Crossing the state line into Louisiana shortly after noon put me ahead of the schedule I kept in my head. I was hungry, but I started thinking that I had never gone into a restaurant by myself and ordered a meal on my own. I opened the sleeve of saltine crackers with my teeth and munched away while I drove.
The crackers didn’t last but a few miles. My mouth was so dry it felt like I had eaten a package of sandpaper. In between two small towns, I spotted a Coca-Cola machine outside a laundromat. My first baseball coach in high school told the team that carbonated drinks would ruin your health and keep you from being a good ball player. If he caught anybody drinking anything made of fizz water, it was an automatic one-game suspension. The coach was long gone, but I still had a hard time convincing myself it was okay to drink a Coca-Cola.
I fished a dime out of my pocket and slid it into the coin slot. The bottle made a racket as it wormed its way down inside the machine to the opening at my knees. I looked to see if anyone was watching, flipped off the bottle cap in the opener, and took a quick sip. Then a long one. The one good thing about not drinking a soft drink for so many years was that when you finally did break down and have one, the taste was all new and exciting.
* * *
The map was open beside me, one end tucked into the fold of the bucket seat so it would stay flat. The nonfiction was the hours I had spent on the road. The fiction was the short distance of inches I had moved on the map.
At the town of Ponchatoula, Louisiana, Highway 51 intersected with Highway 22. A sign pointed to the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. My map told me the long bridge was a quicker route to downtown New Orleans, where the Times-Picayune was located according to Charlie. From my father’s airplane, the gigantic lake had always seemed more like an ocean with a tiny ribbon of a bridge strung tightly across it. Now, with the sun hot on the right side of my face, it just looked like a lonely road on the water that went on and on to nowhere.
The air had a damp smell as I drove, making me think I should be crossing the lake in a boat instead of in a car. The lower speed limit and the 24-mile straight shot across the water gave me the opportunity to type out a new manifest in my head:
Was it really that easy?
Would I have to rent a boat to go out on the river?
Could a seventeen-year-old even rent a boat?
It was already the middle of the afternoon. Where would I spend the night?
What if I was too late and the General had already left the newspaper for the day? Charlie had not given me his home address.
Simple and logical questions bombarded me like the lovebugs that were still hitting my windshield. The closer I got to my destination, the more the questions jumped out at me. Is this the way it was when an older person took a trip? The closer you got to where you were going, the more complicated everything became? The typewriter in my head had no answers.
* * *
I crossed Lake Pontchartrain in thirty minutes. Finding the Times-Picayune on Poydras Street took three times that long. I had to stop at two different gas stations to ask directions and “Poydras” wasn’t one of my favorite words to say. I had never heard it pronounced and new words like that needed a little time to settle in my brain before I was any good at getting them out.
Driving in New Orleans was not the same as driving in Memphis, and not for the reason that all the streets were new to me. Car horns were louder and drivers much more likely to use them in New Orleans. I got honked at anytime I didn’t challenge for position in a lane in my little car. When I did try to change lanes on Canal Street, cars and trucks wouldn’t let me. My father once told me that Canal Street was the widest street in the world. As far as I was concerned, it was also the scariest to drive on.
A man in a truck swerved in front of me. I honked at him. It was the first time I had ever used my horn in traffic. I didn’t like the shrill sound it made, almost like a hurt animal. The horn also reminded me of one of my out-of-control screams.
Sweat rolled down into my eyes as I pulled my car into a parking spot on the street around the corner from the newspaper building. I put the top up, stuffed my gym bag in the trunk, and locked the lid. Locking the doors wasn’t of much use since the car had flimsy sliding windows that anyone could open easily from the outside. Anyway, the only thing in the front was my heavy typewriter that someone would have a hard time lifting from the floorboard if they had in mind to steal it.
Two women in the lobby of the Times-Picayune sat behind a long counter and on both sides of a telephone switchboard where they pushed and pulled different-colored plugs attached to cords. When they let go of a cord, it snapped back into its hole like a frightened snake.
“T-P, how may I direct your call?”
The two women spoke the words in one breath over and over, paying no attention to me. I had to interrupt them by raising my hand like I was in a classroom. The woman on the right leaned toward me, lifting her earpiece.
“Help you?”
“I… n----eed to see the General?”
“General? General who?”
I was rattled. I couldn’t remember the real name of Charlie Roker’s friend that was written on the piece of paper in my gym bag. Only that he was “the General.”
The operator went back to pulling and pushing plugs.
“F----orgot… can’t remember his name, but he’s like the general of the outdoors.”
The other operator leaned around her side of the switchboard.
“Are you talking ’bout Ray Patton?”
“That’s it.” My voice was too loud, like I had gotten the correct answer on a television quiz show.
“Newsroom. Second floor.” The operator pointed to an elevator on the other side of the large lobby.
The newspaper offices at the Times-Picayune sounded and looked much like the newsroom at the Memphis Press-Scimitar. Typewriters and Teletype machines clattered away. Reporters and editors shouted to be heard over police scanners and shortwave radios. Pneumatic tubes hissed and sucked air in different parts of the room.
At the Press-Scimitar this late in the day, the newsroom would be empty. The Times-Picayune was a morning newspaper, so everything was going full blast late in the afternoon, even on a holiday. I didn’t know anyone, but I felt almost comfortable in the busy but strange newsroom.
A man, surrounded at his desk by three telephones of different colors, chewed on a fat unlit cigar. To no one in particular, he yelled: “Copy!”
A guy a little older than me rushed over with an empty pneumatic tube in his hand, grabbed the sheets of paper and rolled them into the cylinder. I caught up to the copyboy as he put the tube in the hole to be whisked away.
