Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans (12 page)

It was when Julian was about eleven that the stories began about the Silver Creek land. Simon had a captive audience in Julian on gumbo night. Julian would pull up a chair to the big round table in the tight kitchen and start his homework while the mixed scents of sausage, shrimp, chicken, and okra swirled in the steam, almost potent enough to taste.

“Pay attention to what I’m saying,” Simon would say, stopping in the middle of stirring rice to point an admonishing spoon at Julian. “Someday that land’s gonna be all yours.”

Simon told Julian how his grandfather Moses, a freed slave turned sharecropper, had inherited the land from his master and mulched it with sweat and blood. It had been left first to Jacob, Simon’s father, and Jacob’s first cousin, Maree, and then, upon their deaths, to the next generation of Fortiers—Maree’s daughter Genevieve and Simon.

Simon bragged as if his name were on the deed of the Taj Mahal. Two hundred and forty acres of sugar-rich bottom land, black and fertile as a young womb. Pines, magnolias, live oaks by the hundreds, and honeysuckle and jasmine that turned the air to perfume. And the creek snaking through it like a thick vein of silver.

Wistfulness played in Simon’s eyes when he talked about how nightfall wrapped Silver Creek in darkness so velvety you “could feel it on your skin,” and set off a symphony of cicadas and nightbirds that “could drown out a brass band.” About how Auntie Maree, his father’s first cousin, had yoked him to her apron strings until he could craft a perfect roux. And how Jacob had taught Simon the ways of fishermen and hunters, so he’d never know an empty supper table.

“Uh, huh.” Julian would flip to the next page in his geometry book. When Simon went on like this, it meant one thing—supper would be late, and he’d have to cut short his practice time. But he always indulged his father the endless paeans to the skywardreaching oaks and clear-water streams and earth so sweet it could grow damn near anything. The more Simon talked, the more excited he got, the more loose and free his spice-sprinkling fingers, the more delicious the gumbo. But Julian was more interested in mastering a page in the Arban trumpet method book than in any talk about land he couldn’t care less to ever own.

The first time Julian remembered seeing Silver Creek, he must have been four. The last time he saw it was just after Ladeena died. The creek that Simon always described as a ribbon of sparkling silver winding through rich earth and shaded by luxuriant trees and thickets, was, to Julian, just a hot, bug ridden swamp. Simon tried to teach him hunting, but the buckshot noise hurt his sensitive ears. He was equally unimpressed with the joys of fishing, lacking the stomach for worms and fish guts. The only good part was when Simon and Genevieve decided to throw down in the kitchen. Then, everything was good.

Crawfish etouffee from fresh-caught mudbugs, red beans and rice with homemade andouille, tomato-ey shrimp Creole, and peppery gumbo with all manner of whatever swam or crawled thrown in, and fresh herbs and spices from Genevieve’s garden that made every inhaled breath a joy. Simon invited everybody he knew from the nearby town for supper. As impatient as Julian was with logging in country time, he had to admit, the food made it worth the trip.

But after his twelfth summer, Julian did not return to Silver Creek until he was eighteen, for his mother’s burial. And then, never again. He and Simon rarely talked about it any more. Julian had other plans that did not include spending his life holed away in some backwater when there was so much world to get out and see.

At thirty-one, after his engagement to Velmyra ended and he was itching for change, Julian had packed up his trumpet and headed for New York, and any other part of the world where he could lose himself in his own, self-made blues. Simon’s steps slowed, his eyes paled, his shoulders fell. He had been to a war in Korea, cooked in foreign kitchens in exotic villages, seen so much of the world—and still longed for home, talking about his land the way some men talked about their first love. That his only son didn’t share his southern-boy homing instinct was more than heartbreaking, it was an assault to his history.

But Julian couldn’t understand his father’s obsession with a stretch of flat, lifeless land called Silver Creek.

“Do you mind if we turn down the air a little?”

“Oh. Sorry.”

