RELIGION WHEN I DIE

Last May, a few weeks before school ended, Perry had awakened to find a note from Peaches on his bedroom nightstand: POOL AFTER SCHOOL, BABY! it read in her swooping scrawl that was neither print nor cursive.

It would be just the two of them today—Brendy had dance lessons that afternoon—so as soon as school let out, Perry jumped on the 91 sky trolley, heading toward the natatorium in City Park. The windows had been fogged opaque by the tension between the air-conditioning and the almost-summer heat outside. Droplets of condensation beaded all over the car’s red exterior and made it look as if it were sweating from exertion. Inside, a trio of elderly ladies coming from the Tchoupitoulas Walmart squawked and gossiped, filling the car with the scents of candy lozenges and pressed-flower perfume.

The day before, Mr. Yaw had changed his approach to Perry’s piano lessons and given Perry a small keyboard to practice on. About the size of a shoebox, it fit easily into Perry’s book sack. The idea was that he would take it out and practice his fingering and chords whenever he had the chance. That way he could practice at home without his folks investing in a real piano before Perry’s aptitude for sorcery revealed itself.

Mr. Yaw was a white man of medium build who stood just over six feet tall. The strangest thing about him, in Perry’s opinion, was his bearing. At times, he seemed stiff and formal, speaking from somewhere low in his throat, his voice squeezed tight as it traveled up and out.

“I’m not sure what the issue is, but this is what worked for me as a boy,” he’d said. “Having a way to practice idly until the motions became natural to me. Wasn’t long before I was locksmithing on an amateur basis.”

Hearing that had made Perry hopeful. There was something about locks that he found compelling. Being able to manipulate their interior mechanisms by playing this or that simple tune—even such modest magic would make Perry proud.

As the skycar scooted along above Esplanade Avenue, Perry sat with the keyboard balanced on his right knee and played chords with the volume off.

The trolley glided past the entrance to City Park with no stops before the turn on Orleans. It paused a couple times after the turn, but Perry stayed on until it turned again and descended to the street out front of Delgado Community College. Perry disembarked, ignoring the vibrations at his feet. Something about Delgado had always seemed weird to him, but nobody else had ever said anything, so it was probably all in his head.

Perry headed into the park, his keyboard hanging from his left hand, swinging along with his arm. He loved the smell here. There was always a little algal must in the air, but instead of smelling moldy and gross, it smelled alive. The oaks and magnolias joined hands overhead as Perry followed the familiar path toward the pool. He walked automatically, musing over how good it would feel to cut the water with his hot brown limbs, and how school was almost almost almost over.

That was why it took him so long to notice something wasn’t right. Perry slowed down as he realized that the light was wrong. It was only 3:30, but out here it looked as if night were about to fall. The sky was cloudless but dim and exhausted, and the trees… the magnolias, the oaks, the willows, the cypress trees all looked dead and bare. Even the Spanish moss looked washed-out and withered. Perry thought of that scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy and her friends stumbled into the wrong part of the forest where the trees threw apples at them.

He made his way into a clearing before he stopped and turned, trying to get his bearings. He saw no landmarks he recognized, no signs that he was even in the park anymore. Beneath his feet, the asphalt bike path had given way to a beaten dirt track without Perry noticing. He was… he was lost.

In the distance, Perry saw a figure standing by what looked like a well. From here it was hard to tell, but Perry thought it might be an older white man. “Hey!” Perry called. “Hey, excuse me!”

Something about the way the figure’s body responded made him think calling out had been a bad idea. Its body tensed, vibrating with attention like that of a hound. Perry almost expected to hear a howl or bark.

Fear fell on him like a wet blanket. He tried to turn around, or at least halt his approach, but his body paid him no mind. It carried him closer to the figure, and closer still. Barefoot, it wore grimy black judicial robes with a soiled powdered wig that had slipped back on its skull to show its stubbly scalp. Its face seemed translucent white, and its skinny bare legs were dirty, badly scratched by brambles or stickers.

