Sinners Making Music

There’s been a lot of life between my last post and now.  ”Walking Far from Home” was the anthem for most of it, for me.  (Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On” was the anthem of last year’s holiday.)  To try to pick a place other than the start to begin is a little absurd, because there are so many places, so many little details.

There was New Mexico with Hannah. I picked her up on a Wednesday night and let her go the following Tuesday.  In between we drove 1600 miles, ate at a diner in Flagstaff where the waiter shirked her on coffee.  We stayed in Santa Fe, at a Motel 6 I was familiar with, walked around town and through bookstores, through art galleries.  You wouldn’t think there was more than one seven foot tall wood-carving of an eagle in New Mexico, but there are at least two.  We got a pint of Jim Beam from a gas station because there was nowhere to drink–it was Thanksgiving, and shared it in bed in that weak lamplight from beside the bed.  We went to Taos and I got a tattoo.  We ate good New Mexican food, and better Mexican food in Chimayo, where a man at the gates of the church stopped us on entering and exiting, fed us pinyon nuts with chile powder from his hand.  He talked to us about the brotherhood of Jesus, how we were all of one vine.  He asked us if we were married.  We had a good light about us, he said.  There was the land, more than anything, stretching out in front of us, mountains rising in the distance like bright teeth.  There were birds and dogs in trucks and there was bourbon of many kinds.  One good meal a day.  I guess I lied before.  More than anything there was her.  There were the first moments at the airport when I couldn’t hold myself back and had to kiss her, a little brash, to have it done because I was afraid, I guess.  Her voice in the car so much clearer than on the phone, so smooth and cool.  I don’t know what either of us expected but I think that we both got more than that.

The intervening time was the end of teaching my first quarter, flying home.  Snow and hunting, setting traps for coyotes and fox.  There was a gun store with a Civil War era dragoon’s pistol, drinking at a bar with my father and having him talk about going to New Orleans just after Katrina to help.  Potshots were taken at him from the Superdome.  Dinners with momma and the family, watching Firefly after Christmas with them.  Getting a couple suit jackets and upgrading myself “from Drugstore to Dynasty Cowboy”.  And then flying to New Orleans to be with Hannah again.

And that.  My memory is horrible, and yet I remember so much about my time there.  Last night before I fell asleep I played back everything, went day by day, and only made it to day two before I slept.  Landing, walking out and taking my first taxi into the city.  The place is flat and somehow alien–the air thicker, palm trees out of place for me, and the city both smaller and bigger than I imagined. I was greeted by Bloody Marys spicier than most food I’ve ever eaten, immediately whisked into a casino (my first) and given some Wild Turkey.  All this by Hannah’s ex-boss turned friend in high places.  We drove out to the house at which we were staying–an old, small plantation house on Race and Religious, replete with slave quarters that locked from the outside (in which Hannah and I stayed).  There was so damn much.  It took forever for Hannah to land that night, and I remember getting into the backseat with her and just touching her hair and looking at her, holding her hand.  We spent nearly half our time in New Orleans in the slave quarters, in bed or drinking coffee or bourbon in preparation for going into the French Quarter or the Garden District.  Bar after bar, some spinning, some stationary.  We listened to blues bands and brass bands and there were fireworks at night and cool, almost-raining hours outside when no one was looking.  We lasted on bits of bread and cheese and grapes, more on the coffee and bourbon, and ate dinner with her ex-boss and friends, big meals, four courses or more, gumbo and oysters and lamb shanks and ridiculous things like that.  The meals I enjoyed most were with her alone, a hunt at 1:00AM for a grilled cheese sandwich that led us from the District to the Quarter and back, shrimp po boys in Bywater, catfish on our own, the last night, in a bar with dogs.  A homeless man named Otis talked with us for half an hour about living in New Orleans, about Katrina, about devilment and about how lucky I was to be standing beside such a woman.  Hannah bought him a few beers at the convenience store–he’d been kicked out of the bar up the street years ago.  Added up there were hours just raking my hands through her hair, cupping her face in my hands, smiling or grinning or being deadly serious because we were going so damn fast.  Plastic cups of Maker’s in our hands at Howling Wolf, leaning in, she said something to me that I caught over the sound of the band.   The night I was supposed to leave she walked through the airport security line with me and when they stopped her and told her to leave I stopped her, too, and like that first moment at the airport in California I rushed, said I loved her and kissed her, and went on.  And then, because it was New Orleans, and because it was with her and it was so perfect, I stayed a while longer.