The Mermaid

I was born in the desert and in my elder youth I abandoned my valley to take off for an adventure. You see, it was always hot in the desert, very hot, so I went North, to the Rockies, to those jagged goliaths that come down from Canada, and I found myself in deeper valleys. Valleys between heaven and rock, cloud and stars, and I saw the sun and moon were happy and I knew that this was a place made for gods, but then it got cold, much too cold up there in the pines, up there in the ether, and I had no good jacket, and my desert blood was too thin for the snow. So I headed East, across great plains and great rivers, to older lands, to the Mid-West, which was really no West at all, to little hamlets where many pale people in the desert had come from and brought with them their children who all became great swimmers for there was not much else to do in the desert it was so hot. But I found they were not great swimmers, these pork-and-corn-fed chaps from these misty prairies and hills for it was too cold to swim and it did not help that they ate a lot to keep warm and were pale. I’ll admit they were friendly and honest and strong and great, but still, I was cold. I do not like the cold.

So I pushed on to the coast, on to the old and great cities of the East, to the very ports which so many stragglers from the Old had come to the New after crossing the raucous Atlantic. And as I stood out there on the docks, there in the frigid elements of dawn, I looked out into the immense gray, and I felt the breath of frigid waves, rolling and carrying to my cheeks the breeze, the mist, the forgotten memories of so many of our forgotten, and it was there that I felt the wind whisper to me. Oh, how I shivered when I heard them there in that moment, in that pausing of time out there on them docks, in that conduit of ages that came on the lapping waves, them ghosts that came here from the trials of the Old, them ghosts who brought so many of us here into the brighter trials of the New. But the New was now Old. It was too much for me, too large and intimidating. I felt like a country bumpkin. I felt like a Mid-Westerner. And the people were cold, at first at least, for when you got to know them they were burning with energy, perhaps too much energy for me. They talked fast and had incredible jaws. Many nights they kept me up till dawn with their stories and energy. I loved them once the ice melted. But it was all too expensive and mostly concrete and all the beaches were crowded. I preferred the mountains of gods over those of men. There was not much great swimming either. And again it was still too cold. So I headed South to finally find some warmth.

I crossed the Mason Dixon and hiked down the spine of the Appalachians along gentle jungle mountains, some blue, some green, and the weather warmed, and I found myself in lonely meadows below the skies and atop the precipice of destiny and once more I heard the wind speak to me and I stayed there and listened. I listened for too long perhaps. I became thin and crazed, up there in the heavens, up there in the winds. Perhaps the mountains were not so healthy for me, so finally I descended, down, down into the South, down into the land of batter and sugar where everything was sweeter and slow and all was good and bright until I found the land haunted. Yes, haunted. One moment walking down lush rainbow promenades and the next finding myself in the gloomy dilapidated shell of a neighborhood as if I were walking through the carcass of some ancient beast, as if my mind had flipped and eyes had sunk to some lower place. And then there were the bats, oh, so many bats, but I’d rather not go farther into these trails. The South is haunted. I tell you, nowhere in these states does time feel as twisted as there in Dixie. I was on edge. I was also getting fat. So I wondered, where next? I had gone North, East, and South, and I am from the West, so, where next? Ah, I will go see the Old, I thought. I’ll save for a big trip and get myself across the oceans and seas. I’ll flip the sands of time and pass through the Pillars of Hercules, raid the castles of forgotten kingdoms, wander the shrines of pagans. But I figured I needed a little money saved for all that. So I surrendered. I got a job.   

I picked peaches in Georgia and cleaned some dishes in Alabama till I found myself a factory job in good old New Orleans. In New Orleans I could find a boat to take me to the Old. That was the thought. I wanted a ship and the flexibility I saw with them. With a ship I could hop on and off at ports and ride the great liners and tankers to see the candy rock mountains of the world. That was the plan. A mighty good plan too. But then I met a girl.

           I met her at three in the morning in the French Quarter in the heat of Mardi Gras. She was preaching love and the mighty power of Grace and better yet she was tall and gorgeous and had sparking blue eyes that rattled and melted me. The way she lectured upon the charity of the Gospels made me shiver, or maybe it was her face, or her legs, or her smile. I wasn’t sure, but God sure was. Good News! He proclaimed. This is the one! The world had screamed. I chucked my cup into the gutter and went straight for her. Cold waters ran through my veins and sparked inside me an ecstasy I did not know existed. By God’s plan we hit it off and for three months we walked the parks and markets and discussed our deepest thoughts. Pretty soon she had me going to Church twice a week and we were planning babies and all sorts of adventures and dreams. I plunged all my little monies into a ring. But then she disappeared. A note was all I got. A little postcard saying she had a boyfriend back in Kentucky who was the true love of her life and that she needed to wash herself of her wayfaring ways. She said she still loved me though. I had that at least.         

So that was the story of the girl, the one God had ordained and Kentucky reclaimed. You can imagine I was in tight spot for a while. A most melancholy state. I was weak and nauseous and my heart wilted as petal after petal of spirit was peeled from my soul. I had broken all my travelling rules and all I had left was my factory job. But soon enough the factory let me go on account of the sugar prices falling, or the oil, or something dirty that the lads in China were doing. I can’t correctly recall what the lady told me. I needed another job. My cash was sapped by that damn ring I bought. I got another job but like most jobs it wasn’t a great one. I found myself as a lowly busboy in the drunkest place in the country, filling fish bowls with booze and cleaning the sorriest looking restrooms you’ll find. My life was in the gutter and it smelled like one too. But every now and then I saw a rainbow in the gutter and when I saw those colors I knew that thing known as Grace was still checking in on me just as that beauty from Kentucky told me so. Beautiful moments of ephemeral eternities. These were all that kept me going. But still, I was in a tight spot.

I ended up shacking with some strangers to lower my costs. The fellas were all wild aspiring writers and artists who seemed intent on philosophizing and partying till they exploded upon some obscure revelation. They talked too much, and I couldn’t find no sleep and my mind went to mush. The gutter was getting deeper. Now it was then that I worked down near the Mississippi, at the bottom of the French Quarter, and often when I got off work in the wee hours of pre-dawn I walked along the river to get some exercise, and it was them hours walking the river that were the clearest moments of my dark days.