He reached over to dial down the air conditioner, which had been blasting since they left Baton Rouge. To Julian’s mind, the noise helped to quell the awkwardness dividing them.

For a half hour they had been driving westward over the long bridge stretching across the Atchafalaya River, where the giant cypresses and pines, their thick trunks moored deep in the mirroring swamp, filtered flashes of sun as the car made its way over the jigsawing wetlands. As they crossed the broad basin, there was no sound except the air conditioner and the wail of the tenor saxophone from a radio station just outside of Baton Rouge. Grover Washington—Julian recognized the silky tone, the post-seventies groove. He tried to listen to the music, nodding his head to the rhythm, his arm resting lightly on the top of the steering wheel. Feigning nonchalance, when actually there was a constant nervejitter in the pit of his stomach.

When he’d first turned on the radio earlier, bad news had blared mercilessly. All about the hurricane, the levees, the current state of the whole town and its nearby parishes. The government failures. The second hurricane that had followed, adding insult to injury, another blow to an area already bludgeoned by the first. The missing people and the ones who were not—the ones who floated face up in the flood waters, bloated, found at last.

But there were a few good stories—the reconnection of loved ones once lost and returned to each other, the rescues of old women or young children on rooftops, who told their tales of hopelessness, heat, exhaustion, and fever dreams of heaven, until the whir of chopper blades sounded like the battering wings of angels. The volunteers who’d rescued starving dogs destined for disease and death. The tearful cries of defiant citizens from their outposts of exile—Houston, Dallas, Denver—determined to return and rebuild.

But after a while they had both had enough. “Do you mind?” she said. And Julian was relieved, too, when she reached a hand across to the radio, inviting Grover to float them away to a mindless refuge of fusion funk.

Soon, Velmyra broke the silence, but not the way he would have preferred. She wanted to talk about his career.

“So, anyway, like I was saying the other night. I saw you on
The Tonight Show
,” she began, proud at having taken a good whack at the icy barrier between them. “It was a repeat, I know. But I had missed it the first time, a couple of years ago, so I was glad I got to see it.”

This was not cool. Not at all what he wanted to talk about. She went on praising his playing, telling him how happy she had been for his success (despite what they had been through, but that was all past, wasn’t it?) and how she’d even taped the show so her mother could watch it.

He said very little, an occasional nodding grunt, and she seemed perfectly fine with a conversation that was decidedly lopsided, her questions exponentially longer than his answers. How did it feel, being famous like that? Did people recognize him on the streets? What about the travel? Did it get old after a while, never sleeping in his own bed? And what was Jay Leno like?

“I mean I know this is what you wanted, but is it, you know, as great as you expected it to be? Does it—”

“Velmyra,” he interrupted, gritting his throbbing jaw. “I can’t play right now.”

There. He had said it. And he realized that, since the accident, it was the first time he’d ever said those words.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I can
play
, a little, for a little while. But I had a car accident several months ago. My jaw…I had surgery. The doctor said it should be as good as new, but it’s…slow. And I tried to come back too soon. Right now, my embouchure is crap. Nothing feels right.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see, feel her looking at him, eyebrows raised, eyes stunned, lips parted. She was silent a moment, then turned to stare out the windshield.

“Oh, my God. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s OK. I’ll be able to play after a while. I’m just impatient.”

The awkward silence began again. He was testy now. He fidgeted in his seat, lowered the armrest, and put his elbow on it. Adjusted the seat with the knob under it.

“Damn rental cars,” he said.

Now he was angry, at what he didn’t know. Why did she have to bring that up?

Part of him wanted to ride in silence for the rest of the trip, and part of him wanted to tell her about how he’d cried when he’d come out of surgery and felt the huge bandage on his face. About how it felt to have to cancel a boatload of gigs. About the embarrassing comeback disaster in Japan, at only the hottest club in the whole damn country. Not to mention his band.