You people and yer goddamn jungle music, it said. No home-training…! Its voice was raspy and ragged, like it had shouted itself hoarse at a Saints game.

He was still roughly twenty-five yards from the judge, but he could hear it whisper just the same. Him, he told himself, it’s a him. It’s not an it, but he knew that wasn’t true.

Just a-drummin’ and a-hollerin’. Ya dirty up the place and vandalize. Paint yer little mess over the statues and the walls.

Perry hadn’t painted anything, but terror broke against his breast to spread across his core, a gelid web. A hollow tremor ran through him as he realized that the Judge wore a noose around its neck. Its frayed edge hung down like a necktie or a severed tongue. Its face wasn’t just unnaturally pale, it was made-up like that of a clown or a mime, and its cheeks were comically rouged. At first, Perry thought the Judge wore dark lipstick, but it seemed more like it had ingested something rotten and thrown it back up. A ragged black stain ringed its mouth and ran down its chin.

It stood next to a well. It was a broad, stone-built structure that rose to the Judge’s waist. As he drew near, Perry became certain that it was the well pulling on him, not the Judge, and certainly not his own two feet. What if it kept dragging him and dragging him until Perry went over the side, and—?

Two large rough sacks lay at the Judge’s dirty feet. Had they been there before?

“We wanna integrate! We want equality!” Now its voice was high and mocking. But ya live like scum, like animals. Without us to keep you in line, ya kill up yer own selves.

This was a dream. Perry had fallen asleep on the skycar and he was having a nightmare.

Moving jerkily, like a poorly operated marionette, the Hanging Judge—his name sounded in Perry’s mind, as if something outside him whispered it—stooped to grab one of the large bags lying on the dead grass and heaved it over the lip of the well. More sacks appeared, a pile of them. The judge grabbed two more, one in each hand, and threw them in as well. Perry realized now that the bags were big enough, lumpy enough, to hold human bodies or remains—not full-grown people, but kids, at least. Boys.

It’s only right. I only do what I got a right ta do.

Now he was about five feet away from the Judge. His legs were still, and his feet didn’t touch the ground. Perry hung suspended before him, his arms stretched to either side. The worst thing about the figure was not its ratty, disheveled wig or torn and dirty robes—not even the pallor of its face or the rust-brown substance that stained its fingers and palms. It was the eyes. The eyes were very human—bloodshot, utterly insane, but human—as if this were no evil spirit or malevolent haint, but a man. A man who barely saw Perry, but hated him just the same.

Eyes locked on Perry’s, the Hanging Judge reached into its robes and withdrew an object. Without looking away from Perry, it tossed the thing into the well.

A foul exhalation rushed out, the dark, red-brown stench of blood and human shit. A thrum ran through the ground beneath Perry’s feet, and the well trembled, belched a tongue of flame. Acrid smoke poured into the air, rising in a column up, up into the dimming sky. Just looking at it made Perry’s eyes water. Hot tears rolled down his cheeks.

Something about the smoke seemed wrong to Perry, and gradually he realized what it was: There were faces and bodies in the smoke. Distended and pulled out of shape as they rose into the sky and dispersed. One face rolled its hollow eyes in Perry’s direction as it went, its mouth pulled into a moan or a scream of anguish.

Perry cut his gaze from the smoke back to the Judge, as if that would relieve his terror. The Judge was bigger now. Before, it had been the size of a normal man—under six feet. Now, it was seven feet if it was an inch, its dirty, blackened teeth clenched as it glowered at Perry.

You don’t need to know who I am, it said. That ain’t none of yore concern. All you need ta know is that if I burnt ya alive right here and now, wouldn’t nobody in the world miss yer Black ass.

“Don’t!” Perry shouted. “Don’t burn me! Please!”

Ask real nice, said the Judge. Beg!

“Please!” Perry wailed. “I didn’t do nothing! I’m not a vandal or—! I didn’t do nothing wrong!”

