Flights of Angels Read online

  At the Bob Taylor School for Boys Jimmy and Danny were waking up from their algebra class. It was almost over. Five more minutes. They sat up straighter. They piled their books before them. They stretched and yawned. Wedge was moving around from behind the desk to sit on the edge of it. “You boys get that homework for tomorrow,” he was saying. “If you goof off in here you’re going to end up filling Coke machines for a living or get kicked off your teams. So do them problems, will you?” Jimmy smiled his most beautiful and trusting smile at Wedge. Wedge was really the assistant football coach. He was just filling in as an algebra teacher. Wedge liked Jimmy and had been the one to take him to the hospital when he broke his wrist in practice.

  “That kid didn’t even yell,” he told the other coaches whenever Jimmy’s name came up in an evaluation session. “He’s a winner. He’s got the stuff.”

  “But he won’t study,” Bob Taylor would say. “Goddammit, Wedge, this is a school.”

  “You come home with me when we get off the bus,” Jimmy was saying to Danny, turned to face him so Danny could read his lips. “My grandmother loves your mother. She’s glad were friends. I’ll bet she gives us some money if we’re together. Then we can go to the park and find Little Mo and buy some grass. Let’s call your mom and tell her you want to go home with me.”

  “She’ll never let me go. I’m gwrrounded.” Danny’s speaking voice was very seductive to Jimmy. Every time Danny fucked up a consonant it reminded Jimmy of how brave he was to talk at all and what a fierce football player he was even though he couldn’t hear behind him to know if he was going to be hit. Jimmy put his hand on Danny’s arm. He was really glad Danny was home. He had only mailed the LSD to the school to make sure Danny was popular with the other kids. In Rhode Island they didn’t know that Danny’s father owned one of the largest steamship lines in the world and was the richest man in New Orleans.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Jimmy said. “I’ll tell her we aren’t going to do anything bad. I’ll tell her we’re going to do our algebra homework so we won’t get kicked off the team.”

  “Aw wite,” Danny answered. “You do it then.”

  Jimmy called Danny’s mother after the next class and begged her to let Danny come over to his grandmother’s house. “You know my grandmother,” he said. “We’re just going to do homework, Mrs. Wainwright. I swear we aren’t going to get in any trouble. Danny’s really talking well since he went to that school. He’s making every word something you can understand.”

  “If you’re sure you aren’t going to get in any trouble.” Danny’s mother, India Wainwright, was weakening. Mrs. Pais was on the symphony board with her. She was a lovely lady who certainly wouldn’t let boys smoke dope or take LSD. Surely that was over, India Wainwright decided. Surely the nightmare of drugs entering the brain of her beautiful and gifted and deafened son was over. “Okay, Jimmy, he can go home with you. But he must be home by six o’clock. Remind him of the time.”

  “I’m going to turn over and do the other side,” Rhoda was saying. “One hour on each side should do it. God, I love to lie in the sun. But I hate getting sand in the suntan lotion.”

  “Do you believe all this stuff about skin cancer?” Abby asked, sitting up to get her Bain de Soleil out of her bag. “I don’t believe it. It’s just another thing they’re trying to stop everyone from doing.”

  Little Mo was waiting in the park when Jimmy and Danny got there with the ten dollars they had borrowed from Mrs. Pais. “I only got half a bag of grass,” he said. “And it’s not much good, but I got a sheet of acid I got from some hippies in a bus. I can let you have three hits for ten dollars. That’s a final offer.”

  “Three. Hell, that’s stealing.” Jimmy hugged the small black boy and pretended to rub his head with his fist. “Come on, Mo. Make a better offer than that.”

  “That’s it. That’s final. I’ll give you a reefer for lagniappe. Three hits and a reefer.”

  “We’ll take it,” Danny said. “Take it, Jimmy.”

  “Okay. Let’s see you roll it Make it big.” They all sat down in the roots of the live oak tree and Little Mo got out his baggie of marijuana and a roll of papers and carefully separated a paper and sat it on his scrawny knee and filled it with grass.

