The wind rushes up from the west to envelop my east-bound body. It carries the sounds of oncoming traffic and the rustling of leaves across the I-10. The aroma of fresh boudin wafts from Don’s Specialty Meats and saturates the linings of my nose. Directed towards my traveled route, my eyes blink rapidly to combat the relentless gusts surging in through the sides of used shades. The wind engulfs my standing thumb and drifts me one backwards step at a time towards New Orleans. Off in the distance, a faded moon observes the land behind a late-afternoon sky.
Near the Holiday Inn Express, a rustic car acknowledges my plea and pulls onto the shoulder, Fortunate Son oozing from its sealed windows. I feel a stroke of luck as I pry open the door and my gaze is met by a beauty in her early twenties. Her black hair is pulled into a French braid. Her eyes capture Louisiana foliage soaked in sunlight after rain. Soft lips are curved into a smile that seems as though it’s been practiced for years. It is more insecure than judgmental, but it would comfort any stranger on the road.
She kills the radio. “Isn’t it illegal to hitch-hike on interstates?” she remarks as I settle into threadbare upholstery.
“Well I haven’t been caught yet.” She laughs at my response and offers a hand in greeting.
“Colette Moreau. Tell me your name isn’t Jack Kerouac.”
“It would certainly fit my occupation.” I take her palm in mine and reply, “James Doran.”
“It’s a pleasure. Where to, James?”
“New Orleans if you’re headin’ that far.”
“How convenient for you. It’s my last stop. Better you go to the Big Easy with me on your arm than Officer Boudreaux.”
Colette and I remain immersed in conversation as three hours elapse into the textured grooves of the I-10. The trust between us grows with every mile. The mood, however, dims with the day. Driving into the city close to sundown, she begins to delve into her past. Flashbacks emerge from her mouth to reveal a traumatic childhood that has pervaded her nightmares ever since. Almost twenty years have folded into yesterday and still she cannot breathe without reminiscing.
Colette was born to a poor New Orleans home that went from broken to shattered in four years. Her father was more appreciative of whisky than fatherhood, and it showed. He didn’t abuse Colette so much as her mother, however, and Mrs. Moreau made it her life’s purpose to keep him from laying a hand on her daughter until it cost her life. As is so common among women in Louisiana, Mrs. Moreau was independent, especially in nurturing Colette. Full of incompetence, the drunk attempted to discipline his daughter, but Mrs. Moreau thwarted his efforts in spite of the beatings it ensued. As far as she was concerned, he would just take a few swings and then walk around the neighborhood to cool off, leaving little Colette safe for a while.
Eventually, the bastard’s frustration grew, and his self-control diminished. One night the beating didn’t end. He planted his blood-stained hands on her face and neck even after her prostrate body quit struggling. Colette hid behind the kitchen counter the entire time, reluctantly listening to screams and colliding flesh through tiny palms clasped to her ears. When she heard the front door close and the car peel out of the driveway, she crawled from the kitchen. There, at the center of the living room, lay the mutilated body of her mother on beige carpet turned red. Her head was cocked back in an awkward angle. Sweet eyes were concealed behind bruised, swollen lids. From the corners oozed a stream of blood, as did from her broken nose and teeth. The scarlet fluid had been smeared across her face and neck where purple blotches already lined the skin. Colette could hardly recognize the woman that lay before her.
A few blocks from the house, her sorry excuse for a father passed out behind the wheel and crashed into a convenience store. He was taken in by the cops when they realized what he had done just before. The drunk was ultimately incarcerated at Angola State Penitentiary, and he would forever be withheld from his daughter. Colette was then adopted by Mrs. Moreau’s brother and his wife. The three of them moved west to California where Colette could recover and lead a somewhat normal life, but her mother’s death never departed her thoughts. Straight out of college, she collected all of her savings, packed up her sedan, and hit the road. With instructions from her new family, she resolved to find her mother’s grave and thank her for the sacrifice that saved Colette’s life.
Dusk announces its presence as I sit with my back against the oak. Its canopy, a billowing mass of branches and Spanish moss, denotes the heart of Holt Cemetery, the final resting place of New Orleans’ poor and indigent. A solemn mist rises up from the grass and replaces the afternoon’s clear air. The fog renders sepulchers across the way to mere silhouettes, and an old cremation oven is the largest phantom besides the sexton’s ramshackle house. My eyes glide along gravestones still visible in the dimming light. Though on level ground, a few appear from a surrealist painting. Partially sunken in the mud, their borders jut out in slanted sections, while the headstones protrude from the crests as though on separate planes. Others are just as bizarre, framed with bricks, PVC pipes, cobblestones, wooden boards, or cinder blocks to keep the buried remains from being washed away. Some are simply covered by a plastic tarp weighed down with rocks.
Colette sifts through each one, sometimes retracing her steps. At every marker she either leans forward or crouches down to examine the names of the interred. She weaves through aisles of trinkets and personal possessions, offerings as forlorn as the dead they’re attributed to. Toy windmills, Mardi Gras beads, and American flags convulse beneath the spell of a spastic breeze. Easels bearing wreaths and portraits stand in scattered locations, hunched over in solemn prayer. Plush bears lean against the stones, their soggy fur caked with filth. Bouquets of flowers lay in the dirt, wilting with age. A ceramic statue of Mary creeps out of the earth, but it is not a source of hope in the search. Her shroud is a faded blue, her face is a dark hole, and her arm is on the ground beside her. Colette’s been searching the cemetery for hours and won’t accept that her mother’s grave may have been replaced or simply isn’t demarcated. A two thousand mile drive brought her to the potter’s field, and she won’t rest until she finds what she came for.
I lean my head against the oak, trying to find words to comfort Colette, but instead I am caught by the moon. As a drifter I am always under the influence of celestial bodies. So easy to contemplate, the moon often reminds me of places I’ve left behind or those that I have not reached. Nonetheless, it is perched above destinations that are unattainable to me in the present moment. I will always chase the luminous orb, but the journey will never be satisfied. I feel that Colette and I are driven by a similar force, and our nature is what led us to New Orleans at the same time.
I imagine her wading in the shallows of the Pacific, jeans scarcely rolled past her ankles. She allows the increasing depths to saturate the denim as inches accumulate between the shore and her. Petty ripples near the beach grow to waves that rise up to hug her thighs, and she hardly struggles against the current, letting the gentle rhythm take control. She begins to sway her arms through the air before her, a gypsy in her hypnotic dance. Similarly, the wind swells around her, leading black strands of hair excluded from her French braid into a bal-musette. The overlapping sections of the braid assume a blue tint in the way that a raven’s feathers will as they flutter beneath the moon. Together, the ocean, the coastline, and Colette converge into a contra dance orchestrated by that spectator of the night. It is the pure focus of her movements, as she hopes to summon it from its post so that it will liberate her from this world. She wishes to ascend to its height, where the spirit of a mother long purloined from her dwells, the only place where Colette can truly live.
“Colette…” I begin but am cut short.
“I found it, James,” she shouts from twenty yards off. “I found my mother’s grave!”
I rise from the dirt and walk in her direction. Along the way I pass the burial site of Louis and Lidia Ezeb, two siblings born consecutively in the 1870s, both dead within a year of life. They were among the first to be buried in Holt. Thirty yards away Colette is on her knees, picking grass and weeds from the edges of her mother’s worn headstone. As I place my hand on her shoulder, I see tears fall to form tiny splatters on the fallen stone. A trembling hand traces the handwritten epitaph: “Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always perseveres.” Colette directs her vision to the skies, and I follow. For a moment it seems as though the moon is directly above us, and I know that Colette’s heart will always be interred in the potter’s field.
