Congo Square: New Orleans

I got off the train and into the pit of August heat. It felt and smelled like being in a mouth of a large dog which had fed on the unsavory remnants of something already pre-digested. A lurking stench crept around the moldering subtropic rail station. Not sewage or septic but the raw smell of uncut shit, as if someone had dropped drawers in mid-traffic.

The river snaked through the last patches of the state before dissolving through a sieve of mangroves and entering the gulf. Cumulus rose like spouting whales the colors of apricots and peach skin. I walked up the steps to a platform, pulling out my camera.  A young woman leaned on a railing in front of me as I raised the lens. Someone spoke from behind.

"Yeah, take a photograph of that," he said.

"I know. It's magnificent."

"Yeah," he laughed.

I took a few shots of the clouds, then realized the girl in the foreground had been standing in something of a lurid pose, or at least enough suggestion to her stance to make me feel like a creeper. Damn film. I can't just erase the shot and now I''ll have the judgement of the developer on me.

It was a good place to photograph, New Orleans, and I saw many good angles for it. Much was new and strange. Wrought iron balconies. Taro pushing up leaves the size of card tables through cracks in the pavement. Geckos. Humidity. And plenty of good characters. It started raining and I stepped into a thrift store to stay dry. A tophat sat on a mannequin. Five dollars. It fit perfectly, riding just above the brow, and made me look more of a character myself. A tourist stopped me in the French Quarter to take my picture. He gave me five dollars for it. I suppose that makes you seem a local, when the tourists stop you to take your photograph.

A good hobo band was playing on Frenchman street. They were clearly freighthoppers. Unwashed, untrimmed, and all in the same olive drab and dirty grey. The guitarist knew how to work the crowd, the banjo not bad as backup though hesitant on solos, and the washtub bass hit each chord satisfactorily, but I was most impressed by the washboard. He had thimbles on all fingers and had fastened a few cans and bowls onto the board which he struck as he played. I appreciate any percussionist who does not need a proper instrument to get his music across.

I had arrived in the middle of a song and hoped for another, but it was their last number. So I gave them a dollar and complimented the washboard. He was hesitant in talking, not taking over-much pride in either his playing or craftsmanship. He was a narrow boy probably not yet twenty. Though his mouth was bracketed by a rancid beard and his head a clot of dreds, his cheeks were smooth and unblemished and he had the eyes of the Virgin - gem-like, liquid and sorrowful. Cleaned up, his features would have a femenine delicacy that would remind men of some forlorn stripling relative and women of a junior-high crush. Had he wanted to, he could have gotten away with anything. It impressed me how careful he was of his looks, just the other way than most people might take it. What number of beautiful faces hide and age and go uncelebrated. I wondered just how financially stripped he and his bandmates might have been originally. They might just be rich folk playing paupers. I'm the reverse.

My host in the city and I were unfortunately too much alike to tolerate each other's company much, so I spent most of my time wandering. Supposedly New Orleanians are a talkative bunch. I have not found it so. Unable to locate the chatty folk, I was feeling bored my third and final day and unwilling to go back and argue some more with my host. So I went over to Congo Square to read for awhile. A man was standing by the channeled creek tossing bread to the ducks. He shared half a loaf with me.

"I'm the arborist of Louis Armstrong Park," he said. He moved his arm behind him to indicate a park bench. "That's my office." Then he swung his arm back to the ducks. "These are my constituents."

"I haven't done this since I was a kid," I said, wadding up chunks of wonder bread and tossing them out.

"Satisfying, isn't it," said the arborist.

A school of irridescent scales shimmered under the duck bellies, snapping at the scraps. "What are all these fish we're feeding?" I asked.

"Rio Grande cichlids. They came in on the flood," he said, referencing Katrina. "They'll strike anything that hits the water."

To prove the point the arborist spat into the creek. The surface churned with a scrum of fish.

"Anyone wanna go swimming?" he said, then turned his head to two hunchbacked birds. "Look, some goose-hawks."

I knew them as night herons. They looked intently at the water so I threw them some bread. The pair pounced like trip hammers, each coming up with a cichlid.

"That is satisfying," I said