Gods of New Orleans (12 page)

Emma stood slowly, keeping one hand on Eddie’s for support but also to make sure he stayed put. She reached a hand into her coat pocket for the gun that wasn’t there anymore. These men weren’t dopes, but it was her luck the room was dark and they’d all had at least a glass or three before she’d come in. She made as if to grab something in her pocket and lifted it slightly, aiming her finger through the fabric at the man who’d spoken.

“Any man tries it on with me and he’ll find himself on the wrong end of a gat. Is that clear?”

The room went hush for a few heartbeats. Emma looked from the man who’d spoken to the one called Jonas, who scooted his chair a few inches away from the jokester. In the corner of her eye, Emma saw the barkeep had his eyes on her pocket like he believed good and well she had an iron.

“Don’t need more shooting today,” the barkeep finally said. “Old Clive didn’t mean nothin’ by it, Miss Emma. Did you, Clive?”

The old man with the wrinkles running across his forehead and a pope’s nose settled in his chair and shook his head. “Just funnin’ is all,” he said. “Didn’t mean it serious.”

Emma sat back down and kept her hand in her pocket. The empty space where a gun used to be felt cold against her palm, and she promised herself it wouldn’t be long before she had heat on her side again.

Chapter 12

Aiden kept looking around the street like he’d been told by the man who gave him the box. The guy was in the dress shop when he and his ma went down for her first day of work. Aiden’s ma asked if anyone knew where Aiden might find a job and the man seemed to appear out of nowhere, just popped up like a jack-in-the-box from behind the counter.

He’d handed over a shoe-shine box and said Aiden could find work up and down any stem in the city so long as he kept walking and carrying the box. When he was done at the end of the day, he was supposed to bring the box and any money he’d earned back to the dress shop and hand it in to the lady there.

That was a week ago. He’d come out on the street twice so far, trying to find shoes to shine, but no luck. Today would be different, though; he knew it. Still, it felt like hours had passed and he hadn’t shined a single shoe, much less done anything but nearly put holes in his own.

Aiden pulled the green book from his trouser pocket and unfurled it. The book fell open to the first map, and Aiden thumbed a few pages until he got to the 'East Carrollton’ map. He found where he was on St. Charles Street and stuffed the book back into his pocket. He’d been thinking of trying his luck in the Hollygrove neighborhood, but he only saw dark-skinned folks walking in and out of the homes there, and not much that looked like a shopping district. The man who gave him the box told him to stick to streets with lots of storefronts, so that’s what Aiden had tried to do.

He’d taken the streetcar down St. Charles and got off where the carman said he should.

“Over at Riverbend; you like to be finding shine work.”

Aiden pretended not to hear the way the carman muttered about
doves fouling the nest
. Aiden just picked up his shine box and stepped off the streetcar. Now, he looked up and down St. Charles and saw nothing but crowds and storefronts in every direction. But which one should he aim for?

About as hopeless as a blind man in the dark.

“Hey, Shine!” Aiden spun around, but he couldn’t see who’d hollered.

“I said, Shine! Dammit, son, you got mud in your ears? Shine!”

Across the street, a group of well-dressed men sat around a table outside a cafe. Aiden caught glimpses of them through the passing crowd. It looked like three of the men were dark-skinned. The other two he saw more clear. They were pinker than suckling pigs.

Aiden moved to cross the street when the traffic parted a bit. He got a good look at the fellas this time. They all had bellies that made Aiden think of livestock. One of the white fellas waved, so Aiden stepped fast across the street. He stopped at the sidewalk and nodded to the man with his hand in the air.

He was thick-faced and with a mustache that twirled up to meet his cheeks just below his eyes. When Aiden got close enough, the man lowered his hand and set it on the table next to him. The other four men all had smiles on their mugs, and Aiden caught a couple of them nudging each other in the ribs and whispering. The man with the mustache snapped his fingers in Aiden’s face then.

“Man yells
Shine
you bust tail and haul it over to him, you hear me?” the man said. His puffed-up cheeks behind the ends of his mustache made him look like a stage actor Aiden had seen once. Back when he was just a boy, a traveling show came through Chicago City right after the Great War. With all these Japanese folks with white paint on their faces, and these big manes of dark hair, looking like ghosts of lions.