Too late! Too late! crowed the Judge. Yer mine! Miiiiiiiine!

Perry forced himself awake to find the trolley headed back uptown. It reached Carrollton and turned left from Orleans, gliding back toward Esplanade. Perry had missed his stop. The old ladies were gone now—so was everyone else. He was alone in the trolley except for the driver. His keyboard had fallen from his lap and lay at his feet, smashed as if it had been thrown from somewhere high. It didn’t matter. It had done him no good.

The next day, Perry asked his parents to transfer him to a different school—one where he could focus on STEM—and discontinue his piano lessons.

He couldn’t explain his reasoning to anyone else—maybe because it wasn’t a matter of reason. He knew that if he told Peaches about his dream—he resigned himself to call it that, though he was dead certain it had not been a dream—that she would have gone looking for the Hanging Judge, intent on teaching it a painful lesson. Perry didn’t think the Judge could best Peaches in combat, but that seemed beside the point. The episode had opened a fissure in him, a red and angry wound that refused to heal. Sometimes Perry would find his attention wandering toward the memory, playing along it like fingers along a scar—except it wasn’t a scar, it was still raw, and it ached with a pain that felt as if it had always been with him.

It would do no good to beat the Hanging Judge even if Peaches could get her hands on it. The Judge simply was. It was a fact of life, and the sooner Perry learned to live with that, the sooner the pain would become dull and bearable.

More than a year later, he still felt this way, and he’d never told a soul.

The carriage ride was long and dreary. By now the fog should have burned away, but it stood thick as soup, resolute. Every so often, a landmark swam by—the low, salmon-pink Wm. B. Allen building on North Rampart Street, the Rock’n’Bowl from Mid-City, and Cooter Brown’s, that bar on the end of St. Charles. Perry resolved to just stop looking—the sights weren’t making any sense.

What if the fog ain’t in the city? Perry wondered. What if it’s in me? He shook his head, irritated by his own willingness to upset himself. He considered reaching into the sack for something that would banish the fog or light the way, but the idea sickened him.

Eventually, the fake-clop of the mule’s hooves gave way to the blunter, mealier percussion of hooves against dirt, and they left the haze behind.

The ride had taken less than an hour by Perry’s reckoning, so it should have been broad daylight, but the sky above the carriage showed indigo, as if the sun had just bedded down for the night. Streetlights burned with flames instead of filaments, casting dim and buttery light onto the neighborhood. This street looked like Bourbon or Frenchmen, but longer, with clubs and bars standing three and four and sometimes more to a block. Each one produced a riot of sound—jazz clashing with zydeco, clashing with blues, clashing with soul. People walked, stood, talked, drank all along the sidewalks and in the streets. Every race, creed, and color seemed represented—Black folks, white folks, Asians, Hispanics, actual Indians, even what Perry thought must be Australian Aborigines. There were even animals—pigs, goats, pelicans, giant nutria, even a crab or two. Perry saw a P-body disappear into the crowd as the dead taxi pushed slowly through.

Zombies were out in force, standing stock-still on the corners or shuffling to and fro. As they rode by, one zombie wearing a tux with tails passed another in what must have been a mix-and-match Mardi Gras costume (a sailor’s hat with a pirate’s blouse, puffy genie pants, and cowboy boots) and the Mardi Gras zombie waved while the fancy one just twitched his shoulder and moaned a greeting.

The taxi turned down another street corner—Perry was too busy staring at the zombies to read the sign. He saw zombies often enough, but he’d never seen any dressed so wildly or with so much personality. Bounce music poured out of a club’s open front door. The drums and bass stuttered as the lyrics barked into the street.

Keep it keep it keep da body clean

Keep it keep it keep da body clean

Keep it keep it keep it keep it

Keep it keep it keep it keep it

Keep it keep it keep it keep it

Keep—

As the music receded behind them, the block began to change. The clubs and bars gave way to large gated lawns and austere mansions lit by dirty orange light. As they passed a grand old place with a brick-and-ironwork fence, Perry saw a haint stepping out onto the sidewalk. This was the first time Perry had seen a haint by night, and he was amazed at the way the ghostly white woman shone in the dim.

