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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 98: Brown 316
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 115
Remembering his aborted discussion at the crawfish boil, Derek saw that this near race riot, by Whites, was the perfect opportunity to get his points across. He would get his baby argument delivered, and all grown up to be a respectable citizen of society. It was time to have a conversation about race.
That night, after a gig at another supper party at the Beaufoy Mansion, he took them down a strange path, saying he had something to show them. Curious, the other four in the Living Colors Dixieland Gospel Band followed him until they ended up in front of the Thomy Lafon Schoolhouse. It was a well-cared-for building, with a playground (with teeter-totters, a swing, and a merry-go-round) adjacent. A low wooden fence had been erected to keep in kicked or thrown balls and children who might too eagerly rush out into the street to get them. Much of the details of the school were not visible because the sun was down long ago, even if the moon shed quite a bit of light onto the night scene.
“Do you know what this is?” Derek asked his bandmates as he halted on the sidewalk in front of the schoolhouse. They could all read the black-on-white painted sign in front with its ornate Gothic lettering. Vashti shook her head, but Maurice nodded, and so did Pierre. Lei He shook his head.
“What is it Maurice?” he asked gently, leading them toward the correct conclusion.
“Is the best Negro schoolhouse in all Louziana, awe so they say. Mah grades were not good enough to attend. Mah papa said if Ah’d a spent mo’ time studying than fishin’ or playin’ the ‘bone, Ah’d haf done betta in school. Ah had a theud cous’n who attended. He graduated, um, a few yea’s back, I can’t rememba.”
Derek patted Maurice on the shoulder. Perfect. Everything was going to plan.
Now, he looked at Pierre.
“It's as Maurice said. Thomy Lafon was a Mulatto who did very well for himself. I believe he worked some business deals with my uncle, and perhaps my grandfather, too. While he did well in business, he always had a special spot in his heart for orphaned and Creole children, and he donated a lot of money toward helping them--not just this schoolhouse, but other projects as well. He was a good Christian man. But he died sometime before the turn of the century. My uncle would know more. He probably went to the man’s funeral.”
While he was a bit curious, Derek shoved aside that bit of history as irrelevant to his goal tonight.
“I had an encounter yesterday with a man shooting policemen,” Derek said. This fully got their attention, and he detailed the encounter. All three of the young men had heard about it but had not realized he was involved, and he filled in a lot of details. In fact, a number of details had been added to the popular version of story, with lightning bolts falling from the sky, and Jesus showing up with a halo to bless the police, and other things which showed a startled Derek the power of gossip, especially in a world before video cameras.
“I think the Devil was messing with that man’s mind. I could see the Devil’s plan like I was looking over his evil shoulder. He wanted to cause hatred between Blacks and Whites. He intended that this schoolhouse be burnt down.” They were all listening intently. Questions, speculations, clarifications flowed quickly for a few minutes until Derek shut it down. All of them were still standing on the sidewalk in front of the schoolhouse. “I’ve said before that I think racial unity will be required to beat the Devil. You can see here that he is planning on creating hatred between the races.”
They all nodded willingly enough, which was wrong. They were supposed to do more, and not just nod like puppets. Frustrated, he sighed.
“Pierre, this Mister Chauncey was rousted by a policeman just for sitting in a White neighborhood.”
Pierre nodded willingly enough, and looked inquiringly at him. The night shadows hid part of his face, but what Derek could see was placid. He resisted the urge to scream. Everyone was just so laid back and polite and genteel. Vashti, catching on to his disturbance, patted his arm.
“This is wrong,” Derek continued. “If the police had not done that, no problem would have occurred.”
“Ah, I see your point,” Pierre said--but he said no more. Instead, Maurice spoke.
“This Chauncey guy was a troublemaker. He knew betta, and went lookin’ fo’ trouble. Awe he was plannin’ on robbin’ the place.” Derek was dumbfounded that Maurice could say this. Didn’t he understand that his race had been abused? To his surprise, Maurice replied, and Derek realized that he had muttered that aloud.