It was there I waited for the sun to rise and watched the big ships pull up anchor and roll out towards the Gulf. Rusty metal leviathans bound for the Pacific and Atlantic and whatever country needed a million bushels of corn from the plains of Iowa. All the ancient peoples of the world getting fed by one big muddy river that sluiced right down the plains of the New. I intended to get on one of those ships. But I had been intending to do so for some time, but still, there I was, all dreams and no action, still moping around with a broken heart and a sorry wallet. I supposed I could have gone West, picked up and run off like so many others had done in the past to get a fresh start. But I had come from the West and when you are from the desert edges of the world you don’t see a new start there. You see home and for me home felt like quitting. I couldn’t say what exactly I was trying to do then in all my travels but it sure felt like quitting to stop. Looking back, the truth was that I had quit. I just didn’t realize it. I watched those ships every morning and deep down I always knew I could get on one of them. I was scared to do it though, and I beat myself silly about it. Young men aint supposed to be scared, I reproached my soppy heart. But I was wrong about being scared. No doubt fear was a part of my state, but it wasn’t fear exactly. It was like being that Coyote from the Looney Tunes. You see a colorful bird ahead of you and you run after it with licking chops in a blaze of meaning and excitement till one day you finally stop for whatever reason and take a look around. And it’s when you stop you realize you don’t know what exactly you’re chasing, and then you see how far you’ve come, and you look behind to see how you came there, but you don’t see no road connecting home, and then you look forward, and again you see you got no clue where you’re going or what you’re doing. And it’s in that moment that you fall. That you see you weren’t on no road at all. That there was no bridge under you. That you didn’t have no path, just energy, just white-hot nitro running on a comet, but the dream has disappeared, the shooting stars have passed, so you fall, down, down, looking around for something to grab, but you’re too afraid you’ll break your arm if you catch a branch, that you’ll get twisted and you won’t be you anymore. So you refuse the help the world gives and you keep falling, but the fall is tricky, cause the fall is the gutter. There is no motion at all in the fall. There is no change. You think you’re safe, that you just can’t make up your mind, that you hadn’t quit, but you have quit. And the gutter can be anywhere and the thing about the gutter is that it’s open to all people, of all ages, of all sizes. Maybe it’s a job and being alone in an ugly city. Maybe it’s the bedroom of small-town adolescence. Maybe it’s at the dinner table with spouse and kids. Or maybe it’s just sitting at the graveyard and it took four score years to find the gutter. For me the gutter was sitting right there on that bench after work, the smell of bleach on my fingers as I looked out on the Mississippi. The river wide and dark and the yellow ship-lights taunting me, beaming towards shore across the waters like bridges of gold, roads of faith, like I was Peter and Jesus were calling to me out there.

It was times like these that I’d think of jumping creeks as a kid. Creeks that were just wide enough so you couldn’t make it across in one jump. Where there weren’t any rocks standing above the water to help you avoid getting wet. Creeks where you had to get in the water for a bit and get your shoes muddy to get across. But you aint never cared about that as a kid. Damp socks and shoes be damned. That was my attitude up till New Orleans. Everything before was that childhood creek. I hopped with joy. Nothing could stop me. But now I sat and pondered on the creek too much, and the creek became a river, the biggest river there was, and I only saw myself drowning if I tried to get across. I can’t tell you how many times I stepped to shore where the ship lights met me and stared out on that yellow brick road hanging there on the water. That road of dreams where if you aint got no faith it’ll drop you faster than the world does spin. Eventually I got tired of even going to shore. I stayed on my bench and looked out at the water, trying to find meaning in ebony pools where there was none.

It got particularly bad one night. I saw this couple walk hand in hand by me and I thought of my love from Kentucky. My heart splintered as I recalled our first kisses, our moment on the levees up in the sugar country where the world was pink and the barges sailed over waters glossed in gold. The setting sun coloring our cheeks with orange and blush. The nervous hugs and gentle grips of hair. The both of us falling on our backs and rolling over one another as we let the chiggers nip at our skin for the world was a dream in that moment and you can’t get hurt inside a dream. I then thought of all the friends I left behind. The good people who took me in their hearts and who I never kept up with and now felt like ghosts. And then of course I got down to thinking on my family who I’d only kept in contact with simple postcards every now and then. I thought I could be someone. I thought my soul would conquer any struggle. I thought that I’d be noble about it. I thought all I needed was my God alongside my hearty constitution and that all our strength together would take us where we needed but oh no how I was wrong. I was laid low. I thought I was going somewhere but in the end I merely found myself lost, lost in the land of frozen dreams, cold and begging for help for some kind of light to steer me back to courage. I saw the dark waters of the river pass before me and I saw all of life and time hidden within there with me outside of it all. My travels, my time had passed. My times as a young man dead, drowned, snuffed at the bottom in some forgotten place within that infinite river of time. I knew not who I was. I knew not where I was. My body was hollow, my throat quivering, and finally, I began to cry, sobbing as I sat there on that bench before the Mississippi, a hurricane of grief raining down on me.

Suffering adapts. Suffering survives. I thought I could avoid its mighty grip, but no one can, no one. But then it all changed one night. Something popped right out of the river before me, something to grab on to and carry me out of the gutter, out of the fall. This was how it happened. This is how I met her.

 ~

I was sitting in my usual spot on the levee right out in front of Jackson Square. It was early June and the Buck Moon was out in full and the night muggy and unusually quiet. The hobos less than usual. I only saw one. Now the homeless there had come to know me so they didn’t bother me much and most were sleeping anyway, but an old man I had never seen before came walking by me. He had a guide stick in his hands and sunglasses on, tapping the stick around to find his place. He had on nylon gold pants and a nylon gold jacket and he wore a backwards yellow ball cap. A tall, lean, corn-on-the-cob looking fella.