She paused outside the gate and looked over her shoulder. Another haint, a distinguished-looking Black man whose hair was dusted with gray, stepped out and took her arm. The two of them danced to nothing, dipping down the sidewalk.

“Pie Lady, Pie Lady!” someone sang. The voice was a high, sweet contralto, and now that he thought about it, Perry realized he hadn’t heard it in months.

“Oh no!” Brendy said. “Pie Lady dead?”

“Maybe,” Peaches said. “But maybe not. We here, and we ain’t dead. Maybe haints need haint pie.”

“Pie Lady, Pie Lady!” The Pie Lady turned the corner. She was tall and rawboned, and before her she pushed a wheeled aluminum cart full of pies. She looked whole and solid to Perry, but he supposed she could have been recently zombified.

“Pie Lady!” Brendy shouted as they clopped past. “You still alive?”

“Sure am, darling,” Pie Lady called back. “Better tips on this side of town. They give me gold! Pie Lady, Pie Lady!”

“Aw,” Brendy sighed. “I miss her.”

“The thing about the Dead Side of Town,” Peaches said, “is that it ain’t just for haints and zombies and like that. It’s for everything in Nola that passed on. So all the buildings here is ghosts of buildings used to be on the live side. That might not even be the real Pie Lady. Maybe she left Nola, and the city decided it wanted to remember her.”

“Buildings have ghosts?” Perry asked.

“Everything do,” Peaches said.

“And wait,” Perry said. “You’re telling me there’s haints of people ain’t even dead?”

“It’s complicated,” Peaches said. “I don’t know if I’m explainin’ it right. Ask Mr. Larry about it and he’ll tell you.”

“Is that who we’re going to see?”

As if on cue, the carriage slowed to a stop. “Department of Streets!” the driver called over his shoulder.

Peaches reached into her pockets and retrieved a $45,000 hell note. “Keep the change, baby,” she said as she paid up.

Perry descended first, then helped Brendy down. As he lowered his sister to the cobbled street, in his peripheral vision Perry saw the carriage as it really was. It was a hearse like the ones they used at the Majestic Mortuary on O. C. Haley, but the top of it had been sliced clean off to expose the seats to open air. Instead of regular car wheels, the carriage had big fat tires like on a tractor or a monster truck.

But that wasn’t all: Just as Perry had thought, the “mule” was something else entirely. It was only a skeleton, but it wasn’t composed of mule bones, either. It looked like a six-legged cross between a spider, a giraffe, and a dragon. Fire rested in its mouth and eye sockets.

Perry clenched his eyes shut and heard the rattle of bones as the creature swung its head his way. Something dry scraped the side of Perry’s head. Had it—? It had. It had licked him! What kind of creature had a bony tongue?

“Bahomet!” the driver barked. “Lèches pas!” He snapped the reins, and the carriage moved on.

When he was sure it was gone, Perry opened his eyes and turned to stare up at the Department of Streets. The building stood nine stories high. It reminded Perry of the Cabildo in Jackson Square, but pieces of it seemed blurry and undefined, as if they hadn’t quite decided how to look. The third story jutted out above the entrance, supported by great white columns, and a well-kept patch of cobblestones stretched from the dirt street to the main entrance.

“Well,” Peaches said. “We is where we at.”

“Why would the Dead Side need a Department of Streets?” Perry asked.

“Why wouldn’t it?” Peaches said with a shrug. “Every city gotta have a place you can go to and find out everything you need to know. Here in Nola, this is it.”

The building’s interior was dark. The tiled floors seemed to be black and white with green and gold trim, but with the lights so low, Perry couldn’t be sure. The corridors curved this way and that, lined with heavy wooden doors. Most stood closed, but some hung ajar and others stood entirely open or absent, offering nothing but a blackness akin to that within Perry’s Clackin’ Sack.

