Saving Fats

"Incredibly violent down there right now," he says to me as he thunks himself into the B seat. I'm sitting in A by the window, minding my own business, perusing the thin World Traveler magazine and happen to hover over a glossy Acapulco beach scene; oiled bodies, turquoise water, palm trees-the usual tourist bait. I'm not even contemplating a Mexican trip. "Ten cops killed down there just last week, in fact," he continues. "Kneecaps knocked off. Executed gang-style." He points an index finger to his temple and pulls the trigger with a little click of his tongue.

"Is that right," I say, hoping he'll catch the cold drift, but he rattles right on, oblivious.

"Drugs, cartels-you know. The Big Dogs have moved into the fancy pink villas; taken over the beach, major hotels, the whole damn town. Armed to the teeth too. Easy to get caught in a crossfire. Never even know what hit you." This time I just make a little hmm of acknowledgment as he grinds his slab hips from side to side trying to lash the seat belt around his tremendous middle. He's already sweating profusely. I had the feeling he might be a sweater and now, here it comes, oozing from the deep folds in his neck, beading up on his forehead and chin. "Same thing as down in New Orleans," he goes on (although I fail to make the connection). "Looters were armed better than the cops. AK-47s, Glocks, over and under shotguns-Believe me, I was down there."

"Really?"

"Right in the middle of it. Never seen anything like it and I was born and bred down there. Cops just ran away and hid. Not that you could blame them. It became a question of survival-purely. I count myself among the lucky, though. Friend of mine had a boat. Used to be Fats Domino's bodyguard. Had one of those-what do you call 'em?-'torpedo'?-no-'cigarette' boats-you know."

"Cigarette?"

"Yeah-long, skinny orange sucker with some kind of big-ass Buick engine in it, rumbling away-chrome manifolds-Blow you right out of the water you're not careful. Don't know where he copped the fuel. Must've had a tankful already. Anyway, he comes chugging along in this rig and sees me up on the roof of my crib, just clinging like an armadillo, and he honks his horn at me."

"Honks his horn?"

"They have fancy horns, these cigarette boats. Sound like a European sports car. Just blares out with some dumb melody line like from Goldfinger or something. As though he's cruising chicks. And here I am, straddled up there on the shingles in my BVDs and don't recognize him from Adam, but he's waving his Hawaiian shirt and yelling for me to jump down into the water and he'll pick me up."

"How high was the water?"

"High! I mean I'm talking up to the dormers and rising and it is some kind of ugly deep blackish-looking shit with all kinds of plastic milk bottles and chunks of car metal and TVs bobbing along-little dogs paddling around in circles with their eyes bugged out."

"So you jumped?"

"Jumped? No, man-Slid! I am not a jumper, as you can plainly see. Slid my sorry ass all the way down into the slimy goo and he come and threw me a line-my friend."

"The bodyguard?"

"That's right."

"Well, that was kind of heroic of him."

"It was, indeed. He's a heroic kinda fella. That's his business. Protection. Security."

"The hero business."

"Exactly. Saved Fats's life too."

"Fats Domino?"

"The very man."

"The Fats Domino?"

"Mr. 'Blueberry Hill' hisself."

"Wow, that's hard to believe."

"Why is that hard to believe?"

"Well, I mean, I used to listen to him in high school."

"Didn't we all?"

"I know, but-"

"He lives right down there in Ward Nine. That's where we saved him. Right in his home haunt."

"I heard that he was missing down there-"

"He was but we saved him."

"Same day you-I mean the same day the guy in the orange cigarette boat picked you up?"

"He was headed over there to get Fats already when he saw me clinging to my A-frame."

"So then, once he got you on board, you both sped over to Fats Domino's house and saved him too? Is that what you're saying? Is that what you want me to believe?"

"I don't know about 'sped.' There wasn't much speeding going on because of all the junk in the water. I mean there was full-grown pecan trees and refrigerators blowing by. You wouldn't believe all the crap there was in that water."

"People?"

"What?"

"Many people? Swimming?"

"Bodies. Floating."

"Is that right?"

"You saw the pictures, didn't you? Everybody saw the pictures. Bodies everywhere. Animals. Horses. You just couldn't believe the power of that water."

"I'll bet-"

"You know, the way you normally look at water-just sitting there, flat and blue-pretty, with the sun hitting on it. Or at night, with the moon-kinda peaceful-Makes you want to fall in love or do something stupid? Uh-uh-That water was a raging monster, let me tell you. It was a stone terror."

"And where did you find Fats? Where was he?"