The man in front of him now looked twice as scary, though, because he wasn’t wearing a costume, and he was staring daggers straight through Aiden.

“I’m sorry, mister, I‌—‌”

“Mister? You hear that, gentlemen? This little Shine just called me
Mister
.”

Mumbles of agreement rolled around the table, across the men’s round bellies. Aiden spied gold watch chains glinting in the morning light. He watched the men’s jaws work around their laughter. One of the dark-skinned men gave Aiden a stink eye he thought would never come off, and the other white man looked at Aiden with something between hunger and hatred on his face.

“I‌—‌”

“You didn’t nothing, Shine,” the man with the mustache said. “Now get on down there and do what you get paid for.”

Aiden set his box down on the sidewalk and knelt beside it. The man stuck a leg out and propped his heel on the box before Aiden got it open, so he had to ask the man’s permission to move his foot off the box. Then he had to ask if it was okay to set the man’s foot down on the pavement again.

Aiden got his brush, rag, and polish out and barely had time to close the box before the man’s foot landed on it again with a
thunk
. With a hard swallow that stuffed his anger down his throat, Aiden went to work, first brushing away bits of ash that had fallen on the man’s shoe from the cigar he was smoking. As Aiden worked, more ash came floating down from above and onto the man’s shoe again.

“You lean over the work, you won’t have that problem, Shine,” said the man. “You must be new at this, otherwise you’d have known that. Should be charging you tuition for what I’m teachin’ you here today.”

Aiden felt resentment and hatred curdling in his guts, but the thought of his mother sweeping aside rat droppings and dust kept him at his work. He leaned forward a bit and felt ash falling past his face, some of it landed on his ear and he had to fight the urge to brush it off.

The quicker he finished this job, the better. Whoever these men were, Aiden wouldn’t soon forget their faces. Next time he was out looking for shoes to shine, he’d know to avoid this bunch if he spotted them. He’d just have to keep a good lookout as he walked to make sure they didn’t get eyes on him first.

While he worked polish into the man’s shoe, the other men around the table traded chuckles and hushed comments that after a while became less hushed and more like what Aiden remembered from the school yards back in Chicago City. There always seemed to be some group of kids, his age or older, who had something to say about how Aiden dressed or walked or talked. Pretty much anything he’d done had been cause enough for someone else to take issue with it, as if whatever Aiden did was bound to end up going wrong.

“Poor little Shine. Ain’t got sense enough to do this job,” said the other white man at the table.

“Must be trying to buy his momma out of Mister Bacchus’s employ,” said one of the Negro men. Aiden’s ears pricked up at the mention of the gangster. He had to force himself to keep from shouting back at the suggestion that his ma was working for the guy.

It didn’t take two seconds for Aiden to put together what the men around the table meant by
being in Mister Bacchus’s employ
.

“How about it, Shine? Which house she work in?” the same man said.

“Now, Mister Clemmons,” said the man with his foot on Aiden’s box. “May I be so bold as to ask you to refrain from disrupting this young man while he’s hard at work? After all, if his mother is
ad opus
, then I’m sure it’ll be only a matter of time before we’ve all had the pleasure. Isn’t that right?”

The men all set to laughing and Aiden couldn’t take it. Before he knew what he was doing he’d torn the man’s shoe from his foot and flung it into the street. The man nearly fell backward out of his chair he stood up so fast, but Aiden had his hands on the man’s stocking foot and was yanking on that, too.

He felt a sharp pain in his gut and rolled onto his back into the street. One of the men had kicked him under the table. Aiden clutched his stomach and flipped over onto his knees. A small crowd had formed around the table.

Every man and woman in the area was watching Aiden, some with looks of horror on their faces, but most with a sort of half glee. Aiden saw bets trade hands between two of the Negro men at the table. The man whose shoe he’d torn off stood beside the table, shaking with rage and ready to kill.

Aiden felt heated enough himself, and he didn’t back down. But he was wise enough to know when a fight was lost before it had begun. He skipped backward, onto his feet, and nearly stumbled over the man’s shoe. With the crowd watching him, he leaned down and picked it up. The he tossed it to the man, who fumbled it against his chest.

