Cold Season by Scott Corrao

In the end, it was the laptop.

It had belonged to Mario’s Papa, an outrageous expenditure for a man of his means and one Mama never really got over. “Who do you think you are,” Mario had heard her demand of him, “Mr. Bigshot with a computer?” Papa was the only person in the village with such a thing. He had saved for months to buy it from a used electronics store in Oaxaca De Juarez.

Papa left no will, but after he passed the laptop was given to Mario. Who else would use it? Mario was fifty-seven, too old to travel north for the harvest anymore, and like his Papa he’d always had a way with stories.

Near the end of the month, he decided to write. It was July, the temperature over 100degrees. Mama had roasted beans overnight and the odor clung about the house. Mario sat on the porch and stared at the blank screen. He had a story in mind, but couldn’t think how to tell it, how it should sound. He couldn’t think whose voice to write in. He stared almost three hours at the screen before Mama called him to dinner.

***

A few days later, Mario was again on the porch with the laptop and a beer, staring again at the screen. He had started and stopped writing a few hundred times. He had produced almost an entire paragraph.

Someone said, “Mario Fuentes?”

A smiling young man stood at the base of the porch stairs. He looked just like Rudy Gonzalez. Mario hadn’t known anyone was there. He asked, “Are you related to Rudy Gonzalez?”

The young man said, “He’s my brother.”

“How is Rudy?”

“Fine. He lives near San Marcos with his wife.”

“How many children does he have now?”

“Just the two.”

Mario nodded.

Rudy’s brother said, “I have a field in Guadalupe.”

Mario made an impressed face, “You’re young to have a field.”

“This is my first. My grower approached me after the harvest last year. He said I was a natural leader and should have my own field.”

“Yeah?”

“So now I have my own field.”

“What does your brother Rudy say about it?”

“Rudy says to find you – Mario Fuentes. He says you’re the best man to help me farm strawberries.”

“Rudy’s crazy. I’m fifty-seven.”

Rudy’s brother kept smiling. He had the spritely stoop of the young berry farmer. “That’s what I told him,” he said.

Mario smiled back. He said, “That’s nice of Rudy to say, but I can’t help you with your farm.”

“Rudy said to offer you $200 a day.”

“How much will you get per box?”

Rudy’s brother shrugged.

“You can’t pay me $200 a day without knowing what you’ll get per box.”

“That’s what I’ll pay you. It’s a guarantee. I’ve got a good route across the border.”

“Sonoyta?”

“Imperial Valley. And I’ve got us a nice house to live in. Barsug – the suburbs. And a good crew.”

“You’ve got all this. Why do you need me?”

“Rudy says you’re the best. He says you’ve seen it all.”

“I’ve seen lots of babies try to be farmers. For most of them it doesn’t work out. Picking’s the easy money, kid.”

Rudy’s brother said nothing, but smiled still.

Mario said, “I’m going to Acapulco this December, to sell ice cream to Americans.”

“What will it pay?”

“Not $200 a day.”

***

The drive to Mexicali took four days. Rudy’s brother had a Dodge Charger from the seventies with enormous rear tires with white lettering. The air conditioner did not work most of the time. They drank beers and some tequila on the ride. Mario had the laptop with him, tucked between layers of clothing in his duffle bag so it wouldn’t jounce around too much.

They stayed in a motel outside Mexicali, waiting on four pickers. Most of the guys Rudy’s brother planned to use were already in the states. Rudy’s brother left the Charger at a friend’s house and borrowed a white Dodge Van Ramwagon for the drive across the desert.

The pickers arrived. Three of them were Mixtecs living in Mexicali – all sons of men who’d known Rudy at one time or another. The fourth was a woman in her late thirties named Marta. Marta’s hair was streaked grey and her thighs were bulky with muscle. As they rode in the back of the van out of Mexicali, she told Mario that she had been picking for over twenty years. She said she had picked for every grower in San Diego County, including Coastal Berry and Berryfornia. She said her name was known at the offices of the California Strawberry Grower’s Association, and that her photograph had been used in a brochure published by that organization in the mid-nineties. She said she could pick strawberries as fast as anyone – no matter their age or their gender – and that Rudy’s brother had begged her on his knees to work his farm for him.

Mario thought Marta was pretty attractive. He’d never worked with a woman before and wasn’t sure what to make of it. She seemed sure of herself in a way most women he knew were not. Mario’s wife Anna had been prim and withdrawn. She died in 1989.

After midnight Rudy’s brother drove the Dodge Ram Vanwagon over a boulder, tearing off the muffler and much of the undercarriage. It soldiered on another seven miles or so, vomiting smoke and strange noises – Mario, Marta and the Mixtecs coughing in the back – then shuddered and died in the desert.

Rudy’s brother kept smiling. He even made a few jokes. Mario wanted to yell at him, but did not. They had one working flashlight among them, but Mario advised them not to use it. He said their eyes would adjust to the dark.

The next day they walked the Imperial Valley desert. It was August and there were no clouds. The sun rocketed skyward and it became deadly hot. There had been a case of bottled water in the Vanwagon. They all had plastic bottles stuffed in their pockets and the waistbands of their pants. Mario turned his baseball cap to shield the sun but still felt his one cheek bake, then his forehead, then his other cheek. One of the Mixtecs mumbled to himself.

Marta asked Mario why he didn’t just leave his duffle. Mario didn’t want to get into it about the laptop and everything.

They crossed a mountain pass that would have been wide enough for the Vanwagon. Rudy’s brother reminded them this was a good route. The air was silver and hazy. The desert stretched out. Many miles to the west, Mario could see the almost artificial green of housing development lawns and beyond that what may have been the Pacific, or maybe just the horizon. They kept walking.

About three hours later, Marta fell and began to seize. None of them knew what to do. Rudy’s brother knelt beside her, crying and calling her name. Mario looked away, toward the tendrils of San Diego just visible in the far off.

“Marta! Marta!” Rudy’s brother’s shouted. One of the Mixtecs crossed himself and said the Hail Mary. These sounds, along with Marta gagging and her limbs luffing on the desert floor, were all Mario could hear.

Rudy’s brother implored the Mixtecs, “She’s my sister in law’s aunt! What will I tell, Maria?”

Later, there was some discussion over what to do with Marta’s body – carry her, bury her, or whatever. Mario lent no opinion to the debate. In the end, one of the Mixtecs covered her from the chest up with his windbreaker then weighed the edges of the garment down with rocks so it would not blow away. They left her like that, a mound of windblown fabric with legs sticking out.

