Gods of New Orleans Read online

  Bacchus swiped at the rainwater that had pelted his fur-lined coat. He removed his hat and shook it to release a spray of droplets in the servant’s face. Emma thought she should just get into the car, but she stayed rooted in place. Something inside her forced her to wait for Bacchus’s reaction, to witness it because it was due to her mistake that the servant would be punished. Her eyes went wide when she heard the gangster’s words.

  “Ain’t got time to be callin’ the Birdman in. Give me your hand, boy,” the krewe boss said as he replaced his hat.

  The servant hesitated a second, and Bacchus snatched up the man’s free hand even as he was lifting it from his side. Emma saw tears fall down the servant’s cheeks, mixing with the rainwater that Mr. Bacchus had spattered onto his face. Then the servant’s face twisted with pain and he let out a howl as Bacchus drove a knife through his palm.

  The umbrella wavered in the air over Bacchus’s head, but it continued to cover him as he withdrew his blade. Emma felt an urge to comfort the servant, wrap his hand somehow. But she had nothing to use, and the look on Bacchus’s face told her it would be unwise to do anything but watch.

  So she watched. And she felt that old agony burn anew inside her. Servants treated like filth. A man beaten because the color of his skin didn’t make him a full man in his attacker’s eyes. The servant took his beating on his feet, all the while holding the umbrella above Bacchus’s head as the krewe boss’s stick cracked against the man’s shins and ribs.

  Finally it was done and Bacchus again extended a hand for Emma to enter the car before him.

  “I do apologize that you had to witness that, Miss Emma,” he said, shaking his heavy jowls. “Discipline. It is a nasty business, but sadly a needed one.” As he ended, Bacchus stared daggers at the servant who now stood shuddering and sobbing, clutching his crippled, bloodied hand to his chest, but still holding the umbrella above the krewe boss, sheltering the man from the rain.

  Wanting to voice her objection, but knowing better than to do so, Emma stepped up into the car and joined Eddie on the rear-facing seat. At first, she thought Bacchus would have the other servant precede him as well, but the krewe boss instead took a step forward and turned his back to the car door, obscuring Emma’s view of the injured servant. Bacchus spoke then, and his words sent fingers of fear across Emma’s scalp.

  “You made one mistake too many, I am sorry to say. Good bye, boy. Maybe your next employer will take pity on you and end your miserable life.”

  Bacchus arm made a swift pushing motion as he backed into the car. He moved like he was made of air, billowing into the space without actually stepping a foot up to the floorboards. He took his place on the seat opposite Emma. She and Eddie both recoiled from the man as the ghosts and phantoms began swirling around his head.

  Wispy images of knives and gun barrels swam in the air, flashing out to strike, or exploding in blasts of remembered crimes. Then Bacchus seemed to dissolve where he sat and all that was left was the red mist that she had seen in Hardy’s tavern, just like what Emma had seen hovering around Celestin Hardy himself that morning they’d arrived.

  That morning he shot Otis.

  Outside, the injured servant lay in the rain-soaked earth around Emma and Eddie’s front stoop. Mud stained his livery in great splotches mixed with blood from the stab wound in his hand. Emma felt herself leaning out of the car, like she would help the man.

  Bacchus’s voice broke Emma’s concentration and she spun back into her seat, facing the gangster and clutching fast to Eddie’s shaking hand. The red mist had vanished and Bacchus was there again, whole and made of flesh. He called out to the other servant. “Close the door now, boy. Chill is coming in, and I am not given to having the chill on my skin.”

  The man lifted Eddie’s instrument case into the car and set it on the floorboards in front of Emma’s feet. Then he stepped back to close the door, revealing once again his fallen companion on the ground. Emma’s breath caught in her throat as the man sank into the ground. The mud came up around his shaking form, swallowing him like a black soup come from hell itself.

  The door closed before she could see any more of what happened. As the driver started the motor, Emma looked out the window at the place where the injured man had lain in the mud. She only saw the broken remains of an umbrella, its spines snapped and bent as if by a storm.

