I saw him and I watched the walkers, those who’ve taken to carrying signs and speaking out against the assailants they believe they’ll recognize once they stay the vigil until another passing. And I remembered how Jolene was always a private woman and doubted she would show her smiling face in a crowd this immense — especially among the sober living. The waters may look still today, but each time I glance across the creek, use my peripheral vision, for a moment her easy presence forms here, waiting. It’s here I leave some hope for her, a few presents now and then, and ask her to go easy on us — the living. Here, too, I vow to follow him, take him down to the water one night, bring her Southern Comfort.
Jolene came to mind just this morning, how the light illuminated the walking bridge rail above her resplendent body. The shining of her deep black hair, under the water, on the morning they found her two dozen years ago. Right here in the thick of Brooklyn Alley. Just west/northwest from the Double Door Inn and over from the Broken Bank, Marshall Park. I remember how she always smiled when asking for “just a few quarters to get by.”
It was spring. Jolene, though barely grown, had already been married and separated twice. She had a young child, but her parents had taken custody in the recognition of her spirit gone to drink. She had lived among the other ghosts, friends still walking the Earth along Independence, panhandling, selling themselves, huddling together for warmth and for desire of the strange flesh necessary to endure the jaundiced and rotting skin they themselves wore. Those who had lost lives here already, and yet still breathed, still continued this walk among the living. The ones whose blood no longer held hemoglobin, red, nor white leukocyte to speak of, yet flowed with a powerful wine-red fire-rush of alcohol-permeated heat. Those whose tears bore no salt, yet swelled each time a lost love was mentioned in conversation. Worse still if one actually passed by, nonchalant, unknowing, a member of the living world still. Those who fill the deep underworld here, though the white-collars cannot see them.
Jolene had found a lover. A great man, great in size and truly experienced among these parts. His residency here dated back a good decade or more, since his mom was chain gang in South Carolina. Heard she died there. I knew him holding his own guts in his hands. Knew him to be unstoppable. He walked with a certainty. A macho strut. He was certain — of himself, of the drink he made vows with. Everybody knew him. This familiarity, this personal community knowledge, allowed her protection from the perpetrators who infiltrated the Brooklyn-side Charlotte streets on weekends, summers, and holidays. Those who came to prey on the already forgotten but not quite gone. Those who justified rolling drunks as “teaching them a lesson.” Or roughing lobs to “make them understand.” Ethnic cleansers. I despise them.
It was in the month of the eclipsed moon, that time of reddened sky, after a fresh rain and hail pummeling along the curb. Jolene and her man. They were along the newly constructed revision bank when the storm broke. They had gone into the bar to avoid the wetness and to engage some draws from the deep tap-well, at least until the panhandled earnings were exhausted.
They say when the lovers went back down the construction path, Jolene was so taken by the deepening colors of the flora around them, she swelled with passion in the green and purpled midst and they lay together in the wet grasses along the bank, experiencing the fullness of newborn spring. They say she slept there. Fell asleep during, some say. When they found her she was naked from the waist down, as brown as a summer doe, lying half-in and half-out of water. The half-in was the upper part of Jolene. They dragged her out by the bare heels poking up through the wild violets blooming.
You know, she smiled even in death and her heavy hair flowed far past her physical body, much as the water flowed behind her. Jimmy was questioned but never arrested in her passing. He suffered from blackouts and seizures, and couldn’t recall the last he saw her the night before. He was so sure she had returned to the bar with him. So were a few other regulars. They were all certain they saw her at least two hours after the coroner determined her expiration. They recounted Jolene hanging onto Jimmy’s arm and smelling his breath and neck as if it were something scintillating. No one remembered her speaking, though Willie Notches said she tried to steal a cigarette right from his brother Tyrone’s pocket but was so intoxicated she couldn’t grab hold of it. Said his cousin Punchy Blackknees walked by and put a cigarette into her hand and she thought he was handing her a grasshopper since the clumsy numbness made the end shake up and down. Willie still laughed at the recollection. Others said they had seen her swimming near the city center at dawn, where elders and children were allowed to fish before the conversion of the city into cosmopolis. Said they averted their eyes to avoid embarrassing her obvious bathing. The city more concerned with gentrification than the fallen, then and now. Nothing was done. No follow-up, just over and buried, they say. They still claim such. Amazing.
Years passed. Winos would sometimes claim they saw a beautiful woman, underwater, facing up and smiling in the now white-collar park enclave. Back then, they’d leaned over and fallen in trying to get a better look at her before the shock of cold water woke them from drunken stupor. Then there was Tyrone. The creek-bum who hadn’t seen a sober day in so many years his skin had grayed beyond redemption. Tyrone drank with Jimmy, for years they say, drank with Jolene once or twice in the living time. It was Tyrone whose death bristled my attention. Tyrone had claimed it was Jolene in the waters. Claimed she reached right out of the water for the Marlboro in his shirt and held him a moment, puckering wet lips and beckoning him with her muddy eyes. He said he’d shaken her off twice before and was afraid she would come for him again. He told Jimmy he believed her jealous of the woman Tyrone had introduced to Jimmy while he should have still been mourning her. As if the ones who lived on this bordering world were capable of remaining celibate for a year’s time to mourn anyone. He drowned four years after they found Jolene. He surfaced around Freedom Park, no explaining it, the pocket completely ripped from his shirt and his trousers torn through the crotch, one entire pant leg missing.
Then there was that one up from the Catawba River for the Frontier Days rodeo. They said he looked and walked a lot like Jimmy and that he had drunk in the Double Door three days straight before going to “get some sleep” by the pond path. They said his breath had the strong smell of Peppermint Schnapps or Hot Damn over bad beer and cheap wine. Said the peppermint was the only thing kept him from getting picked up P.I. by Officer Wall on his lot patrol at the market. He surfaced exactly four years after Tyrone. After him, they came up more often.
A few full-bloods floated facedown after being lost for two or three days. They were strong men, well built, with the exception of the distended gut from too much drinking. All were known to have frequented the park and the Indian bar nearby. All were going through hard times and break-ups. Then two half-bloods rose from the bottom. One with his woman just twenty yards away, still sleeping after having relations. For a week she told the story of his sweetest day, their closest time together — ever. This day he had drowned. Then she took up with a guy who stayed over nearer the park and they poured wine on the ground for her man every time they took to drink together.