Perry had expected to see people working here, just as they did at his father’s office in One Shell Square, but no one was around. Maybe nobody was in charge of the streets after all. And who was in charge of Nola, anyway? Perry had seen the king and queen on TV, but now that he thought about it, he wasn’t sure whether they really ruled anything, and he knew there was a mayor and even a governor. How could there be so many official personages and nobody home in what, it seemed to Perry, should have been an important departmental office?

As always, Peaches walked unconcerned. She seemed to know where they were going, so Perry didn’t worry. Much. Brendy must have worried, though, because in the gloom she reached for Perry’s hand and held it tight. He tried to read his sister’s body language, but she didn’t speak or look his way.

They reached an open doorway beneath which a dim spill of golden light seeped into the hall. Peaches knocked on the frame. “Mr. Larry!” she called. “It’s Peaches! You back there?” The volume of her voice seemed somehow profane in the stillness of that abandoned building.

An answer came back, stretched upon the air. “… Come on back!…”

Peaches led them through a room where dusty books, sheaves of paper, and stacks of accordion folders stood columned, reaching for the ceiling. Many of the stacks were so high that they looked to Perry as if they’d collapse at the slightest provocation. The air in here smelled of learning and neglect. Perry thought of all the potholes and graffiti tags in town and felt he understood a bit more about Nola than he had this morning.

They threaded their way through the maze to find a tired-looking, gray-haired white man standing over a scale model of Nola, complete with a length of the Missus Hipp, and sky trolleys suspended above the streets. He wore a faded blue dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, a brown-and-gray striped tie, and red suspenders. A great big mustache hung over his upper lip, but he didn’t wear a beard. His steel-gray hair stood up in corkscrews, and bags stood out under his eyes. His right eye was a clear and piercing blue, but the left one looked strange to Perry, even in the watery light of the room. It looked almost as if the eye were a fake, carved out of wood and popped into the socket.

“Mr. Larry, these my friends Perry and Brendy,” Peaches said. “Perry and Brendy, this Mr. Laf-ca-dee-o Hearn. I said it right?”

“Yes, darling,” he said. “But you can call me Larry.” His voice was soft and smooth, like oiled leather, but there was something foreign about his pronunciation—a funny little lilt that Perry couldn’t place. Clearly, he was from Away—especially with a name like “Lafcadio.” Perry didn’t even know what country it was from.

Mr. Larry turned to smile down at Brendy. “And aren’t you the sweetest little thing?” He looked like the sort of man who didn’t smile often, so his smiling now counted double. “Brenda is your name?”

“Bren-dee,” she corrected.

He turned to fix Perry with a one-eyed stare. He looked like a giant bird. That thought made Perry feel as if his eyes were being deceived again, the way they had been by the fake carriage and the not-a-mule. Mr. Larry wavered just a little in Perry’s vision, but then his image snapped back more vivid than ever. Looking at him made Perry feel less than real.

“And you’re Perry?”

“Yuh-yes sir.”

He took Perry’s hand and shook it firmly. “Well, I am just pleased as can be to make your acquaintance, young sir.”

“Mr. Larry know everything there is to know about the city,” Peaches said. “And what he don’t know, he know how to find out.”

“I’ve inhabited these environs many a year,” Mr. Larry said. “A long, long time.” Something in his voice reminded Perry of Daddy Deke, and before Perry could close it off, a surge of emotion washed through him.

He shook his head, took hold of himself. Mr. Larry was talking, and Perry felt he should listen. “… first came down from Ohio, I wrote regionalist articles about the goings-on down here,” he said. “New Orleans captured my heart the first time I saw her.”

“Nuh-owlians?” Brendy said. “What that is?”

“He just call Nola that sometimes,” Peaches said with a shrug.