He came right up to my bench and took a seat on the other side from me. He didn’t notice me and was smacking on gum and when he sat down he started to pat around the bench with his hands. He leaned over and felt around under the bench. He grunted and grabbed something. It was a big wad of dry gum with a penny stuck in it. He tossed the wad to the dirt and then spit out the gum he was chewing. It was a big pink wad and he reached into his pocket and pulled out a new penny and put the penny into the gum and then put that wad in the same spot underneath the bench where he had just grabbed the other wad. He then started to sniff and look around. I figured he might have finally noticed me, but he didn’t say nothing. He leaned forward and started to look out at the river, scanning it like he was watching for something, but he had those sunglasses on.

I followed where his head was facing anyway, right down to the shore. I saw nothing was there but dark murky water. But then splash!

It came, the log, surfacing from water, except it wasn’t no log, it was a girl, and she came out of the water as smooth as butter. The blind man heard the sound and perked up. He settled back down though, like he was a dog and had just twitched at a bad dream. I looked back at the girl. She was a tall girl, somewhere around twenty I’d guess. She was wearing a long blue shirt and a pair of denim shorts and tucked around her waist was this bulging yellow fanny pack. Her hair was long and auburn and after staggering a bit up the rocks she sat down in the weeds and started to wring her hair out. I thought her some tourist who fell into the river. Perhaps she was drunk. But she was in no rush. She didn’t look around for help or anyone. She didn’t even notice me or the blind man on the bench ahead because it was so dark out. She also didn’t seem to be concerned at all that she was soaking wet. She moved with such grace too. And I could see her perfectly. That Buck Moon was staring right at her with its big pale eye. She was no drunk. She was gorgeous. She was free. The freest looking person I’d ever seen. She just took a swim right in that dirty Mississippi.

Here I was complaining there aint nowhere to swim but this girl felt hot so she took a swim where she could. I could see her smiling too, a slight smile at least, a smile of grace and peace. All alone, gazing across the river, with a grin spread over her face. I looked at over the blind man. He was looking right at her. He surely had to be blind, but I asked him anyway. “Hey, you seeing this?”

            The blind man jumped and turned to me in excitement. He had low pitched and scratchy voice, like all the words came from the back of his throat. “Jesus! How long you been there?”

            “Sorry. Sorry.”

            “What you sorry for?”

            “I wasn’t sure if you were blind or not.”

            “Isn’t it obvious?”

            I didn’t say nothing to that.

            “Say something,” he said.

            “Sorry. I was here when you showed up to the bench. I watched you do your gum thing.”

            He frowned. He pointed down towards the river. “You see any girl down there?”

            “Yeah. That’s why I asked you. It looked like you could tell there was.”

            He frowned at me again.

            “Sorry.”

He grunted.

“You expecting a girl?” I asked.

            He leaned forward and wiggled around. He was hesitant to speak to me. “Yeah, matter of fact, I am,” he said,

            I hesitated myself. I wanted to help the blind man but he was being awful pouty about his blindness. “Well,” I said, “you want me to describe this girl for you?”

He looked ahead and put his hands out in front of him like he was shaping a box. “All I know is that her name is Maggie, Maggie Rapids, and that she’s supposed to come out of the river right here when the Buck Moon is out.”

            I looked up at the moon, full and pale and dodging clouds. “Not sure if it’s a Buck Moon, but there is a full moon out. And that girl over there did come right out of the river.”

“You playing with me?” The blind man asked me.

“No. I wouldn’t play a blind man.”

He pointed at me, although it wasn’t exactly at me but rather towards a statute far off to the right of me. He asked, “You saw a girl come out of the river, right here?”

“Yep. She’s down there, just drying herself off it looks like.”

“Oh Lordy.”

The blind man stood up from the bench. “Maggie! Maggie!” He called out, waving his stick, shouting at the top of the lungs. “Hey! Maggie!”

            The girl turned around and looked up at us on the bench. She must have seen the blind man with all the nylon gold he was wearing. I realized he must have worn it on purpose to get attention in the dark. “Maggie! Maggie Rapids” He turned to me. “Does she see me?”

            “Yeah, she sees ya alright.”

            The girl started to walk up to the levee. I got a better look of her. I thought she was good looking before, but she was something else walking up that levee. The river-water dripping off the locks of her damp auburn hair and her long legs glistening in the lamp-lights. She was dipped in moonlight, otherworldly.

            “Maggie! Maggie!” The blind man kept yelling. “Hey! Over here! Maggie!”

The girl turned around and looked up at us on the bench. She must have seen the blind man with all the nylon gold he was wearing. I realized he must have worn it on purpose to get attention in the dark. “Maggie! Maggie Rapids” He turned to me. “Does she see me?”

“Yeah, she sees ya alright.”

The girl started to walk up to the levee. I got a better look of her. I thought she was good looking before, but she was something else walking up that levee. The river-water dripping off the locks of her damp auburn hair and her long legs glistening in the lamp-lights. She was dipped in moonlight, otherworldly.

“Maggie! Maggie!” The blind man kept yelling. “Hey! Over here! Maggie!”

            “I hear you!” The girl called back. “Stop yelling. I’m coming!”

            The blind man quieted down, like it was his momma barking at him. The girl came to the bench. She gave me a look to acknowledge my presence. I wonder what the look must have been on my face. I wonder if my jaw was loose and I looked like I had seen a ghost, a dream.  She didn’t say nothing as she looked at me but simply pointed at the blind man in front of her. She was asking what was up with the guy. I shrugged my shoulders. She turned to the blind man.

            “I’m Maggie,” she said.

            “Maggie Rapids?”

            “Yes.”

            “From Minnesota?”

            “Yes.”

            He hunched forward and pointed out at the river. “And you just came out of the water over there?”

            “Yes.”

            He wrung his hands together. He was contemplating something. Maggie looked to me again and pointed at the blind man. I gave her another shrug. The blind man reached into his pocket but just as his hand went to pull something out, he froze, and took his hand out with nothing in it. “You know Jacinda?” He asked.

