Jeremy’s nose. The money envelope waved, waiting for Jeremy to answer him back some ways.

“No, sir, Cap’n” Jeremy said, “I purely do not expect it, Mr. StDenis. I sure was a fuckin’ mess, this trip.”

It was the Captain then, not expecting Robideaux to be so easy about it all, who stood back shuffling. “Now Robideaux. You, there…” Captain said, “
got
to get yourself shut.” Then he stopped saying.

Jeremy figured Captain was thinking about what it was Robideaux had to shut himself from.

“You get youseff shut of dem
woman
problems, Robideaux, you pure must,” Captain said. “Damn,” he added. “You get youseff right ’fore you come back to woik my river, y’heah?”

Then, like that, he gave Robideaux his money.

Women problems?
Well, who didn’t have women problems, he was a man, man problems if he was a woman? People were such a fucking bore, people were. Jeremy’s laugh nearly seeped from Robideaux’s hung-down head. Robideaux was near jumping, near yelling,
“No, sir, no sir. Ain’t women’s. Got me a bad spirit what took me down in Cairo, trying to stick me in some dark place where there ain’t no God A’mighty, and is gone ride me till he wear me out, toss me aside like a wore-down boot. It ain’t me, Captain, it surely ain’t me, I pays attention, my woik.”

Which he never said; Jeremy gripped Robideaux and made him take his dressing like a man. Then, reluctant, like he didn’t for real deserve his pay, Jeremy took the envelope. “Yessir, I hear you, Cap StDenis,” Jeremy said. “No mess of a man need work your tow, Cap.” Jeremy threw Robideaux’s truck-sack over one shoulder, hung his old lady guitar from the other and headed, sad and slow for looks, toward the city.

Captain StDenis yelled down over the dockside’s banging cranes and growling donkey engines, “Y’get yourself right, now, y’hear? Get y’self right and we glad to hev you back ’nuder trip.”

Jeremy smiled and nodded.

“’Sides, Preach’, we used to dem songs you been making since Illin-wa.”

“Yassir, Captain,” Jeremy hollered out, deep day washing up his nose from town. Then: “Cap’n, oh Cap’n, one more ting.”

He waited till everyone had turned for listening. “Fuck y’all to a fare-thee-well. You, your boat, all who work the boat, all the boats that work the river you float on, the world you crawl across and the God that grinds you up like the meat you truly are. Fuck you each and every one.” A whimper squeaked out Robideaux’s nose. “‘Kay, Cap?” Jeremy added. A tear rolled down a valley of Robideaux’s cheek. Jeremy threw a smile, tossed a wave. The captain and the men stood round-eyed. Swede Lewis most of all. And Jeremy was gone.
Some fun
in sweet-home tonight.

Two things, now. One, even after humiliation, his bridges smoking ruins, Robideaux was home, and two, Jeremy had no idea where the fuck he’s at. The river was small. On the tow, everyone knew this Robideaux Jeremy walked in. Jeremy was Robideaux, who tended cable and held the barge together, big dumb preaching man as got himself drunk in every lowdown the whole Mississippi way. Being him, there? Easy.

In the big world, now, he was just another laid-off, paid-off river man with a guitar, come down for a dirty time, catching at Mardi Gras.

Robideaux was kicking. Jeremy hadn’t traveled anyone, man or woman, with so much thrash in him, not in half a thousand year maybe he hadn’t. Took some fight to make those big feet go where Jeremy wanted. Other side of that was, Jeremy didn’t have any particular place he wanted. If Robideaux eased north, though, Jeremy figured, he ought to bear south. Pain in the ass that was, but there ’twas. Oh, yes, he’d have to hurt this Robideaux.

By and by, walking got easier.

“Give up?”
Jeremy asked.

Silence.

“Robideaux?” he said.

Nothing.

With walking, walking got easier. The warm wet town carried blood heat. A million men, a million women gathered, bumped, shoved, jiggling, to have each other in screaming carnal ways. One good long juicy hump,
Whooo-eee
, that was JUST what it was, coming. Good times in a good place.

Might be this Robideaux was not a young man, but he was, for sure-enough, a man and Jeremy strutted him on the
Vieux Carre
. “Thank you, Robideaux,” he sang out, jostled by a passing wave of flesh and sweet eyes flashing him and his old lady guitar. Flesh everywhere. The stinky places between a million legs breathed in with a swish, exhaled musk and magic. Each bumped another, going, coming, rushing here or, sweated for the night, waited to rub a stranger there. Each rub gave a little hint, a glistening sniff of what might be had, might be—later, sometime later—but tonight for sure.