“New Orleans is a different city,” Mr. Larry said. “Much like this one, but sadly lost to time.” He bowed his head, staring at the floor. The way his neck bent reminded Perry of the ostriches at the Audubon Zoo. Maybe he’s crazy, Perry thought, and immediately he felt ashamed.

Mr. Larry looked up and made what was almost a smile. “Forgive me,” he said. “The mind wanders. For one as old as I, there is a wealth of memories to riffle through. Peaches, darling, tell me about your latest adventure. What’s this I hear about you hunting songs?”

How does he know about that? Perry thought, suspicious. But if Mr. Larry was as in-the-know as Peaches said he was, why wouldn’t he?

“Just one song for now,” Peaches said. “‘Jailbird Stomp.’ You know it?”

“We think—I think Jailbird kidnapped my grandfather, sir,” Perry said. He immediately wished he’d kept his mouth shut, but he wasn’t sure why.

“I see,” Mr. Hearn said gravely. He rubbed his smooth white chin. “Of course I know the tune you mean,” he said. “Let me hum a few bars, see if I can entirely recall…

“Now, let’s see…‘Just a visit…’ ‘way up in that…’ ‘I see the way…’ Ah. I got it.” He raised his arms, took a sliding step with his right foot, and spun under the vaulted ceiling. He sang as he bowed his back and shuffled his feet:

I just pay my visit

Don’t live here no full time

I’m gone back home directly

Let the sentence fit the crime.

As soon as the first verse began, Perry recognized the song that had escaped him the last time he tried to sing it. This was it, exactly right, and Perry wondered how Mr. Larry knew it when the song was out running the streets.

I walk on down these dirty streets

With worn-out shoes upon my feet

They call me a jailbird, they call me a junker

They just jealous because I’m free!

Piano, drums, and bass. A horn section tooting quietly, waiting to open up for the solo. The smells of booze and tobacco unfolded into the air, and Perry could almost see Jailbird, in his rumpled suit with his tarnished silver watch chain hanging from his pocket. On his head, he wore a fedora that looked like it had been sat on during a sky trolley ride.

Fear coiled in Perry’s belly, but he felt it from a remove. It could be, he reasoned, that the music was sweeping him so swiftly along that he didn’t have time to fear the magic—but it was more than that. He felt stronger than usual, more solid. Why should he fear his own breath? His own blood?

Perry sensed other people standing with them in the room. It was like the room had become a club, and Perry stood among the crowd. He felt an elbow bump his head. Sorry bout dat, little man.

You good, Perry said silently.

I’m just paying my visit

I don’t live here no full time

I’m gone back home directly

Let the sentence fit the crime.

HEY!

Raucous applause filled the room. After a beat, Perry realized that he, Peaches, and Brendy were hooting and clapping by themselves. “That’s it, baby,” Peaches said. “That’s it right there!”

“Yeah,” Perry said. “Yeah. Now I’ll know him when I see him.”

Mr. Larry raised his eyebrows. “You saw him?”

Perry paused. Mr. Larry’s expression was one of simple curiosity, but Perry sensed that he was missing something. It seemed to him that there were a right answer and a wrong answer to the question, and he wasn’t sure which was which. What he was sure of, however, was that he had no intention of mentioning the Clackin’ Sack or Brendy’s rock to Mr. Larry. Those things were none of the old man’s business. And if they were none of his business, then neither were the other ways in which Perry or his sister were different.

“Well, yeah,” Perry said. “Just from the way you sung and danced. That’s Jailbird all over.”

“Yes, well,” Mr. Larry said slowly. He stared his bird-stare again, this time at Perry, “No harm done, I suppose. I’m sure we were all caught up in the moment… And I did do my best to capture Jailbird.” He paused and took another breath so deep that Perry thought he’d burst once more into song. Instead, he spoke. “So. Let’s review what we know from the lyrics.”

“He was born up in the jail,” Brendy said.

“That he was,” Mr. Larry said. “That he was. So from that, we’re meant to understand that Jailbird feels he belongs in Angola. He thinks of it as his true home, and he’s never far from it. So a man going to prison very soon likes to enjoy himself while he can.”