            Maggie put her hands on her lips. She leaned and studied the blind man. My fingers tingled watching her. Put some heels on her feet and throw a swanky jacket over her and you’d get every photographer itching to get her picture hanging up on Magazine Street.

            Maggie said, “You talking about the pumpkin psychic?”

            “Pumpkin psychic?” The blind man said.

            Pumpkin Psyschic? I thought.

            Maggie sighed. “The gypsy. The old woman who goes around in a shack. Yes, I know that Jacinda.”

            The blind man perked forward. “Yes, yes,” he said, happily. “Gypsy, voodoo woman, witch, devil, whatever, she sent me here to see you.” The man began to wring his hands again, his shoulders pointy and hunched.

Maggie frowned. “Well, go on, what’s she want? Is she here?”

            The blind man threw back his head. “Oh no, she aint here. Thank God she aint here! She’s the one who made me blind you know?” He pointed at his sun glasses. “Made me blind and said I had to see you to get my sight back. I been blind for a week, coming here waiting for you.” He waved an arm back towards the bench. “Been sitting on that bench waiting. Just waiting.”

            Maggie then gave me a side look, a glare really, a look that maybe she didn’t mean for me to see but was rather the outward expression of herself asking herself if I should be there. But I was too in awe of the two characters before me to register any of her side look. I wasn’t leaving. You see a lot of nutty scenes in New Orleans, but this one was flying up the rankings of strangeness.

            “You still there?” The blind man asked, frightened that perhaps she had walked off.

            “Yes,” said Maggie, turning back to him. She walked up to him and grabbed his arm and escorted him away from the bench. “Come, let’s take a walk and talk.”

The blind man began to protest. “I’d rather sit and talk. I don’t like walking blind when I don’t go to, you know?”

Maggie slapped his hand. “You want your sight back? Walk with me.” The blind man lowered his head and followed her lead. They walked away talking quietly until I couldn’t hear no more.

They didn’t walk so far away from me where I couldn’t see them. Eventually the blind man got fed up and forced his way to getting them to take a seat at another bench. I saw Maggie take another look back at me before she sat. I whipped my head and turned it toward the river, but I kept taking peeks over at them. I was a little weary now of this Maggie. She controlled the blind man and showed no fear in him, or me. I also was wrapping my head around the idea that perhaps the two of them were some kind of homeless druggy schizos that played out scenarios like these occasionally with one another. But that didn’t hold up. Maggie looked far too healthy. She was gorgeous. the cleanest thing I ever did see float out the Big Muddy. The blind man was admittedly very odd, and he did flail a bit, but there a sober earnestness in his voice. I took a look back at them, down there away from me, and I saw the blind man trying to hand her something. It was a little brown paper bag, like a lunch sack your mom gives you for school. Maggie seemed hesitant to accept the bag, but the blind man pleaded with her. She looked like she was about to accept the bag, but she gazed around first, to check if anybody might be watching. Thankfully, she looked left first, for I was right of her. I snapped my gaze away from her before she looked right. I stared at the river and pondered the two of them, and what might be in the little brown paper bag. I then heard a shout of joy cry out from the darkness.

“I can see! I can see! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I can see! Man it’s bright!”

I looked down the levee and saw the blind man jumping up and down and hugging Maggie in a big embrace. He wiped his hands down his face and almost started to cry, but then he took notice of the corn-on-the-cob outfit he was wearing. “Jesus!” He yelled. “I look like a damn pixie-stick!” I heard Maggie giggle. She was on friendly terms with him now. They talked a bit more and then the blind man, or rather, not the blind man anymore, skipped off down the levee and into the night. I saw Maggie start to walk my way and I snapped my gaze back to the river. But she was coming right for me, I could hear her steps getting louder. I suddenly found myself very nervous. It was an odd feeling, and I’ll tell you, right there I got to thinking that this is how it might feel for women having strangers come up to them at night. Ridiculous, I know, since I was the man stranger here in this scenario, but that was the feeling I had. She came up to the bench and stood there looking at me. I was still facing the river, acting a fool, pretending to ignore her when all my muscles were pushing to face to her.

“You blind too now?”

I turned and looked at her. I mumbled. “No…no. I see ya.”

She squinted at me, sucking in her upper lip to take me in. She seemed to have settled on a decision, because she sat down and held out a hand. “I’m Maggie. Maggie Rapids. I’m from Minnesota.”

An awkward little greeting, like something you’d except from meeting an old farmer out on the plains, but she said it quite genuine, nonetheless. “Good to meet you, Maggie,” I said, and gave her my name. I then leaned over the bench and shook her hand. It was still wet when I shook it. My first impulse was to wipe it on my pants, but it felt rude to do so. Maggie seemed to notice something on her hands as well. We had an awkward little pause. Finally, she said, “You smell kind of…not dirty. What is that…bleach? No, something else.”

Well there I was not trying to be rude and she goes commenting on my hands that I had so vigorously scrubbed to get the stench of puke and booze off from. You get dirty hands working a bar in New Orleans past midnight.

“It’s just the city,” I said. I wanted to move off the topic of my hands. But I gave them hands a little whiff anyways. They weren’t so good. I could see what she was getting at. She must have noticed my face squeeze up at the whiff. She said, “I have heard there is a famous stench in some places here.” She started to laugh to herself. “But I didn’t smell nothing before shaking your hand.”

“Well, maybe it’s you,” I said. “You just got out of the river there, maybe clean smells funny to you now. Maybe you got your smells mixed up.”

            “No, it’s not me,” she said. She then went quiet. We both offended each other, but she didn’t leave. She sat right there by me and started to look out the river. A push boat was going by, glowing of blues and reds, and she was looking at those same roads of light that skirt the waters.

            “I’m sorry,” I said. “I work at a bar. I can’t never seem to get the smell off. I try though. I got to find a new job. I had a better job, a little before, but they let me go, on account of the economy, something concerning China or oil, so I had to find another job, and they sure got a lot of bars here, so I got myself one of those jobs. But I aint even bartender, I just work the bathrooms and clean up, and boy it’s bad, the smells, I apologize for that by the way, but you’d understand if-”

            “I get it.”

