The Devil’s Punchbowl

‘Good, good.’

‘How was your visit to Greenville?’

‘Fine. Got some good people up there, and they really want the plant. I still like this place, though,’ Necker says almost wistfully. ‘It’s got a romance to it that the other cities don’t have–apart from New Orleans, and there’s no possibility of making that work now.’

I figured as much, but it’s a relief to hear it confirmed.

‘I did an overflight three days after the levees broke,’ he says, looking down at a string of barges on a bend in the river below. ‘Hauled some relief supplies down to Biloxi. Christ, it looked like the End of Days down there. There were still people stranded on the interstate. I couldn’t believe it.’

I shake my head but make no comment. The enormity of the havoc wreaked by Katrina is beyond words. We do what we can, then start again the next day. ‘You want to view the industrial-park sites first? Or look at the city?’

‘Let’s head straight down to the old Triton Battery site. I’m pressed for time today. Okay with you, Major?’

‘It’s your nickel,’ McDavitt replies.

On any other day, Necker’s haste might worry me, but today I’ll take any excuse to get time alone with my thoughts. As we drone southward, following the vast river, the city unfolds beneath us like an Imax film, the classic city on a hill, one of only three on the eastern side of the Mississippi from Cairo to New Orleans. From two thousand feet, you can see the nineteenth-century scale of Natchez, the church steeples still taller than all but two commercial buildings; yet we’re still low enough to take in the Gone With the Wind aura of the grand mansions set amid the verdant forests of the old plantations. A year ago I could rattle off our claims to fame with poetic enthusiasm: how Natchez in 1840 had more millionaires per capita than any city in America; how we survived the Civil War with our property intact, if not our pride; and how, after the white gold of cotton failed, the black gold of oil replaced it. But experience has drained my enthusiasm, and my ambivalence is difficult to mask.

Still…a more picturesque American town could not be found anywhere. For sheer beauty Natchez is unmatched along the length of the river; with its commanding site above the river Mississippi it surpasses even New Orleans, and one would have to travel to Charleston or Savannah to find comparable architecture. But gazing down from this helicopter, I no longer see the city I knew during the first eighteen years of my life, nor even the town I found when I returned seven years ago. Now I see Natchez through the mayor’s eyes, and what I see is a town crippled by a mistake made thirty years ago, when the majority of whites pulled out of the public school system in response to forced integration. A city whose public schools are 90 percent filled with the descendants of slaves, and whose four private schools struggle to provide a superior but redundant education to mostly white students, leavened by a few lucky African-Americans (the children of affluent professionals or dedicated middle-class parents–or those kids recruited to play football) plus the majority of Asians and Indians in the county, who avoid the public school system if they can. Changing this state of affairs was my primary reason for running for mayor, for until it is changed, we’re unlikely to attract any new industry larger than Hans Necker’s as-yet-unborn recycling plant. But thus far I have failed in my quest–publicly and miserably.

Necker asks a lot of questions as we fly, and I answer without going into detail. Every road, field, park, school, and creek below holds indelible memories for me, but how do you explain that to a stranger? Necker seems like the kind of guy who’d like to hear that sort of thing, but the truth is, I’m simply not in the mood to sell. That’s one good thing about casino companies: you don’t have to sell them. They come to the table ready to deal. And like the plain girl dreading prom month, we can’t afford to be too picky about whom we say yes to. We got our prison the same way. (It might look like a college athletic dorm, but the razor wire doesn’t let you forget its true purpose.)

After flaring near the earth beside the river south of town, Major McDavitt sets the chopper down on the partially scorched cement where the gatehouse of the Triton Battery plant once stood. For me this is an uncomfortable visit, because I set the fire that destroyed the shuttered hulk that remains of the factory.

‘You okay?’ Necker asks with a smile.

‘Not bad, actually. Thanks to Major McDavitt.’

The pilot holds up a gloved hand in acknowledgment.

‘Take a walk with us, Danny,’ Necker says.

McDavitt removes his headset.

‘I always use military pilots,’ Necker explains, climbing out of the chopper. ‘Combat pilots when I can get them. They don’t lose their cool when things go awry, which always happens, sooner or later.’