Aiden had already dashed forward and grabbed up his shine box. He snapped up the brush in his other hand and stuffed it in his pocket before reaching for the polish. His fingers closed on the tin, but it slipped out of his hands as Aiden dodged a kick from the man.

Snarling, the guy lifted a foot like he’d stomp the shine box out of Aiden’s grip, but Aiden was faster and twisted to the side, so the man’s foot only nicked the corner of the box. Aiden ducked a swing from the guy’s beefy mitt and snatched the polish tin off the ground. Then he wheeled around on his heels and took off down the street.

A few cheers let out behind him, and a couple of shouts, too. But Aiden didn’t bother looking back. He just pumped his legs and slapped his soles on the street for all he was worth.

Two streets over he finally let himself settle down to a more even pace. Folks on the sidewalks all looked his way, most shaking their heads. A few pointed and chuckled. When he heard a voice calling
“Shine”
again, Aiden nearly jumped out of his skin. But it was just a Negro gentleman standing beside a horse and buggy across the street.

Aiden hotfooted over to the fellow and set his box down beside him.

“Yessir,” he said. “You needing a shoe shine today?”

“Sure enough I’m not. But you look to be needing safe passage out of this street,” the man said. “Probably like to be hopping up into my buggy, you know what’s best for your skin.” He pointed back the way Aiden had come.

Aiden whipped his head around. The big white man had both his shoes on again, and a couple of the other fellows had come with him. Their faces said they were none too pleased with the chase he’d given them, and Aiden didn’t dare think about what they’d do if they caught him.

Without another thought, Aiden grabbed up his shine box and leaped into the buggy. The Negro gentleman stepped up behind him and grabbed the reins. He slapped them on the horses’ rumps and they were off at a trot. Aiden risked a look out the side of the buggy and saw the big man and his pals spitting in the street and shaking their fists after him.

“That should be the last you’ll have to worry about those fellows,” the Negro said.

“Yessir. And thank you, sir.”

“Don’t mention it. Not everyday I get to help put a knot of trouble into the likes of those hogs. Damn fat cats living off the sweat of other men, deserve a little comeuppance from time to time. Now, you got a badge of transit, don’t you?”

Aiden nodded, feeling in his pocket for the thin piece of metal he’d got from Mister Hardy on the mooring deck.

“Well go on then, Dove. Show me you got the right to be sitting beside me here.”

Aiden pulled the badge from his pocket and held it up for the man to see.

“Good to go, Dove. Now best put that away lest someone who has to walk gets it in their head they’d rather be the one to ride in my buggy. You like your hand, don’t you, Dove?”

“Sure I do, mister,” Aiden said, pocketing the badge.

“Well then, best to be keeping that badge out of sight lest you need it. You go waving it around ….” He trailed off and let his pointing finger finish for him.

Aiden followed the man’s finger and saw a group of tramps huddled around a doorway to a saloon. Most of them had only one hand and nothing but a stump wrapped in raggedy bandages where the other used to be.

“Not everybody comes to New Orleans has the right payment for Papa Lebat. Some folks is like to be stealing a badge of passage off them what earns it proper. And some who does the stealing like to be adding an extra bit of punishment, as if to remind folks how easy it is to lose in the Crescent City.”

Aiden choked back a sob as he remembered his father’s hand and the knife that Celestin Hardy drove into it, pinning his pa’s mitt to the wall of the station house.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“What is it, Dove?”

“You ever hear of folks just up and leaving New Orleans?”

“Some do. Sure enough, some do. But if you mean Doves like you what just come to town, it’s only after a long hard day’s work you gonna get free of this city’s sweet embrace.”

Aiden wanted to ask how the man knew he’d just come to town, but he figured it was plain as day. He’d just about lost his life over a simple shoeshine job.

Can’t even get that right. Pa’d switch me good if he knew.

Thoughts of his pa being angry with him didn’t help lift Aiden’s spirits, so he let the buggy man’s words find their way into his chest where he wrapped them up tight with his arms. He ignored the nagging worry that the man next to him knew more about Aiden and his family than he should. The fear that he’d just jumped from the pan into the fire burned behind his eyes, but Aiden closed them tight.