“No, no. They’se bad uns in ev’ry race. ‘Sides, he was Creole, so not Black.” Blacks and Creoles were supposed to stick together, so Derek was disappointed in Maurice, and turned back to Pierre.
“How is it okay to keep him out of a White neighborhood?”
“Derek, my friend, I admire your passion, but really--”
“Just answer the question.”
“All right, mon ami--if you promise to calm down.” Pierre waited until Derek took a deep breath and let it out. “Four White men stand in a street. Each goes to his own neighborhood. How can this be? Simple, one is a Yankee. You. One is a French descended aristocrat who is also incroyably handsome. Me.” That got a few chuckles from the others. “A third is a Cajun who lives in the swamp. The fourth and last is a French merchant who is visiting from Paris. We are all White men. But we are very, very different.” Pierre drew in a breath. “You are a man full of passion for Justice, and a Yankee, and, not least, a man from another world. I am trained to refined taste, multiple languages, to run a business and a city, and among many other things, I can hold a conversation about wine for over two hours, and look interested, even though I find the topic to be of surpassing dullness. The Cajun lives in the swamp, where he is who he is, brave, unencumbered, and true to his lights. The Parisian merchant reads strange philosophies. I find I cannot understand Parisians. They have become increasingly strange since their Revolution, and the killing of the priests and the nobles. I think it has addled their minds.”
Pierre stopped, and Derek waited for him to go on, but he did not. Eventually, Derek realized that Pierre thought the discussion over, and probably thought he had won the point--a conclusion which frustrated the crusader for justice.
Derek frowned. “It seems to me,” he said, “that the problem isn’t that people are different. The problem is that when you separate people based on those differences, each group wants to think it’s the best. Back home, all our high schools have football teams, and they play against each other. They have what they call pep rallies before games, and they all want to be the best. Sometimes, though, some of the fans drive over to the town their team will be playing next, and vandalize it--nothing serious, maybe, just graffiti on shop windows and toilet paper in yards--but they are saying that the people in one town are better than the people in the other, entirely based on where they live. I don’t care whether it’s race, or religion, or, I don’t know, clothing styles. When you separate people based on anything, you create enmity between them, each thinking the other inferior.”
Maurice scratched his head. “Are you really saying we should not have football? Or baseball? Because I like to watch a baseball game.”
“No,” Derek, exasperated, expostulated. “I’m just saying that separating people creates enmity.”
“It sounds like you’re saying no baseball,” Maurice said doubtfully.
Lei He nodded in agreement. “I, too, like baseball. Football, not so much, but baseball is velly good.”
Derek just stared at his three friends wondering how things had gotten so far off track. He wanted to give up, and try again, but he had faced down far worse monsters than people who could not seem to buy a clue if you offered it on fifty percent discount. He dredged up an answer, and spoke a bit intemperately in his tone.
“Pierre, suppose for a moment that one of those Cajuns suddenly struck it rich--maybe discovered that there was oil underneath the land that has been in his family for generations--and decides he wants to move his family out of the swamp and live in one of those fancy rich-people houses in your neighborhood. Are your neighbors going to welcome him, send the welcome wagon, invite him to a party to get to know them?” Derek felt relief. Finally he had created a killer argument. But Pierre was not wilting or showing any sign of concern. How was this?
“Derek, we just went to a supper party, our second at Beaufoy Mansion. We played music, chatted with the guests, ate in the kitchen. Should we have insisted on a spot at the table? Consider this. My mother designed that supper party. She has one every two weeks. She picks out the food, and the theme. She has to be careful of food because some people are allergic, or have particular hates toward certain foods. She also has to be careful of the theme. If the Bishop of New Orleans, whom you met and managed to anger a lot--” That was a clear jab or warning. Pissing off the most powerful Catholic in a city of numerous Catholics might not be the brightest idea. Also, the subtext was Pierre was genteel, but he had only so much politeness to spare. “Along with Assistant Mayor Pepidou being there together, the menu designs must be Christian, but cannot be Baptist for neither are, nor Catholic, nor Presbyterian. If they were Presbyterian, Stephens would be angered. Catholic, and Pepidou would be angered.