  He spit on his fingers and wet one side of the paper, then expertly rolled the joint. “Want to smoke with me?” he asked.

  “No,” Danny said, and stood up and looked around. “Let’s go, Jimmy. I’m not supposed to be in the park. I’m gwrounded.”

  They took the stuff and left the park. “We’ll go to my house,” Jimmy said. “No one’s there. My mom’s in Mandeville and my stepfather’s gone to Chicago.”

  They moved along Exposition Boulevard, underneath the live oak trees with their capes of moss, past the iron fences and the stone fences of the mansions and the smaller houses. It was a nice afternoon and there wasn’t any football practice and they could look forward to getting high and having some crazy dreams.

  Eric talked on the phone for an hour. Then he decided to go home and get to work on the election. He’d just sit down at the table and get this goddamn union election solved.

  Jimmy and Danny let themselves in with the hidden key and ate a piece of fried chicken. “We going to take the acid now or what?” Danny asked.

  “First let’s smoke the joint. Three hits aren’t going to last very long. Let’s take our time and do the acid after we get high.”

  He got out peanut butter and crackers and cheese and pickles and spread the food out on the table. Then they sat down at the table and began to smoke. They started giggling as soon as they lit up. It was the best. A house to themselves and enough dope to last the afternoon.

  Eric came up on the porch and put his briefcase down and began to search in his pants pockets for his key. Through the French doors of the living room he could see into the kitchen area. He saw Jimmy’s head move in laughter. He pulled his briefcase back behind a stone pillar and drew in his breath. I have to do it, he decided. I have to spy and I have to be a snitch. Goddammit all to hell, will it never stop? What am I doing in this crazy marriage with these crazy kids? My mother warned me not to get in this but I am here and I will not let it come apart. I started this and I will finish it if it kills me.

  “He’s a good man,” I was telling Abby. “And I love him. But he won’t go anywhere. He works all the time. He never stops working. His father makes him work. We already have enough money to last the rest of our lives and still he keeps on working.”

  “You don’t appreciate him,” Abby answered. “You don’t know what you have.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to have anything,” I said, knowing more than I knew I knew. “Maybe I just want to be alone.”

  Eric moved around the front porch until he had a clear view of the kitchen through the dining room doors. He squatted behind a fat concrete planter and watched as Jimmy and then Danny appeared in the kitchen door. They were eating something. Maybe they are just eating, Eric told himself. If there is a God, be merciful for once in your life and let them just be eating. But they aren’t supposed to be over here and they aren’t supposed to be together. I thought we had agreed to keep them apart for a while. He hung his head. He shrank back farther behind the planter.

  It was at that point that my cousin Ingersol came driving down Webster Street and saw Eric perched on the side porch looking in the window. Ingersol came to a stop and blew the horn. “What are you doing, Eric?” he called out. He was in his Porsche with the top down. “Can I help you? Did you lose something?” Ingersol was probably just looking for someone to have a drink with but also Ingersol is really polite and helpful.

  Eric put his fingers to his lips to shut Ingersol up and Ingersol got out of his car and came up onto the porch.

  “The kids are inside,” Eric whispered. “I want to see if they are smoking marijuana.”

  “Can I help?” Ingersol whispered back.

  “Yes. Stay and be a witness.”

  Da
nny and Jimmy had gone to Jimmy’s room to take the LSD. As soon as they took it they lay down upon the beds to listen to Bob Dylan. Lay, lady, lay. Lay across my big brass bed. I don’t know how Danny listened when they played records. Maybe he just felt the vibrations in his head.

  Eric and Ingersol came in the door and went into the kitchen. They smelled the marijuana and found the remains of the joint. They looked at each other. “Go around back and make sure they don’t escape,” Eric said. “I’m going to his room.”

  Ingersol was going out the back door when the phone rang. Jimmy answered it in his room. Ingersol picked up the extension to listen in.