“So he lookin’ for booze and maybe some women,” Peaches said. “But he ain’t got no money.”

“No money, sure,” Mr. Larry said. “But this is Nola, and there’s one thing spends better here than money.”

“Favors,” Perry said with a nod.

“Yeahyouright,” Peaches agreed. “Why else would a song like Jailbird wanna mess with Daddy Deke? He doing a favor for somebody. Somebody big. So if he drinkin’ on somebody dime—somebody shady…”

“I know where I would go for that kind of enjoyment,” Mr. Larry said.

“Da Cut,” he and Peaches said in unison.

“What’s Da Cut?” Brendy asked. “Where it is?”

“My dear, you just may find out someday when you’re older,” Mr. Larry said. “No one under the age of twenty-one is allowed inside. Alas.”

“Don’t worry,” Peaches said. “We’ll get in.”

“Now, Peaches,” Mr. Larry said. “I’m offering you information from my stores, but not so you can run off and do something rash. You’d do better to contact the City Magicians.”

“Mr. Larry, I got a job to do,” Peaches said. “I gotta protect this city and get all them songs back where they belong so Nola can keep on rockin’. Now, you know I’d go to the grown-ups if I could, but they ain’t never listened to me before and they ain’t like to start now. I’ma get that song with or without your help. Now, if you don’t wanna tell me nothin’ no more, that’s your decision, but I sure could use the knowledge you got.”

Mr. Larry watched Peaches, frowning, for what seemed a long time. Then he looked down and away. “Needs must,” he said with a sigh.

“Aight then,” Peaches said. “So tell me this: Which room in Da Cut got the biggest bar, the loudest music, and the loosest women?”

“That would be the Velvet Room, my dear.”

The dead taxi that floated up to the curb outside the Department of Streets was different from the one that had brought them here—it was a United Cab without wheels. Perry, Peaches, and Brendy piled into the backseat while the driver, a slightly built zombie in a patchwork blazer, sat in the front, holding a copy of the Times-Picayune. She seemed to be reading it, but she had no eyeballs, so Perry wasn’t sure.

When he first saw the zombie, Perry had wanted to hold out for another ride, not because he found the cab or its driver especially creepy but because he had always assumed that zombies must smell pretty bad.

It turned out he was wrong: This zombie, at least, smelled just like the dining room at Dooky Chase—like fried chicken and okra, and hot sausage and good, good apple cobbler—so Perry realized there was still an awful lot about zombies and the dead that he just didn’t know.

Instead of a not-really-a-mule pulling it through the haze, a glowing ball of phosphorescent light preceded the cab. All it seemed to do was illuminate the haze, but that, and shelter from the clammy fog, were enough to make the return to the land of the living much more pleasant.

“That Mr. Larry something else,” Brendy said as the dead taxi glided through the haze. “He slick.”

Perry agreed, but he kept his mouth shut, knowing that Peaches would protest. It wasn’t so much that Perry thought Mr. Larry was a bad guy; he just didn’t naturally trust people he didn’t know—especially white people. Peaches, on the other hand, seemed to see the good in everyone until or unless they proved her wrong. It was all right—even admirable—for her to conduct herself this way, in Perry’s opinion, because her physical strength and invulnerability allowed it.

“Oh, he ain’t slick,” Peaches said. She sat in the center of the backseat with one long leg folded underneath her. Her toes dug into the carpet at the bottom of the car. “He just know a thing or two about a thing or two. And he know how to talk to kids.”

“What you mean?” Perry asked.

“Well, he sweet and nice and everything,” Peaches said. “But you know: most grown-ups is fake nice. Mr. Larry talk to us like we people.”

“Is that because he down with kids, or because he down with Black folks?” Brendy asked.

Peaches shrugged. “Prolly both. I think he was married to a Black lady once. I seen ’em together in a picture.”

“Lots of white folks married to Black folks,” Perry said.