            I shut my mouth. I didn’t know what got me going off like that. I suppose I hadn’t had a good complaining session in a bit and sometimes it’s easier to lay your struggles out in front of a stranger than someone you know. Now wasn’t that the truth, laying your troubles on a stranger. And I had that perfect one, cause this one was easy to look at, and she was obviously a little strange herself. But I could see she was not interested in hearing me out. She was a girl, a young woman really, so she probably wanted to do most the talking, and also, she came to me, so I figure she must have been in the mood to do some talking.

            “So you’re from Minnesota,” I said. “You’re a pretty good swimmer for being from up there. Why were you swimming out there if you don’t mind me asking? And who was that blind man in that crazy yellow outfit.”

            I leaned back into the bench, ready to let go and listen to her. I gave her plenty of questions to talk on. But she just frowned and pushed her hair back and asked, “What do you mean I’m a pretty good swimmer from being up there?”

            I got out of my cozy lean position. I pointed out at the river. “I didn’t even see you out there. And I been sitting on this bench here for some time. You just came out of the water. Like a fish. You must have been under for a bit. How long were you under?”

            “You don’t think people from Minnesota are good swimmers?”

            Her face wasn’t so friendly looking. “Look,” I said, “I been all around, nearly every state, and I spent some time up north and in the Mid-West. I didn’t see any examples of good swimmers.”

            “Well what makes you able to tell who’s got good swimmers and who don’t?”

            I crossed my legs. “I’m a swimmer myself. And I come from hot places, you see, where you got to swim to keep cool.”

            She frowned. “You’re silly. You probably just use to warm water, easy water, but we, from up there, as you so put it, we swim in all sorts of water. Hot, cold. Dirty, clean. Lakes, rivers. See, you probably just only swam in pools. That’s not swimming.”

            I uncrossed my legs “That’s not swimming? What is it then?”

            “That’s play.”

            “Play?”

            “Yeah, that’s for kids. And what am I doing talking to you about swimming? I’m the one who was swimming! I’ve likely swam more miles than you’ve driven.”

            I laughed out loud. “Alright. I get it. I just meant to compliment you.”

            She cooled down. “Well, thank you. I guess I’m impressed you been to nearly every state, for your age especially, being sort of young.”

            Sort of young. That was a good way to put it on me. Because I wasn’t purely young anymore. I had been to too many places, met too many people to be purely young any more. I was drifting into pure adulthood, and with my recent woes seemed closer and closer to getting there.

            “Minnesota’s a long way from here,” I said aloud, thinking. “At the opposite end of the river over there.” I nodded to the Mississippi.

            She sucked in her lips and nodded. “Yep. Don’t I know it.”

            I glanced at her, then. She was caught up in something in the river, a gleam of light on the waters, a dream under the murk perhaps, because that’s where all dreams lie, under the murk we display to the world. Put everyone together and you’d have one gnarly big ocean with all sorts of tempests and colors where no one knows what’s at the bottom of any of it it’s just so deep. I still was itching to get to asking about why she was swimming though, and what that blind man gave to her, and why he was screaming that he could see after he gave it. But she wasn’t interested in talking about all that. She dodged those questions and I aint much of a pusher when it comes to questions with strangers. Being a pusher is an awful rude thing to be.

            I then saw a big tanker coming out from behind the bend of the river. A red goliath full of the earth’s darkest juices. “I’d like to get on one of those,” I said. “Been meaning to hop on one for a while now and just ride it to where it takes me.”

            Maggie looked at the tanker. It was passing under the bridge, barely fitting underneath. “What if it takes you somewhere nasty, or dangerous?” She asked me. “What then?”

            I sighed. “I guess I go hop on another one. But you got to be patient a bit. A lot of things appear nasty at first. Might be nasty at first, but then you let yourself seep into the place for a little, and you come to find you like it. And the opposite is true too, you know. You think one place is gold, and after staying on for a while you find it’s actually pretty rusty.”

            “So where you at with New Orleans?” She asked.

            “Rusted,” I said. “Like the bottom of a dumpster.”

            She laughed out loud. “Maybe you’re just rusted.”

            “Yeah, maybe.”

            She perked up in her seat. “What about one of those cruise ships that come out of here. They’re bound to take you somewhere nice. Some pretty islands in the Caribbean.”

            “I don’t think I could get on one. Too much security.”

            “And that tanker will just let you on?” She scoffed. “You’re all talk.”

            And here she was ripping on me again, this lovely stranger who crawled out of the dirty Mississippi. I was getting a little tired of it. “You just come sit by me to rip on me?”

            “No, no,” she said. “I would never rip on another’s dreams.”

            “What was the deal with that blind man?” I asked.

            “He was cursed to be blind until he found me and gave me something,” she said, matter-of-factly.

            “What did he give you?”

            “None of your business. But he can see now.”

            “I figured. And it was a gypsy that made him blind?”

            “That’s what he said.”

            I frowned. Nothing was making any sense. I wasn’t sure how much I could go on with her.

            “Seeing how you see this place is pretty rusty,” she said. “You think you could pretend it’s gold and show me someplace good to eat. I’m real hungry, and I knows there’s got to be some good food around here.”

            “It’s kind of late so your options are limited. But yeah, I can point you to somewhere.” I gave her instructions to a good late-night grub spot that would have all the Louisiana essentials if she were itching to try those. I thought that would be the end of my strange encounter, but then said, “Well can you walk me there?”

I hesitated. She said, “What If I tell you that if you don’t walk me there that the gypsy will curse you.”

“I don’t believe in gypsies.”

“She’s not a gypsy.”

“You just said she was.”

She laughed. “That’s because no one knows what she really is. So we just say gypsy, but we don’t call her that in front of her cause she doesn’t like it.”

