We drove in silence in the pounding rain and in traffic that got heavier the closer we got to New Orleans. I didn’t know if the lack of conversation was due to the noise of the storm and the heavy traffic or if we were each thinking our own hard thoughts. Morning light fought its way through banks of dark clouds fighting for their space. Highway 23 dumped us into the south suburbs of New Orleans. Phil maneuvered the little car through the traffic and rain-slick streets with the same confidence and skill that she dodged logs in the river.
“The bridge is going to be crowded and dangerous,” she said. “How do you have in mind that we should go about this?”
The approach to the bridge was lengthy with a gradual rise. It would be impossible to park on the bridge.
“Can we p----ark somewhere and walk out to the middle?”
“I’m game if you think you’re steady enough on your feet.”
Phil pulled the car over the curb and parked on the sidewalk. “Nobody’s going to be walking here,” she said, “except for two crazy people I know.”
“Y----ou mean two couyons?” I was getting good at making Phil smile.
The tape sealing the top to the urn, even after all it had been through, had not lost its holding power. I picked at the sticky goo without success. The wind blew so hard that the sliding window on my side inched open on its own.
“You don’t have any fingernails,” Phil said. “Let me try.”
She worked on the top of the urn with the nimble fingers that tied sailor’s knots and fine-tuned outboard engines. After running her fingernail under the top, she twisted off the brass cap and handed me the urn.
I looked inside. “It’s not even half full,” I said.
“Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Genesis 3:19,” Phil said.
She was right. I carried the whole of Mr. Spiro inside me.
I unzipped the windbreaker Captain Moreau had given me and offered it to Phil.
“Rain’s not going to melt me. I’ll put it over your bandage again.” She wrapped the windbreaker around my head, twisted and tied it. She put a towel over her head.
“Now, don’t we make a couple heureux?” Phil said. “A happy couple.” She was joking but I didn’t want her words to be a joke.
“Yes, if you want to know the truth, I think we do.” She looked at me and smiled. I was getting better at putting some meaning into my sentences.
I walked with one arm clutching the urn and the other arm around Phil to steady myself against the gusts that blew the rain sideways. When we got to the bridge, we walked in single file holding on to the railing.
Phil shouted over the whipping wind: “You said that even Jimmy LaBue was your gift.”
“Right.”
“Then Hurricane Betsy must be your gift, too.”
“Right again.”
“We just need to make sure this gift of yours doesn’t blow our butts back down into the river.” Phil caught on quickly to new concepts.
A continuous stream of cars and trucks crawled across the bridge. The Mississippi River was a world of its own far below us, a tangle of violent swirls and white froth.
I handed the urn to Phil. “Hold it with both hands.” She braced herself against a steel girder. I took off the top with one hand and reached into the urn with the other.
Mr. Spiro gave his four words to me that summer in 1959 when I was his paperboy for a month. I’d had six years to think about the four words and how they fit into Mr. Spiro’s way of life that he called the “Quartering of the Soul.”
I took out a handful of ashes. I shouted the first word as I gave part of Mr. Spiro to the howling wind.
“STUDENT!”
As the ashes were carried away by the storm’s rage, I thought about the time I talked to Mr. Spiro about going to college and what I might study so I could make sure I got out in four years and didn’t get in trouble with the draft board. He gave me one of his lectures where his eyes didn’t blink. He said that a student is measured by grades and degrees to a fault. There should be no end to learning, no sense of a destination reached, or a cup that is full, he said. Learning is like breathing. If we stop, a part of our soul withers.
I reached into the urn for the next handful. I threw the ashes as far as the wind would let me.
“SERVANT!”
I recalled the day I found Mr. Spiro fixing a lady neighbor’s broken-down fence. I pulled nails out of the old boards for him and helped him scrape off flaking paint. He worked an entire week on the fence. I came back to help him paint it on the last day and asked if his neighbor was going to pay him for all the hard work he had done. “We are the ones who owe the debt, Messenger. Helping others is our balance due for the privilege of life.” He did admit that he had accepted a homemade cherry pie from his neighbor and that we would be enjoying those sweet proceeds as soon as we could clean all the paint off our hands.
Once again, I shouted into the rain and wind.
“SELLER!”
When I told Mr. Spiro I had gotten the copyboy job, he explained it was a good way to trade the one commodity I could call my own — time. “You must make your own way in the world by selling your time,” he said, “but be careful not to sell yourself out.” I asked him if maybe that is what my father was doing by working so long and hard and not having time for anything else. A good question, he allowed. Had I raised the subject with my father? No. Like the many other subjects I had been too afraid to raise with him.
I shouted the last word the loudest of all as I rose on my toes to throw the handful of ashes.
“SEEKER!”
One time when Mr. Spiro and I sat and watched the river from our favorite spot, I asked him what it must have been like for the first explorers to come down the Mississippi River in a boat without having any idea what was in store for them. He came back with questions that were meant to knock me for a loop. Do you know where you are headed now? Have you sought any directions for the path you find yourself on? Have you considered who put you here and how you arrived at the place you are now? As usual, I shook my head. “As you go about the business of living, Messenger, seek to understand a higher power that exists in a realm that is above us. To pretend there is nothing beyond the finite dimension of man is the highest form of conceit, ego, and contempt for life.”
Even though the wind cut into us on the bridge and the rain stung our faces, Phil and I looked out over the river for a moment.
I had put in plenty of time thinking about the four words. I was confident I finally understood the Quartering of the Soul and that the real trick is to keep the four parts equal in your life like they are equal on the four pieces of the taped-together dollar bill. If one of the four parts becomes more important than the others, you’ll lose your balance and eventually lose your way.
Phil and I once again looked down at the swirling river, at the water that wanted to go to the gulf but was being held back by the storm surge of the advancing hurricane. I put my arm around Phil and felt my own storm surge of happiness and the sense I had fulfilled my promise to Mr. Spiro.
* * *
I gripped the railing hand-over-hand as we made our way off the bridge. A gust of wind whipped the windbreaker off my bandaged head. It fluttered like a runaway kite out over the river. I tripped when one of Captain Moreau’s shoes that were too large for me came off.
“Kick the other one off and let’s get out of here,” Phil yelled above the wind.
When we got near the car, I told Phil I wanted to drive to the barge to make sure I could handle the four hundred miles back to Memphis.
Safe inside the car, Phil dried her hands on a towel. She shook the brass container and then twisted off the top.
“There’s something else in the bottom,” she said.
“I kn----ow some ashes are left. I’m going to keep those in the urn on my bookshelves.”
“No. There’s something else. It looks like a dollar bill with some writing on it.”
I reached into the urn.
I read the words on the new dollar bill in Mr. Spiro’s familiar handwriting. I handed it to Phil. She nodded, either that she agreed with what was written or that she understood the meaning of the words. Neither of us had anything to say.
The traffic had backed up on the bridge access. The honking got louder. We needed to get going, but I couldn’t make my hand reach for the switch. I found myself not wanting to leave the bridge and Mr. Spiro.
The tears were not too far away.
“It’s okay,” Phil said.
But then the spur was followed by the moment, and I decided this final tribute on the bridge to a life well lived was not a place for tears. I had kept my promise and that was a victory that didn’t need tears.
I smiled at Phil and turned the key.