I follow the CEO down to the cracked concrete, bending at the waist until I clear the spinning rotors. McDavitt gets out and walks a couple of strides to our left, like a wingman on patrol. He looks about fifty, with the close-cropped hair and symmetrical build of a Gemini-era astronaut.

‘Lots of history around this town,’ Necker says, walking toward the burned-out battery plant. ‘Not all of it ancient.’

I feel Major McDavitt come alert beside us.

‘For example,’ Necker goes on, ‘this plant here was used by a drug dealer as a hideout until somebody in present company took care of business.’

Danny McDavitt gives me a sidelong glance.

‘And we’re not too far,’ Necker continues, ‘from where somebody ditched a chopper under suspicious circumstances.’ The CEO beams with pleasure at the hitch in McDavitt’s step. ‘I just want you boys to know I do my homework. I’ve checked you both out, and I figure whatever you did, you had good reasons. I check out everybody I plan to do business with, and I’d like to do some business in this town.’

I stop, and they stop with me. Necker has to look up at me, since I’m three inches taller, but I’m the one at a disadvantage.

‘I’m going to be straight with you, Penn,’ he says. ‘I want to bring my plant here. I want to buy that old factory there and recycle all the debris to show the town I mean business. There’s one obstacle in the way, though. This has been a union town since 1945. I used to be a big supporter of unions–belonged to one myself when I worked as a meat packer. But they got out of hand, and you see the result.’ He waves his hand at the abandoned battery plant.

It’s a little more complex than that, I think, but this doesn’t seem the time to argue U.S. trade policy.

‘Mississippi has a right-to-work law, and I plan to use that. But bottom line, I need to know one thing.’ A stubby red forefinger shoots up. ‘When push comes to shove on something–and it always does–am I gonna have your support? Are you going to be in office a year from now, when I need you? If I’m going to bring my plant down here, I need to know you’re going to be the man in charge. I can’t afford some yokel, and I can’t afford the other thing.’

Major McDavitt cuts his eyes at me. The other thing?

‘Don’t get the wrong idea,’ Necker says quickly. ‘I don’t care what color a man is, so long as he can tell red ink from black. But race politics gets in the way of business, and with your fifty-fifty split, I can foresee some problems. I figure you’re my best shot at solving those problems.’

‘You’re saying that if I answer yes to your question, you’ll bring your recycling plant here?’

‘That’s the deal, Mr Mayor.’

‘What makes you think I won’t be here in a year?’

Necker flashes a knowing smile. ‘For one thing, this is a detour from your main career. For another, I’ve heard you might not be too happy in the job.’

‘I won’t lie to you. It’s been wearing me down pretty fast. It’s tough to get everybody swinging on the same gate, as they say around here.’

Necker nods. ‘Politics in a nutshell. But my research also says you’re no quitter, and you’re as good as your word.’

Yesterday I might have confessed that I might not be here next October. But given my involvement with Tim, I’m not sure how to reply. ‘Can you give me a few days to answer you?’

‘How does two weeks sound?’

‘I’ll take it.’

Necker grins and starts to say something else, but his cell phone begins blaring what sounds like a college fight song. He holds up his hand, checks the screen, then with a grunt of apology marches away to take the call, leaving me staring out over the mile-broad Mississippi with Danny McDavitt. A mild breeze blows off the reddish brown water, and the pilot squints into it like a man measuring wind speed by watching waves.

‘What do you think about Necker?’ I ask, casually checking my cell phone for further messages. There are none.

‘Kinda pushy,’ McDavitt says after a considerable silence. ‘But they’re all like that.’

‘You fly a lot of CEOs?’

The pilot’s lips widen slightly in what might be a smile. ‘Not these days. I flew charters in Nashville after I got out of the air force. Don’t ask. At least this guy knows he puts his pants on same as the next guy.’

I look back toward the Triton Battery plant and see Necker speaking animatedly into his phone. ‘You think he’ll do what he says? You think he’ll bring his plant here?’

McDavitt spits on the rocks at the edge of the parking lot. ‘Yep.’ Then he turns toward me, and his blue-gray eyes catch mine with surprising force. ‘Question is, will you be here when he needs you?’

