Shades of Brown

            by Joe Shemuel

 

She sat up, glancing over to make sure Benoit was still asleep. He was. She gingerly slung her legs over the side of the bed, and then checked again. After reassuring herself one final time, she slowly put both feet on the floor, picked up her clothes, and slipped them on. It wasn’t easy in the dark. She didn’t bother to put on her shoes. Then she tiptoed over to his side of the bed, to the nightstand. On it were a few keys, a small foil wrapper, and a wallet, the leather worn and brown, homemade maybe. She took a final look into his eyes, which were still shut, and paused, searching. His chest rose and fell, his feet twitched, but his eyes were sedentary. Looking at just his face, she would’ve guessed he was dead. She picked up the wallet and walked straight out the door, taking care to make sure the flimsy aluminum didn’t slam. She escaped out across the tracks into Gautier and didn’t look back.

            The sun in Gautier had not yet risen and the birds, those that were left, hadn’t begun to caw and crow. Even the docks hadn’t yet come to life; the colossal steel machines were still. It was silent. The levee stood, incomplete and unassuming, a buffer between the unpredictable terror of the Gulf and the certain banality of civilization. The rain fell steadily, etching small ravines down the levee’s two sides, until it merged with Pascalouga Bay on the one side, and formed a ruddy puddle on the other.

Two-point-three miles inland, through thick marsh, across the wispy downtown stretch of Graveline Road, and past the tracks, Benoit Morell’s alarm clock beeped. 5:30 AM. Without looking, he jabbed the Snooze button with a well-placed poke. “Good morning, darlin’,” he mumbled, fumbling for his wallet with his free hand as he turned over to hug the empty sheets. His eyes snapped open. No woman; no wallet. “Sonofabitch.” He flipped on the desk lamp and searched the room, just to be sure, but who could hide in a one-room trailer? “Damnit.”

            Now standing, he looked around the room again and then flicked on the clock radio, as if the airwaves contained the answer. They were doing the weather.

“Expect another day of rain, folks,” the forecaster said, “Boy, is it coming down.”

            “Fuck,” he grumbled and pulled on a flannel shirt, a heavy parka, dirty, dark jeans, and a scarf; the trailer’s heater had failed months ago. The linoleum floor reminded him to double up on socks and to cover his bald head with a beanie. He lit up a Lucky Strike, his first of the day; breakfast would consist of little else. The fridge was empty, but he looked anyway, and then sat down on a stool at his makeshift table - an inverted crate he’d taken from the dock, savoring his nicotine in long drags. The smoke hung in the air, wafting over scattered piles of bills, the New Orleans Times Picayune from October 14th, 2006, and that goddamned letter. He pulled it out of its envelope and then read it over again - the seventh time, to be exact - a look of disbelief imprinting itself more and more firmly on his brow as his eyes moved down the page. This time though, instead of restoring it to the center of the table to be avoided, he tore it in half, bisecting the Official seal and five of the fifty stars on the envelope. He crumpled the shredded remains and threw them at the corner wastebasket, which was overfilled, so the paper bounced off and came to rest on the floor.

           

            The Number 14 bus, running late as it often did when it rained, dropped him off at the end of Bay Point place. The driver, an old black man who had driven Benoit to and from work enough times to call him “Ben” and let him ride for free, given the circumstances, parked in the cul-de-sac and lit himself a Benson & Hedges. Benoit saluted the old man as he walked away, toward the docks, but the white smoke had obscured his face and he didn’t notice. He didn’t wave back.

            Benoit arrived at the waterfront at 6:22 AM. A mechanical, invariable hum grew louder and louder in his inner ear, suggesting work to be done. The other levee workers, or Associates, as they were supposed to be referred to but seldom were, stood in a line outside the Employee Center, a drab aluminum quadrangle with bathrooms, a cafeteria, the cigarette vending machine, and most importantly, the punch clock. The fluorescent tubes marking the entrance were the only source of light and the metal roof shook loudly as the rain came down, contributing to the din. Benoit fell in with his Associates and waited. He shuffled his feet, lit another Lucky Strike, and ignored the men in front of and behind him until he no longer could keep it in.

            “Mornin’, Bill,” he said.

            The man in front of him turned around, surprised that anyone was making conversation at this hour. A couple other men also wheeled around, also surprised - and lonely- but none of their names was Bill.