"He was up on his roof too. Same like I was; grabbing on to the chimney bricks and trying to keep his balance. He had some kind of shiny patent leather dress shoes on-you know, the kind with the little black elastic bows. Cute. Musta been on his way to a gig or just come back from one or maybe that's just what he'd been wearing around the house. I don't know. Had the full tux on, though-the whole deal."

"Full tux?"

"Cummerbund, cuff links-the whole nine yards. It was like the whole damn emergency had just caught him completely up short. Didn't want to get any of it wet either. We told him to kick off the shoes so he could get a better grip but he wouldn't. Said he just bought them shoes and they cost more'n the whole suit put together. He started slipping all over that roof on them fancy leather soles-and he's not built for speed, you know-Fats. Built for comfort, just like me-right along the same lines as me. And now the two of us-me and the bodyguard, we're sitting in the boat afraid he's just going to go ass over teakettle off that pitched roof and drown hisself in the gravy. So, finally, we talk him into just setting down on his haunches, nice and easy, and then inching his way to us-Just more less like the way I done it."

"And you got him on board?"

"We did. We managed to hoist him up on that orange cigarette boat, just through pure kindness and coercion. And he was panting kind of heavy and worked up-making funny sounds out his nose. And we could understand that on account of the situation he'd been in and his general kind of-physical condition. You know-being right stout and everything. But then his shoulders start to shake up and down-his huge shoulders, and we see that he's weeping. That's what he's doing-weeping. And we're saying, 'Fats, what's the matter? What's the matter, Fats? You're okay now. You're in the boat. We got you safe and sound now. We're gonna get you outa here.' But he just keeps right on moaning and weeping away like he's lost his mama or something. So I ask him, 'Is there someone left behind in your crib, Fats? Is there anyone else inside there?' And that black water's lapping up around the windows of his little white house and I'm thinking nothing could still be alive inside there because that water's just too damn high and ugly. And then Fats says, 'My piano'-just like that. That's exactly what he says: 'My piano's in there.' And right then-just exactly when he said that, we saw that piano of his go floating on by the front door. It must've busted itself out through a window or something, but there it was-kind of rocking back and forth like a little white city all its own. A baby grand. Just beautiful the way it pitched back and forth like it was playing a little silent waltz to itself. And Fats, when he saw it-I thought he was going to jump right back in the water. We had to hold him down and restrain his ass. He was, by God, ready to jump in and try and save that thing like it was his only child."

"So, did you manage to save it for him? His piano?"

"We got ahold of it. Tied lines to the legs and started towing it real slow, out of the neighborhood, down Caffin Avenue. And you should've seen it-with Fats sitting right back there by the chrome motor, chugging along in his tuxedo and snappy Italian shoes and he never once took his eyes off that baby grand the whole while. Just glued to it like as though he thought if he looked away for a second it might just go down and disappear. And don't you know what happens then-One of the legs of the piano snaps right off. Just as we hit about Montereau Street, trying to make that big loop out past the levee; the leg just cracks itself in half and that piano did a flip and went right under."

"Sank?"

"Completely. And so here we are again-We've got to hold Fats down to the gunwales, he's so excited we're afraid he's gonna capsize the whole bunch of us. He's become one desperate man-crashing around with his eyes just hunting that water for any sign. Then, bam!-here it pops up again, white and shiny with its teeth grinning out at us. We've still got one line on that other leg but it's not tracking with us like it was before. It's causing the whole boat to heave off to one side and the front end is lurching way up like it might just roll over and capsize on top of us. So now, my friend the bodyguard is saying we're going to have to cut the piano loose before we end up drowning the boat altogether and he breaks out one of those SWAT team kind of knives with saw teeth like a shark and Fats is yelling, 'No! No! That's my piano, man! You can't cut my piano loose! I'll never find it again!' And he jumps clean overboard!"

"No!"

"God's truth. Just throws his huge self off the back end of that fancy boat where the motor's churning away and he's thrashing around in his tuxedo trying to dog-paddle over to his sinking piano while my friend shuts the motor off so it won't chop Fats into chunks of meat. And now the boat kind of settles down some and the piano just lurks there in the water with one corner of it sticking up and Fats has found the rope line and is inching his way down it toward the baby grand and talking something-saying something out loud as he's paddling along. I think, at first, he's talking to us but he's not, he's talking to that piano and he's telling it 'Everything is gonna be all right,' in the softest, sweetest voice; 'Everything is gonna be all right, now.' Just talking to it like that. Repeating it like you'd talk to a child stuck high up in a tree and you're trying to climb to it and keep it calm: 'Everything is gonna be all right,' over and over again. And Fat's big head and shoulders are slowly making their way toward the keyboard as he keeps quietly talking to it and the two of us are just holding our breath, waiting to see what happens. What're we gonna do now? We got the engine stopped. We got Fats Domino in the water and we're tied on to a damn baby grand piano, bobbing up and down in that soup while all the guts of New Orleans goes roaring past us toward the Gulf of Mexico."

