A Wake of Vultures Read online

A Wake of Vultures

  J. Lewis Celeste

  This story is a work of fiction. Other than factual locations like the city of New Orleans and the former Cleveland Joseph Peete Projects, etc., names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used in this work fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2011 by J. Lewis Celeste

  All rights reserved, including the

  right of reproduction in whole or

  in part in any form.

  The photograph presented on the cover was taken by Mr. Charles Richard Clark II on December 28, 2009. The work is titled “American Black Vulture in Puerto Lopez, Ecuador,” the photograph was contributed to the public domain.

  Shelton Chestnut Fanning and Slaw Spokes were sipping rye and water in the back of Clyde’s Place after a nine hour day of ripping pipe out of a former residence on a former street in the aftermath of Katrina. They’d done well for their efforts, better than average and they averaged very well since Slaw saw opportunity in other’s misery. They knew it wouldn’t last forever; already the big companies were clearing neighborhoods faster than they could scour a house. But their circumstances were good in the now, and they were banking money.

  “Shittin, youse a fuckin mess,” Slaw said laughing.

  Shittin, forgotten as Shelton since early childhood cause his older brother shit on him so much the nickname stuck, winked at Slaw.

  “I aint no kinda mess Slaw, jus admiring the view and forgot myself.”

  “Ha!” Slaw quipped, “you admire all you want Shittin, but you know Sheila won’t even spit your way, no matter. You could have it all, and you won’t, and still get no ass from her!”

  Shittin had been staring at Sheila the bar maid when she bent over suddenly to pick up a napkin. She unknowingly rewarded his lustful eyes with an exclusive view of her plump round ass. She was completely unaware that he consummated their relationship in that brief moment; oblivious that he spilled his drink down the front of his shirt, jerked upright violently and knocked his chair over in the process. She aint notice none of it, but Slaw did and he was cackling like a madman. Sheila was also from around the way, and she knew Shittin & Slaw since grade school. Slaw was dead on. Sheila wouldn’t cast an amorous glance at Shittin even if he was the last dick walking. But Shittin craved that booty, has since the fifth grade, and in his mind she was his girl.

  It was getting late and it was time to get as the saying goes. Slaw was bone tired and Clyde might slide by any minute bitchin ‘bout his tab so he downed his bourbon and told Shittin they were out. They walked into another sticky night. Wet air licked by bullfrogs and crickets clung to them like a damp wool blanket. Liked by little else than reptiles and insects, the perpetual humidity in the Big Easy was an unfortunate constant. But like any native whether from the South, the Midwest, or the Northeast, local folk endure their weather peculiarities. For the draw of why we live in a particular climate is in the blood. And for Slaw he aint never known nothing else and as far as he knew no one in his family line was the wiser. He loved the Bayou and the dark sticky nights were so regular and normal in his life he barely even noticed them.

  They had the one truck. An old red Ford with no amenities but a couple of torn seats, the right number of mirrors and a bed that they filled every day with Katrina gold. It has been almost seven months since the hurricane and a good seven for him and Shittin, his partner and friend. Pals since the age of nine, they were linked by neighborhood and upbringing and welded together by that very association.

  Well known in their hood, Shittin as an oddity, Slaw as his protective friend, they were the “Abbott & Costello” of the Nolia. The only deviance being Abbott was Slaw and Slaw would fuck you up if you fucked with him or with Shittin. They were buds and always will be. They were raised in HUD projects, the notorious Magnolia, Central City New Orleans. Bred into every government entitlement, locked into a grid of streets and buildings, a box if you will, disenfranchised from even the hope of “what if,” replaced by idle curiosity when the pigeons took wing to see any kind of flight. This was their life up until the storm, up until Slaw saw opportunity. While others expected the government to swoop in and save them, Slaw knew money was in the air or “in the water,” but figuring out the angles was the rub and he put much thought to it. Calamities of this sort always offer a horizon, but a man has to look for it. And Slaw did. The “wealthy folk,” them business and home-owners, all those outside the world of “I’m entitled,” were well insured and although they cried and hollered over their bad luck and that bitch Mother Nature, they readily abandoned their mangled properties for others to clean up. To clean up or to clean out became the question though, and this was answered by those left behind. Thus the Slaw & Shittin salvage team was born. Incorporated not more than eight days after the levees broke and red choppers joined the pigeons over the soaking malaise that was suddenly not so easy anymore.