It was an odd situation. Being asked by this young lady stranger to escort her through the French Quarter. I thought I should probably warn her of being too friendly to strangers, especially considering where she was. But I didn’t want to have that talk, and I knew I could keep her safe and didn’t pose no threat. I think she knew this already though, that through our talking she had sized me up and deemed me fit. There was a strong confidence too that you gleamed from her that made you aware she wasn’t one to cross, that in the event she did run into troubles with strangers that those strangers would be much more at risk. I agreed to take her to the restaurant. I didn’t want to risk the wrath of any potential gypsy.

Before we left our bench, she opened up the yellow fanny pack she had on and took out some sandals. It seemed to be like a clown bag, that little fanny pack, because she pulled out a water bottle, and a hair tie. So there she was, Maggie Rapid, walking the levee with me in the dark, nothing but sandals on and wet short and shirt and hair tie, and that ugly yellow fanny pack on her waist. We didn’t get far though before she jumped into a restroom. She came out with a clean new outfit on. Another plain blue shirt and pair of khaki shorts, all of it somehow dry. The wonders of that yellow fanny pack were growing on me. We didn’t have to walk far to the restaurant. When we got there I wasn’t sure whether she wanted me to eat with her. She walked right in and was surprised to find me still standing outside.

“You’re not coming in?” She asked.

“Um…”

“Come on, I’ll pay for your meal.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“OK, but come on in anyways, I’d like the company.”

I went in with her. The place was quiet and only had a pair of youngsters inside. We took a seat at a small table with candy cane chairs and a green table-top covering.

“Soooo Gumbo,” she said, reading over the menu, “that’s kind of like the special soup they got down here?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Sure?”

“I don’t think anyone from here will agree to that definition, but yeah.”

She set down the menu and looked at me. “Would you recommend it?” And that was the first moment I got a look at her face in the light. Her eyes were blue, a blue you’d see in the water around the Bahamas, water so clear you could see the white sands and pebbles under it. She had a few faint freckles too, not much, but they were there and they gave that childish feeling to her which had it not been for them she might be a stone cold Aphrodite. She was also real tan for how naturally pale I took her to be, and her tan seemed to glow even more in contrast to the vibrant amber hair she possessed, which at the moment she had pulled back into a pony tail. 

“You’re thinking too hard on it,” she said (about the gumbo). “You don’t like it?”

“I prefer turtle soup,” I said. “When the weather is a little cooler. Kind of muggy weather for soup. June aint a good soup month.”

“Turtle soup sounds gross.”

“It’s delicious.”

“How much turtle do they put in it?”

“No clue.”

“What’s turtle even taste like?”

“Good when it’s in soup.”

She crinkled her nose and cast her eyes to the side. “Can’t be worse than pumpkin bisque,” she muttered to herself.

“Pumpkin bisque?”

“It’s awful,” she said. “Don’t try it. I have an aunt who makes buckets of it in the fall.”

“Yum.”

She pulled up the menu. I assumed she went looking for turtle soup as I had no good answer for her about it. The waiter then came up. He was a long, lean feller with poofy black locks and a hooked nose. He had a raspy, annoyed voice. A pack-a-day smoker, for sure. “We’re out of jambalaya,” he wheezed. “And no oysters either.”

“Oh, ok. Well, may I have a Diet Coke, please” Maggie said.

“Yes, mam.”

“And may I have the crawfish etouffee?”

“Yes, mam.”

“And a bowl of turtle soup too, please.”

“Yes, mam.”

She set down the menu and smiled at me, tilting her head just a bit as to say, I got your turtle soup, it better be good. 

“And what about you, buddy?” The waiter asked.

“I’ll just have a water and a cup or red beans and rice. Please.”

            The waiter nodded and picked up our menus.

            “You could have just got a cup of the turtle soup,” I said. “A bowl is a big commitment.”

            “I figure you’d want some,” Maggie said. She then leaned back and opened up that fanny pack of hers. She pulled out her very own soup cup. She was carrying her own soup cup in that yellow fanny pack. It was a personal soup cup. The outside of it was made up of a vanilla bean colored ceramic and painted over it a depiction of a picturesque little island scene, stick figure girls sipping drinking cosmos with palm trees and flying dolphins surrounding them. 

            I chuckled. “You really like soup,” I said.

            “I most certainly do.” She started to stare off into the distance, off into some steamy revery of soup. “My dad always made a mean soup. He’d he always make me my own in its own little pot. And whenever someone else tried to get at it he he’d whack their hand and tell him this soup was just for me and to leave it alone. He’d always have a nice pot going for me after a big swim meet. My sister was always a little jealous I got my own soup.”

“Well that’s a nice soup cup you got there,” I said. “Did your dad get you it?’”

            “Thank you,” she said. “No, my siter actually made it for me. She’s got plans for us to go treasure hunting in the Caribbean.” She held the cup out to me to show the two little stick figure girls sitting in their lawn chairs.  “My sister lives in the Florida Keys. I’m on my way to visit her.”

            I smiled. “So you took a little road trip on your way. Nice. I like that. I’ve taken my share of road trips. How long it take you to get here from Minnesota?”

            “Almost a year now.”

            “Wow. You really been soaking it all in, huh?”

            She laughed. “Yeah, more than I expected. That’s for sure.”

            The food came out and Maggie went right to spoon some of the turtle soup into her own soup cup and offering it to me. It was a mighty fine turtle soup. A good meaty texture with just the right amount of spice to give a nice tingle without burning you. Maggie devoured her etouffee, grunting in satisfaction with every other bite. When we were done the waiter came to ask if we’d like some desert. “We got a good bread pudding,” he said.

            “Bread pudding?”

            “Where you from, mam?”

            “Minnesota.”

            “Ah, well bread pudding, you’ll love it. It’s-”

            “We’ll take it,” she said. “Sorry, I just want to be surprised by it when I see it.”

            So the waiter brought out bread pudding with two spoons and a couple of cold scoops of vanilla ice cream atop it. It was delicious. Maggie loved it. The whole meal was one of the best I had in some time. The sugars got me perked up and eager for more.

I asked Maggie. “You ever had beignets?”

