Down on the Batture

Paggio

- 116 Paggio “Watch out for the jerk,” says Lisa, who is watching a little more carefully than I am because I’ve been driving the last leg since Alabama. We are new to the city, and everything on Oak Street near the levee looks like it came from my childhood, circa 1945. There is a green shack with a rusty bicycle hanging out front like an advertisement for a saloon—wait, it may be a saloon—a lot full of what look like marble pillars, and a store that says Five And Dime. What is right ahead of us, however, is a sports car, stopped dead in the middle of the road. I brake and wait. The driver’s door opens and an arm extends below it to the street to deposit the box of a hamburger to go. Then, in sequence, part of the roll, a wax paper drink cup, its lid, several napkins, ketchup packages, some loose fries, and a straw. The driver then cleans her hands with the remaining napkin and drops it neatly on the pile. It didn’t take a minute. She was cleaning up. I wish I could say it was an exception, but there is something in the genes here that allows people to empty the car ashtray on your curb with an absolutely clear conscience, watch their dog poop on your sidewalk while they are talking to you, and scatter their food wrappers like confetti and still enjoy the music, as if it all went away to the great repository in the sky. On my last trip to the airport I saw a snowy egret with wings like a wedding gown rise from a canal littered with plastic bags and two shopping carts. There is no bird more beautiful, and no backdrop more ugly. You wonder what other people see. I think - 117 Paggio the answer is that they see the same thing and it looks perfectly normal. One good thing about trash, it is an easy way to find the summer camp of Ricky and the boys. You just look for signs that they were here yesterday. As I am walking up I hear one of them say, “Watch out for that motherfucker,” which gives me pause until I realize that they are not talking about me but about a light-skinned black man who is whirling a huge naked saber out on the sand. He stands tall, head shaven, bare feet, wearing only the baggy trousers of the martial arts. His shirt and sandals are stacked neatly by the water. His sword slashes the air in bursts, down and up, then a leaping turn and he cuts from behind. When he finishes he stands stock still, bows to the river, breathes deeply, and begins again. He is in his own space out here on the batture, public and private, safe and dangerous, all at the same time. Out here, this looks perfectly normal, too. Giving the master a wide berth, I come into the shade along the river, picking my way over the most recent debris. To be fair, they have a garbage bag hung on a tree near by, but also to be fair, it would take ten bags and a Boy Scout troop to get this place in order. Which raises the question that has come to haunt me here; what is order and why is it so important? About a year ago a fellow copied me on a letter he’d written asking the city to cut down all of these unsightly batture trees. He lived nearby, he said, and the woods harbored rats and other unattractive animals. I don’t think he said that they harbored unattractive people, but he could have. I wrote him back and said that there were actually some attractive things down there; you could see the raccoons hopping the levee in late summer, humpbacked like little camels, and if you removed the trees all he’d likely see is the trash washed up by the river and a line of monster barges, rusting at anchor. But suppose, he wrote back, the parish cleaned the place up and made it a park? I said that would be a miracle, more likely they’d just post it off limits, but examining my heart I think I was fearing something different. They might actually clean - 118 Paggio it up and that would...