A Brief Note/”A Walk”

Hi there. 

As I mentioned in the last entry, it was never really my intent to use this blog as an outlet for my creative endeavors. You can argue that “writing about shit I read” is a creative endeavor, and you know, I’ll be happy to argue that with you, strawman, but not right now. 

When I was a lot younger, I fancied myself a writer, and if you’d known me in High School or for some years of College you might have thought of me as “that irritating guy who wants to be a writer”. Somewhere along the way I either realized I wasn’t cut out for it or I found it discouraging or I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. Depending on when you ask me, you’ll get a variety of answers, usually ending in a joke about how I was “the shitty Virginia Woolf”.  

In any case, I was recently on a vacation, and one of the people I was with said I should write a book or something, and I told them that I used to fancy myself a writer but blah blah blah the shitty Virginia Woolf.

But something must have stuck; I wrote the first short story I have written in some time, and I liked it enough to revise it a few times, and am unambitious about doing anything with it, but I liked the revised version of it enough to want people to read it, so I am sticking it up here. If you want me to stick to what the blog is about normally I understand that, and you can skip everything below. But here it is— “A Walk”.

A Walk

The dog always pulls at the leash at the bottom of the steps. She’s interested in something in the flowerbed, but I can never figure out what it is. Most of the time, when she pulls at her leash it’s for a chicken bone or someone’s drunkenly discarded half-slice, and I’ll grumble “leave it” under my breath. It’s a pointless command, by and large; she’s either won the battle and enjoys the greasy bliss or has lost and emits a quick series of whines before we move on to the next distraction. 

The bottom of the staircase holds no such treasure, but she pauses every time, sniffing wildly, her lips wobbling the way they do before she inhales a treat, but there’s nothing that I can see, and I never hear the telltale crunching or gulping, so I assume there’s some sort of scent rivalry occurring in the flowerbed, some other dog interacting with her in the secret language of piss. She never seems to leave a reply; there’s a tension between whatever is going on in the flowerbed and the desire to walk, and the desire to walk wins each time. 

This morning it’s cold, which in this part of the world happens seldom enough that I forget how to deal with it every time. I adjust the hood on my sweatshirt, and wish that I had a scarf. The foolishness of this wish sticks with me for a minute or two. It would just take up room in the closet in the hall and I would forget it, go too far in the walk, and then refuse to go back to get it, mumbling about how I was already too far along, not wanting to confuse the dog by going back to the house so quickly, not wanting to deal with the alarm, the dog, the keys, the fact that it would get to be too warm in the hooded sweatshirt because the house is nice and warm and I’d want to sit back down and have a coffee.

The walk happens before the coffee. It’s unclear how this pattern emerged but it’s the same pattern daily : Get up, feed animals, go to the bathroom, get dressed, get the leash, walk the dog, come home, watch the dog drink great big blorps of water, unleash the dog, then start the coffee. The walk is the paramount thing, and the dog will follow me from room to room if she feels I’m taking too long, maneuvering in front of me, then standing still and staring at me with an accusatory look on her face.

When we walk, I try and vary the pattern a little, but some mornings I am too tired to do a lot of thinking, and we will move on autopilot, arriving at certain destinations without being certain of how we arrived. Maybe she tugs on the leash, maybe she’s suddenly interested in varying the direction or sniffing some trash or shitting, and I take a moment and wonder again how this routine added to my routine, the multiplication of every tiny routine I have become accustomed to since I moved here, the importance of routine in keeping me centered and everything wanders and I am also not wandering at the same time, we’re on a fixed path, up St Phillip, over at Chartres, down at Esplanade past the unfinished construction, only a few blocks to go now, the pile of dirt has plants growing on it, the trench plate over the hole is slowly shifting so that the hole is becoming uncovered and someone’s tire is going to end up in it.

This morning, however, I am possessed of sound mind and we’re going to take things a little differently, though still up St Philip, as the walk almost always starts that way because the park gates are shut at this hour. I’m trying to move quickly because of the cold, and, at least for now, the dog appears to be moving with the same purpose. 

There are always people standing on St Philip. Sometimes prostitutes ending their workday, sometimes workmen starting theirs, always a couple of people who’s business I don’t know and don’t want to know, smoking cigarettes and waiting around. We exchange the same head nods. The head nods eventually become hellos when they have seen me often enough, and over time this might mutate into a brief exchange:

Hey.

‘Sup.

Good, good.