  Emma sat against the leather seats, fear and sorrow fighting inside of her. She glanced at Eddie, whose face was soft but set with fear as well. Bacchus sat with his eyes closed, his hands on the head of his gold-tipped stick with the shining point stabbing into the floorboards between his feet.

  For a brief moment, Emma forgot everything she had just seen. The interior of the car again fit around her like a glove and she remembered being a young girl riding with her father, and then racing around Chicago City with her friends. Then she remembered her father striking their servants, berating them for simple errors, and threatening them daily. And she remembered the red mist in the shape of Bacchus’s body, like a ghost of all the blood he’d ever spilled.

  The driver moved the car into the street, and the remaining servant stood on the running board beside Emma’s window. The man clasped tight to a cold metal handrail mounted beside the doors. In that instant, any hint of familiar relief that remained in Emma’s heart was washed away in the torrential rain that shivered the servant and soaked him to the bone.

  Chapter 24

  “Hey Julien, wait up,” Aiden said, pushing his cart along the street behind the other boy.

  “Oh hey, Conroy,” Julien replied. He turned to greet Aiden with a handshake, but kept his eyes on the ground.

  “What gives?” Aiden asked. “Thought you’d be all smiles after that pull down with the Ghost the other night. You and me came out on top, hey?”

  They had come out good. Aiden was worried it had been a dream, or that the money would disappear as soon as he tried to spend it, like the fairy gold in the stories his mother used to read to him. But the coins were real when they hit his hand and they stayed real all the way home.

  “What you do with your loot?” Julien asked, his face sagging so bad Aiden thought he might trip over his own chin.

  “Gave it to my ma. Most of it anyway. What about you?”

  “M’daddy took off with most of it. Went off to Old Storyville. Damn fool ain’t even my real daddy,” Julien said, sucking back a sob that Aiden pretended he didn’t notice. He could see Julien’s anger was just under the boy’s skin. “Why’d you give it your momma anyway? That much dough, oughta like to buy you some new shoes or something.”

  Aiden mumbled a reply, wanting to agree with the other boy because Julien was the only friend Aiden had in the whole city. And the only person he’d met so far who had dark skin and didn’t make Aiden think his mother might be right about Negroes after all. Of course, she’d first accused Aiden of stealing when he came home with the money, and then, when he’d told her he won it, she went on another tear about the ‘dark influence’ of New Orleans.

  “Gambling, Aiden! And with . . . those people.”

  She had settled down a bit when he showed her the pile of coins he’d collected. Even the idea of ill-gotten gains didn’t stand a chance against a stack of loot like that. He’d lied and said the boys all played a hand of cards in the gala house after they were done working. Something told him that the Ghost wasn’t someone his ma would want him knowing about or having anything to do with.

  “What about your daddy? You find him yet?” Julien asked as they rounded a corner to the street where they’d be working for the night.

  “No,” Aiden said, not wanting to say much more and knowing that he wouldn’t have a choice in the matter.

  “You say he just disappeared, huh? Ain’t seen nobody go out like that before. Usually a guy gets the knife, he end up in the street that same day. But your daddy he took a while to slide down. Funny.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “I mean it’s funny
he didn’t just go right there when Hardy put that knife in him. Usually that’s how it go down. And you say Mr. Bacchus hisself was there. Man like that don’ let you get away with just a stabbing. He put you down. Dat’s how it happen to every man gets the knife or lose an eye.”

  “You said the Ghost lost his eye, though. To the Birdman. So what gives?”

  “Ghost different. He ain’t like all them other fools end up on the street.”

  Aiden bristled, but found it easier to take the remark when Julien said it. It didn’t feel like he was naming Aiden’s pa direct. In the past two weeks, Aiden had also made his own kind of peace with things. His pa had crossed a line somewhere and now he was on the wrong side of life. Aiden chuckled as he remembered what his father used to tell him when he was a boy, before bedtime.

  “What you laughin’ at, Dove?” Julien said.

  Ignoring the name, Aiden told him. “My pa used to say if you wake up and your feet hit the floor, then that’s a good thing. It means you’re on the right side of the grass.”