The quintet he led—Antoine Johnson on piano, Hector Rubalcaba on bass, Walter Haymaker on tenor, and Jeffrey Mobile on drums, all good friends—had been with him through fat times and lean, but had all taken gigs (temporarily, they said) while he healed. They had to make a living, didn’t they? They would be back, for sure, the minute he was ready.

Sure.

And part of him wanted to say something to her that would make her feel what he was feeling now. Regret. Anger at the past. Something like,
Why’d you marry that dude, so quick after we split? How could you have? What was that all about?
Or,
How soon did you realize what a horrible mistake you’d made?

But he said nothing.

They drove on mostly in silence. Velmyra made an occasional comment about the landscape, about how she wished she had her sketchpad with her, then reached in her huge cloth shoulder bag and realized she did. She made etchings on the paper with a charcoal pencil; cypress trees, egrets, oaks dripping moss. An eagle in flight, a pelican perched on a telephone pole. They stopped for gas and bottled water and clean restrooms, and Velmyra bought potato chips and orange juice. When they got back in the car, Julian looked at his map, then turned off the interstate onto a smaller highway.

In a few minutes they were miles into deep country, and the sun sat higher now above tall pines in variations on a theme of green: the pale greens of saplings, the deep summer greens of the mature trees. Julian stretched his shoulders and looked across the road at row after row of straightback evergreens and wispy clouds pasted against the piercing blue. He felt better now, and thought,
this is not so bad.
The air was cooler among the trees, the sky bluer. It was actually good to get away from the city.

They drove on, and he sensed something had changed with Velmyra. Her silence now had an uneasiness about it; she blinked her eyes the way she used to years ago, when she had something that needed saying on her mind.

“I’m really sorry, Julian.” She was shaking her head, her eyes apologetic. “I didn’t know anything about your accident. Sylvia didn’t tell me. It must have been horrible for you. For your career, and everything.”

Sympathy always made him feel a little uncomfortable, softening his defense, breaking him down. But still, he was impressed that she had been thinking about it all this time. He sensed her comment was genuine, and he allowed it to comfort him.

“It’s OK. I just need to wait. Work my way back into playing slowly. I’ll be all right. Daddy kept telling me not to jump back into it, but I wouldn’t listen.”

She nodded, smiling slightly. “Speaking of your father, how’s his friend, Mr. Parmenter? The one who owned the restaurant? Did he make it through the storm OK? I know your dad and he were close.”

Parmenter. She had a good memory. He wanted to tell her that the man who’d shamelessly ripped off his father was just fine for someone who should be in jail.

“Parmenter? He made it through the storm OK but his health’s real bad. Told me he wants to see Daddy as soon as I find him. Says Daddy ‘owes him something.’ Strange, considering how much he owes Daddy.”

“What do you mean?”

He hadn’t talked to anybody about this. But what the hell. He felt like talking now. He was away from the city, on a country road, sheltered by tall trees. He felt safe. There was something about being here in the country, and being with the woman he once believed he could trust with his life, that made him feel he could tell the truth.

He turned off the narrow road onto one even narrower and full of gravel that spat up like popping corn against the undercarriage of the car. Trees hugged the roadside, their thick branches trellising the road like a dark, shading arch.

“There’s a story about that,” he began. He slowed the car and leaned back into the seat, his wrist resting on the top of the steering wheel.

“Years ago, when Daddy was young, he was just about the best damn chef in New Orleans.”

T
wo Louisiana boys, one a tall and strapping blond, the other as wiry as a willow branch with skin the rich brown of live oak bark, came back from their tours of duty itching to begin the lives spared by an undeclared and nameless war. Matthew Parmenter had been thirty-one and Simon Fortier twenty-two when they met in a MASH in Korea. Country-mannered, with Crescent City grit beneath his nails, Matthew had been a supply sergeant, and young Simon, fresh from a wooded backwater called Silver Creek more than a hundred miles from Parmenter’s home, brought the Fortier family recipes to his job as an army cook.