            “No, what in the world is that?”

            “It’s like a doughnut, but fluffier, and better.”

            “I like doughnuts,” she said. “And those sound amazing.”

            “You like coffee too?”

            “More a tea girl,” she said.

            “Alright, well how about going to get some beignets? I know a good little café open late. I’m in the mood for a coffee now after that bread pudding.”

            “That sounds great. Let’s go!”

            So we left the restaurant. I was in a jolly mood. The rust was getting kicked off and Maggie was gold. We passed the Joan of Arc statute on the way to the café, a gift from the French that was a huge golden replica of an armor-clad Joan riding her horse into some eternal battle. The French sure are great at giving gifts. I wondered if we had ever gotten them some nice gifts. I supposed them Normandy landings and the Liberation of Paris was a good enough gift. “Now that was a woman,” Maggie said, standing under Joan’s breast plate. “What a lovely statue for her.”

            “Amazing she was only nineteen when she died,” I said, reading the inscription plaque at the base of the statue. “All the stuff she did being so young.”

            Maggie became kind of down at my comment. “I’m nineteen,” she said. “I didn’t realize she was so young.” She stared at the statue at a little more, placing her hands on the legs of the horse and gazing up.

            The café was a little busier than the restaurant. We ordered a plate of beignets. I got a coffee and Maggie got her tea.  “These are incredible!” Maggie said with a mouth full beignet. “Why don’t they have these everywhere?”

            “I ask myself that all the time.”

            “I think they’re better doughnuts,” she said.

            “They are.”

            She ate five of those powdery beauties. I had four myself. I was stuffed, but Maggie didn’t look like she was which was odd concerning all the heavy food we’d been eating. I reminded myself that she had been swimming and that’s a heck of an exercise right there. I should know, me being a former swimmer and all.

            “You must have really worked up an appetite,” I said to her. “How long were you swimming?”

            She got quiet when I asked her that, mouse-like. She still wasn’t into me asking about her swimming.

            “Well you took long enough,” I said.

            She squinted. “What do you mean, I took long enough?”

            “That blind man said he had been waiting days for you to show up.”

            She frowned. “It wasn’t me who told him to go out there. And I didn’t need what he gave me anyways…” She sipped her tea and looked off. I recalled the brown paper bag the blind man was trying to give to her. Maggie had acted very hesitant to take it but soon as she did take it the blind man had got his vision back.

            “He sure needed to give it to you though. Whatever it was.”

            She nodded at that. “Yeah.”

            “He really just got his sight back, like that? Just giving you a little brown bag?”

            She set down her tea and crossed her arms. “So you were spying?”

            “I wasn’t spying! Y’all were standing out in the open. I was just sitting on my bench, watching the river, and there you come out the waters like a goddess and cured the poor soul. That’s kind of Jesus-like, you know.” She frowned at my Jesus comment.  I toned it back. “It was a miracle, that’s all I’m saying.”

            “Miracles are more common than you probably think,” she said. 

            “Is that so?”

            “Mm-hmm.”

            “Well I never saw one till tonight.”

            “You’ll see more. You see one, and then more and more of them start appearing to you. It’s the first one that’s the tricky. Most people never see one. But after you’ve seen a couple, they aint really miracles anymore. They’re just another product of the elements you been missing all along.”

            “The elements?”

            “Yeah, the mysteries, the fates, the gods or god, whatever you want to call them, such things really have no precise name but a hundred.”

            Well that sure gave me the shivers. I sipped my coffee on that. But the sip gave me more shivers. I wasn’t sure if it was the caffeine or what Maggie was telling me. I set my coffee down and was a bit shaky in doing so. I had my eyes hooked on the table between us. All of a sudden it hit me that maybe I’d been ignoring something, and I sat there pondering, the way you ponder in the middle of the grocery store when you don’t make a list and you realize there’s something you need to get but you can’t remember, that there’s something behind a door in your head but the door is locked. The kind of pondering you do where you don’t take your mind from it till you find the key and discover what you’re missing. I guess Maggie waited patiently for me to come to find what I was thinking, because it took me a while to realize what I was thinking. I was thinking that I might be sitting across from an angel. That maybe the magic above saw me on that bench and sent something down to kick me out of my slump. It was a scary feeling. A kind of religious terror rattled me. It’s hard to be comfortable when you think you’re sitting before an angel. But I shook myself out of my little predicament. Maggie had a dad and a sister and was from Minnesota. Or maybe she did have that life once but that was all gone long ago. That maybe that was the past life and what before me was the eternal life.

            “You OK?”

            I looked up at Maggie. She was smiling. I mumbled something in response to say I was fine.

            “I remember my first occurrence,” she said in a sarcastic tone. But I figured she did have a first miracle. I figured it be some incredible story, her first encounter in heaven or seeing some great healing or recovery.

            “What was it?” I asked in earnest.

            “A deer brought me breakfast. A bag of pastries. I was starving and swimming to nowhere for days it seemed like, and when I woke up, I saw this food there for me. Best breakfast I ever had.”

            “What?”

            She laughed. “I know. It don’t sound like a miracle, but it was, in the context.”           

            I scratched my head. I was getting mixed up, and when you get mixed up, it’s best to get to the bone, to the core of your mixing. “How did you get here?” I asked. “How did you arrive in the Mississippi River before me tonight?”

            “Well, where I grew up, up in Minnesota, the Mississippi, it’s only a little stream a few miles from my parent’s house.”

            “How did you get here?” I pressed on.

            “I swam.”

            “You swam? All the way?”

            “Pretty much.”

            I laughed out loud. I leaned forward and scratched my head, dragging my nails through the tufts of my hair and along my scalp as if a batch of spiders were on me. I took another sip of my coffee. I needed it. “So,” I said. “If you got here by swimming, how do you plan on getting to your sister in Florida? The river won’t take you there.”

            She let out a breath. “No, I’m well aware of that. So was Jacinda.”

            “Who?”

            “The gypsy, or, pumpkin psychic, excuse me.”

            “Oh, right.”