  “Shoot,” Julien said, “any fool know that. But I guess you gotta find somethin’ to laugh about with your daddy down in the street now. Maybe you find him soon and show him all them coins you won off the Ghost.”

  “Who’d he hit?” Aiden asked, still wondering about the mysterious man in the white suit with the patch over one eye.

  “Huh? Ghost ain’t hit nobody. He lose his eye to the Birdman over some kinda trouble with the gala houses. I don’ know the story more than that. But hey, here go our house for tonight. Better get in and start workin’. We finish up fast, maybe go make some more money off the Ghost. An’ this time that fool calls hisself my daddy won’ know about it neither, ‘cause I ain’t gonna tell him.”

  The boys struggled to navigate the narrow walk up to the front porch. A pair of boards had been left standing next to the steps. Julien went to these and set them down to form a ramp for their carts.

  “Mama Shandy mus’ be in a good mood she leavin’ them boards out for us.”

  “What do you do if they’re not there?”

  “Same as you always do, Dove,” Julien said with a laugh. “Break your fool back lifting this cart up the steps.”

  The door was locked, so Aiden went to the paybox to fish out the key. He had the job down now, knew how it all worked. He still had trouble with the way the house mothers all called him ‘dove’ like it was a word for something they’d found on the bottom of their shoe. But Aiden’s ma was always quick to remind him it wasn’t just dark-skinned folks who could use words that way.

  Inside the gala house, the goings-on upstairs echoed around the upper halls and down through the stairwells. Aiden started in the kitchen, doing the tiled floor first because it was the easiest, and at this time of night nobody’d be using the kitchen anymore, so it was a sure thing he wouldn’t have to go over his work twice because some dummy tracked mud through the room after he was done. Mama Shandy did that to ‘teach a lesson’ the night she hired him.

  Bought. She bought me.

  Aiden remembered the look of relief on Father James’s face as the money changed hands, as if the priest was getting free of a burden. Aiden had gone in asking the man for help, a little money so him and his ma wouldn’t have to live so rough anymore. It was all he could think to ask after his pa vanished. And what’d that priest go and do? He’d put the money Mama Shandy gave him straight into the donation chest, without even looking at it. But Father James had wrung his hands, too, like he knew somebody would call him to account someday. He’d wrung his hands good, just like Aiden was now wringing out the mop.

  Speckles of water dotted his pants again, but he kept most of it in the bucket this time. He was learning. Maybe someday he’d learn how to get away from Mama Shandy. Or maybe he’d just go on cleaning floors like his pa had done back in Chicago City. If a man could make a living doing it, the work really wasn’t half bad.

  “What you standin’ there dreamin’ for? You damn fool dove!” Mama Shandy’s voice whipped across Aiden’s neck like a switch and he spun around to face her.

  The house mother stood in the doorway to the kitchen, staring at him across her eyeglasses. She had them down on her nose, the gold frames reflecting the moonlight coming into the kitchen window and the one gas lamp Aiden had lit to help him see the floor better.

  Mama Shandy crossed her arms and twisted her lips at him in a half pout, half sneer, like she’d as soon smack him one as say another word to him. She reached one hand to lift her glasses up in front of her eyes. Those glasses were worth ten times as much as Aiden had won from the Ghost the other night. Little strings of pearl and gold looped from the frames to drape around her neck.

  “You and your partner best work good tonight, boy. You work fast and good, you maybe earn somethin’ extra. Somethin’ special. You work slow or bad, you get the foot. Or maybe,” she continued, uncrossing her arms, raising one, and stepping closer to Aiden, “maybe I give you the foot anyway, damn dove, make sure you know what you supposed to be lookin’ at and what you ain’t!”

  Aiden dropped his eyes immediately, expecting a swift kick or a swat around the ears. You weren’t supposed to look at the house mothers unless they told you to. And he’d been staring straight at her eyes while she spoke. Aiden waited for the pain that he knew would come. He had to force his hands to stay by his sides, even though every soft part of him cried for protection.