While I ask myself the same question, Necker suddenly appears beside me. ‘I’m afraid we’ve got to head back right away. I’ve got to make an unexpected stop on my way to Chicago.’

‘Chicago?’ This is the first I’ve heard about Chicago.

Necker leads us quickly back to the helicopter. ‘I thought you knew. I promised my granddaughter I’d watch her first dance recital. And now I have to make a stop in Paducah on the way.’

The selectmen will panic if Necker isn’t in town for the festival. ‘Are you coming back for the balloon race?’

The CEO grins. ‘Are you kidding? I can’t wait to see your face when the canopy starts flapping and the lines start creaking at three thousand feet. I’ll be back by dawn tomorrow.’ Necker turns to McDavitt. ‘Let’s get airborne, Major. And don’t waste any time getting back.’

McDavitt nods and climbs into the cockpit. As I clamber in behind him, I feel my cell phone vibrate on my hip. With Necker beside me, I almost ignore the message, assuming it must be Paul Labry asking how my sales pitch is going. But then I remember Tim’s text and decide to check it. This text is from the same number as before. Tilting the phone slightly away from Necker, I read, Tonight, bro. Same place, same time. Don’t respond 2 this message. No contact at all. And bring a gun, jic. Peace.

As I reread the message, the free-floating anxiety that has haunted me since last night suddenly coalesces into a leaden feeling of dread, as close to a premonition of disaster as anything I’ve felt before.

‘Everything copacetic?’ Necker asks from what seems a great distance.

‘Fine,’ I rasp, still staring at the message. ‘Just my daughter texting me from school.’

I grab for my seat as the chopper bucks into the air.

‘Easy, now,’ Necker says soothingly. ‘Sit back and enjoy it. Boy, what I’d give to still have my little girl at home. It goes by so damn fast, you miss most of it. It’s only later that you realize it. That you were in the presence of a miracle. You know?’

I nod dully. Bring a gun? Jic? Just in case? In case of what? I’d give anything to take back the encouragement I gave Tim to pursue evidence against Mr X and his employers. Yet somewhere beneath my panic surges the hope that Jessup, even after thirty years of drug abuse and aimlessness, has somehow proved able to do what he promised to do.

‘Don’t you miss a minute of it,’ Necker advises. ‘But, hell, what am I telling you? You had the sense to get out of the city and bring your kid to a place like this. A place where people are who they say they are, and you don’t have to worry about all the sick crap that goes on out there in the world.’

I flick my phone shut and force myself to nod again.

‘A goddamn sanctuary,’ Necker pronounces. ‘That’s what it is. Am I right?’

‘Absolutely.’

I guess I’m not above a little selling after all.

8

The hours after receiving Tim’s text message are an emotional seesaw for me; panic alternates with wild hope that Jessup has somehow obtained evidence of fraud and gotten safely away with it. This hope is a tacit admission that Tim’s allegations are neither exaggerations nor paranoid fantasies. The maddening thing is that I’ll have to wait until midnight to talk to him. I assume his choice of hour means that he intends to stay on board the Magnolia Queen until the end of his shift. Why doesn’t he simply walk off the boat, I wonder, and race up to my office at City Hall? My endless analysis of this question puts me into such a state that Rose, my secretary, asks repeatedly whether I’m all right and even convinces me to lie down for an hour on a cot in the civil defense director’s office. Lying by the director’s red phone, I find it almost impossible not to call Tim, but somehow I manage it. If he’s willing to risk his life, the least I can do is take his precautions seriously.

The afternoon passes slowly, with Rose doing her best to handle the calls from the various committees and charities using the Balloon Festival to generate support or contributions, and Paul Labry fielding complaints from merchants and residents involving zoning and noise violations. Like the other selectmen, Labry has a full-time job, but he always makes an extra effort to help me during crunch times.

From the volume of calls and the traffic outside City Hall, one thing is certain: Even if Jessup is right and Natchez is festering with corruption beneath its elegant facade, the ‘Balloon Glow’–tonight’s official opening ceremony of the Great Mississippi River Balloon Festival–will go on.

I manage to get out of City Hall by six and collect Annie from my parents’ house, where she usually spends her after-school time. I can tell she’s excited as we drive toward the bluff, and she blushes as the police wave us through the big orange barricades at Fort Rosalie. Annie’s at the age where anything that makes her stand out from her friends mortifies her, but I sense that she’s enjoying the VIP treatment.