            “She sent me some cash to buy a bus ticket to Florida, among other things. She was concerned I’d swim the rest of the way there.”

            “Swim across the Gulf to get to the Keys? That’s crazy.”

            She pursed her lips and nodded.

            “Are you considering swimming to get there?”

            “If the weather’s not bad.”

            I threw my hand at that. But then I could tell she meant it. She was serious. I inched my chair into the table. “You think you could do it? You’d be famous, heck, you’d be famous now if anyone got news of you swimming the whole Mississippi.”

            She scolded me. “I didn’t do it to be famous.”

            “I didn’t say that. I just said you would be.”

            “I could do it though.”

            “Swim the Gulf?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Shoot. I think I believe it.”

            “That’s only because you saw a miracle. Except it weren’t no miracle.”

            “Seeing is believing, right?”

            “And swimming is for pools in warm sunny places.”

            “I must admit my thoughts on swimming are taking a turn.”

            She chuckled. She started to nibble at the little crumbs of beignets that were left. A little waiter man in a green suit who was about the height of a fire hydrant came up to us. He asked us if we wanted more beignets. Maggie ordered five more and another tea. I got another coffee. Maggie paid for it with some crisp dollar bills.

            “How’s your money not wet?” I asked. “How is anything you got not soaked?”

            “My fanny pack,” she said.

            “That’s some fanny pack.”

            “It’s been blessed and tended to by some special people.”

The waiter came back with the drinks and the beignets. Maggie ate and I sat there thinking of more questions. My head was gushing with thoughts on the background of this girl before me. When she was done eating, she wiped her face with a napkin, and said, “I am sure you are coming up with more questions.”

            “I’m sorry,” I said.

            “It’s fine. New Orleans aint the first city or place I’ve stopped in. You’re much more patient than most. Everyone thinks I’m insane when I tell them what I’m up to. Most of them go walking off like they awoke out of some dream, but not a good dream, but rather the dreary one in the night which make no sense and gives you long pauses in the shower in the morning. So I went about avoiding people and cities for a while. And after speaking to animals for a long-time people come off very coarse and vulgar. Animals are very simple and tender in their speech. But when-”

            I held my hand up. I was going to stop her right there about speaking to animals but I realized I was being stupid. I was getting my answers and there was no need to question her yet. I didn’t want to be a pusher. I took my hand back and told her to never mind and to please go on. She went on.

            “So I passed a lot of cities on my way down here but didn’t get to know them. But seeing this here’s my last stop, I figured I needed to see it. I needed to take it in. I knew I needed a guide to do it right though. I couldn’t go around alone because I tried that before, you see, and besides, it’s awful lonely to do anyways. I wanted someone who could show me around, but it had to be someone who could at least try to understand me, or better yet, had the wisdom not to get upset by not understanding.”

            She sipped her tea. I pinched my lip.

            I said, “So how’d you come to pick me?”

            “Who’s to say I’ve settled on you as my guide?”

            I let out a laugh. “True.”

            “I went to you first-most because you saw the blind man. You had the benefit of witnessing that, ordeal, for lack of better words, so you were exposed a little bit. But also because you were on that bench. That was also a good sign.”

            “What you mean?”

            “Well,” she said and set down her tea. “I figure if someone is sitting on a bench alone by a river there’s two likely things occurring with them. Either they’re down, or they’re just trying to do some deep thinking. I have done much sitting by a river myself. You don’t get to take off swimming down one without some serious sitting beforehand thinking about it.”

            “Well I was doing some deep thinking,” I said.

            “You were also pretty down,” she added.

            “Yeah. Well, a job will do that to you.”

            “People don’t go to the river when they’re only upset about their job.”

            I sat quiet.

“You’re rusted,” she said.

I was feeling pretty low now. I’ve never been comfortable having someone else know what’s going on in my head.

            “But rusted sometimes just means you been sitting around too long in one place. How long you’ve been in New Orleans?”

            “About a year.”

            “A year will do that. But a year also means you’ll make a decent guide. So what do you say, will you show me around a little bit before I move on?”

            “Yes…”

            A smile had started to appear on her face but it was wiped away when she took notice of my hesitation. “There’s a condition,” she said.

            “No, no. No condition. I’ll do it. I’ll gladly be your guide. It’s just that I would like to ask you questions every now and then, about your trip. About you. I only say this to be up front with you since you mention yourself you wanted a guide that would ignore or not be bothered by your stories.” I noticed she was getting worried with me. “I won’t pester you with questions, nothing of the sort. But I would like a little something back in return for my services, you see. Not money, not anything dastardly. Just some stories. Stories are the only payments I wish.”

            “Fair,” she said. She stood up and held her hand across the table. I shook it and she smiled. “I can’t wait. Let’s start tomorrow. Meet me here at noon?”

            “Sure.”

            “Great. Goodnight.”

            She walked off immediately but I realized she had no place to stay. I rushed to catch up with her. “Wait, Maggie. Where are you going to sleep?”

            “I’m getting a hotel,” she said.

            “Where at?”

            “None of your business.”

            “Do you have enough money?”

            “I do.”

            “OK…”

            She grinned. “You’re sweet to ask but I am fine. I need to be alone for a while. I am tried and I have had enough city for one night.”          

            “Yes. OK. Well, goodnight, Maggie.”

            “Goodnight.”

            I walked home and I couldn’t stop worrying about Maggie being alone in New Orleans. It’s a dangerous place to be alone for a girl of nineteen. But I had to keep reminding myself that Maggie was no ordinary girl. No, far from it. I was still not completely convinced she wasn’t an angel. I also had to remember she claimed to have swum the entire Mississippi, and I presumed alone, for there was no one with her. She made no mention of a partner in her adventure. She wouldn’t have found a partner anyways even if she had tried. I thought again if she might be crazy, that I might just be walking around with a loony and missing the signs. A normal rational mind would not see a river and walk into it thinking they’d swim the whole thing. That would be an insane thing to do. I could not make my mind up about her and by the time I got back to my home I was in a tight spot about it.