"So, is the water still rising at that point?"

"Water's leveled off some but it's getting dark and nothing's working. No lights. Electricity's all busted up and fires breaking out everywhere. Power lines snapping and spitting. People screaming. Far away you can hear voices calling out but there ain't nothing you can do. People just come floating by hanging onto their front doors, hunks of blue insulation, Styrofoam, any old piece a junk that floats. You just sit there and watch them come and go. Helpless. You and them, both. Some of 'em you recognize from the neighborhood. You call out to 'em. They call back and drift away. And Fats-Fats, he yells out for us to throw him another line of rope and we're yelling back: 'Fats, you gotta get back in the boat now! We gotta get you outa here! It's getting dark and we gotta find our way out of this mess.' And he says, 'I'm not leaving without my piano, man! I'm not leaving without it!' So we toss him out another line and he catches hold of it and starts wrapping it around his chest and over his cummerbund then tying the end onto another leg of that piano. And we're telling him: 'Fats, don't tie that thing around yourself! If that piano goes down you're gonna for sure drown!' And just right then that's exactly what happens."

"It went under?"

"That piano pulls him right down. They both go under and disappear. And my friend the bodyguard he jumps in after them with his shark-tooth knife and I'm thinking now I'm in really deep shit-alone on the boat and I don't know the first damn thing about how to get it started. I'm hardly familiar with Ward Nine in the dry daylight and now here it is all covered in water and it's getting to be dark thirty. Then, my last thought-and this is the one that freezes my blood up solid. You wanna know what that last thought was?"

"What?"

"Alligators."

"Alligators?"

"Alligators, just lurking. You know they gotta be. There's dead meat everywhere. It's like a cafeteria for alligators. But before I could get too carried away with that, up bobs Fats and the baby grand again, like a dolphin breaking the surface. And Fats is sitting up on the corner of it now, roped to it-just sitting on the bass end of the eighty-eights and he's smiling and spitting water and he laughs with this big old grin: 'Everything is gonna be all right now! Everything is gonna be all right!' And there was just no reason in the world for us to disbelieve him. That piano was riding up on top of the water just as flat as a table and Fats was sitting up there like he was ready for a cocktail and my buddy hauls himself back on board with his knife between his teeth, turns that motor over, and off we go like the tail end of some old beat to shit Mardi Gras."

"And you got him out of there? To safe ground. You saved Fats Domino?"

"And his piano-both."

"That's incredible! You actually saved Fats Domino!"

"That's exactly right-Well-me and my friend did."

"The bodyguard."

"Right."

"That's amazing."

"I can't believe it myself, sometimes."

"You must feel really good about that."

"I do. I actually do."

We're high above Detroit by now, looking down at the sparkling lights just coming on. Then, the dark gray wolf head of Lake Superior begins to emerge out of the northwest. My partner in flight takes a little snack break; tears an edge off a cranberry muffin, pops it in his mouth, then twiddles his fingers to shed the crumbs. He licks the corners of his mouth, preens his moustache and beard, then wipes the moisture from his neck with the linen napkin. His eyes have a gentle, slightly feminine cast with long lashes tucked deep in his chubby cheeks. He tells me this is "Day 52" for him, since the flood. Fifty-two days wandering the country in a Dodge van with nothing but what he had hastily thrown into it as he fled the city of his birth. Since the hurricane he hasn't stopped moving; revisiting ex-wives, girlfriends, relatives, friends of family. From Biloxi to Memphis to Philadelphia to New Jersey, New York; slowly working his way north. Now he's flying out to St. Paul to track down an aunt he last saw when he was ten. He hopes he can still recognize her. She's told him she has an extra bed. Then he might head west, he thinks. He's never been there. Portland or Seattle. "Maybe it's time to get adventurous." I go back to the World Traveler just out of having nothing left to say. "I wouldn't recommend Acapulco, though, if I were you," he reiterates, as though I were the one in search of new digs. "Dangerous as hell down there."

"No," I say. "I was just thumbing through the pictures."

"Dangerous just about anywhere when you think about it."

"I try not to."

