<<Previously… adj. 1. Existing or occurring before something else in time or order; prior (esp. used in fictitious storylines in which the reader is asked to suspend their disbelief and act as if the concept of “time” exists).>>
written for the theme: St Maximos the Confessor
New Orleans, last week, this week and the next.
Unlike just about every other city, New Orleans subsists almost entirely upon wonder. The only city that may rival it in this regard is Paris, but the one time I was there I didn’t have enough time to snoop around and find out… lets just say that gargoyles and sarcasm don’t mix.
If you think about it, it’s pretty obvious – a city built on a freaking swamp. All the buildings are sinking, sure, but two hundred years of sinking and you can’t really see it. 
Something else is holding them up, and that something else is the reason that I and my winged associate, Scape, were walking through Pirate’s Alley, a little alley in the shadow beside the towering St. Louis Cathedral. Legends tell us that this alley was swarming with pirates back in the day, and that you could obtain all manner of weaponry and other black market paraphernalia.
With my associate floating just behind me, I stepped over the gutters which ran through the center of the alley – veins to pull the rain down into the city’s belly. The sleeve of my jacket kept rubbing my wound, and I rolled the sleeve up to look at the black, crusted circle of burned skin right where the face of a wristwatch would be if I wore one. “This doesn’t seem weird to you?” I asked Scape. “That I don’t even remember getting a big, nasty burn like this?” Scape shrugged, but I could see behind his blue-tinted spectacles and his many eyes that the shrug wasn’t exactly truthful. “Fine, keep it to yourself,” I said.
I walked up to the thin space of brick wall just between the bar (also bearing the name Pirate’s Alley) and the Faulkner House, where William Faulkner wrote his first novel, Soldier’s Pay. (Of course, what they don’t tell you on the walking tours is that Faulkner wrote two other novels before that in the same room, but instead of being shown to the world these two novels served as currency for him to travel to certain “other-places” that I’m under strict contract not to talk about. I read half of one of these novels and liked it, though I’m not much of a reader and nothing of a writer, so what do I know?) I knocked on one of the old bricks and it was pulled away from inside, leaving a rectangle of blackness in its place. A hand that was more like an outline tossed two dice at me, which bounced off my chest and landed in my open hand. Then the brick was slid back into place.
I pounded on the bricks. “Oh come on! Really?”
“Roll da dice,” said a voice from behind the wall.
“What, you have a Jamaican accent now? It’s me – I know about the dice charade.”
“Roll da dice, mon. You get de numbers right, ya get ta live.”
I sighed, crouched down and rolled the dice on the ground. “I got a two and a four.”
“Da spirits say dat is good. You may entah.” I grabbed the dice and stood up as the brick wall opened just enough for me and Scape to turn sideways and slip in. We walked through a thin, dark hallway and into a room that was lit by a few candles and served as the entryway to the haven of the Collectors.
Now, unlike most things in this world, Collectors are almost impossible to see in the daylight and become easier to see the darker it is – though even in the dark they are odd to look at. It’s kind of like when you stare into a light bulb for a few seconds and then turn the light off and see the shape of the bulb glowing there in the darkness – except in this case you see the shape of a small person. There were a dozen of them in the room, all sitting around overturned cardboard boxes, playing cards and drinking what smelled like rum from bottles with the labels ripped off.
“Evening, gents,” I said, walking up to the biggest box, where six of them were convened. One of them nodded and passed me a bottle, which I swigged from and handed to Scape. “Are we ready to do business?”
“You got da goods?” one of them said in that ridiculously fake accent.
I pulled out a once-crumpled-now-smoothed-out brown bag with a barely legible list of items written on it, pulling said items from the pockets of my jacket and setting them on the box. “Four almond croissants and one cheese danish from Croissant d’Or. An Egyptian pyramid. A pencil sharpener.”
“Dat was one item, mon,” said the Collector. “An Egyptian pyramid-pencil sharpener.”
“What? You wrote it on two lines,” I said, showing him the writing on the bag. “That’s not my fault. Just get some scotch tape and stick the pencil sharpener to the bottom of the pyramid.”
The Collector picked up the pyramid and pencil sharpener. “I guess dat might work, yah.”
I continued down the list. “Tony Sachery’s. Five pigeon feathers. Two hard-boiled eggs. And Son House, on vinyl.” (That last one, of course, was not in my pocket but rather being held by Scape, who has an excess of limbs to hold things with, as far as I’m concerned.)
One of them grabbed the Son House record and disappeared further into the haven.
“Your turn,” I said to them. I took the bottle back from Scape and took a swig, then set it on the table. One of them lifted up a fisherman’s net from the other side of the box – the net was full of large glass jars swimming with what looked like fireflies. I reached over and took the incredibly light bag, held it up and looked into the jars. Dozens of tiny pieces of light swirled around in each one. “A good batch,” I said. The best batches were always in the spring.
You see, each time someone experiences awe in the city, experiences wonder – whether it’s the unique mix of architecture that enchants them, or the music and dancing in the middle of the street or a second line appearing out of nowhere, breaking through all the monotony and normalcy that they’ve spent their lives building up around themselves and leaving them open to experience complete and utter wonder welling up from the deepest aspects of themselves – that wonder is expelled into the air around them like a plant releasing pollen, and the Collectors are there, reaching down from light posts, leaning out from passing mule-drawn carriages, letting that wonder float up into the open jars before snapping the lids shut. The Collectors then eat the wonders like pieces of fruit, until only the seeds remain, which float around inside the jars like so many tiny fireflies. So the Collectors get fed, and then Scape and I come along and trade them random trinkets and goods for the seeds, which then get fed into the soil of the city, which keeps the city ripe with fantastical allure, thereby inspiring more wonder in people, and thus the cycle continues.
The raw wail and slapping steel-string guitar of Son House started pouring through the haven from one of the other rooms. Two of the Collectors on the far side of the table looked at their opponents cards while the rest were looking at me, and one of the others stole the eggs while the others weren’t looking. “Well, nice doing business,” I said.
“You want a game?” asked one of them.
“No. You see, unlike you guys I have a memory – and in that memory my pockets were mysteriously emptied the last time I sat down at that table – and we weren’t even gambling. Then you sold all my stuff (and, not to mention, things which weren’t mine) to the French Market in exchange for a bag of donuts, and I had to go track it all down. So I think I can do without a card game today.”
Most of them began snickering. No one seems to know what Collectors actually are. You can’t ask them, ’cause they’ll tell you they’re leprechauns one day and that they’re ghosts or overgrown frogs the next. Some think that these are the males of the same species that sprites belong to. I think it doesn’t really matter – they help the city, and they help me do my job.
“See you gents in a couple of weeks.” I hefted the bag over my shoulder, checked my pockets and followed Scape back out into the alley.
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story and photos Copyright 2010 by Andy Reynolds
for more stories and a menu of the episodes, visit my website: AndyReynolds.net
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