The Border Patrol found them at dusk. Mario had just finished his last bottle of water, which was the last water any of them had. His mouth felt like gravel. As the Border Patrol pulled up, Mario told Rudy’s brother and the Mixtecs to shut up and let him do the talking. There were two of them in a green Ford Bronco. They had close cropped haircuts. One looked Mexican and wore a cowboy hat and gave them all Snickers bars and said to Mario, “Man, tell me your van broke down. No one your age would be so stupid to cross the desert on foot.”

Mario stared at the ground and chewed the Snickers.

The white one said, “Can’t hear you, amigo!”

The Border Patrol wrote down their names. Mario called himself Carlos Fuentes, thinking that was pretty funny. The Border Patrol fingerprinted them with a type of fancy portable fingerprinting unit Mario had never seen. They handed Mario and his party summonses to appear before a judge in San Diego in four months.

Mario considered telling the Mexican looking Border Patrol about Marta, but decided against it. What could they do about a dead woman in the desert?

***

They took a Greyhound bus from San Diego to Barsug, riding the 5 and the 405, the 101and the 1. Mario had missed these American views of water and city, unseen for so long. Rudy’s brother tried to ask him about Marta at one point, but Mario shushed him and stared out the window.

As they bussed through Oxnard, Mario asked Rudy’s brother about his field.

“It’s twenty three acres,” Rudy’s brother said, like a man waking from a bad, dimly remembered dream.

“And who is the commission merchant?”

“GrowMark Produce. You have heard of them?”

“Of course. Who approached you about becoming a Mexicano, was it Paolo V.?”

Rudy’s brother smiled, “You know Paolo V.?”

“We used to cross together, me and Paolo and Rudy. He’s naturalized now, right?”

“Yes. He’s very well regarded at GrowMark. He runs the entire Guadalupe operation.”

This news calmed Mario. He had been worried about Rudy’s brother, who was likeable despite being a dumb young kid. Every picker knew bad stories about Mexicanos being forced into debt slavery or sent to US prisons or worse. But if Paolo V. was involved the deal must be okay. Mario hadn’t seen Paolo V. since the early nineties but they had been friends once. Paolo V. was a good guy.

***

They had to walk to the house, which was in a suburban development. The neighborhood was lined with berry fields, and beyond the fields were other developments with more houses. Rudy’s brother led them through a gate into the back yard and picked up a funny looking rock which wasn’t a rock at all but a hunk of plastic with a compartment in it and within the compartment a key. The house had two floors, four bedrooms, kitchen, living room, dining room. It was a palace with no furniture. The electricity did not work.

Mario said, “What’s with the electricity?”

And Rudy’s brother said, “I’ll call someone and have them turn it on. You guys find a bedroom. Let’s go to sleep.”

***

The next day, Mario locked the door to the bedroom he’d claimed and turned on his laptop, breathing relief when it started up okay.

Without thinking, he started to write. The words came unimpeded, a new/old voice telling a story that – though unfamiliar – might be his own.
Mario smiled. He kept writing.

***

A week later they planted. Three Tuxpenos had been added to the crew by then, men Rudy’s brother knew from previous seasons. The Tuxpenos didn’t like the Mixtecs and the Mixtecs didn’t like the Tuxpenos. A disagreement over bedroom assignments, the details of which were too complex to decipher but seemed to dovetail with ancient tribal grievances, resulted in strict racial separation in both house and field. All were good workers though, and listened well as Mario and Rudy’s brother instructed them. Of the eight men, only Rudy’s brother and Mario had planted before. The rest had only harvested. Mario showed them how to lay the plastic sheeting and inject the methyl bromide. He showed them how to install the drip irrigation system which, like the Border Patrol’s portable fingerprint machine, was new to him, nifty and unexpectedly convenient. He showed them how to work the plants through another layer of the plastic sheeting so that they were all fit and even. The plants looked hearty. Mario had confidence in them.

All the equipment and the plants appeared at the edge of the field before they arrived each morning, and Rudy’s brother was never surprised. He told Mario that GrowMark provided everything as part of their contract.

“They just give it to you?” Mario said.

“Not exactly.” Rudy’s brother said.

Mario didn’t see his old friend Paolo V. for another three weeks. By this point the strawberry plants had taken root. Twenty three acres was a lot for eight men. Rudy’s brother had wanted to bring on more help, but Mario knew it could be done.

He had said, “It will save you money. You’ll be able to afford more workers for the harvest. You’ll pay them better and they’ll work faster and take better care of the berries.”

Rudy’s brother had said, “My brother was right – you are the best, Mario.”

Paolo V. drove up in a sharp Ford F-150 with the King Ranch package, the truck red and shining in the early sunshine. Paolo V. looked good getting out, tall and narrow as ever, but with a healthy belly hanging over his belt. Even at this hour, he had his hair slicked back and handsome. He didn’t seem to see Mario at first. He walked right by him to get to Rudy’s brother, who stood up straight to shake hands and accept his congratulations on such a fine looking field. Then, while they were speaking, Paolo V. noticed Mario staring at him and stopped in mid sentence and said in English, “Holy shit! Mario Fuentes!” Like Mario was a celebrity or something. Paolo V. hugged him and Mario hugged Paolo V. and felt happy to see this old, good friend he hadn’t seen in so long.

Paolo V. said to Rudy’s brother, “You’re smart, having this one along. No wonder your field is so well maintained!”

Rudy’s brother thanked Paolo V. and told how his brother had insisted he seek out Mario Fuentes of Tejalapam.

“You’re so lucky,” Paolo V. kept saying. “So lucky to have Mario Fuentes.”

Later, Mario and Paolo V. strolled the fields together. They talked about what each had done since the last time they’d been together, Mario explaining how his father’s illness and his own old age had driven him home; Paolo V. talking about the opportunities that finally came his way – reward for having stuck to the strawberry business for so very long, “Since both of us were boys, hey?”

Mario told Paolo V. he had a good feeling about Rudy’s brother’s field and about the season in general. The air felt dry headed into fall. He was sure the rains would spare them.

Paolo V. laughed and said, “I hope you’re right, Mario!” Paolo V. only ever seemed to exclaim things now, a quality Mario could not recall from their youth.