The sun has already set below the bluff, and the truncated roars of flaming gas jets sound from beyond the great mansion whose grounds provide the setting for the town’s biggest festival. Annie gasps as we round the corner of Rosalie, and I feel my heart quicken. The term balloon glow perfectly describes this night ritual; from a distance the balloons glow like giant multicolored lanterns against the black backdrop of sky. But up close, among the inflated canopies swaying in the wind, the experience is much more intense. When the pilots do ‘burns’ for the spectators, you can feel the heat from thirty feet away. Yellow and blue flares light the night like bonfires, awing children and adults alike. The tethered balloons tug against the ropes binding them to the earth, and kids who grab the edges of the baskets feel themselves lifted bodily from the ground. The ceremony is a perfect prologue for tomorrow’s opening race, when the balloons will leap from the dewy morning grass and fill the skies over the city, pulling every attentive soul upward with them.

‘I’m glad ya’ll decided to go ahead with it,’ Annie says, grabbing my arm as we hurry to join the people streaming among the balloons. ‘This will help the refugee kids forget about the hurricane.’

She tugs me toward the nearest balloon, and I use her momentary inattention to check my cell phone for further text messages. I don’t know if I’m hoping Tim will cancel the meeting or move it forward. All I know for sure is that I want the truth about Golden Parachute. But there’s no message.

I spend the first forty-five minutes with Annie, looking at everything she instructs me to and buttonholing pilots so she can ask them all kinds of questions about the flight parameters of hot-air balloons. I get buttonholed myself a few times, by citizens with questions or complaints about their pet interest, but Annie has become adept at extricating me from such conversations. TV crews roam the grounds of Rosalie with their cameras: one from Baton Rouge, ninety miles to the south; another from Jackson, a hundred miles to the north. I promise a producer from the Baton Rouge station that I’ll give her five minutes at the gate of Rosalie, where they’re interviewing pilots and Katrina refugees. I plan to take Annie with me, but two minutes after I make the promise, we walk right into Libby Jensen, and something goes tight in my chest.

‘Libby! Libby!’ Annie cries, running forward and giving her a hug. ‘Aren’t the balloons awesome?’

‘Yes, they are,’ Libby agrees, smiling cautiously at me above Annie’s head.

Libby is a Natchez native who went to law school in Texas, married a partner at her Dallas firm, had a child by him, then divorced him after discovering that he’d kept a series of mistresses during the first decade of their marriage. She liked practicing law about as much as she liked being cheated on, so she brought her son back home and used her settlement to open a bookstore. Her charisma and sharp business sense have made the shop a success, and several author friends of mine stop to sign books there when making the literary pilgrimage from Oxford to New Orleans. After Caitlin left town, Libby and I found that our friendship quickly evolved into something that eased the loneliness we both felt, and that mutual comfort carried us through most of a year. But her son, Soren, has some serious anger issues–not to mention a drug problem–and Libby and I disagreed about how best to handle that. In the end, that disagreement drove us apart.

Tonight is the first time we’ve found ourselves together since ending our relationship, and I’ve worried it would be awkward. But Libby’s soft brown eyes shine as she hugs Annie, and in them I see an acknowledgment that the sadness she feels is in part her own choice.

‘Where’s Soren?’ Annie asks, reminding me that Tim said he’d seen Libby’s son down on the Magnolia Queen, looking high as a kite.

Libby rolls her eyes to disguise the anxiety that’s her constant companion. ‘Oh, running around with his friends, complaining about the bands they booked this year. Where are you guys headed?’

‘Daddy has an interview,’ Annie says, obviously not enthused by the idea of standing by while I play talking head.

‘Well, you can just come with me while he acts like a big shot for the cameras.’ Libby gives me a wink. ‘I just saw some of your friends diving into the Space Walk.’

‘Can I, Dad?’

I question Libby with a raised eyebrow, and she nods that she meant the invitation sincerely.

‘Okay. I’ll catch up in a half hour or so. We’re not staying long, though. I have some work to do tonight, and I want to be rested for that balloon flight tomorrow.’