“Yeah, nowdays,” Peaches said, “but the picture was all old-timey. Like from Slave Times.”

“Wait. So he a ghost?” Perry said. “He look like a real person.”

“Haints is people, too, Perry-berry-derry-larry,” Brendy said.

Perry blushed and suppressed a grin.

“I dunno,” Peaches said. “I mean, he smell like a man, and I can hear his heartbeat. But… I dunno. They’s more to people than haints and living. Think about it—the P-bodies, they ain’t dead, but are they really alive? I mean, really really?”

The dead taxi drew to a halt. Perry peered over the front seat as the driver grabbed a mouthpiece off the dashboard and spoke into it. “Ooooah,” she groaned. “Oooooooh. Urrrrrrrrgggh.”

A polite, British-accented voice sounded from the car’s speakers. “Your destination has been reached: Dumaine and Moss Streets.”

“Oh, all right, then,” Peaches said. She peeled off another big bill from her roll and handed it to the driver.

“Unnnh, huh-huh, braaains mRRRRRRUgh!”

“Thank you ever so much. How much change would you like?”

“Thass okay, baby,” Peaches said. “Buy yaself something nice.”

“Unnnh, huh-huh, gggguh-hruuugh. Urrrrgh.”

“Thank you ever so much. Have a long and wonderful life!”

Perry opened his door, and the kids piled out onto the street. “Man,” Brendy said. “Zombies is crazy.”

Before bidding them good luck and seeing them off, Mr. Larry had explained Da Cut and its history. “Some time ago, a team of what I suppose one would call extraterrestrials lost control of their vessel. This conveyance was not so much a flying saucer as a massive circular structure composed of a single piece of black glass. It came down in Mid-City, cutting a swath of destruction from nearby the racetrack to the Bayou Saint John. Historical records say it sat there, sticking out of the water like some mad modernist sculpture, smoldering, for some time, causing a record-breaking winter heatwave.

“Gradually, it sank into the bayou until the water covered it over, where it lies to this day. One night some years later, a drunken businessman by the name of Creighton Durrant fell into the bayou and found that in spite of his extreme inebriation, breathing the bayou’s waters failed to end his life. He awakened at the bottom with ribbons of sunlight streaming down into the waters, which had for many years been filled with the murk and filth of city runoff. Not only did the bayou seem much cleaner after the crash, and the waters entirely breathable, he was able to see that the crew of the spacecraft had opened a panel in its side and fled.

“As it turned out, there were many rooms inside the craft full of alien gewgaws and artifacts, and as he wandered from chamber to chamber, Mr. Creighton hatched a plan. He would return with a crew of contractors and convert the place into a novelty establishment where patrons could experience the thrill of underwater intoxication. After striking a deal with the kings of the various fauna that called the bayou home, Mr. Durrant opened Da Cut to great fanfare. These days, it’s taken on a somewhat seedier aspect—for one thing, it is the only establishment willing to serve not just animals and the deceased, but P-bodies as well.”

“You mean P-bodies do something besides parade?” Brendy asked.

“Rumor has it that they do indeed.” Mr. Larry paused to load his pipe and lit it with a long, thin match. Dirty puffs of smoke trickled from his mouth and nostrils, and he squinted at them through his little cloud. “What’s more,” he said, “P-bodies are not the strangest creatures to be found in Nola proper. The bar also plays host to High Nutrias, Megaprawns, and Grand Crawdads—among other things.”

“What other things?” Perry asked.

“I’ll let you find out for yourself,” Mr. Larry said, “but I’ll say this much: The P-bodies have paraded for far longer than most anyone realizes. Those parading now are not the same ones who first began, which raises the question: Once a P-body parades long enough, walks through enough graffiti, what becomes of him in the end? What are paintbodies really after?”

“What?” Brendy asked. “Tell us!”

“Mr. Larry in onea his moods,” Peaches said with a roll of her eyes. “It ain’t important. And if it gets important, we find out ourselves.”