"What's that?"

"Think about it."

"Well, yeah-right. That's probably a good policy. Otherwise you'd just never venture out at all, would you?"

"Probably not." I return the magazine to the pouch on the back of the seat in front of me and reset my chair as we begin our descent into the Twin Cities. My friend nibbles away at his muffin, staring contemplatively straight ahead. He seems gripped by a deep silence now as though his immediate unknown future were a tangible thing; a strange partner he was just now getting used to. Out the window the streaming highway lights frame the braided black headwaters of the Mississippi, laying out placid and lazy in their seedbed before starting the long, inexorable journey south to the Gulf of Mexico. "Can I just ask you one thing?" I say to the man from New Orleans. Again, he twiddles his fingers, knocking crumbs into his lap then flicking them to the floor.

"Sure. Why not?" he says.

"Did all that stuff actually happen? I mean with Fats-saving Fats Domino. Or did you just-kind of dream it all up?" He pauses a moment, staring down at his beefy knees, then looks up at the plastic ceiling as though trying to pierce right through it to the rushing night sky.

"What's the difference?" he says to me.

In Memory of Chappy Hardy

10/05 NYC.

Bossier City, Louisiana

(Highway 220) Ceiling's way too low. Made out of I don't know what. Fireproof sheetrock or something lumpy. Little squares of it squeezed together in sections. Some of the squares don't quite fit. There's black gaps where the wind comes through. I can see it. The wind. I watch it. I'm not sure if it's coming from the outside or inside. Like wind from the building itself. Building-generated wind, I guess. And dust. Tiny floating particles of crud. And bugs. Beautiful long-winged lacy-looking things with bent, delicate legs. They press against the glass sliding door and look like they're licking it. I don't know what could be on the glass that they like to lick it like that. Salt maybe. We're a long way from the sea. Maybe film from the sticky humidity. Maybe something sweet but I can't think what that would be either. There's nothing sweet in here. There's displaced New Orleans people in here, that's for sure. Whole families living all around me. Right next door. Maybe ten people in there. All ages, I guess. You can hear them. Way too many for one squashed-up room. You can hear them trying to get along. Trying to find room to sleep side by side, head to toe, or even a place to sit down with a plate of food. They're cooking all the time in there. You can smell it; crawfish, jambalaya, all that Cajun stuff. They're always cooking seems like. Singing too. But there's fights going on. Somebody pushing somebody else around. Family. Brothers fighting. Sisters-in-law. Mothers yelling. Kids wailing away. Then everyone will suddenly just stop and laugh. Just like that. Amazing how that happens. They'll all just stop and laugh. I never hear the joke, the punch line; just the laughter. Maybe somebody is getting made fun of. I don't know. That could be too. Somebody getting humiliated. That happens. Sometimes you see them coming and going with their laundry or bringing beer into the room-Diet Sprite, stuff like that. You can spot them right away from the people in Shreveport. They stand right out. White bandanas, these exotic print dresses with tropical flowers and parrots flying across their breasts. They sound different too. They've got that different ring that must come from back deep in those bayous somewhere. I don't know. I try not to look them straight in the eyes. I don't know why. I'm not afraid or anything, I just don't want them to think I might be curious about their catastrophe. You know-I don't want to embarrass them. Not that they would be. I wonder about catastrophe sometimes. How close it is. How near. Right here, under the skin. How some people it never seems to touch and other ones that's all they know. Like some of these people here, you see that their whole life has just been a string of catastrophes; one strung on top of another, like bad beads. This hurricane deal is just another one. Maybe the worst but just another one. Who knows, maybe those weren't the first bodies they ever saw floating facedown through the drowning streets. Maybe that wasn't the first time they had to carry their mother on their back or not eat for three days or have to fight off a dog to get something out of a garbage can. Makes you wonder. I lie here sometimes thinking about it. Just lie here watching the overhead fan and listening to all these people. Listening to Highway 220 moaning right outside the sliding glass door. You can see the trucks pouring back and forth from Dallas. You can hear the B-52 bombers big as small cities running low patterns all day long. Running circles from the local air base; practicing for Iraq, I guess. Practicing for some new catastrophe. Something coming up. Maybe they know something we don't. I'm sure they do. We're the last to find out. Don't you think? Always. Big long ropes of black fuel trailing out across the sky, out past Louisiana Downs, across the greasy Red River where the big glitzy casinos flash their neons bragging about jackpots and payouts and fun trips to the Bahamas and nobody out here's got a pot to piss in. Nobody on this side of the river anyway.