“Furthermore, she must pick people who won’t get too angry with each other, but at the same time, people who will provide interesting conversations with each other. It can be a difficult balancing act. Your hypothetical Cajun with the oil strike, well, likely he would not fit in.”
Derek felt sad. He liked Pierre, he truly did, but hearing such out and out segregation and discrimination was sad. Still maybe he could help the man. His anger had drained away, leaving only regret, and a certain small sense of vindication.
“So you think you’re better than the Cajun?”
Pierre blinked owlishly at him a few times. “No, I hate to say it, but I think most Cajuns are better than me.” This got everyone else in the Band to stare at him, the descendent of French aristocrats. “Look, I was born with a silver spoon studded with diamonds and rubies in a fleur-de-lis symbol no less, in my butler’s mouth. You think I’m not aware that I spend more money on wine every quarter than most men earn for their whole families in a year, and yet I don’t really drink that much? Just a glass or two each night. In contrast to me, I’ve met several Cajuns who told me that they had killed an alligator with their knives. One told me he had done it with his bare hands, and another said he had dived into the water to save his niece and got her out, got bit on the chest, and still killed the gator. He showed me the scar--teeth marks across three fourths of his chest. He is clearly a much better man than I, mon ami. So are you.” He paused. “For that matter, Maurice is a better player, and if he gets a decent trombone, he always will be. I have a little talent, but he has more.”
“You’re pretty good.” Maurice said a bit uncomfortably. This made Derek aware of something he ought to have done already: Maurice needed a new trombone.
“I’m decent. And I love the music, which helps a lot. And I love you gentlemen, and the cher as well. This also helps the music. But I will never be more than fairly decent. If I get lucky, I may end up as backup to someone great some time. But, Derek, hear me now. I’m unutterably grateful for that. Before this, I was wasting my life away.”
Derek could not help it, but he glanced at Lei He. Pierre nodded, and continued.
“We fought the Ro, ah, R thing. You might say I killed it. What I did was take some silver spoons to a blacksmith, and have him melt them to bullets, and he scratched a cross on them for me. Then I took them to Bishop Stephens, and he put them in holy water, and blessed them. That’s why my bullets cut into that monster, and that poor man in the blue coat--”
“He was so brave,” Vashti said, and everyone paused in respect to the memory of that man who even though he saw his bullets were doing nothing had not given up fighting.
“Well, I got that by being who I am, in the sense of who my family is. From the time of conception of the plan for the silver sanctified bullets to its completion took but three hours. I picked up some old silverware we had not used in years, went to my uncle’s metal shop, asked for help, got it, went to the Cathedral and asked for a priest. The Bishop came out, and he blessed my bullets on the spot. I loaded my gun, and went to Missus Johnson’s diner to play music with all of you.
“But Lei tripped the creature with that Chinese footfighting thing his people do. It takes a lot of training, I know. After that, Derek, you did something to it, and suddenly the knives bit. I was given great gifts, and I used them. But I did not have to work much for them. Not like Lei.”
Derek felt uncomfortable. By his lights, he thought learning three languages, and how to play the tuba, and evidently a half dozen other things, was significant, but he was seeing, at least in part, how Pierre saw himself. But if separate groups did not create enmity, what did? He could see that Pierre seemed to have some mild dislike for Parisians--but then, if you were Catholic, as Pierre definitely was, then people whose recent progenitors had sacrificed Catholic priests to the Goddess of Reason and her servant Madame Guillotine, and had gone on to become atheists, well, it was an understandable dislike. Even if that was unjust and wrong, he did not think Pierre was about to march on Paris like Hitler later did.
If being different did not necessarily create feelings of superiority, what then? If wanting to live amongst one’s own kind of people because an outsider would spoil what you had created by his very own nature, then how was this different than the darkest racists of South Africa? He felt as if he were trapped in a maze, and knew there was a way out, but could not see it. The world was spinning about him, and he did what he did when he did not know what to do.
He prayed.
“Ahem.” A Black man with a known and much wrinkled face and a friendly smile stood nearby. All of the others near him were frozen, and he recognized with a sigh of relief that this was Mister Hunter, the former protector of New Orleans.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #511: Characters Change. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
