Chapter Ten
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Cash
Some decisions you make with your head. Others you make with your heart.
Not sure which I was using when I decided to come to this second line, but whichever it was, I know now it was a big mistake.
As a Green Beret, I was trained to operate in environments where the ax meets the stone, where the bullets fly and the bombs burst. And I was damned good at it.
Cool.
Calm.
Collected.
So it’s odd that right now, standing outside Preservation Hall—the dilapidated-looking cornerstone of NOLA’s music culture—I’m ready to jump out of my damned skin.
Maybe it’s the sheer decibel level. The screech and squawk of the brass band warming up competes with the shouts of locals welcoming each other. A Lucky Dogs hot dog vendor on the corner yells at passing tourists, trying to entice them with shouts of, “Wrap your lips around a wiener!” while a car with its windows down and bass thumping slowly drives by.
Or it could be all the smells. Cologne and perfume, fried foods and sugary booze mix with the dirty-water aroma of the nearby river.
Or maybe it’s the pain in my head. Apparently I’m paying for the reprieve I had earlier today with a headache that’s big enough to knock an elephant on its ass. Taking out my flask, I down two giant gulps, praying the whiskey’s numbing effects take hold soon.
“Don’t know about you,” Luc whispers in my ear, “but crowds like this make me twitchy.”
That’smy problem.
There are too many faces to catalog. Too many eyes to search for nefarious intentions. Too many hands to inspect for possible weapons. You can take the man out of the Green Berets, but you can’t take the Green Beret out of the man.
Although, I hope that’s not true. I hope there’ll come a day when neither of us expects danger to lurk around every corner. Because that’s no way to live. That heightened state of awareness can be endured for only so long before it begins to drive a man mad.
“What in the worldisall this?” A young woman with five pounds of colorful beads strung around her neck meanders into our throng, momentarily distracting me from my preoccupation with the crowd. She’s holding one of the green plastic cups that’s home to a frozen concoction called a Hand Grenade, a New Orleans special.
“It’s a second line!” Maggie tells her, turning away from the group of musicians who’ve come to pay their respects to Jelly Bean.
Maggie’s been jabbering with them since we arrived, and on the one hand, I’m glad. It means she hasn’t seen my complexion blanch of color. On the other hand, I don’t exactly like the way one particular douche canoe in a dark suit and a straw hat keeps gawking at her. The look on the guy’s face says she’s an all-you-can-eat crawfish boil and he’s a starving man.
I glance to see if Luc’s noticed, but he’s too busy scanning the crowd. The skin over his face is pulled tight. Ten years ago, he would’ve been in heaven—he loves live music—but today? I can feel the tension radiating from him.
That’s the thing about battle and bloodshed. Once you’ve seen it, tasted it, it changes you.
“What’s a second line?” the woman asks Maggie. Thanks to the booze, one of her eyelids hangs lower than the other.
“It’s a parade!” Maggie exclaims with a delighted clap of her hands.
“A parade for what?”
“For anything! This one’s in celebration of Jelly Bean Jenkins’s life. But we have them for weddings and birthdays and anniversaries too. Anything we want to commemorate gets a second line. Where’re you from?”
“Detroit!” the woman yells over the brass band’s opening bars of “Gloryland.”
“Join us, Detroit!” Maggie waves her forward as the mass of humanity starts up the street after the band.
“But I didn’t even know this Jelly Bean person!”
“Doesn’t matter!” Maggie throws an arm around the tourist’s shoulders. “All that matters is you have a good time. Down here we have two traditions. The first is we toast to the beginning of life. The second is we dance and sing at its end. And lucky for you, everyone’s invited!”