  “Here, boy,” Mama Shandy said. The echo of her voice told Aiden she’d turned around to talk to someone in the hall. Julien must have come up behind her. Or maybe he’d been with her the whole time?

  “Yes’m, Mama Shandy,” Julien said. Aiden caught a hint of fear in the other boy’s voice, but nothing like what Aiden felt himself.

  “You get in there teach that damn dove how to behave. I don’ wanna have no more sass from him, you hear? And dammit, boy, but get you some new shoes on your feet and quick. I know I pay you right and proper, not like that dove you let tag along with you. Ain’t no reason you need to be walkin’ around in a pair of beat-up old cow hides like what you got on now. Dammit all, if your momma didn’ earn so good for me, I’d send you and that dove a’yours waltzin’ in the mud.”

  Aiden’s ears stung with the word, but worse was the sense that he was being threatened with death and that he didn’t know why or what he could do to change Mama Shandy’s mind about him. He felt even worse when the thought came that maybe he couldn’t. Maybe this was how he would be treated in New Orleans, at least by the house mothers and some of the other houseboys he worked with.

  Everyone except Julien.

  Mama Shandy stepped into the hall and away. Aiden followed her footfalls down to the other end of the house and up the stairs before he dared move from where he stood. Since Julien hadn’t budged either, Aiden figured he was doing the right thing.

  Aiden caught the sound of a door opening upstairs, and a few thick laughs like from a big man who sounded like he’d had enough hooch to last him a week of Sundays. The door closed on the sounds of celebration. Julien came around the corner, his eyes wide and rimmed with something between fear and sadness.

  “What’d you do, Dove? The hell you do to get Mama Shandy riled up like that?”

  Aiden told him how he’d been staring at her eyeglasses. Julien hauled off and slapped him. Aiden raised his fists, but he was staggered by the other boy’s shift to violent anger, and he only put up a weak guard. Julien had stepped back, though, and had his hands on his cart.

  “C’mon. We still gotta do the brass and the window glass. Let’s get done so we can get on home.”

  Aiden followed Julien down the hall, keeping a distance between them. Along the way, they stopped at every gas lamp and polished up the fixture. Julien did the more delicate parts, leaving the easy work for Aiden. At first he thought it was because Julien felt guilty for slapping him, but he found out he was wrong soon enough.

  “I let you do the hard parts, you like to make a mess of th
ings. Set Mama Shandy on another tear, and this time she make good on her promise. Put us in the mud. Like your damn fool daddy.”

  On and on they went through the house, wiping down brass and cleaning window glass. Now and then Julien would come out with another line about Aiden’s ‘damn fool daddy,’ and eventually it was enough to set Aiden on the attack.

  “Look, I don’t talk like that about your pa, so lay off mine, okay? He didn’t start out a damn fool, even if he ended up one when we got here. It ain’t his fault no how, so just shut your yap.”

  “Sure enough, Dove,” Julien said, half smiling. “Like seein’ you get somethin’ in your back that hold you up. Had me worried you was just another cripple white boy. You prove me wrong all right. Truce,” he said as he stuck out a hand.

  Aiden looked at Julien’s hand for a moment before reaching out to shake it. They finished the job in silence, closing the front door an hour or so later. Aiden’s fingers and wrists ached from all the wiping and rubbing he’d done. His back and neck were sore from the way he had to stoop to get at some of the brass surfaces Julien left for him to polish, giving him another reason to wonder how much of a friend he had in Julien. The other boy had done the more detailed cleaning, but he’d also done it standing up and looking straight at his work.

  “So hey, Dove,” Julien said as they pushed their carts back down the street.

  “Make it Conroy. Please.”

  “Okay then. See, you got them bones in your back, just like I said. Sure enough, Conroy. Okay then, so back in the kitchen there. With Mama Shandy.”

  “Yeah? You gonna say sorry for smacking me one?”

  “Huh? Don’ go growin’ too big for your britches now, D‌—‌I mean Conroy. No, you earn that one, so I gave it to you. Be thankful you don’ work with Theo Valcour. He knock out teeth when he teach a lesson.”