She took a step toward Tom, focusing on him. Detective Mamahat made a move to stop her, but Tom waved him off.
“I’m determined to do it,” Eugenia continued. “And nothing’s more determined than a cat on a tin roof — is there? Is there, baby?”
She reached out and touched his cheek, gently.
Then she backed away. “I’m ready now, Detective,” she said.
Mamahat took her arm and escorted her from the room.
Suddenly, everyone began to talk. “Wasn’t that the damnedest...?” “She murdered him?” “I wanna go home, Jacques.” “Yeah. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
As they filed out into the hall, Tom remained where he was. “I’ve never heard my words performed more eloquently,” he said and his eyes filled with tears.
We led him from the room and out of the hotel.
Royal Street was still throbbing with music and expectations. He stared at the passing parade. “Things are fallin’ apart in this old world,” he said. “The pressure builds up in people and they crack. People you’d never expect. Like Eugenia. So seemingly strong and capable.”
“We’ll walk you home, Tom,” Megan said.
“Thank you, my deah, but I’m still a bit too sober to be going home.”
“Then we’ll keep you company,” I said.
“That’s kind of you, Harol’, but tonight I shall seek the kindness of strangers.”
We watched him wander off down Royal in his tuxedo, drawing the attention of passing tourists who either recognized him as one of the world’s great playwrights or pegged him for being just another wealthy eccentric in a city full of them.
Copyright © 2006 Dick Lochte
Dead Men’s Shirts
by Julie Smith
Born in Savannah, Julie Smith’s first job was in New Orleans, as feature writer for the Times Picayune. But it was the 1960s, and San Francisco beckoned. There she would work for the Chronicle, and start writing fiction. She returned to NOLA, the city where her novels are set, in 1996. She’s an Edgar Award winner (and a P.I.!) whose new book is P.I. on a Hot Tin Roof.
For Pig Man Latrelle’s funeral, they had a horse-drawn carriage driven by a distinguished gentleman in tails, top hat, and white tennis shoes. They had the Rebirth Brass Band, but not playing dirges, only party stuff. And they had the damn Dead Men’s Shirts, now offered as part of a package deal by the funeral homes. In recent years, they’d been renamed “Memorial Shirts” as if they were something respectable. Pig Man’s whole family was wearing them, all his little nieces and nephews, every single member of his posse, the P-Town Soldiers, all his little girl-friends, and every one of his babies by different girls (definitely not women — Pig Man was only nineteen).
Pig Man’s T-shirt had his picture on it along with his birthday under the label “Thug-in,” and also the day of his death, “Thug-out.” In addition, it sported a legend informing the world that “Real Soldiers Don’t Die — Now I’m With God, Up in the Sky.”
The Reverend Ray Turner Thompson, who officiated at the service, was pretty sure Pig Man was actually burning in hell and he wasn’t sure he wasn’t damning himself as well just by delivering the eulogy. But he managed to pull out some pap about there being good in the worst of us and God loving all his children, and then he recalled Pig Man — whom he called by his given name, Jermaine — as a cute little kid the reverend used to see at neighborhood barbeques. Lately, as neighborhood “soldiers” fell like bowling pins, he’d gotten good at that kind of thing, but it never failed to turn his stomach.
Just about everything about Pigeon Town turned his stomach these days. The violence was at the top of his list, but not the very top. He hated the glorification of it even worse. Sometimes the Dead Men’s Shirts said “Thuggin’ Eternally,” as if the good Lord had a separate heaven he kept for criminals, who got to sell drugs and blow each other away even after death. And the reverend knew these kids knew what was in the Bible; he’d read it to them himself. What the hell was wrong with everybody?
Well, he’d had to keep his mouth shut at Jermaine’s funeral for the sake of Pig Man’s mama, who’d had two sons gunned down in as many years, both of whom probably deserved what they got. But just wait till Sunday, he thought. I’ve been sitting on my hands way too long.
As soon as he could peel himself away from the crowd of teenage murderers and drug dealers and gangsters who shot up the neighborhood and then had the nerve to come into his church like they belonged there, he went home and began composing Sunday’s sermon. On the one hand, he knew the people he wanted to reach wouldn’t be in church to hear it; they only came for funerals. But on the other, he had to get some dialogue going, some buzz started. Some things off his chest.
The thing was, he was fifty-five years old and a graduate of Dillard University as well as a respected Baptist seminary. Furthermore, he was the son of a preacher who was also college-educated. Education was what happened in his family — and also in the recent past, if he remembered correctly. People worked hard and lived good, productive lives. What had happened to that?
How dare you come into my church, he wrote, wearing shirts that proclaim eternal thugging? Who gave you the right? And as for you parents, who gave your sons and daughters the right? This is still a house of God, and God, if I understand anything about this life, does not condone even earthly thugging, much less eternal thugging. Thugging and drugging and shooting and murder. Rape and violence and revenge. No! These things are not of God. Where is your respect, people? Where are your values? What are we teaching our children these days? LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING — BILL COSBY IS RIGHT! WE ARE FAILING OUR CHILDREN! WE ARE FAILING THEM AT EVERY LEVEL.”
He stopped to imagine the way he’d bellow out those last few lines, doing it now in his mind and finding it entirely satisfying. He needed a bridge to Cosby, though. Well, maybe old Bill didn’t belong in this sermon at all. Poor parenting actually seemed minor compared to what was happening in Pigeon Town, which was a turf war between the P-Town Soldiers and a gang a neighborhood over, in Hollygrove. Jermaine Latrelle was only the latest casualty and judging by what the reverend knew about him, at least he was an actor in the drama.
Not so all the victims. So far, two innocent people had been killed as well as three gang members. The killing continued because every witness so far — and there were quite a few — either refused to come forward or recanted after being threatened. The threat was as real as Pig Man’s dead body, too.
But this had to stop somewhere. Somebody, somehow, needed to get some cojones. The reverend changed focus on the sermon, made it even stronger.
Are we going to stand by and let our innocent sons and daughters be gunned down in broad daylight?
We must trust in the good Lord that we’ll be safe. The good Lord and the tip line, brothers and sisters. Those who are afraid, phone in anonymous tips — and pray for the courage to come forward into the light. Those who are not afraid, come forward now if you dare!
We’ve come to a time when Miss Ella Fauntleroy down there in the front row can’t even sell her homemade frozen cups to the neighborhood kids. Yes, Miss Ella, I’ve seen you, poking your old arm out through your door, holding those frozen Kool-Aid cups out to any kid brave enough to come up on your porch, too scared even to show your face.