Independence Day

July 4th, 2013, 7th Ward, New Orleans

Hardwood floor. TV on the floor. Murder trial on the TV. A young black boy, armed with a bag of Skittles, shot and killed in Florida. Camping chairs on the floor. Red, green, black nylon curtains falling from the windows to the floor.

I bug Bella about six dollars for a pack of cigarettes. She thinks about it and says, “No … no.”

“Okay,” I say and return to the trial on TV.

An hour later I bug her again. “What choice do I have?” she says and fishes the money out of her purse.

I step into the disorienting heat on the front porch. Gunfire: like the sky turned into an invisible bone and cracked in half. One, two, three, four times. I leap backward into the house, shut, lock, deadbolt the door. Find Bella and hold her shaking.

It is Independence day.

That evening I’m on the porch smoking. The neighbor kid struggles with a bicycle.

I ask him, “How you doin?”

“Good. I wanna put this bicycle right here.”

The bicycle is red and far too big for the child and has no seat or training wheels.

“What’s your name?”

“Lawrence.” He has a pacifier in his mouth.

“Lawrence?”

“Yeah!” His eyes brighten because I got it right.

“Lawrence, you go to school?”

“No I don’t go to school.”

“You go to preschool? How old are you?”

“Two.”

“You’re two?”

“Two.” Nodding.

“You’re tall for two.” He is, and he speaks very well, voice muffled as it is by the pacifier.

He says, “I’ve got a bullet in my pocket.” Reaching into his shorts pocket.

I get up and offer my hand through the metal railing. “You’ve got what in your pocket? Let me see.”

He shakes his head emphatically. “No. I told you. I’ve got a bullet in my pocket. I’ll shoot everybody.” He makes a pistol with his little fingers. “Pow. Pow. Pow.”

A couple of minutes later, tossing my cigarette to the street, I rise to go inside. Lawrence is still trying to park his bicycle atop an overturned boxspring mattress by the trash bins.

I say, over my shoulder, “You be a good boy, Lawrence.”

“No,” he says.

A lot of colors around Isabella on the floor. Blankets, striped pillows, an empty jug of apple juice on the floor. Clothes spilling out of suitcases onto the floor. I spend a lot of time drinking. At the dive bar on Baronne, at the gay cowboy place, at the jazz club with the lighted bar top and signs everywhere for Kool and Remy Martin. Beer or vodka, rarely both, wine with Bella watching sitcoms from the nineties. I didn’t like the shows when I was a kid in the nineties, and they don’t make me feel nostalgic, but I like them now all the same. I laugh at all the stupid jokes.