He told Paolo V. how profitable he thought the field would be; what a high quality berry he planned to cultivate – “No Cat’s faces” – and what an able manager Rudy’s brother was. “You picked a good one with that kid,” he said.

Paolo V. nodded and smiled and said, “Has anyone been bothering you out here? Guys coming around?”

Mario didn’t know what he was talking about. He said, “Guys?”

Paolo V. smiled and patted Mario’s shoulder, “Forget it, Mario. Don’t worry about anything.”

***

For the next few months, the eight men worked every day in the fields. They watched the berries go from green red buds to bright red fruit. They tested and checked the irrigation system. They administered a non-chemical pesticide of Mario’s own creation to battle back an eelworm infestation. The Mixtecs and Tuxpenos, while never growing to like each other, at least achieved mutual toleration. At night everyone drank together in the living room, sitting in a circle on scavenged folding chairs and fruit crates, telling stories of their childhoods – all the girls they’d fucked and men they’d fought.

Mario heard them downstairs as he typed. The story he told the laptop grew and grew. It was far beyond what Mario had imagined it might become, almost 200 pages. There were nights where he’d never stop typing. He’d look up and see the sky lightening and know it was time to go to the fields and that he’d lost his chance to sleep, and he wouldn’t care.

Rudy’s brother paid each of them every two weeks in American cash. Mario didn’t ask where the money came from.

In late November Mario left the field early to get pork for their dinner. When the rest returned home after 6:00 pm, they carried bright yellow flyers. The flyers said that migrant strawberry workers were an oppressed population, and that the only way to safeguard the workers was through unionization.

“What’s it all about?” Rudy’s brother asked Mario.

Mario concentrated on the pork. He had cut the lean belly into strips and been simmering it for hours in oil, onion, garlic and lime juice. He said, “Don’t worry about it.”

After that, new people showed up at the field every day. Most of them were white. Some drove jalopies with political bumper stickers and had dreadlocked hair. Some drove shining SUV’s and wore suits. All of them distributed bright colored flyers with such devotion the workers felt guilty not taking them. Mario told the workers not to speak to the people with the flyers, to pretend to only understand Spanish.

They kept all the flyers in a stack on the kitchen counter. They were all handed out by different organizations, The United Farm Workers, The Strawberry Workers of California, The American Berry Pickers Union, The American Farm Union, Strawberry Growers United. Each group had its own flyer with its own message. Mario didn’t know what to make of it. He tried not to read the flyers, lest they distract him from more important things. He encouraged the others to do the same.

***

Mario woke up one morning in December and went downstairs and there were nineteen new men in the house. They had all arrived in a group, bringing beers and microwave burritos from the convenience store four blocks over. Rudy’s brother introduced him around, calling him “Mario the head man,” or “Mario the Foreman.”

The harvest was still a month away, but Rudy’s brother had decided to bring the pickers on early.

“They’re all good guys,” he told Mario. “I’ve known them all for years.”

“But we don’t need them yet.”

“But they need the place to stay, and the money.”

“You’re paying them already?”

The new guys weren’t bad, but they were many. They slept in the halls and on the kitchen floor and even in the room which used to be Mario’s alone. He had to stow his laptop for fear one of them might ask about it. The house’s two tiny bathrooms soon broke under the relentless use. The men played loud norteno music at all hours. They drank and made raucous conversation. Mario had trouble sleeping. Leaving for the fields in the morning he saw white neighbors throwing curious looks toward the house. At least they ate well because the new men, appreciative of Rudy’s brother’s generosity, kept the house stocked with beer and food.

When it was time for the new men to start work in late December they proved an asset, energetic and eager to help, waking early and preparing migas and coffee for breakfast. They took Mario’s instruction on how to harvest – to twist the berry off the vine, to be ever so careful with the skin of the fruit, to leave the smallest touch of green on the berry’s crown, to arrange the berries in the tray just so – even though they’d probably taken such instruction many times from many different foremen.

The winter was uncommonly mild and dry. The berries ripened early – fat, juice-filled, blood red fruit. Mario and the men were bent in the field from first light, Rudy’s brother among them, everyone pitching in. The early harvest was ready January 15th and presented well. They would be a great success and fetch a good price. Paolo V. claimed them with a huge smile.

As the Mixtecs loaded berries into the King Ranch, Mario bragged, “Have you ever seen fruit like that, Paolo V.? They will bring $12.00 a box!”

Paolo V. nodded but said nothing. He asked, “Is that one of those union fuckers?”

One of the hippy kids from the UFW was standing around talking with some of Mario’s workers. The hippy kid’s name was Brad. They all liked him. You had to. Brad with his goofy rainbow painted pickup truck and floppy clothes. Brad gave them flyers two or three times a week, asked the men to spread them around but didn’t press too much. He mainly asked where the guys were from and how they got here.

Mario said, “That’s just Brad.” But Paolo V. was already walking over. The wind kicked up and Mario couldn’t hear what Paolo V. said to Brad, but he sounded agitated. Brad turned to Paolo V. and smiled, the workers around him smiling as well; then he stuck his hand out to shake and Paolo V. hit him in the mouth. The workers kept smiling a minute before they realized there had been a change.
Mario ran over and grabbed Paolo V. who cursed Brad in Spanish and English. Brad stood with his hand on his jaw. He made the stink eye at Paolo V., but didn’t seem to even consider punching back. Paolo V. was not so big, but there was something in the design of his body – a springloadedness in his chest and arms – that dissuaded other men from challenging him; it had always been so.

Mario said, “Take it easy, Paolo!”

“You let these union fucks on your field?!” Paolo V. demanded this of Rudy’s brother, who had run over to see what the problem was.

“He’s alright.” Rudy’s brother said. “Brad’s alright.”

The workers milled around, looking curious. Mario walked up to Brad and the younger white man leaned his head back so Mario could look at his chin. It was swollen, but his eyes showed no fear.

“I told you to keep these union fucks out of here! Don’t we have a good thing going?!"

“Sure we do, Paolo V.” Rudy’s brother said, “Sure we do.”

Brad spoke softly, so only Mario could hear him amidst the commotion. He said, “How much are you getting per box, Mario?”

Mario just looked at him.

***

They got home that night to find a skinny blonde white woman in a business suit waiting outside the house. She called, “Senior Gonzalez? Senior Gonzalez?” and the workers flowed around her like a boulder in a river until Rudy’s brother said, “That’s me!”

