Jotted Journey Notes

Sticky, humid air licked the windows of banged-up Porsches and Ol’ Tour Guide Al pointed – T-shirt rising above his belly – at a grave. We were in St. Louis Cemetery #1 of New Orleans, a city where you could have your spirits poured on Bourbon Street or find them, lurking and wispy, in the dark. A historic Roman Catholic burial ground, the place was filled with an eclectic mix of homes for the dead, neighborhoods of decayed decadence.
“Now, many people couldn’t afford better, so they’d get this sorta treatment when the reaper came by. What you see here are above-ground vaults, to prevent water damage…sometimes one or two to a compartment” he explained, wiping his wilty mustache. Poor blokes were buried here in a dead man’s Noah’s ark, their bodies high up from the floodwaters. Somewhere a few notes of jazz trickled into the caramel heat.
We passed further along, arriving at a grand tomb. With great awe in his voice, Al described the life of the queen of voodoo, Marie Laveau. She was both Creole and white, free and under a spell, a curse-whisperer and a healer. Tour guides do not tell facts; they tell their own truths. Al told us the details of Laveau’s life, all of them unclear, paradoxical and inconsistent, but they aligned like stars, somehow, in the constellation of her story. Mardi gras beads – purple, yellow and green suns on a string – decorated her resting place, and the plot filled with the smell of cinnamon and lilies.
After we had exited the gates of the St. Louis Cemetery, Al offered to take us to his ice cream shop. He promised a diverse selection, and I longed for some sweet cold relief from July in Louisiana. A short walk led us to an old-timey shoppe. Al donned a white hate with a red stripe and stood beaming, silver serving spoon in hand. At the counter were 20 unlabelled boxes, “20 different flavors!”, Al boasted.
“So what’s on the menu?” I asked.
“Vanilla, vanilla, vanilla, vanilla…” Al listed, on and on until his words melted into an incantation.
A year later Katrina devastated the city, a vicious storm of destruction. New Orleans went underwater but slowly, like a magic priestess, she has gathered up her robes. And I’m sure that Al is leaning on a old tombstone somewhere, waiting and licking a vanilla ice cream cone.