Good
time, this. And this wasn’t even it, not yet, not at all. Yet this was good. For a Traveler, this town, this time? Bring it
on
. Jeremy could about use up this Robideaux in one grand night, easy to find heart and legs and eyes in some other man or woman in the swollen silence Robideaux knew would come by magic after Lenten midnight swept the town, amen.

Crushing bodies carried him through narrow ways. The breath from every peeling building smelled…

…Jeremy pulled heavy through Preach’s nose…

…of old mold and plaster, bugs and iron, like cellar damp and niter-frost, of sweat and a seven-night-stained bed. A reek of old times, when the world was hungry, sharp and bloody, filled him at every breath.

The smell, too, was a smothering wash of spice, not half a bad smell.

Sky was scarce on the narrow streets, a slice of late day blue, steeping in sundown red. Iron balconies trailing shadows set off the color. Above them, pretty twilight hid the big black, deep forever tarted up for fun. Music slapped him ever which-way as evening settled over the Quarter. Tunes thumped ahead, behind, or came down through louvered shutters from tall bright rooms above the street. The noise was tin, tingle, and rumble, distant booms and screeching toots and brashes. The guitar hummed at his back, now. She wanted out. Wouldn’t be hard, finding a place to let her wood and steel go loose.

He went into a place. Set down, had bourbon whiskey. A few minutes and someone asked,
Can you play that thing, or’s it just deadwood there?

“Deadwood, sir?” he said, not understanding. “Deadwood, this?” he said, petted the wrapped guitar. “Why, she a breathing thing.”

Yah, but can you play it?

“Mostly she play me,” he said. “Heyaw, yaw, yaw...” Then he played, his eyes gone knives.
Eight bars made him a star. A couple numbers, he was famous. When he left an hour later he was a legend, a drug they’d never tingle to again, not there.

An easy town and easy times, and Jeremy was feeling—Robideaux was feeling—heavy ’round the groin. Oh, yes.

Dark had deepened while he’d played. Shooting crackers let a stink of spark and powder now. Beads filled the air, spinning. Rings and coconut flashed. A throb tingled him from Robideaux’s feet to behind his neck. It wanted. He wanted. Bodies pressed him, each a life, a story, a world to go to and be in. He yearned to reach and be them.

But he was tongue hungry. The bouquet of roiling oil and flaming spice breathed on him from a dozen places, this street, that street. Behind wide doors and tall windows, wood fan blades shoved the boiled perfume of crawdad and hot boudin to him. Red bean juice and andouille filled the air.
Hmmm-mmm
... Time to feed this Robideaux corpse. Jeremy turned on a whim, rode the notion through a door, like
that
.
Daddy Boil’s
. Old Mother Guitar mumbled at his back; must have liked the joint.

Daddy Boil’s
was nearly full, not quite. Nobody paid note as he slipped Robideaux into an ass-warmed chair beside the stage next to the john door by the far wall. A flow of bodies flashed in and out, looking, yelling, catching one another, leaving someone, then banging back to the street and the party roaring out, beyond. Jeremy settled him back among stomachs, groins, and legs. For a while nobody cared that Robideaux waited to feed.

At the bar, backs and elbows. At the far end, a round and shiny church lady poured ass over both sides of her stool. An old whore, waiting. She never turned but her eyes glowed white in the mirror, other side of the bar. She stared into her own darkness and sipped tea, listening.

A good place to start,
Daddy Boil’s
, yessir.

By and by came a pretty girl covered in sweat and pissed at him—the particular him of Robideaux. “You play that thing now, Preach’?” she shouted over the beating juke.

“Yuh-huh,” he said. He was known. Robideaux had tricked him here. He smiled the man’s pretty best. “I surely do.” Jeremy’s Robideaux eyes drank the girl, so obvious.

“Since when you take that up?” she yelled. “Give up the preaching now, old man?”

“Since always is when,” he yelled back. He unwrapped the guitar, loving the touch even with Robideaux’s hands. “Since the Trojan War and long before.” The strings hummed when the cover-cloth brushed them, sliding off. In light, the living blaze of the wood pulsed in the heart of its grain. “She proud, huh?” Jeremy wiped the strings and looked up and down the woman. “An’ I ain’t showing you no old man, li’l girl.”

A run of firecrackers prattled in the street. Robideaux’s left hand pricked the frets; thick black fingers flicked the steel strings. The guitar matched the night’s song, just a chuckle—enough to show this pretty piece of woman that “old man” Robideaux was the for-sure goods. “See you, there?” he said. He didn’t even tingle with that pitiful effort, music to a firework night. “Nothing to that. And I don’t give up no preachin’ neither, now, you see?” His right hand axed out five church chords, loud. Heads turned. “Still sermonizing. Taking my text from
Mardi
nuit
.” He resolved the church he’d conjured in the air, let it dissolve to cathouse buttermilk. God-chords pumping a fine wet fuck.