He wore a big smile while he shook her hand, the same he’d worn at Mario’s house in Tejalapam. He took her gently by the elbow and guided her down the walk away from the house.

That night was their first sleeping in the field. Someone had discarded some lumber by the road and they used it and a blue tarp to build a shelter. They slept in rows, the smell of strawberries in their hair. Rudy’s brother had presented it to them as an opportunity rather that a setback, saying that the savings in rent would mean increases in all their wages, plus they’d not have to worry about being too loud anymore late at night, and they could sleep an extra twenty minutes every morning. Some of the men were angry. Most had slept in worse. And Rudy’s brother’s confidence was infectious. He even had Mario convinced that the move wasn’t a complete nightmare – at least until it started to rain.

Mario woke to the tarp collapsing, to a blue and wet world like underneath the ocean. Around him men cursed and shouted. This was about 4:30 am. He dug himself out from under the tarp and stood in the downpour.

Though the sun rose that day over the purple hills of Ventura County, the men never saw it through the clouds. It kept raining. Mario stowed his duffle under bags of fertilizer, hoping to keep the laptop dry.

It rained all that week. They tried to protect the strawberries, but it was impossible, many would be lost to bruising. They would have to be harvested early and sold cheaply. At least they had harvested a good amount of high grade berries before the rain.

It was a long week. They ate frozen burritos and drank cans of Coke and beer. Some workers fell ill from being outside in the elements. Brad from the UFW came with some other guys and a motor home. They set up an awning and cooked a hot meal and let the men sleep inside the motor home and on the ground under the awning. They had a fire and even a television to watch the Angels.

Late that night Mario sat in the cockpit with Brad and Rudy’s brother. They’d all been drinking for a long time, even Mario, and why not? So long as it rained, there was nothing else to do.

Brad asked Rudy’s brother, “How much will Paolo V. pay you for those early berries?”

Mario said, “GrowMark will charge at least $12.00 a box for those beauties. What did you get, $7.00, $8.00?”

Water coursed down the expansive windshield. Rudy’s brother said, “$4.00 a box.”

Mario coughed, “$4.00?!”

“That’s the contract.”

Brad echoed, “That’s the contract.”

“The contract says how much you get a box, no matter what?”

“Don’t worry, Mario.”

“How do you pay for all the equipment, our wages?”

“GrowMark loans me the money. You’ve gotten paid, haven’t you? They’ve all gotten paid.”

All the time Mario knew him, Rudy’s brother never seemed to stop smiling like that.

***

The sun came out two days later and Brad called more UFW guys in. They came with tables and pens and pins and Mario lined up his workers and they signed – as employees of GrowMark Farms – a petition demanding the formation of a union. This happened early and fast and they were out in the fields by 7:00 am, inspecting the damage from the rains.

It could have been worse. The plants were hearty and thickly leafed. Some larger berries at ground level were unaffected. Mario suspected a few thousand boxes might still come out of this, though he didn’t see how – at such a miniscule price – Rudy’s brother could possibly break even, never mind the interest on the loans.

At 11:00 am the men were all bent in the rows, picking. That’s when Paolo V. showed up, driving his Ford F-150 King Ranch ahead of three Caterpillars and a bulldozer. Mario told his men to keep working, but they were all too distracted. Rudy’s brother’s smile actually slipped for a second – Mario saw this clearly – then reassembled itself. They walked out to meet Paolo V.

Paolo V. skidded to a halt and got out shouting, “You’re a liar! You’re a liar!” and brandishing a short folded stack of papers.

Rudy’s brother said, “I know… I know…”

“It’s in your contract, fucker. You’re not to talk to these union fucks!”

Brad walked up saying, “Just take it easy, Paolo. They already signed.”

“Who signed? These guys? These guys aren’t GrowMark employees. These guys work for him.” He pointed at Rudy’s brother, who kept smiling. “The contract states! These guys work for him, and not for us!”

“It’s your equipment, Paolo V.” Mario hated the pleading sound in his own voice. “It says GrowMark all over it.”

“He rents it from us, and he owes us for all of it. You owe, fucker!” Paolo V. had a bullhorn slung over his chest. He used it to shout in Spanish toward the men in the big machines who, upon hearing him, began to drive onto the field. Paolo V. turned his bullhorn toward Mario’s workers, who had gathered to see what was happening, “This field is closed! GrowMark Farms is closing this field for contract violations!”

Mario watched the lead Caterpillar dig its blade into his strawberries, so lovingly cultivated. Rows of his fruit climbed high into the air then fell, their almost sexually red flesh buried in curds of brown. The other machines joined in. The field dug under and buried.

Paolo V. exhorted the workers, waving the contract, pointing out Rudy’s brother. “This guy did this to you! And these guys too!” he pointed out the UFW volunteers, “Now you have no jobs!” Everyone’s attention was divided and confused. They watched the bulldozers tear apart the field. They watched Paolo V. rail.

Mario swung a shovel at the back of Paolo V.’s head and grabbed the bullhorn strap as he fell. He brought the bullhorn to his lips and pressed the button and Mario knew just what to say and how to say it. He would explain everything so it could be understood. He would set everyone at ease, the workers, the union guys, the men in the big machines. Even the death of the woman Marta in the desert would make sense once Mario’s words, his voice, were heard.

But someone hit him and he fell. He saw frantic legs and feet squelching California soil.

***

It was the laptop in the end.

Not the bullies or the bulldozers, or the pickers or the unions. It was the laptop, Mario’s story.

He deleted all 273 pages, highlighting it line by line and jabbing the delete key and saying yes when the laptop asked if he was sure. The story may have been right but the words were all wrong – the voice, his voice. All wrong.

He sat on his porch in Tejalapam. He heard his mother rummaging in the house.

He stared at the screen, fingers hovering.

He waited for the words to come.

He waited to be able to speak.

South of Atlanta

“All these nights mean something, Henry, each more than the last and none more than tonight. So I need you to keep it together just one more time. For the band. For me.”

It was always hard to tell if Henry was listening because instead of talking to his face you talked to the sheaf of red hair behind which his face always hid. It had been this way since junior high, this hair of Henry’s.

