FSF, March-April 2010 by Spilogale Authors

extra rations and even more for the company. Schulz sat down on an empty powder keg, Quant leaned against the wall, and in the glow of the candle the three began to talk in a gumbo of languages—French, English, bits of Creole. Quant did much of the translating, for while Schulz knew textbook French, the corporal had a better command of the language of the streets—where learned, the sergeant preferred not to speculate. Bunking with Quant had taught him that his chaplain knew some surprising things about the seamy underside of New Orleans life.
    The Headsman's story was part of that seamy side. He'd never known his father, and his mother Madeleine had been a woman of the town. She'd cared for him as best she could until he was ten, when her latest pimp drove him out. He became what Victorians called a street Arab, a ragged homeless boy who survived by cadging tips, committing petty crimes, and renting his body to whoever wanted it. He was a “hobbledehoy” or teenager when he learned that Madeleine had died and was to be buried in Potter's Field on the marshy edge of the cypriere, the great cypress swamp. Letourneau brought to the burial two ballast stones he'd taken from the levee, and when the pine box was in the ground he set them on it to prevent it floating to the surface, as the coffins of the poor so often did in rainstorms. The sexton then filled the hole, and Letourneau tipped him a dime, which was all he had. The man bit it, looked at him suspiciously, and walked away without a word, carrying his shovel.
    The next few years contained nothing but work and sleep, interrupted by rare bouts of drunkenness in barrel-houses or pleasure in cheap brothels. Not life at all, really. One wet afternoon Letourneau walked to the Third District levee to decide if he wanted to drown himself or not. He brought along a bottle of cheap wine and his cane knife, which he'd used that morning, chopping weeds to earn the price of the wine. He sat down on a wooden bollard in the rain, and spent the next hour drinking and looking at the river and wondering if he had the courage to jump in.
    "I never thought of killing anybody but myself,” he insisted, and the man seemed so dim and passive and detached from reality that Schulz almost believed him.
    Letourneau had a bellyful of wine when, no more than ten feet away, a head bobbed to the surface of the river. Raindrops dimpled the water all around it, as if little fish were feeding. At first he believed the head must belong to a drunk who'd fallen in and drowned. But then it rose above the surface and looked at him avec les yeux blancs d'une statue, with the white eyes of a statue. The head was perfectly bald, lacking even eyebrows and eyelashes, and its skin was the color of a bruise.
    The drowned man stood up and stretched out a hand for help. Letourneau thought, I've never been this drunk before, but still he rose and leaned down and took the hand. It was cold and the fingers and palm were wrinkled and white, as if the man had been in water for a long time. The nails curled like fishhooks. When the fellow was safe ashore, he spent some time rearranging his sodden rags of clothing, which smelled like river mud. Then he began to speak “ comme Allemand ."
    "Like a German ?” demanded Schulz indignantly.
    Letourneau answered, “Yes, in his throat, you know? And his voice bubbled up, as if he was still full of water."
    At this point the candle flared and went out. Letourneau kept talking, his words distilling out of the darkness, with the muted sounds of the stormy Gulf as background. The drowned man was a Yankee seaman named Morrow, who'd been serving on Farragut's flagship Hartford when he was blown overboard during a battle upriver at Port Hudson. Like many sailors he couldn't swim, and for a few minutes threshed his limbs helplessly, like a crab being boiled. Then the cold river water sluiced into his lungs and turned to fire. He was only twenty, and the last thing he felt was an