  “We got three hits of blotter acid,” Jimmy was saying. “Me and Danny. We got the house to ourself for another hour. Come on over.” Ingersol shook his head. He laid the phone down on the table and tiptoed back up the stairs to Eric.

  I was writing. Propped up on a quilt with my legs in the warm sand and a glass of gin by my side and Abby asleep on a blanket. The children sang in the trees, I was writing. The tallest ladder could not reach them. Rich ladies wept in the streets named for orators. Maids wept in the streets named for muses and anyone who slept kept one eye on the moving cloud of the starless nights. The schools melted, the catfish floated belly up, the river licked its levees, oil spread on the marshes. . . .

  The phone was ringing in the beach house. It continued to ring no matter how hard I tried to shut out the sound. Finally I got up and walked into the beach house and answered it.

  “Where have you been?” Eric asked.

  “Where are you?”

  “At our house where your second oldest son and his friend Danny are now high on LSD and being kept in their room by your cousin Ingersol until a doctor can get here.”

  “Oh, my God. You didn’t go to Chicago?”

  “No. Come home now, Rhoda. We have to deal with this.”

  “Oh, God, don’t tell my mother or your mother. Did you call India and tell her?”

  “I called Hale and he called her. They’re on their way. Come on as soon as you can.”

  “Don’t let him out of the house. He might get to the Quarter like he did last time.”

  “Don’t worry. Ingersol has them in tow.”

  I woke Abby and we put on our shorts and gathered up our stuff and got into the car and started driving. “You drive,” I told her. “I have to finish my poem.”

  We were on the causeway before I began writing again. We had a pitcher of martinis on the seat between us and as soon as I took the first sip of mine it came to me, the next stanza of my poem. The books were sewn shut, the librarians left in disgust, the fathers bled into the mirrors, the boy screamed, you are not my mother. The rains fell, the river rose, the ferry rammed the wharf, the batture dwellers stood on the roofs with wet feet, the tourists lit out for Houston, the police peered into the windows, the mayor wept on his tennis racket. . . .

  “God, that is so sad,” Abby said when I read it to her. “Is it really that bad, do you think? Are we in that much trouble?”

  “Well, poetic license. I’m never going to get published if I only write about good things. I have to delve into the darkness.”

  “Them taking LSD is plenty dark. Me getting herpes. God, I can’t even bear to say the name.”

  “Don’t think about it. Just drive the car. We’ll stop them from taking drugs. We’ll do it if it’s the last thing we ever do. No goddamn teenage boy is going to get the best of me.”

  “What are they doing? What did Eric say?”

  “He said Ingersol had them in tow. Ingersol was the tennis champion of New Orleans, Abby. He can handle it.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Ingersol had them in tow, all right. He had Danny tied to the bed in Jimmy’s room. He had Jimmy tied to a weight bar with two hundred pounds on each end. He was sitting in the hallway on a straight chair watching the stairs, the door to the backyard, and the bedroom where he had the boys tied up. He was waiting when Semmes Morgan and Morais Devaney came in looking for the party. Semmes was the boy Jimmy had been talking to on the phone. Ingersol knew them all and knew their parents.

  “Come on in, boys,” Ingersol said. “Come wait for the mothers to arrive. I guess soon they’ll be calling your mommas too.”

  “We didn’t do anything,” Semmes said. “We just came by to see if Jimmy wanted to go ride bikes.”

  “He’ll be riding bikes,” Ingersol said. “Taking fucking LSD. Who in the hell are you kids trying to fool? What in the hell do you think you’re doing? Tell me that. Tell me what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “We’re not doing anything.” Semmes stuck to his story. “We just came by to see if anyone wanted to go ride bikes.”