The cook, a six foot tall transvestite, black, had grilled us hamburgers under hubcaps and I was trying, between snippets of my rah rah speech - the speech I’d made so many times this tour, nearly every night since we crossed south of Atlanta - to make Henry eat his half pounder with bacon egg and cheese, and to drink from a vat of muddy coffee. Henry claimed to have foresworn caffeine for health reasons but I reserved the right as Tour Manager to overrule any life decisions that might affect the Show Going On and the night’s Show, our first in New Orleans, was supposed to have Gone On an hour ago. Besides, Henry drank Red Bull by the case.

In between bites, he took deep breaths and said things like, “uggh.”

“Chew and swallow,” I said. “We’re late.”

“You shouldn’t make me eat this. You know I’m vegan.”

I took his feistiness as a good sign. “You’re wearing a leather jacket.”
“It’s gonna fuck with my IBS.”

I had tried to explain to him that his gastrointestinal issues were most likely the result of low grade Gluten sensitivity, but that concept conflicted with his devotion to beer. “Eat.”

We finished and I paid and we walked together out into New Orleans, which was brown, vaguely sushi-smelling, and damp enough to cause everyone in the street to sweat just a little. Outside the club Cheryl found us. She said the place was about half sold and the owner, Stanley, was pissed at our lateness. “Thought we lost you there, Henry,” she offered helpfully, “You took a pretty good fall.”

“I fell?” Henry asked. I shrugged. This pattern of Henry’s – binge to blackout to confusion – was something we’d all become used to.

“What’s the opener?” Cheryl wanted to know. “Oceanside?”

“Fine,” Henry said.

“Clark wants Thurbers Avenue Curve.”

“Okay, Thurbers Avenue Curve.”

“No! Oceanside!” Cheryl shouted, causing Henry to wilt. They had dated at one point, and still hooked up periodically, and though he adored her bass playing we all found her to be a pain in the ass. “Right?” She appealed to me now. “Right? Oceanside opener?”

Henry broke into a run toward the club entrance. After six weeks sharing a van, Cheryl and I were familiar enough with the vagaries of his substandard GI system to know why.

While we waited for Henry to clear the Mens’ room, Stanley, the club owner, yelled at me about our late start. I tried to point out the crowd that we – a measly unsigned band from Rhode Island – had brought to his club on a Thursday, all of them buying lots of drinks and none of them complaining, but he didn’t care.
Our first-night-in-New Orleans’ audience looked a lot like our DC audience and our Athens audience and our Vienna and Starkville and even our Northampton, Mass audiences: somewhere near the corner of longhair and hipster, Birkenstock and Doc Martin; lots of big drinkers and weed smokers, good time fun folks. That it was well past midnight was the only thing that made this have to be New Orleans. That and the air, so wet it seemed to weigh something.

My band (I like to think of it as mine even though I don’t even play an instrument, but it’s really Henry’s band, The Placeholders, with Clark on drums and Cheryl on bass) climbed onstage. We had no album and just a few rudimentary pub shots on our MySpace page, but Henry was still somehow recognizable behind his cherry colored hair blade, and a few in the crowd hooted and clapped and some even pushed their way up close. One hundred fifty people in the place, maybe one seventy five.

Though Henry and I had been friends all our lives, I often found him stupid and frustrating, and of everyone I’d ever known he least deserved fame. Yet he’d always been sort of famous. Even as a teenager, a suburban rebel swathed in flannel, hair begelled and colored, he’d been famous within our school, and attracted friends and especially women in quantity and quality such a poser couldn’t possibly deserve; and all because he could play guitar really, really well. Now that he was (thanks to me) a National Touring Musician, the scope of his magnetism was even more confounding. No longer just stupid high school girls but attractive, educated women; women with careers and cars of their own; women with families and even children had been spied making the morning scurry from his motel rooms in various rock towns down the eastern seaboard.

People came to see the band, yes, and to hear the songs, but mainly they came to watch Henry, and this made sense because no matter how personally revolting I often found my oldest friend, I’d never deny how good he was, how special. He had a singular, lilting, melancholy tone, mysterious melody, heartbreaking lyricism. He always had. That’s why I’d gone to him for my last shot. He played guitar so good you forgot how insane he was. Plus the fucker sang in a lowdown bobcat rasp, like the bastard son of Dylan and Nina Simone. What an asshole.

The band started up with “Oceanside” after all, slow and big. All at once the crowd seemed to coalesce and suck toward the stage. Even the bartender snapped to. You know the band is good when the employees pay attention.

Someone tapped my shoulder and I turned and Nikki Faulkner was standing there. I didn’t recognize her for a second, with the music and the colored lights. She wore that sparkly makeup you sometimes see on tour kids, but made it look good somehow. I said “Hey!” just to say something because I hadn’t seen her since the funeral and seeing her then made me flash to that day, but she pulled me into a hug and she felt tiny and good and her hair smelled like nice women’s hair care products and cotton candy.

“What are you doing here?” She said. I attempted to explain myself, yelling over the music, trying not to spit on her or get caught leering south of her neck, where she wore tiny shorts and a nothing tank top appropriate for the underwater-type humidity.
I told her about waking up one day knowing I’d had enough of running the merch booth for Phunk Monkey, and deciding I was going to do whatever it took to get my old friend Henry and his band together and take them all out on the road. I told her how I’d done it all in three feverish months: web presence, press kit, promo, demo, tour. I didn’t tell her how much money I’d spent, how far in debt I’d sunk, how troubled my bandleader was, how the whole thing had come to feel like a desperate last chance at making it in the rock business. I didn’t tell her that the day of my awakening was the day after the funeral. I’m sure she dug the subtext.
Nikki told me about her last six months. They sounded a lot like the six months prior, only she didn’t have my sister alongside anymore, to tour the Southeast and West Coast, see bands, make scenes, and spend her parents’ money. “I can’t believe you manage the Placeholders,” she said, “everyone’s talking about them.” And honest adrenaline blitzed my scalp. If the Queen of the Scene Nikki Faulkner had heard of my band, we were on to something.