            “Mornin’, Ben,” the Bill he had intended, the real Bill, responded.

            “Ya know what happened to me last night, man?” Benoit started, “Bitch took my wallet while I was sleepin’.”

            “No shit?”

            “No shit. I had about ninety dollars in there, too. I better not see her again-”

            Just then, the boss appeared out of nothingness and walked up to Benoit, halting the conversation. Winston James was a sturdy, dark man who stood about seven inches taller than Benoit. They were a Colonel and a Private, Winston James and Benoit.

            “I heard about your wallet, son,” the boss said, his words straight and flat. “Why don’t you clock in half an hour early today?”

            “Thank you, Mr. James.”

            “You’re welcome,” Winston James said. A notion of a smile seemed to cross his lips, but it quickly disappeared. Then he turned and walked back into the dark.

            When Benoit finally reached his section of the levee, the rain was constant and he no longer cringed as it permeated every last layer of cotton, wool, and polyester. He strode with purpose, fully upright. His three fellow Associates were already deep in the 9-foot trench that paralleled the levee along its entire 1.7-mile stretch, and they nodded their heads to him as he took a shovel and descended into the ditch, where he joined in their mechanical rhythm, trying desperately to heap more mud onto the barrier as nature refused to yield. Benoit and the other men lit Lucky Strikes to pass the time, but the rain put them out. A nostalgic observer might have described the group of men as a prison chain gang, though their uniforms were mud, rain and sweat instead of black and white striped convalescents and there weren’t any balls and chains tied to their ankles.

            “Nick, Dan, Ryan, how’re you guys doin’, besides this shitty job, I mean?” Benoit asked.

            “The usual, man. Vicky’s pregnant though,” Dan said, beaming. “I’m gonna be a dad.”

            “Just another fucking mouth to feed,” Nick grumbled without looking up from his shovel.

            “You’re just mad cause you’re not getting any,” Ryan said. “I wish I had a wife, someone to love me. You know it says in the book of Mark that man-“

            “Shut up,” Nick shot back. “I don’t want a wife and I damn well don’t care what it says in the book of Martin.”

The four of them stopped, fell silent, and devoted all their attention to shoveling. Every time one of them put another scoop of dirt on top of the ridge, the rain carried down two scoops worth, which collected at the bottom of the trench, indistinguishable from the rest of the mud on which they stood. The brown muck slowly rose around their feet, until it surpassed the tops of their boots and poured in. Their toes were too numb to feel the cold sensation, and none of them would have noticed it, had it not anchored their boots to the sludge every time they tried to rearrange their feet.

            “We’re actually not married yet,” Dan clarified after about fifteen minutes of silence. “She’s just my girlfriend.”

            “Hmmph,” Benoit snorted. “Fuck ‘em all. That’s what I say. Whore stole my wallet this morning. Ninety goddamn dollars.”

            “That’s what you get for sleeping with prostitutes, Benoit,” Ryan said quietly, before looking away, as if Benoit’s anger couldn’t touch him if he refused to acknowledge it.

“Fuck you then,” Benoit said. He shook his head and lit another Lucky Strike, which the rain again promptly extinguished.

            As they toiled in the trench, Winston James drove his backhoe over to the edge and tooted the horn. Benoit and the Associates spiked the shovels into the mud in unison and turned. His stuck in deeper than the rest. From the depths of the ditch, they had to crane their necks to see into the high cabin of Mr. James’ backhoe. Mr. James cut the engine.

            “I brought you boys something special,” he shouted. He took four thermoses from deep in the cab and carefully descended.

Three of the four men climbed out of the ditch and met Mr. James on the solid mud, where he handed over the steaming cups of coffee. He kept the fourth one for himself.

“Thank you, Mr. James,” they said, taking the cups. Then they nodded their heads and dropped back out of sight into the trench, where Benoit was waiting. He looked at them and shook his head. “Bitches,” he mumbled. His knuckles turned white, constricting the brown, wooden handle. The others shrugged and turned away. The deep drone of the backhoe started again and then slowly faded out.

 

By 7:00 PM, any light that had graced Gautier had retreated and it was now dark again. Benoit waited to board the number 14 bus, but he wasn’t alone this time. Twenty-three of the 24 Associates on the Number 14 got off at Le Temps Libre Saloon down on Graveline Road. One of them, however, exited the bus on the road that ran along the tracks, across from the entrance to Bonne Chance Mobile Estates.