“Is Ray P----atton here?”
“You mean ‘the General’?”
I nodded.
“Sports department. Against the back wall,” the copyboy said. “His desk is the one with the gator on top. He’s probably there… just can’t see him for all his crapola.”
I heard the clacking of the typewriter before I saw it. Ray Patton sat sideways at his desk, hammering on the keys with two fingers faster than anyone I had ever seen. The typewriter sat on its own metal stand. The General held a telephone receiver to his ear by scrunching up his shoulder. He glanced up and nodded for me to sit in a nearby chair. The telephone conversation was one-sided with the General saying, “Tell me more about that,” and “I see,” and “Spell that for me,” in between his quick laughs.
The small stuffed alligator, resting on top of a hodgepodge of books and telephone directories, had a tiny umbrella in its mouth from the Sho Bar. A “My Name Is ___” badge was stuck on the head of the dried-up animal. “Blaze Starr” was written in on the name badge with a red marker. Fishing lures of every shape and color dangled from the spines of books, mostly telephone directories. A coffee mug in bad need of a washing was adorned with a quote:
May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won’t. — General George S. Patton
“Hold on,” he said to me as he hung up the receiver. “Let me get this down on paper while it’s fresh.”
The General blazed away on the typewriter with two fingers, faster than I could type with all ten. I gazed around the busy room.
“All right, then,” the General said, jerking the paper and carbon out of his typewriter. “I’d say you have to be one Victor Vollmer from Memphis, Tennessee.” We shook hands. Anytime I got away without having to introduce myself was a big plus for me.
“Roker said I could expect you this afternoon. Glad you made it. You must have left Memphis in the wee hours.”
“Four o’clock.”
This was the time for the small talk that came so easy to most people when they were talking to strangers for the first time, but chatting was like a foreign language to me. The General saw he would need to be the one to get our conversation going.
“So, how’s our Rocket Roker doing?” I had never heard Charlie referred to as Rocket but didn’t ask about it. I wanted to get on with my business.
“He’s g----ood. Charlie said you were the p----erson who might could help me find the Mouth of the Mississippi River.”
The General smiled.
“The Rocket warned me that you weren’t much on chit-chat. I guess I’m your man, although we need to talk a little more about exactly the place that you have in mind.”
The General rearranged some papers on his desk and then rose from his chair. He appeared to be of average height sitting down, but he was tall. Taller than my father.
“Let’s get out of here before somebody finds some more work for me to do,” he said. The General tapped the stuffed alligator on the head. “Good night, Miss Starr.” He pulled an old and cracked typewriter cover from his desk drawer and covered his machine. I liked people who took care of their typewriters.
Fifteen minutes went by before we managed to get out of the building. If the General didn’t stop to talk to someone first, likely as not that person would stop and want to joke with him. The General had something to say to everyone he passed. Charlie said the General was a good reporter and I could see why. Everybody wanted to talk and joke around.
The General walked over to the switchboard in the lobby.
“I’m gone for the day, my PBX lovelies. Take a message, as they say.” The two ladies smiled at the General as they pushed and pulled their switchboard cords.
We stepped onto the sidewalk. The tall buildings put the street in the shade this late in the day.
“First order of business is for us to go have a beer,” the General said. “You are eighteen aren’t you?”
I shook my head. “N----ot for a few months yet.”
“Okay, cancel that. The first order of business is for me to have a beer and you to watch,” the General said. “Charlie wouldn’t want me to lead you down the road to debauchery. He’ll want to be in charge of that himself.”
We came to my car parked at the sidewalk meter.
“Can’t leave this little ragtop here,” the General said. “It’ll be sliced up like a watermelon as soon as the sun sets. You can park it in the employee lot and we’ll take my truck.”
“Is there a ch----ance of me getting to the Mouth of the Mississippi River before it gets too dark?” Figuring out a way to hurry someone without being too much of a pain was another talking skill that I lacked. My question was met with silence.
The General leaned on the front fender of my car. He folded his arms, like he was telling me to slow down without having to say any words.
“A couple of things, Son Vic from Memphis.” Even though he wasn’t a real general, he talked straight at you and firm like generals did in the movies.
“First thing. Charlie told me to take good care of you while you were down here. Second, we need to take a time out to talk about this mouth-of-the-river thing you are so set on. It may be a little more complicated than what you had in mind.”
Umpires liked to call pitchers and coaches together before the start of a game to go over the ground rules. The General was doing the same thing with me. He was telling me in his own way to slow down.
“Sorry,” I said. “I know I’m b----ad about trying to go too fast. I’ve been thinking hard about the mouth of the river and getting this close to it probably makes me get in too b----ig of a hurry.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get it all worked out, but I can assure you that twilight is no time to start messing around with the mighty Mississippi.”
I liked the way the General listened to me and then explained exactly what was on his mind. I hoped we could get along and that he would like me eventually, if I could slow myself down and act like a regular person.
“M----aybe the first thing is for me to find a p----lace to stay tonight,” I offered, wanting to show the General that I could take a hint and could slow down and think like a grownup. “The only p----lace I know is called The R----oosevelt where my parents stay, and I don’t think I have enough money to spend the night there.”
“Let me guess,” the General said. “You and your family also dine at Commander’s Palace and Pascal’s Manale and have breakfast at Brennan’s.”
I nodded.
“Get in your little car, Son Vic, and follow me around to the rear of the building.” The General pointed the way. “First thing it looks like we may need to work on is getting that silver spoon dislodged from your throat.”
I nodded and got in my car. I could take a hint.