We kept talking while the band played, about everything but Heather. Sometimes we’d lay off and Nikki would crane her neck to watch Henry take another lead (never too long, never too short, never boring) or guide the band through another series of changes. The room had filled up pretty good. The floor was slathered with foamy beer/sweat concert sludge and the band was loud and the lights swirling and people doing the sorts of things they only do in dark rooms watching live music: falling, kissing, swaying, shouting, dancing, staring, nodding – eyes closed – to themselves. It can work, I thought for the eight hundredth time, if I can just keep them together, keep Henry together, it can work. And somewhere in there Nikki was looking at me in a new way, and much later, after the two hour set and before the four song encore she called my phone with her phone and saved the number under “Nik” and got close enough to my ear to say, “call me in the morning and we’ll go to the Fairgrounds,” without having to yell. Then she faded into the milling, smiling crowd.
And if the show had ended there it would have been a great night, but few Placeholders shows since Atlanta had ended well. The problem tonight was a couple in the front row. Not the couple exactly. Just the girl, who’d become over-enamored of my frontman after an evening at his mercy, and now, pre-encore, endeavored to share with him her phone number, and promises of unmentionable interactions, greatly to the displeasure of her boyfriend/husband/whatever he was. The potential (and let’s face it future, if not this night than some other) cuckold, with a trucker hat and flat top and a permanent look of confused anger, took offense and may or may not have called Henry a “cocksucker” and/or grabbed his guitar. It was always something. And someone always either said something or grabbed something, and Henry always felt justified wading into the audience to exchange words and fists with people who’d paid to see him play. More than his drinking, his digestive issues, his petulance, his refusal to sleep or start shows on time, Henry’s fighting with the audience was a problem. And of course I ended up jumping in to break it up, catching a few stray punches for my trouble. ‘Cause it was my band, and Henry was my guitarist, and someone had to save him from himself.

***

Morning birds were chirping by the time we finished load out. We had been scheduled to play the same club again that night, but between the late start and Henry’s encore fisticups, Stanley figured enough was enough and kicked our asses out, leaving us a sad gigless unit on the first Friday of Jazzfest. I’d already cast out a net of texts and voicemail, trying to find a place to play. Henry wanted to get a few drinks and I couldn’t leave him alone so it was almost 9:00 am before I got back to the hotel. I fell asleep and didn’t end up calling Nikki until 2:00 in the afternoon. I woke her up.

We met at the C Gate, her in another pair of tiny shorts atop depthless hardwood floor colored legs, a big goofy hat and enormous sunglasses, telling me how great the Placeholders were and how lucky I was to have them.

The Fairgrounds were hot and crowded and smelled like fish fried in syrup.
There was a mishmash of music from stages at every compass point and everyone there was sort of smiling and swaying and chewing and staying at once just in and just out of each other’s way. We drank gargantuan, iced boozy drinks through ridiculous straws and ate spicy shrimp and crab and gooey cheese in convenient hand-held pies. Nikki listened to my problem, made two phone calls, and then we had a place to play for the night, in the Quarter. She made one additional phone call but wouldn’t let me listen in and wouldn’t tell me what it was about.

We walked and danced and ate, and watched and listened to people play music. There was a tent with just jazz and another with only gospel. At one point we became entranced by a short bald guitar player fronting a rowdy trio. At another Nikki handed me a small blue pill to eat. “I have to work tonight,” I said, but she only smiled and said not to worry.

One of the big bands Nikki and my sister Heather used to follow was playing the main stage and Nikki wouldn’t miss it. Things were crowded at that end of the fairgrounds, and a real wind blowing dust off the downs – maybe sixty thousand people there, a herd on the Savannah, in the wind, under the flags in the sun. Heather led us toward the stage, sipping her drink, smiling benevolently, twirling once in a while to some stray beat, looking as in charge as she always had, but different somehow too. She’d changed since the funeral, but it was hard to tell then just how because of the noise and the heat and the wind and the crowd and the pill making everything start to drip at the edges and blur into the last thing.

“I’d like to introduce!” A God-voice shouted through the PA stacks, “One of the GREAT AMERICAN BANDS!” And the rest of it was lost in the spasm of the crowd, this big like wave breaking over us and sweeping us down and then everything was moving, and the music pounding dryly, loud as anything. Sometime later Nikki and I were kissing. Not some sloppy couple at a rock show, but something real happening, two people among thousands, connected, and later I’d think it’s the first time in sixth months I haven’t thought mostly of my sister Heather, haven’t pictured her alone behind the wheel and wondered if she left the road accidentally or on purpose or both.

The show ended and Nikki took my hand and led me through the crowd, saying “I rented a house just down the street.” She checked her phone and shouted, “Yes!” and showed me a text which I could barely see in the sunshine. “Sarah Slater from PPC’s coming to see your band tonight. How ‘bout that?”

“What?” I said, “You did that?” PPC is one of the dominant booking agencies in the southeast. “How did you do that?”

“I just did.” She said it with a wise grin, which faltered when someone from the crowd touched her on the shoulder.

It was some dude. He wore a Bulletproof Lincolns T-shirt which I complemented him on when Nikki introduced us, because the Bulletproof Lincolns had let us open for them in New York City and were cool as shit and completely housed the room, but the dude said, “Right on, bro. Someone like gave me this shirt last night. Are they any good?” The dude’s name was Brett. He must have had to put quite a lot of something in his hair to keep it so still in that environment.

“Been lookin for you, girl,” he said to Nikki. His tone was paternal and weird, but I figured it was just my ears what with the recent concert blitzing and the mumblings of the parting crowd now free flowing around us like water around boulders. She pulled him a few paces away and they began a pretty serious talk, Nikki and this dude Brett in his Bulletproof Lincolns T-Shirt, Brett with that purposefully lazy “S’allgood” accent I’d heard on a hundred bored southern stage managers.

Then I saw him put a hand on her shoulder, his lips melting apart to reveal teeth the color of the blowing racetrack grit, and Nikki sidestepped which I took to mean I should come over, and maybe I was a little abrupt because Brett put his hand on my chest and said, “Slo down, bro. Me and Nikki’re just talking.”

I looked down at his hand then back at his face. Before going on tour with Henry, I’d been in exactly one fight, but since Atlanta I’d had lots of practice. Brett took his hand off me and said to Nikki, “Gotta be tonight, Girl. I’m through chasin’ you.” Then he turned and melted into the crowd. The sun arced off Nikki’s huge sunglasses.

We went back to her rental house. We left the French doors open in her master suite. Just closed the curtains and let them lope in the breeze.

I asked nothing about the douchebag on the fairgrounds, wasn’t my business. I think each of us was waiting for the other to mention Heather, but neither of us did.
I wanted to stay all night, all week, but Henry’d been unsupervised for too long already, and if Sarah from PPC booking was coming I needed the Placeholders to impress. Nikki said she’d see me later at the show.