Benoit looked both ways before crossing the tracks, more out of habit than precaution - the trains no longer ran through Gautier - and then passed through the tall, crooked gates, wrought of crude iron that had rusted years before. He walked by his neighbors’ trailers, wincing at both the cries of agony and the whimpers of subdued ecstasy that emanated from their translucent plastic windows. A few children played in the puddles. Some of them squealed with joy as they splashed; others coughed or sniffled.

Benoit kept his head down and went to the mailboxes on the left side of the camp. Most of them were visibly empty. Some hung open, as if their owners were welcoming the mail but knew not to expect any. He took out his mail key, which was dripping in mud, and tried to wipe it off on his pant leg, which unfortunately was also sopping, so he mashed it into the slot anyway and tugged until the weak hinges yielded. The water bill and two plump breasts from November’s issue of Hustler stared back at him.

The door to his trailer was open, flapping loudly against the doorframe in the wind. On the way in, he slammed it until it latched. He wiped his feet on the brown doormat, threw off his boots, and then took a few steps into the trailer. His soaking socks prevented him from feeling it, but the linoleum was two-inches deep in water. Rainwater dripped steadily from a one-point-five-inch wide hole in the roof located directly above his makeshift table. He took the Times Picayune from his table and found an old sweatshirt, which he wrapped around the newspaper. Then he jammed the ball into the hole. His wet garbage can had begun to smell, and as he walked over to empty it, he noticed the tattered letter lying near its base. The red, white, and blue dyes had run together to form a brownish, fibrous mass. He lifted his foot and flattened it.

 

            When Benoit awoke, his alarm clock read 5:50 A.M. The water level in the trailer had risen overnight and he didn’t bother to turn on the radio. He dressed himself carefully, keeping his other set of work clothes dry in spite of the flooding, but his boots were still thoroughly saturated with mud. He soaked paper towels in hot water to stuff his pockets and then rummaged around under the bed. One pocket of the parka bulged more than the other. He grimaced as he pulled on the damp boots and then strode straight past what remained of the bills, past the empty fridge, and out the door.

            Benoit got on the Number 14 at 6:27 - “the late bus,” as Mr. James had described it before - which reached Bay Point place at 6:49. His beanie was already drenched, his feet numb. The walk to the docks took him five more minutes than usual. The motorized clamor had already reached its climax; the line for the punch clock was short. As the rain continued to hammer the aluminum roof, Benoit pushed his hands in his pockets. One of them found comfort in the warm tissues. The other was cold. While he waited, Benoit stared out across the docks. He clocked in - forty minutes late - and slipped out the side door, where the backhoe was now parked, its engine silent. He walked around it and continued down to the levee.

Nick, Dan, and Ryan were working feverishly when Benoit arrived, their shovels making blurred arcs through the air, one after the other. Dan waved. If the other two noticed Benoit’s arrival, they didn’t let on. Benoit’s strokes were different today, slower and more deliberate. He let the blade sink in at the beginning of each stroke, as if he were scooping out the clay and rock that lay below the mud, and he lifted each load vigilantly. It seemed that he was trying to preserve every last grain of soil in spite of his intense shivers that made the blade wobble. His section of the levee began to sag noticeably and the rain carried it down like the rest.

The other Associates soon noticed that their shovel blades were rising far more often than Benoit’s, but they stayed quiet. After close to an hour, Ryan put his shovel down.

“What’s goin on, Ben?” he asked quietly.

Benoit didn’t look up. He steadied himself and prepared another large scoop.

“C’mon, I know you hear me. What’s up? Are you ok?”

“Leave him alone, Ryan,” Nick said. “He probably got ripped off by another thieving call girl and isn’t in the mood to tell us the details. Get it?”

Dan and Benoit stopped working. Benoit drove his shovel into the mud again as if he were going to take out another scoop, but then he left it there.

“The bitch,” he began calmly, “is not the problem. The fact that my fucking trailer got flooded last night is not the problem.” He picked up his shovel and spiked it into the side of the levee. “This levee is not the goddamn problem.”

