Robert Stone Prime Green, Remembering the Sixties (2008)

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.The census, which my wife worked until virtually the day before shegave birth, was a dazzle of New Orleans strangeness.If kabbalah an-gels and Mayan gardens had appeared behind the flaking doors ofimpoverished New Orleans it would not have surprised us.More-over we were drawing the best temporary pay in the South as far aswe knew.The hospital in which my daughter was born was Huey Long sgift to his private tinhorn republic.It was segregated, which meantthat everything had to be done twice, replicated.Only the poor wentthere.Fathers were not allowed in maternity.Doctors and nurseswere condescending and sarcastic.It seemed that only the blacknurse s aides were kind.We had a girl and we called her Deidre.We moved apartments once, letting some passing friends stay58 r o b e r t s t o n eout the rent on St.Philip Street.Maybe out of some secret unspo-ken hate, a cruel sense of humor who knows? these people leftthe remains of their shrimp dinner in our sink.It remained there forfour days of blistering New Orleans summer.The place had to befumigated.One day I was walking down Barracks Street when a black Cadil-lac pulled up beside me.The passenger door opened.A well-dressedman I did not at first recognize addressed me cheerfully. Hey, Stone! Get in.I got in beside him, and the air-conditioning in his car was verywelcome.I saw that it was my landlord, Mr.Ruffino. What you do that to me for? Mr.Ruffino inquired.He was refer-ring to the shrimp in the sink. I ever do anything like that to you?I was surprised and alarmed.Perspiring heavily all at once, air-conditioning or not, I explained what I knew must be the circum-stances.Somehow I convinced him.Maybe Mr.Ruffino took pity on my recent fatherhood.He waslater helpful in getting me into the seamen s union.He also revivedmy aborted show-business career by introducing me to his friendDominick.It was the era of poetry readings to jazz, and Dominick fanciedthe idea of introducing these items at his Dumaine Street bar.I readsome of the pieces I d read in the Seven Arts.Local talent and peopledriving in from New York or the Coast or Mexico came through.Wepassed a glass goblet and split the proceeds.Sometimes, after Tulanefootball games, the players and their followers would come in andthrow bananas at us.This cost them nothing, since the bananas, inbunches off the dock, were hung from the ceiling and the bar pillars.On one occasion Dominick, who was taking increased pleasure inthese upscale shows, rented a bunch of avant-garde Yugoslav car-p r i m e g r e e n : r e m e m b e r i n g t h e s i x t i e s 59toons to precede the main event.Drunk partisans of the CrimsonTide, which had prevailed over Tulane that day, disrespected the car-toons and threw bananas at the screen.Dominick stepped forward infront of a phalanx of his heavyset, frowning waiters.He put up hishands for quiet. Y all don wanna tro bananas at the screen, he told the cus-tomers decorously. Don do it.The next show was us.We were reading aloud from JohnBrown s Body. I don t remember whose idea that was.Not mine.Itis, in fact, a most moderate and open-minded poem, althoughmaybe not a great one.Still, it sounded out of place a block or so offthe levee. Horses of anger., we read.The customers began to hoot and jeer.They started throwing ba-nanas again.The well-dressed Tulane alums, the Bama dolts, thetourists all started screaming and throwing bananas.We perform-ers covered up and tried to flee.This only encouraged the mob.Suddenly we heard a body fall.And then another. Degeneratecocksuckers! The very words I had in mind! It was Dominick.Hisrage at degenerate cocksuckers who failed to appreciate StephenVincent Ben�t was uncontainable.In very little time he and his staffhad cleared the place.When the last philistine had been ejected,threatened, and booted in the ass, he shook hands with the readers. Y all was good, he said. We ll do it another time.I learned a lot that year in New Orleans.Janice did too.The closerto street level you live, the more you have lessons thrust upon you.One I remember very clearly was an experience I had while takingthe U.S.census.It was hot, as it could be only down there.I knocked on the doorof one of the decrepit wooden houses on the edge of downtown, in an60 r o b e r t s t o n earea I believe has been demolished for the construction of the Super-dome.If the dome builders didn t get it, no doubt Hurricane Ka-trina did.Inside, half a dozen people were gathered around a bed.Beside it,a single candle burned at the feet of a plaster Virgin.Cloth blindshad been drawn over the windows to keep back the killing sun, andthe candle was the only source of light in the room.As I advancedtoward the bed, I saw that all the people around it had turned towatch me.Looking over their shoulders I saw that, lying there, withclean white sheets drawn almost up to her chin, was a very oldwoman.Her skin was a caf�-au-lait color and engraved with finewrinkles.Her toothless face was like an old turtle s.She breathedwith difficulty.She was clearly dying.I was delighted to learn that the folks in the room were attendantrelatives from two different households.This was a tactical coup,census-wise, and a labor-saving stroke of luck.In my brisk impa-tience to record the statistical details of everyone s life, it took me amoment to realize that these people were strangely unforthcoming.Looking up from my forms, I confronted their eyes.Their eyes werecalmly questioning, almost humorous.I stood and stared and re-turned to my jottings until suddenly it hit me.Someone is dyinghere.These people have come to attend a death.Perhaps this was notthe ideal time for census taking? After this leap of understandingthe rest followed unbidden.That had this been a white middle-class household I would neverhave been allowed past the door.That had this been a white middle-class household I would neverhave dreamed of entering a sickroom, of approaching a deathbed,asking cold irrelevant questions of people who had come to mournand pray.p r i m e g r e e n : r e m e m b e r i n g t h e s i x t i e s 61That what had happened there was entirely determined by thepolitics of race and class how blinding that can be, how dehuman-izing, how denying of elemental human dignity and respect.Walk-ing along Dryades Street in the paralyzing glare, the whole wave hitme.The questions I had asked, one after another, that they had en-dured from me.Place of birth.Estimated year s income.Mother sfull name.Condition of residence? We didn t ask that one; the an-swer was always dilapidated and we checked the appropriate square.I thought of that afternoon and those people almost twenty yearslater, when that house was gone, the whole neighborhood vanished,and the Republican convention in progress in the giant arena thathad replaced it.I thought of it again when Katrina came and scat-tered such people, their houses and their graves and their prayers, tothe four winds.Just as the unimaginable summer heat began to subside, westarted north.Janice traveled on the train with the baby and theFrench Market cat.I planned to hitchhike.Rides were so badthrough Mississippi that I tried a freight train, the one and onlytime in my life I ve ever done so.The yardmaster at Picayune, Mis-sissippi, was friendly.He advised me not to ride.Then he remindedme to always put a two-by-four in the freight car door to keep itfrom slamming shut forever [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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