“All these nights mean something, Henry, each more than the last and none more than tonight. So I need you to keep it together just one more time. Do it for the band. Do it for me. For real this time.”

This I spoke into the wood of the door of the bathroom of the Club Nikki’d got us into – the Sinkhole on Toulouse - inside which Henry had locked himself at 5:30 that afternoon. What intra-band conflict or bodily malfunction of combination thereof had led him to this end was unclear. Clark and Claire would say only that Henry’d shown up grumpy, didn’t seem to have slept, and had taken with him into the bathroom a handle of Jim Beam somewhere between a half and two-thirds full. Communications in the intervening three hours had been spotty and I had yet to hear a sound to indicate my bandleader was even still alive. So after negotiating a price with the Sinkhole’s manager – Hank, who thankfully seemed to think Henry was a crew member and not his night’s entertainment – I broke the door down, pulling something in my shoulder in the process.

Henry sat on the floor of the single stall, his head reclined on the toilet seat, eyes open, handle – vessel now only to a thin, amber film – lolling in his lap.
“You shouldn’t be doing this to me,” he said.

“What am I doing?”

“You know.”

“What am I doing to you?”
“I was happy in Rhode Island.”

“Installing cabinets?”

“I was happy.”

“You want this.”

“I don’t want anything. You shouldn’t be doing this to me.” The handle clinked on the tiles. The bathroom wasn’t terrible as nightclub bathrooms go, and who didn’t need to get away from it all now and then?

I tried to be as plain as I could about the woman from PPC booking, “the fact that she’s even coming means a lot after last night.” I mentioned Clark and Claire. I talked about the future, his talent, the songs. None of it meant shit to him. So I talked about myself, and for whatever reason he started to listen. Our friendship had always meant more to him than I was comfortable with. When I talked about my sister his eyes cleared for a moment, like the flash of blue sky that will occasionally burn by during a Rhode Island summer thunderstorm.

“Two hours till doors. We go on in three.” I said. Henry nodded and I knew he was with me.

The place filled up fast and a half hour after doors the manager came up to me and said it was sold.

“Sold?” I said. “How many?”

“650.” And just by the way he said it I could tell he was psyched, “And there’s 30 more out on the street wanting to get in.”

The sign said Placeholders 11:00, but at 10:45 the crowd started cheering for no good reason, and soon after that started chanting, “place-hol-ders, place-hol-ders!” Six hundred plus, chanting for a band without even an EP to call their own. We must have done something good the night before, and word must have spread around town because when we finally did take the stage we were met not with the usual polite smattering of applause, but instead a great whooshing sound, the cavitation of a huge engine, so loud the band’s tuning noises were lost in it, and only getting louder until Henry counted out “On Fire”, and after that was just noise and light.
I stood with the crowd awhile, feeling there a wonderful shared secret before it explodes into common consciousness. The buzz was so profound I didn’t notice my cell phone vibrating until Nikki had called five times. It was past midnight now and the Placeholders had played five songs, each melting into the next in ways surprising to both band and audience.

I couldn’t hear Nikki over everything, so I ducked behind the bar and even there it was difficult. Finally she just started shouting, “I need help! Can you help me?!”

“Yes!”

“I’ll text you the address.”

It appeared a second later, as the band veered into “Eastern Facing”. “Eastern Facing” tended to fire up even the most timid crowds. Here it was like tossing gunpowder on a barrel fire. Above the spastic, stretching, pulling throng Henry’s face was obscure beneath the sheaf of red. I told myself he looked good up there, that the address Nikki’d texted was right around the corner on Bourbon, that nothing would go wrong if I just ran over there real quick.
I was almost to the door when someone pulled my shirt and I turned to see an older woman too fashion-forward for the scene. “Sarah Slater, PPC Booking,” she said, shaking my hand.

“Thanks for coming!” I shouted. I didn’t want to seem rushed but I kept hearing Nikki’s voice in my head, Can you help? “What do you think?” I asked Sarah, sure to indicate not only the band, but the packed-to-the-walls club, the sautéing crowd.
“I think we need to talk,” she smiled.

“Okay!” I should have stayed, needed to stay, but Nikki… “I have to get a backup guitar from the van. Back in two minutes.”

“See you then,” said the woman who could literally save my career and personal finances.

As constantly moist as the air had been since we got to New Orleans, it was never wetter than right then as I ran down Toulouse and dove into the throng bursting the sides of Bourbon St. It was the sort of horde you just cannot move quickly through: aggressively drunk frat boys in predatory circles around bare chested teens, the ground so slathered with a jelly of vomit and spilt liquor that any tight cut becomes impossible. I slid through fast as I could, sweating freely amid the neon reds and blues and club music and Dixieland jazz, and then into a dark bar, mostly empty, one loan accordion player for entertainment, then up the back stairs to a second floor, empty again except for Nikki, standing alone on the wrought iron balcony.

“What are they doing?” I asked her. There was some sort of disturbance in the street below, bodies darting about, shouting.

“Hi,” I’d startled her. “I didn’t know if you’d come.”

“Of course. I gotta be quick though. That woman from PPC is at the show. What’s going on down there?” A fight had broken out now in the street.

“Asshole! You left Sarah alone? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It doesn’t matter. Let’s do whatever you need to do and we’ll get back to her.”

She made a face like she wanted to fight about it but saw it would be useless, and then I followed her to the back of the bar and up another flight of stairs to the third floor.

Up here was a full on house party, complete with club beats and well-dressed scenesters, and it took me a few minutes following Nikki through the swarm (every third member of which knew her, of course, and wanted to hug hello) to notice the little things that were not right. First: the lights were all on. Second: there were semi-pro looking two-man camera teams roaming around videotaping the guests. But it all didn’t come together until we got to the densest part of the multitude, which parted to reveal a skinny dude and a girl on Ecstasy having sex.

I say she was on Ecstasy because beyond being naked and copulating in a crowded public space, that she was mightily rolling was her single defining feature. Her eyes were gigantic and formed wholly of pupil, and her tongue poked from her mouth in rhythm with the skinny kid’s morose thrusts. She had one foot on the floor and the other on a dirty looking sectional. Two camera teams filmed the scene, and a guy with a clipboard periodically interrupted the action to effect minute adjustments on the performers. When the girl on Ecstasy spotted Nikki she said, “Hey, girl,” lazily, like they’d run into one another in the supermarket.
“Hey, Beth.” Nikki sounded sad.

