Half of Paradise

“What kind of work do you do?”

“Anything. I’m going down to the docks today,” he said.

“My husband is a welder on the pipeline. He can get you work.”

“I’ve never worked on a pipeline.”

“You can learn. He will teach you.”

“Where is he?” Avery said.

“He is eating breakfast. Finish the coffee and you can talk with him.”

Avery met her husband and drove to work with him. He got a job as a welder’s helper on a twelve-inch natural gas line that had just kicked off and was to run from an oil refinery to the other end of the parish. He worked with the tack crew, cleaning wells, driving the truck, and regulating the welding machine. He liked the job. Each morning they went out on the right-of-way that was cut through the woods and marsh, and the joints of pipe would be laid along the wooden skids by the ditch; he followed behind the truck with the electric ground that he clamped on the pipe to give the welder a circuit and with the wire brushes and the icepick in his back pocket that he used to clean the joints; the welder would bend over the pipe with his dark goggles on and his bill-hat turned around backwards and his khaki shirt buttoned at the collar and sleeves, and the electric arc would move in an orange flame around the pipe, and there was the acrid smell of tar and hot metal and the exhaust from the heavy machinery.

He stayed on at the rooming house, and sometimes in the evening he went down into the Quarter and ate dinner in an Italian place off Bourbon Street, then he would walk through the narrow cobble lanes and look at the old red and pink stucco buildings and the iron grillwork along the balconies and those fine flagstone courtyards with the willow trees and palms that hung over the walls. At night he could see the back of Saint Louis Cathedral with the ivy growing up its walls under the moon, and there was the park in the square across from the French Market where the bums and the drunks slept under the statue of Andrew Jackson.

One night he found a small bar on Rampart where the band was good and there were no tourists. He had been drinking since he had gotten off work. He sat at the bar and drank whiskey sours and listened to the band knock out the end of “Yellow Dog Blues.” The drummer twirled the sticks in his hands and played on the nickel-plated rim of his snare. The man on the next stool to Avery was having an argument with the bartender. He was dressed in sports clothes, and was quite handsome and quite drunk. He had thin red hair and blue eyes and a pale classic face like Lord Byron’s. He didn’t have enough money to pay for his drink. He turned to Avery.

“I say, have you a dime?” he said.

Avery pushed a coin towards him.

He gave the dime to the bartender with some other change.

“The fellow was going to take my drink away,” he said.

“You’re spilling it,” Avery said.

“Spilling?”

“On your coat. You’re spilling your drink.”

“Don’t want to do that.” He wiped his sleeve with his hand. “My name is Wally.”

“I’m Avery Broussard.”

“You look like a good chap. Do you want to go to a party?”

“Where?”

“On Royal. A friend of mine is giving a debauch.”

“I wouldn’t know anyone.”

“Of no importance. The literary and artistic group. We’ll tell them you’re an agrarian romanticist. Do you have a bottle?”

“No.”

“We’ll have to get one. The artistic group asks that you bring your own booze.”

They left the bar and went to a package store down the street.

“Do you mind making it Scotch?” Wally said.

Avery went in and bought a half pint.

“Good man,” Wally said.