And then they vanish, replaced with someone else, changing with the seasons or according to some schedule I am uncertain of. All of them smoke. Today there is only one. He says hey, and grinds out his cigarette with the toe of his shoe. He looks unhappy to be outside at this hour, shivering slightly, like he’s only been outside for a moment or two and hasn’t figured out how to adjust to the temperature yet. Always walking that dog he says and I say something like you know it and keep moving along, the dog ignoring him which makes me a little suspicious that she might have caught the scent of some food on the ground and I scan the ground looking for any sort of object she might want to ingest. I once had to pry a desiccated rat out of her jaws, which is not an experience I care to repeat, especially barehanded, the rat feeling like a weirdly hairy piece of beef jerky and me wondering to myself exactly how many disease ridden insects were interested in feasting on the rat jerky and how many of them were interested in changing their diet from cold rat jerky to warm pink jerk and giving me bubonic plague in the process.

There’s no rat, bone, pizza, or shit (human or dog) that’s tempting her, and some leaves crunch agreeably under my shoes and her paws and I take a moment to absorb all the sounds: birds chirping, the dog’s toenail’s clicking, a distant garbage truck moving down a block or two away, the omnipresent hum of traffic on Rampart, and if you listen with the right ears the fading of yesterday’s revelry into the bleariness of the day.

We hang a right; the dog wants to cut across a small patch of grass, but I shorten her leash and keep her on the sidewalk. There’s usually puke at that corner, when people stumbling back from the Quarter realize they have had entirely too much sugar mixed with booze and need to lighten their load; heads already aching, sweating no matter the weather. I don’t look, we just proceed.

The wind rolls down the street, a welcome relief in the summer, an angry curse in this weather. I’m wearing a knitted cap under the hood, and I pull it over my ears, which gives me the illusion that I am warmer and deadens the sound at the same time. The birds continue their chirps the dog continues to click her nails everything continues but it’s fuzzier and there’s some happiness on my part in this shift, as it forces me, in its own way, to pay attention more to the sounds of the morning.

Eventually, a truck or streetcleaner will roll by and shatter my sense of quiet, but in this tiny moment, the city seems quiet, and I am momentarily content, and this moment of contentment costs me a couple of shivers and I am reminded that I need to keep moving. I want to stop and drink everything in; I’m going to have to drink it in on the move. I lean into the wind and we walk a couple of blocks and I stare at the street ahead, eyes always looking for the same things I think the dog is looking for and I fail because I hear the telltale crunch of a bone in her mouth I check to see if this is something small she’s going to destroy or something bigger I should attempt to fish out, and it’s the former so I watch her crunch, and if a dog is capable of looking smug, she does. We turn left.

The wind is less intense as we continue towards the river. We’re walking past some of the dog’s favorite bars; the bartenders there know her better than they know me, and they give her treats, at her favorite she gets whipped cream and a milk bone in a shot glass. Even in the twenty four hour-ness of New Orleans, however, most of these places are closed, and the ones that are open are open in a quiet way at this time of the morning; you can go in if you know, and if you don’t, you might walk by without knowing. There are some rowdier places, but they are not on this morning’s route, and the dog is not tempted by them; she likes people but dislikes crowds and random hooting, and on this we are in agreement. 

It’s all uneventful from here until Cafe Du Monde, but I am doing my best to stay engaged, the cold is my ally this morning, as the periodic adjustments of my hood and my hat bring me back into it, and I never lose more than a few steps. I see restaurant workers having a morning cigarette before ducking back in. I see a couple of mail carriers walking and talking:

I told him that was enough.

Did he hear you?

He gone.

I don’t see anyone else for a while; the time is indeterminate, but not overly long. A woman approaches me. She’s a little younger than I am, but is wearing a long night, and I can smell cigarette smoke and on top of it the hazy smell of booze and sweat.

I’m not drunk, she says.

Ok, I reply.

I’m not drunk. But I don’t know where I am.

You’re on the corner of Royal and Saint Ann. Do you know where you are staying?

I just got divorced.

Congratulations? Do you know where you are staying?

I’m at a air bnb on St Phillip.

Ok, Saint Phillip is a long street. Do you have a number?

She fiddles with her phone for what feels like five minutes, but in reality is a lot shorter. I just got divorced, she says, he was a real prick.

Sounds like you made the right move.

Here, I’m here. She shows me an email with her address.

Ok, listen carefully, I say, and give her the simplest set of directions I can think of, including several easy to spot landmarks along the way. Do not walk past the coffee shop, look out for the coffee shop. It will be on your left. When you see the coffee shop, take a right, you will be on the right block of Saint Phillip then, so look for your number.

He tried to screw me over in the divorce.

Divorce is always unpleasant, I reply.

She is looking into a cup of coffee that I am imagining a bartender gave her before shoving her out the door and into the street; last call, it’s six am, I have to stock up and go home. It’s in a plastic cup and I can smell the sugar and milk coming off it; it’s very sweet and light, but I am still wondering how she’s holding onto it because the cup is in no way insulated. She’s shaking a little, but not enough to spill the coffee. She brings it up to her mouth, blows on it as if she’s going to take a sip, and then pulls it away from her mouth, holding it at chest level. 