With fresh eyes on the room I noted that wherever there was a camera, there was a little piece of exhibitionism being filmed: a girl kissing another girl, two dudes rubbing up on a single girl; all of it just for the camera with a sort of deliberate amateurishness. The cameras all had little stickers on them that said “Houseparty.com”.

I followed Nikki out onto another balcony. Maybe 10 people here and a camera team, this one filming the dude we had met on the Fairgrounds, Brett, who held aloft between his ring and index fingers a $100 bill. I couldn’t hear just what he said to the camera and the little crowd, but it led up to him casting with a flourish the hundo down onto Bourbon Street. Everyone leaned over to watch it go. The crowds, upstairs and downstairs, cheered.

Nikki tapped Brett on the shoulder. He made a big show of greeting her, introducing her to crowd and camera, trying to absorb her into his production – and that’s what all this was, a production of this dude Brett’s, who on the Fairgrounds had been just one among the numerous, but who here was in charge. Nikki pressed a slip of paper into his hand and pulled away and grabbed me and we started for the door but Brett shouted, “Three grand, Nikki? Three?”

The two of us were now more at the center of things than two people who aren’t having sex should be at this kind of party. Brett flapped the check, “This says three thousand! That’s like not even half!”

Every eye and lens on the balcony watched us. From the party emerged four stout guys. They were holding bright red Solo cups, but their eyes were clear and focused, looking only at Nikki and me; Brett’s party, Brett’s cameras, Brett’s security.
Nikki stepped close to Brett, trying to shrink the scene, keep it between them. All she and my sister had ever done had been designed for public dissemination: they were the Queens of the Scene who everyone knew and who knew everybody. But right then I identified what had changed in Nikki since my sister’s death. She had turned inward, trying to reclaim what pieces of herself she’d given away for so long. Moreso than the business of the money, it was this change in her that seemed to piss Brett off. He pushed her away and shouted, “Tell me from there!”

When I punched him in the mouth he said “ooh!”, and everyone on the balcony except the cameraman scattered. The burly Solo cup guy nearest me lunged and I just ducked clear.

Nikki had me by the shirt now and was dragging me away into the party, which had decided collectively not to notice the viscous punching of its host. We swam through the crowd, tipping beers and jostling cameras along the way.

The first of the Solo Cup Security Brigade caught up to us in the stairwell, but I was able to grab his arm and sort of heave him down the stairs ahead of us, the whole time thinking that this was some action movie shit right here. As we hit the ground floor I clearly heard a high pitched titter. Nikki was giggling.
We washed into the Bourbon Street crush like a whitewater tributary into a lake, not even trying to be polite now, just bulldozing people, leaving Brett’s security to deal with the anger left behind. Drinks of every shade and temperature were spilt upon us. By the time we reached Toulouse we were rainbow colored.

We enjoyed a hundred yards or so of unencumbered running between Bourbon and the Sinkhole, and as we cut into the entrance of the club I thought “Safe! Safe here with my people!” but in the entranceway we ran into a wall of humanity running straight back at us. It was the Placeholders’ audience, my audience. The frontrunners wore expressions of rabid panic. Further behind could be seen the sort of violent jostling one never likes to see in big crowds, bodies flying back and forth, mosh pit-like even though there was – pointedly, I thought – no music playing, only the terrible feedback of an electric guitar carelessly thrown aside.

The mob came with too much force for Nikki and me to possibly swim against, and we found ourselves pushed back out into Toulouse where waited Brett, a bloody Kleenex pressed to the corner of his mouth. Solo Cup Security was arrayed around him. One stepped forward and held out his hand and in his hand was a fucking gigantic blue gun, the sight of which actually made me unable to breathe for a moment. To the already freaked out crowd fleeing the Henry-inspired riot inside the Sinkhole, the gun had an even more potent effect. People started to actually lose their shit. They flittered about Toulouse like converts, waving their hands over their heads and moaning.

“Come on now, Brett,” Nikki began, but he held his hand out for silence.

“Seven’s what you owe. Seven grand right now or you come back to the party and work it off. And you?” He never really looked at me, but who else could he have been talking to? “You I’m still deciding whether it’s just an ass beating or what.”
Another wave burst from the club, pushing me straight toward the guy with the gun and just as I was about to hit him I realized all at once that a) it was the guy I’d thrown down the stairs and b) he was going to fire the weapon. I’d never even seen a gun until right then, but I just fucking knew somehow, so I lashed out at his arm and got it pointed up into the sky just before the thing went off. The shot was the last straw for the Sinkhole’s besieged concert goers. I’ve been to a thousand concerts, stood in a thousand crowds big and small, but I’d never experienced mass panic until just then.

Hysteria replaced oxygen as the atmosphere’s dominant element. I lost my grip on Nikki’s hand as she was flung to the pavement. The gunman was hit too and the gun went skidding. A security guy swam into view, punched me hard in the face, then got broadsided and knocked flat by a frenzied overweight earth mother. I swam, woozy from the punch, and a pair of frat boys tripped over me and we all went sprawling on the damp pavement. I could hear only shouting and grunting and footfalls and it never let up, never became any less of a tumult even as Brett pulled himself to his feet, found the gun, swung it around and pointed it down at me and was just about to fucking shoot me – I’m quite sure of this – right there in the street over the confused matter of three or seven thousand dollars and a punch in the face. The clamor never died but seemed to coalesce, sharpen and focus into one familiar voice.

It was a terrible, savage screech.

It was Henry.

He was the last man out of the Sinkhole, driving the crowd before him like a demonic sheepdog, swinging Cheryl’s bass in concentric arcs, directly, as it happened, into the back of Brett’s head.

***

For all that excitement it felt like we should have stayed in New Orleans, put down roots maybe, learned some sort of lesson. But we have a show in Tuscaloosa tonight, and since Sarah from PPC still hasn’t called, we need all the momentum we can generate.

I thought Nikki might come with us, but she has that house rented through next weekend and doesn’t seem too excited about sharing our van. She tempted me to stay a while, and promised to meet in Colorado next month. We’ll see if Henry makes it that far.

He’s been better today, started talking to me again, maybe even forgave me for leaving the venue last night.

We’re still drawing, and still going, and we might outrun my credit card debt yet.

My sister’s memory is another story. She’s with me all the time, unless the lights are down and the volume is up and the band is on.

Then everything is fine.