Orleans by Smith Sherri L

Author:Smith, Sherri L. [Smith, Sherri L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780399252945
Publisher: Putnam
Published: 2013-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

20

“DANIEL. DANIEL, WAKE UP.” I KEEP BABY GIRL close to me and creep over to tap him on the foot. We been here less than fifteen minutes, and now there be a light coming in through the broken window. Firelight.

“Daniel!” He stir and suddenly sit upright. “Shhh . . .” I put a finger over my lips. He look around, nodding that he understand. I motion him to the front wall along where I been sleeping. “Come see.”

Normally, I be giving him a hard time for being a tourist, but this be something special. Something I be real glad to see, too.

He shuffle over on his butt, keeping low like me. There be an opening in the wall that used to be a window, but the glass be long gone, and now it be open to the street below.

“Christ, what is that?” Daniel ask, and it sound funny through his filter, no expression, just words.

“All Saints’ Day,” I tell him. “Hurricane season be over today, and we still here.”

In the street, riding toward us on lean brown horses, come an All Saints’ krewe. They be decked out in all they finery—owl- and pheasant-feather headdresses, chains and bracelets made of shiny metal and glass mounded high on they wrists, and necks with strand after strand of old Mardi Gras beads, purple, green, and yellow, all sparkling and shining in the torchlight. The krewe be riding, holding they flambeaux high up to the sky. Like a thundercloud of fire, rolling toward us, they be singing and shouting at the clouds as they go by.

“Who are they?” Daniel whisper. I bounce Baby Girl in my arms.

“Anybody. Everybody. They wear masks over they eyes to keep from knowing. All Saints’ krewes and the Market be the only times tribes come together. Folks just show up in they costumes, ready to ride.”

The krewe outside be a big one, almost twenty riders. They wheel around in a circle at the widest point of the road and thrust they torches toward the center of the ring, moving to a trot as the ring shift shape and turn into a spiral ’stead of a sphere. Now they be like a hurricane, swirling and swirling, the smallest rider in the center at the eye.

The sound grow louder. I hear them and I mouth the words. “Katrina, Isaiah, Lorenzo. Olga, Laura, Paloma.” Up and down, over and over, they be going faster and faster. “Jesus, Jesus, Hay-SEUS!” The Hurricane riders be stretching wider and wider in the street, and then they burst apart, horses and riders shooting off in every direction, splashing through the streams and trampling over the neutral ground.

Some of they flambeaux go out, they be moving so fast. And they shout, hoot, holler, and I got to hold my tongue not to join them out loud. “Nous sommes ici! Nous sommes ici! Encore! Encore! Encore! Nous restons ici!”

Daniel be looking at me like he never seen me before. I want to laugh, but we got to stay quiet.

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