‘I’d like to see that,’ Libby says, chuckling like a wiseass.

‘I’m making him take a barf bag,’ Annie tells her. ‘Seriously.’

I wave them off and head back toward Rosalie, wondering where Tim Jessup is at this moment. Dealing blackjack on the boat docked below the cemetery? Or hiding out in some hotel room with stolen evidence, chain-smoking cigarettes while he waits for midnight to come? There are no hotel rooms available, I answer myself. Implicit in my worry about Tim is a fear of violence, and it strikes me that violence has always been a part of the ground beneath my feet. Fort Rosalie, the original French garrison in Natchez, was built in 1716. In 1729 the enraged Natchez Indians massacred every French soldier in the fort to punish them for ill treatment–for which French reinforcements slaughtered every native man, woman, and child they could find the following year. Rosalie went on to become General Grant’s headquarters during one night of the Civil War, but by then it had presided over untold numbers of robberies, rapes, and murders in the Under-the-Hill district that lay in its shadow. Is it possible, I wonder, that in some dark clearing across the river men are gathering to watch starving animals tear each other to pieces while half-naked girls serve them drinks?

As I round the east corner of Rosalie’s fence, a tungsten video light splits the dark, and several brown heads begin bobbing in its glare. If the gas jets of the balloons look like lanterns, the video light is a white-hot star illuminating a blond woman with a handheld mike standing before Rosalie’s gate. She’s interviewing some children who apparently fled here from the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. Two TV trucks are parked nearby, and more than a dozen journalists call questions to the kids from the shadows behind the light.

As I near the spotlight’s halo, the producer I spoke to earlier waves me over and tells me what she wants: the basic Chamber of Commerce routine. When the kids finish, I take their place before the gate and squint against the glare while my pupils adapt.

On TV I tend to come across more like a district attorney than a mayor, and this has been a double-edged sword. Despite my diminished enthusiasm for the job, after two years in office I can give the city’s PR line on autopilot. This year’s Balloon Festival, however, has more meaning than usual. With the city’s hotels and shelters filled to bursting with suffering families, many locals believed we should cancel the races out of respect for the hurricane refugees, and also to keep from straining the city’s overtaxed resources. But the Balloon Festival is a twenty-year tradition, and I, along with several community leaders, championed the idea that the work required to bring off the races under extraordinary circumstances would prove a unifying force for the community. As I explain this to the brightly blank eyes of the TV reporter, she acts as though my words amaze her, but I know she’s thinking about her next question, or her eye makeup, or where she can get a sugared funnel cake like the one a refugee kid is eating. I try to wrap up my pitch with some enthusiasm for the citizens who’ll see the report from home.

‘Critics argued that with the hotels filled, the balloon pilots would have nowhere to stay,’ I say, ‘but dozens of families have generously opened their homes so that the festival could go forward. We’ve had more volunteers for the support crews than we’ve ever had before. After feeling the outpouring of energy up on the bluff tonight, I believe events are going to bear out our optimism. The best thing you can do in the aftermath of tragedy is to focus on the present, because that way lies the future. Thank you.’

I move to step out of the light, but suddenly a cool, calm female voice with no accent reaches out of the dark and stops me.

‘Mr Mayor, some refugees have claimed that they’re not receiving the relief checks that the federal government promised them. Could you comment on this for our readers?’

Caitlin. She is here.

I shield my eyes from the glare. ‘What paper are you with?’ I ask innocently.

‘The Natchez Examiner,’ Caitlin answers with the faintest trace of irony. ‘Caitlin Masters.’

‘Well, Ms Masters, welcome back to Natchez. As for the relief checks, they’re a federal matter and consequently not within my purview. Could someone kill that light, please?’

‘What about the contention of two of your selectmen?’ Caitlin continues, a fine barb of challenge in her voice. ‘They say there’s been a great deal of fraudulent application for relief by refugees, with some people going through the check line three and four times with one Social Security number.’

To my surprise, the spotlight goes dark, but I can’t pick Caitlin’s face from the red afterimage floating before my eyes. ‘As I said, those relief checks are being issued by the federal government; therefore, fraud in obtaining them falls under federal jurisdiction. I suggest you speak to the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security.’