 

At 10:03 A.M., a dark green humvee bearing an American flag from the passenger side window exited Highway 90-S at the Van Cleave Road exit and turned left into the Singing River Mall parking lot. It came to a stop in front of the International House of Pancakes, taking up almost two full spaces. The driver, Lieutenant Richard Adderley, enjoyed a complete breakfast of orange juice, coffee, grits, pancakes, sausage, and toast. He complimented the petite waitress on her new shoes, and with his muscled physique and cleanly trimmed face, he lured her into a romantic rendez-vous behind the tinted windows of the humvee’s rear seats. After they finished, Lieutenant Adderley pulled a hundred dollar bill from the pocket of his camouflage pants and handed it to her - a nice tip. Then he started the humvee again and drove down Ladnier Drive to the docks, where he took an envelope from the glove compartment and stepped out into the mud.

 

The rain turned to hail and fell faster. The wind grew to a howl and began to swirl around the mud on top of the levee. It blew through Benoit’s beanie and burned in his ears. He was panting and grinding his teeth, and the other three men stared silently. Over his deep breaths, they could hear the waves stirring in Pascalouga Bay, crashing violently against the unseen side of the levee. Without another word, Benoit heaved himself over the lip of the trench and took off running toward the Employee Center. He slipped in the mud several times and twisted his ankle, but he got back up and kept going. When he was a few hundred feet away from the glowing front doors, he cut sharply to the East, toward the side of the Center where the backhoe was still parked. Benoit glanced over his shoulder and then scrambled up the ladder. The key was still in the ignition. He grasped it firmly in his hand, paused, and then torqued it hard to the left. The crows on the Employee Center’s roof took to the skies and the surfaces of the mud puddles near the backhoe’s chassis rippled. His entire body vibrated with the undulations of the 12-cylinder engine as he clutched the steering wheel and gearshift, feeling the power seep into him. With one smooth motion, he put it in gear. His feet found the pedals. The machine lurched forward and then slowly accelerated to the Northwest, reaching a steady 26 miles per hour against the thick mud and relentless wind. Benoit stood up as he drove and scanned the area around him.

Winston James was shooting the shit with a group of Associates under the awning the Administrative Offices, passing around cups of warm cider, when the rumble began. The group wheeled around to look toward the ocean and froze. All along the levee, the Associates were scrambling out of the trenches, shovels in the air, shouting. Their cries were punctuated by thunder and cracks of lightning. The waves’ crests were visible over the top of the levee, first one by one, breaking intermittently along the 1.7-mile stretch, and then in unison, pouring into the trench below.

Benoit pushed his right foot down even harder, willing the backhoe to go faster. It refused and continued to progress toward the gawking group at a constant pace. Winston James and his cohort were too engrossed in watching the levee deteriorate to notice the slight rumbling that was steadily growing louder between fits of thunder and lightning. From a hundred feet away, Benoit could distinctly see Mr. James, whose back was turned, and another larger man whom he didn’t recognize, dressed in military fatigues. At fifty feet out, the backhoe began to slow down, but Benoit hadn’t released his foot. The rumble increased to a cacophony as the old gears, now rusted from the rain, ground against each other, competing to compel the backhoe’s inner workings to an imminent halt. The cogs and rings whined and screamed, struggling for a mutual goal. When the backhoe was twenty feet away, Winston James turned toward the noise’s source. He stood in place, staring at Benoit through the fogged windshield. When there was ten feet between the two men, as Benoit looked up and their gazes met, the backhoe gave a final, deafening screech and stopped.

He reached into the right pocket, the cold one, and pulled out a slender .22 caliber pistol. For a moment, the machines paused, the surfaces of the puddles became still, and the thunder and lightning died away. Benoit rose to his feet and lifted the object, looking for a straight line between Mr. James and the front of the barrel. He paused. Three sharp noises echoed across the brown plains. Then, sucking in last aspirations that sounded like boots squishing through mud, a body slowly faltered and fell from the cabin of the backhoe to the mud below.

Lieutenant Adderley lowered a .45 caliber pistol and turned to Mr. James.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

Mr. James nodded and looked at the man but didn’t respond. The rain started up again, lighter than before. Mr. James and Lieutenant Adderley looked down at the body, staring as droplets of mud splashed onto his pale skin. The brown water rose and washed over, and before long, his face was completely brown.