OLIVES
It’s the trumpet you hear first. A fat man holding a tuba shouts orders to his ramshackle band that does not listen.
“Stormy Monday,” he shouts, to no avail. The trombone player rips into a stilted version of “When the Saints” because two tourists scurry past under umbrellas. You slide up against the buttress of the cathedral, out of the rain. At least for a little while, until you can find your next pub.
A little girl, maybe seven or eight, leans on the next buttress, out of the rain like you. Her jeans come down above her ankle and her slippered foot creeps out into the rain to a shallow hole where a square slate tile has come loose and been removed or stolen. Rainwater collects in the square hole and she delicately reaches her toe toward the rippling water. You gaze at her and listen.
The bandleader gives in and plays his line and then, seeing you, starts into “Jingle Bells.” You give a half smirk and then look to the girl to see if she registered any joy, any recognition at the Christmas song. Her ratty, once white shoe touches the water and she pulls it back quickly. It reminds you of going to Lake Pontchartrain with your Paw-Paw when you were a kid, playing games on the rocks while he fished for Friday’s gumbo. There are always a million games to play when you are bored, but this is Christmas Eve. You wonder why she is out here.
The trumpeter steps forward and blows trills as tight as knot work before slumping into a soulful “On the Sunny Side of the Street.” You look up as if maybe it is a sign that the clouds are breaking, and then laugh to yourself at the irony. Still dropping buckets, the band plays on in the rain. And the girl stands without even feigning interest.
Then he powers out the first line of the song with a clean, clear voice that resounds through the square. No one is listening. “Gold dust at your feet, on the sunny, sunny side of the street,” he sings, loud and beautiful. You look into his face, covered by a red baseball cap, raindrops dripping from the bill in a cascade over his effeminate features; long, dark eyelashes, high cheekbones, full, pouty red lips to match his hat, puckered, kissing the lips of the rusty brass trumpet as he echoes the refrain, and a pointy, cleft chin that trembles as if he is crying.
You look back at the little girl, blond hair, wet and lank, falling out of her grey cotton hoodie down to her pointy chin, sticking to her cheeks and pointed nose that she got from her father. The puddle holds her concentration. Long, dark lashes on delicate, white lids flicker like tasseled silk fans.
He blows the last notes of the song, looks at the soaked “tip hat” and sighs. Then he looks at her and pulls the brass to his lips again for “Up the Lazy River.” The bandleader yells, “Patrick, more Christmas songs, ya heard me?”
Patrick nods his cap, contritely tipping rainwater at his bandleader, and follows the tuba line of “Deck the Halls.”
A man walks up, holds a 32-ounce can in a paper sack under his arm and claps. He balances on a black trashcan for the length of the song, throws his can in, claps again, and stumbles off mumbling something about a cook off. You take a dollar bill out of your wallet and start to throw it toward the wet hat, and then you stop, crease it down the middle, lengthwise, and hold it out to the little girl until she looks up. Blue eyes peer up at you, and she takes the bill without any facial expression, and places it in the wet hat. Patrick places his hand on her head and nods, then goes back to playing.
You leave, cross the square and head toward the Marigny where you think you’ll find a stool to perch on for a while, dry off and warm up. This keeps you content for quite a while, as a semi-capable pianist plays tunes on a black Steinway decorated with cocktail stains in the dungeon of a pub. You order another whiskey neat with a cherry, and listen to the two young fools in their twenties rant loudly about the road trip they took to Mexico last year.
That’s when Patrick walks into the pub, pauses in the grey light of the door frame to let the little girl catch up, and then he escorts her to other end of the bar from you. He looks at her like a trophy, then up to the bartender.
He places his naked trumpet on the concrete floor and pulls out a wad of wet dollars and a handful of quarters. The bartender says, “Olives?” Patrick nods. She looks up to him quickly, and Patrick adds, “And a Coke in the bottle.”
The little girl pulls out a pocketbook, pink and aquamarine macramé that she likely crocheted in art class. She pulls out a couple dimes and nickels and holds them in her pruned palm.
“No, sweetie,” Patrick says. You pull the glass of whiskey to your lips and hear him say, “My treat.”
The bartender brings Patrick a beer, then returns with the girls’ Coke and places a bowl of olives stuffed with pimento in front of her. She smiles for the first time.
She eats a few olives and takes a long swig from the bubbling bottle. She says, “Daddy, when are we going home?”
He takes a long swig form his bubbling bottle and says, “Not yet, sweetie. Soon as we make some more cash.”
You finish your whiskey, eat the cherry, and drop three twenties on the bar. Tell the bartender to take one and treat the man and little girl to the rest.
Copyright 2005 Stephen Patterson. All rights reserved.