  They looted first, of course they did. This wasn’t crime to them it was opportunity, a smorgasbord of tasty options. It evolved surreal enough, the looting, one day law and order, consequences and everyday routine; the next, no man’s land, predator frenzy and utter abandonment … I mean outside the hood. For disenfranchised youth the chaotic aftermath of Katrina was irresistible. But Slaw realized sooner than most that real profit wasn’t in common theft. Many “liquid” items were ruined by the water and the stuff that was saleable sold less than value because, no pun intended, the market was flooded. Not more than one week of rowing up and down drowned neighborhoods or scouring debris fields covered in mud, mold and mosquitoes did it dawn on Slaw that the fuckin pipes were all over the place. Like a messy kindergarten sculpture but on a real scale: clay (mud); finger paint (broken plaster walls, siding and roof tiles); tinsel and pipe cleaners (plumbing); and the occasional real item, a toy car or a doll (a real car or a real dead person). But back up, the epiphany that came to Slaw was Katrina gold, “hi-bright,” residential copper tubing sticking out through the mess of former homes. Endless strands of water pipe, tons of it, were poking out of mud and wood ready and waiting. Slaw remembered the days before Katrina when crack fiends broke into abandoned buildings and ripped out the copper. They would walk through the streets with long tubes of it balanced on their bony shoulders. Sold by weight, they got paid enough to spark up, paid enough to make it worth the efforts of demolition. And here they were paddling through shit with fuckin pipe constantly in the way.

  ‘Fuck yeah,’ thought Slaw, ‘money.’

  So like Forty-niners they were off at a gallop mining through the wreckage of others’ lives, their profit, their providence, their Katrina Gold. Slaw did some research and learned that “bright” (#1 copper tubing) fetched $3.20 - $3.60 a pound. The salvage yards would get upwards of $4.50 for the same. A dollar profit per pound was serious incentive to buy bulk scrap and with scavengers willing and eager and copper pipes sticking out of the wet broken land like hair on the back of drowning Ymir, the race to pluck those valuable strands began. But understand just because pipe was all over the place it wasn’t like playing pickup sticks.

  These entrepreneurs, and there were many of them, worked for their profit and Slaw and Shittin were in the thick. They cut and dug and pulled and got hurt and cursed and sweat and fought with their competitors collectively dubbed “Salvage Artists,” and altogether they gutted the rotting ruins of nature’s wrath, biting like gnats the decaying back of Midgard, Odin’s kill, for their profit.

  Of course this influx of wealth did not curtail efforts to ensure they were duly compensated by the government for the deplorable response to the disaster. “Shit happens,” some say
, but the reaction to shit happens was almost worse than the storm’s destruction for many, including Slaw and Shittin. So when word spread that compensation claims were being taken and lists for new housing were being compiled and free food and necessaries distributed, they stood in every line. Lifelong residents of subsidized housing they couldn’t claim the loss of a home, not like anyone who lived in Magnolia actually called their place home for there is no hominess in cinderblock, fluorescent bulbs and peeling paint. Originally built in the early 1940’s and expanded in 1955, the Magnolia Projects, also known as the Cleveland Joseph Peete Projects straddled the 11th and 12th ward. Considered one of the largest housing projects, Magnolia had over 1400 occupied units at one time. Known as “The Wild Magnolia” in the 1980’s and 90’s it was notorious for its very own crime rate, statistically high enough to be comparable to some cities, Cities! Even before Katrina hit many of the buildings in the project were abandoned and fenced off but Slaw and Shittin were still there when the waters came as were hundreds of others. They were forced out after the