I’m not drunk, she repeats.

I know. Up the block, to the coffee shop, take a right, and you’re on the block where you’re staying.

I think she wants me to walk her there, and I am unwilling to do so; it remains unspoken, and I tell her that the dog needs to keep moving because it’s cold and the dog is skinny and the dog helps me out with a little shiver. We continue on.

We skirt the edge of Jackson Square, where the fortune tellers are setting up and the unhoused are tearing down. We continue up to Cafe Du Monde, sitting there, poised to open. There was a time when it never closed, and I wish that time was still at hand, as I would easily stop and have a cafe au lait, but during and after the plague it has not kept the same hours, but I do see waiters with the little paper hats assembling and I admit to feeling a sort of nostalgia that is somehow unearned.

The town is filled with this; there’s a plethora of stories about how so-and-so’s made the best po-boys and there was this epic night that your friends had that ended up there and ordered a cochon de lait po boy and a daiquiri and that place has been there forever and was run by a local family and now it’s closing and they are repainting the building and that building’s hideous turquoise paint job is somehow iconic and worthy of preservation. Eventually you learn that so-and-sos had, in reality, only been open for six years, there’s nothing historical about the paint job, there’s nothing long lasting about so-and-sos, the “family” that ran it turns out to have been an out of town absentee owner who once enjoyed a po-boy and thought that it would be a hoot to own a po-boy place in “‘Nawlins”. The person telling you about the tragedy of so-and-so’s closing has likely not even been to so-and-sos in a few years. 

The dog is always excited to walk up the ramp towards the river; there’s usually powdered sugar somewhere along the way for her to lick. Not today. She seems unbothered, but stops at the same spot she always does for a long drawn out smell of the concrete and post nearest the bottom, and squats and takes the briefest piss. She has an almost childlike enthusiasm for the ramp, and when we get to the top and climb first down, then up the stairs, I look to see if she’s panting, even slightly, but she’s relaxed and moving at the same pace I am.

We get to the top of the stairs, and there’s a blacktop pathway and a set of stairs leading down to the Mississippi river, which flows with a sort of quiet menace. I take a moment, despite the cold and wind and look up and down; the dog and I are alone here, which is rare. Normally there are at least a few people jogging on the path, or someone with a tripod and a camera waiting to get a shot of I can never figure it out. Sometimes there’s a couple sitting on the steps, staring out at the river, always in some sort of semi-cuddle; something about the river makes couples at least hold hands, and up the path a short distance is a chain link fence that people attach locks to with their names on them and I always want to know all of their stories and if they are still together and how often someone comes along and cuts off the locks or removes the section of fence; I have never seen it clean, but the locks change from time to time, and the saggy parts of the fence become less saggy so someone must do it.

The river itself always looks small to me, perhaps because it is so large. It’s difficult to take in something of that scale, and we imagine that the gigantic thing looming in the distance is close simply because it’s large, and as we walk toward it and it doesn’t change in scale we never quite readjust. There’s a boat upriver that has sat there forever, and I know it takes several minutes to walk along, but from here it looks like it’s closer and smaller and I am contemplating all this, but the dog is unimpressed with my thoughts of scale, and begins to climb up the stairs as much as her leash will let her. She doesn’t tug when she reaches the leash limit, but instead stares at me and tilts her head to indicate that she does not understand why we are not walking. I climb the stairs, get up to the top of the path, and we walk along the river.

I hear the morning train sounding its horn in the middle distance. If I wait too long it will close the gap, the horn blasting seemingly every ten seconds as it slowly rolls between Decatur and the river. I have no desire to be stuck on the wrong side of the tracks so we cut the river walk short and head back on to Decatur.

The sky is beginning to change color, and some of the cold will go away with it, and I am afraid of being bundled up too heavily. I take off the knit cap and appreciate the brief rush of returning sound. The birds tweet slightly louder, the background noise rushes up to meet me, and I stuff the cap in the front right pocket of my hooded sweatshirt. The dog looks back at me, impatient.

Time to go home, I tell her. A few seconds pass. You want to go home? I ask.

She offers no assent, but moves along side me, and we cross Decatur onto Toulouse. We will go up a block, turn onto Royal and then onto Conti, and follow it back down until we leave the Quarter and head towards home. I’m content to let things go now, and to arrive back at my front door and into the warmth of the house without entirely remembering how we got there. The mail carriers I saw earlier have moved along on their rounds, and I offer them a slight head nod as we walk down Toulouse. They ignore me and continue gossiping and we are walking in opposite directions and the sound of their voices fade and the sounds of the Quarter rise.

It’s slowly warming up. I want coffee. The walk continues, but I’m not a part of it anymore.