Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Warren
Levette’s letter had brought a warmth to my heart that I hadn’t expected. I immediately felt his absence in the knowledge that it would be days before I saw him again. Talking to him on that bench had changed something between us, and I hoped that he felt it, too.
Each day passed by with a monotonous, dull tone, and I realized just how bored I had been before Levette turned up in New Orleans with his pretty voice and handsome face.
I worked so much that friends were hard to keep, and I knew that my troubled soul was a hard thing for other people to deal with.
But Levette didn’t seem to mind. He almost welcomed my sadness, like our sorrows called to each other. The more I thought about him over those few lonely days, the more I realized that he seemed lonesome himself.
Five days dragged by, and I was exhausted by the nothingness in my life.
I missed my family, even when anger was etched into almost every memory of them.
I longed to sit with them around the dinner table and listen to the thick accent of my parents.
Then I would remember the fights that would occur during those dinners, the dangerous tone of my father, and my brain would jumble all my thoughts and emotions until I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
“Why don’t you head home?” Gerald, my boss, asked, motioning around the room. “It’s not like we’re packed. I can manage the end of shift.”
He was right. It had been a slow evening, with only a few of our regulars sitting around the bar. I nodded and pulled my apron off, dumping it beneath the counter.
It was barely midnight when I left The Carousel and headed home. The scent of food permeated the air, but notes of alcohol from the passersby mixed with it, turning my hunger into nausea.
The nightlife of New Orleans was beautiful and messy, and I truly loved it, even if I didn’t partake often.
I had never learned how to have fun, to let go and be free.
I was always working: first to help my family survive, and then to make sure I could afford to live by myself.
Drinking and revelry weren’t often an option for me, even if sometimes I wished they were.
I walked through the lamplit streets, smiling and nodding my head politely to anyone I knew.
As I got further into the Quarter, I found myself on Royal Street.
In my youth, I had never been allowed to even mention the French Quarter or any of its beloved streets for fear that my mother would beat the Devil out of me.
Now, I got to admire all the little stores and their busy windows filled with potions and the likes.
All were authentic and guaranteed to work according to the signs they had up in their doors.
“What are you doing here?” a voice questioned from the dark recess entrance of a storefront. “Ma was right, then. You’re married to evil.”
Recognition hit me in an ugly wave as my older brother stepped out of the shadows, a sneer across his face. It had been a few years since I had seen him last, and time had been cruel. His features had sharpened into points, much like our father, and there was a meanness in his eyes.
“Robert. It’s…good to see you, brother.”
He reared back as though I’d hit him, spitting on the pathway between us. “I’m no brother of yours. Look at you, prancing through the den of deviants like it’s home to you. It more than likely is, I suppose. It would make sense that you’d spend time with like-minded heathens.”
Even though I knew Robert thought and acted like my parents, hearing such cruelty from his own lips shocked me. I had expected him to be an accomplice to their misery, not that he would turn out to be like our father.
“I was simply walking home, Robert. If I were not your brother and was just some deviant as you so labeled me, perhaps I would ask why you are here—in the same place as I—if it is so in league with evil. Tell me, brother, does Father know you’re out at such an hour and visiting the French Quarter, no less? ”
Within seconds, Robert had grabbed me by the shirt and slammed me against the shadowed wall where he was first hidden. The nasty gleam in his eyes mimicked the very one I’d seen in my father’s every time he beat me and left me a little more broken.
“Whatever you are trying to insinuate, I suggest you keep to yourself. I am a God-fearing man, Warren. I would never behave like you.”
A bitterness I tried to keep at bay crept up, and I found myself laughing in my brother’s face. I had been tormented for so long that his anger didn’t overwhelm me with fear as it once would have.
“I was not insinuating anything, but I fear that your reaction makes me question things. You may think what you want about me, brother, but I am honest about who I am.”
His fist connected with my gut first, and then my face as I doubled over. He hit me twice more, until I could feel the blood pouring from my nose and my eye beginning to swell with the force.
“Tell me again how honest you are when I know what you keep hidden. I remember the reason Father beat you as a child, and I bet little Frederick does, too. You ever tell anyone you saw me in this disgusting place, and I will make sure everyone knows just how much of a deviant you are.”
Robert let me go and I fell to my knees with a thud, a loud groan leaving my mouth as my stomach tensed.
His foot connected with my stomach and sides, over and over, until I was barely able to wheeze a breath.
I saw him step backwards, turning back to look at me with a smug, satisfied look on his face.
“I know who I am, Robert, and I’m happy with that. But all you will ever be is Father’s shadow, a cheap copy of a vile man. I can live with myself and be happy, but you will always be bitter and alone,” I called out to him as he walked away, my voice shaking with reverberations of my physical pain.
I might have passed out as I lay outside that store because the next time I remember moving, the street lamps were duller and the raucous noise normally heard was dull in the Quarter.
Getting to my feet was difficult and I had to grip onto the window ledge and pull myself up, holding my stomach with my other arm.
It had been years since someone had hurt me or beat me, but I suddenly reverted back to the little boy who had been hurt by those he loved.
Tears of betrayal and anger ran down my cheeks as I stumbled down Royal and onto Dumaine Street.
While New Orleans was known for the welcomeness they showed people, the one thing the Nola people didn’t do was get involved in the drama of others.
People feared for themselves, and so as I struggled my way down the streets, nobody stopped to help or ask me if I was okay.
It angered me then, though I now understand that when people are scared, they prioritize their own protection. It’s human nature, after all.
I lost track of where I was and how to get home at one point, my knees giving out beneath me. I fell onto my side and cried out, sobs following until my throat ached.
“God, please,” I whispered, rolling onto my back to look at the stars. “Help me.”
Tears burned my eyes and stained my cheeks, mixing with the blood I’m sure covered my face.
The sky was dark, but the stars twinkled brighter and brighter as I watched, reminding me of Levette.
Look at the dark sky and think of me. And I did.
As I drifted in and out of consciousness, my thoughts remained on the strange man made of darkness and sorrow that had already so changed my world already.