  Danny’s parents arrived. India and Hale Wainwright. India had been the best-behaved girl in New Orleans since the day she was born. She had married the richest man. How was she supposed to deal with having her son end up in a drug ring? There was no way she was prepared to deal with this but she was dealing with it and dealing with it well. She had on her makeup and she was ready to go to war. There was not a snobbish bone in India Wainwright’s body. She did not think for a moment that wealth or beauty or power was supposed to be a shield against disaster. India was ahead of everyone I knew in this respect.

  Abby and I got home half an hour after Hale and India arrived. We all sat on the stairs in the downstairs hall and tried to decide what to do. Ingersol had untied Jimmy and Danny and they were sitting on the floor.

  “Tell us what you took,” my husband, Eric, asked.

  “One hit of acid,” Jimmy answered. “I’m not even sure Danny took his. I just gave it to him when you came busting in.”

  “Did you take it, Danny?” India asked. She got up and went to her son and touched his shoulder. “Look at me. Tell me what you did. Look at me so you can hear me.”

  “Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother,” Danny said and grinned at Jimmy. “Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother.”

  “He took it,” Hale Wainwright said. “Or else, why is he talking that way?”

  Abby began to cry. Her little boys were only four and five years old but she could see this happening to her in the future. The world was full of darkness and nothing could save us from it. Not money or knowing the governor or steamship lines or law or medical degrees from Johns Hopkins or being on the staff at Ochsner’s Clinic. It was plague after plague after plague. No one was safe.

  “I have to go,” she said. “I’m sorry. I really am. I wish I could stay and help. I have to get home to my kids.”

  “Don’t talk about this to anyone,” Hale said. “I’m counting on you, Abby, to keep this to yourself.”

  “Who would I tell?” she asked. “Why would I want to talk about this to anyone?”

  “Good,” Hale said. “I’m glad you feel that way.”

  Abby was just going up the stairs to leave when Eric’s uncle Sully came down the stairs carrying a black bag like the ones physicians have in old movies.

  “What did they take?” he asked. “I need to know what they ingested.”

  “One hit of acid,” Jimmy said. “One little hit and I’m not sure Danny even took his.”

  “Where did you get the acid?” Sully asked. His presence lent a sense of science and weight to the room. Eric got up and stood by his uncle. Sully was his mother’s brother. A tall old-fashioned man who loved his work. He was a pediatrician. He took a stethoscope out of the bag and listened to Danny’s and Jimmy’s hearts. We all watched.

  “I’m going to give them phenobarbital,” he said at last. “Then we’d better let them sleep this off. I want them to go tomorrow and talk to Gunther Perdigao. We have to find out why they did it. Boys don’t take drugs for no reason. They are looking for something they need. It’s the wrong place to look, however.” He took Jimmy’s shoulder in his hand and looked him in the eye. “This is the wrong path to happiness and joy,” he said. “This is the path to hell.”

 
Jimmy began to cry. Then Danny began to babble again. “Mother, Mother, Mother,” he said. “Going to go with Mother, Mother, Mother.”

  This was all a long long time ago. We gave them the phenobarbital and put them in the twin beds in the guest room and then we all went upstairs and sat in the living room and talked. “We must plot to save them,” Eric said. “We have to get all the parents together and stay on top of this. There is a madness loose in the world and it will devour our children.”

  “We’re with you.” Danny’s father sat on the edge of his chair. “I’ll do anything. Nothing is too much.”

  I found a coffee cake in the kitchen and heated it and served it. I made coffee with chicory and boiled milk. The sun went down. We called Eric’s mother and told her we were home. My oldest son came back from wherever he had been. My youngest son went into the den to watch some stupid television program. We called people on the phone. We went on talking.

  “They are searching for ecstasy,” Sully had said when he was leaving. He always talked like that. Straight to the point and oblivious of whatever small talk or niceties were going on. “All people and especially young people want joy and ecstasy. They do not count the cost when they find out where to get it. You must change your lives or you cannot win.”

  Then he left and we talked until nine o’clock and then we woke Danny and helped his parents put him in the car and then we went back to our house and decided to give up for the night.