Magic Shoes

It’s New Orleans night in our little apartment raised three floors above the bums who sit on the stoop downstairs. Talking in loud gruff voices, they leave empty bottles of Wild Eye in the vestibule which I will find tomorrow on my way out. I throw the front windows wide open, inviting in a summer night of drunken voices and the rush of cars along the street below. A horn interrupts some woman singing oh baby yeah to a pulsing rhythm which fades like an echo as the traffic light changes and the car pulls away. I chop tomatoes, celery, peppers, onions into the pot, and they sizzle against the heat. Thick chunks of andouille sausage dressed in spices and a rich pork stock—the cornbread bakes, and flushed with the heat I sing along with the Professor, Tipitina tra la la la. The lazy piano pulls me in and I turn up the volume, and the guys on the street raise their voices. I can picture them rattling their awkward limbs in defiance of 4/4 time, as they pass the Wild Eye with sticky lips trying to sing. I stir the old silver pot, releasing a spicy incense that struts with the city’s late night din like a festival in this downtown hotbox tonight.

Down three flights of narrow stairs, he works kneeling over newspaper in a dimly lit basement, dribbling red, blue, yellow, purple in chaotic strokes over old black shoes secured last week from the second-hand store.

The pot simmers, and I sit on the couch flipping through a new book I bought with rent money from a shop window on Central Ave today. The Professor sings headin’ out baby headin’ out honey chile, and page by page, I ease my way into the world on my lap. One writer says in words that mix with my own steady breathing that she has reached the age where she is doing things for the last time... And suddenly I am not afraid anymore, her image standing before me with cotton candy hair and a neck gathered in loose, creamy folds--and the rent man goes away.

And there he is like a child stepping off the bus, holding up his Jackson Pollock shoes; he waves them through the air like flags. I shake my head and laugh, stir the spicy stew. They are worried about our future, saying music and books won’t buy benefits, living room drapes, or a washer and dryer. I tell them not to worry, that I’ve adorned the windows with plants so the sun can come through, and his parents had lots of benefits which changed nothing for them in the end. I wash things out by hand sometimes and leave them by the open windows to dry.

Love the shoes, I say, and he explains that he will wear them whenever he writes or plays out—and the bums downstairs raise their raucous voices in celebration. He sets the painted shoes by the open windows as the slightest breeze tickles the back of our necks. Another horn blares, a muffler-less car guns angrily at the light, and he picks up the guitar and strums the new song he’s written today: ten songs in ten days. Always a goal. We’re short fifteen dollars in rent and he throws his head back, adding his voice to the late summer night.

That night, we ate steaming bowls of Cajun stew over rice, and thick slices of cornbread warm from the oven, as the shoes dried by the open window. I remember someone bellowing into the payphone on the corner, and then hearing the bums yell back. And the Professor sang oh yeah baby I done run’d out of money. I told him that night how much I liked his new song. And I knew that the next day, long after all the state workers had trudged home, that there would be another festival in some dark, smoky room with neon beer lights and dollar drafts, and that he’d wear his new shoes. That he’d sing We talk of New York, we talk of New Orleans, we’ll all be going there soon. And, at the time, all those years ago, I believed him--as he passed the hat, praying for rent.
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