Читать книгу The French Quarter - Ken J.D. Mask - Страница 6

Fifty miles away, the crescendo blast of his shotgun pierced the clear azure-white, streaked sky, and a flock of black birds broke out of a perfect ‘v’ into chaotic flight, squawking so loudly that their “caw-caw” cries echoed throughout the forest. In the path, the swamp white oaks shook violently, and the foliage parted like the Red Sea. Just as suddenly, the canopy of branches closed and swallowed up the tunnel of light. The forest was dark again.

Smiling, Luke Jacobs placed his 12-gauge against a tree trunk and inhaled a deep, satisfied breath.

He had no intention of trying to kill a living thing today. He just wanted to be in the woods where he felt at home. In the clearing where he stood, he could smell yesterday’s rain in the wind. He could also tell by the moss on the sides of the trees, he was standing in virgin territory. No human had ever stepped into this part of the forest.

Luke basked in the tranquility of the woods, which was only interrupted by the twittering of a nest of finches nearby, and a squirmy family of moles, who had made a home in a felled hollow log.

From his adolescent days growing up in Louisiana, camping, hunting and fishing with his father, being awakened at 4 a.m. while the “ole man” attempted to silently collect the gear to keep from waking their mother, Luke had loved the outdoors. He thought back to how the early morning trips usually started off on a bad note … no kid wanted to awaken at that time of the morning, particularly during cold/damp seasons; but as the day progressed, the intrigue and excite-ment of being in the woods would entice him.

In retrospect, he now understood their trips had been mainly meant for bonding. Spending time together on cold, late December/early January mornings in the deep woods of Louisiana, mostly in the marshlands, Luke and his brother Allen knew this time with their father was quite special. It was something recognized, not “later in life” but then, while it was happening.

The crunch of leaves underfoot brought him back to the present. A crow cried out in the distance, and Luke imagined it might be crying out to its lover. Absently, Luke picked up a piece of dried driftwood and ran his fingers over its porous edges. Just its very touch reminded him of his father.

One of the things Luke had enjoyed during their hunting adventures was learning to carve. His father would find pieces of driftwood that were tossed about in the marshlands, and take them back to their house in New Orleans. Over the years, both he and his father learned to whittle animals out of wood. His brother John never really “got it”; his hunting and fishing expeditions were the extent of his pleasures.

Later, the boy took carving seriously and began making chess pieces. During junior high school he would sell these to vendors throughout Louisiana and in the French Market. His chess pieces became famous within an intimate circle. Meantime, his mother continuously prodded him to prepare for college.

Luke figured he would have a career in carving. The chess pieces were something that he did for fun. Carving desks, picture frames, etc., was something that he really loved and enjoyed, plus he could sell them. He loved the smell of the freshly cut cypress, pine, dogwood, birch, willow trees. These pieces were usually brought to him by friends so he would carve pieces for them. But he gave up his carving, after his mother’s insistence that he study more in order to go on to college. She seemed to not want him to carve since his father died. Luke understood.

Roy Winston Jacobs had been a police officer on the New Orleans force. His career had been brilliant, and he retired with many decorations. Three years following his retirement, he died of a heart attack.

Winston had been known to hunt men to far reaches of the territory and the world. His tracking skills rivaled his hunting and fishing expertise. His father had taught Luke how to track as well. To this day, he could tell a female’s print from a male’s, or he could tell a possum’s footprint from a squirrel’s. That’s how he knew he was standing today where no man had ever stood.

Because of what his father had undergone, Luke always despised the police. His father had been a reasonable, level-headed man; however, those around him seemed to be something different, always conniving and scheming in some manner to accumulate riches and goods. His father re-mained steadfast in his belief that being a police officer was an honorable profession.

He had always noticed an indescribable sadness within his father’s eyes. This air of angst seemed odd in a man who stood 6’4”. Dark brown complexion, with thick-black-and-gray curly hair, beneath his father’s furrowed brow a set of large sad brown eyes floated. Luke would never forget those eyes. Even as he aged, Roy kept a full thick black moustache, but his eyes would haunt him the rest of his life. Now he understood why.

The police force in New Orleans was well known to be corrupt. Throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s, along with organized crime, prostitution, gambling, and trafficking of alcohol and tobacco products, police enjoyed great status in the city as both protectors and extortionists.

Winston stood out among them. As a freshly recruited young black police officer, he refused to get caught up in any such corruption of police life.

This didn’t present a problem; it just made life for the Jacobs’ family less comfortable than the lives of the police officers around them. Roy Winston Jacobs’ wife, Jeanne, and their two kids, Luke and John, lived in one half of a duplex that had seen better days.

Proud of his father’s distaste for corruption he always admired him, but never by any stretch of his ambition, would he himself be comfortable on the police force.

Police corruption⎯extortion, bribery, and mal-feasance—ran rampant throughout the city, known by all throughout the regions. Most other parishes throughout the state of Louisiana had a type of corruption but it was less prominent, less advertised than that of New Orleans: corruption was a part of the Louisiana culture. The dead-beats, deadheads, whores, prostitutes, and pirates had landed there early in the 16th century and their offspring had the same sensibility: an expected carryover due to the ‘natural evolution.’

What amazed him was his father’s ability to hide his sadness. How he held his head high and mighty—in spite of. Around 5’10”, Luke was somewhat smaller than his father, with a light-brown complexion from his mother’s Indian side. Luke was similarly forthright in public, and reserved around family and close friends.

He was keen-featured, and attractive to the opposite sex. Without shunning the numerous advances of young women, young Jacobs delved into his studies in high school, college and law school. While enjoying women’s company, he still managed to keep his thinking clear. He glided through college studying Political Science as do most pre-law students, and later went on to Tulane’s Law School. Thereafter, he took a pos-ition as a New Orleans public defense attorney. Soon he became an assistant D.A.

He despised the position, the mundane routine of putting away individuals who he knew were young and foolish, not quite knowing what they had gotten themselves into at the time. This conflict which Luke would experience throughout his career as an Assistant D.A., troubled him.

His love for wood re-manifested itself in his early thirties. He began hunting and fishing again. He even flirted with carving: he still loved the smell of fresh-cut cypress wood and often carved figures for friends and family members.

* * *

One of the things the boy admired about his father, particularly after their hunting expeditions, was the care and dedication his father demon-strated during their “carving” years. They both learned to carve together, and his father took his time, patiently learning to whittle the wood into objects that were quite different from their origin. Luke loved how a piece of wood would transform itself into a life-like thing.

His father always looked in his eyes when he spoke. “Son, the main thing in life, and the one thing you need to carry with you as far as you go, is a certain level of discipline. No matter what you do, no matter where you are, demonstrating a certain level of discipline is important. Being able to demonstrate to someone that you’ve had the wherewithal and the presence of mind to sit down and to concentrate for a certain period of time is something no one can take from you and is always admired.”

His father would sit there, fumbling, in his initial attempts to carve the wood, his efforts crude at first. Yet, as time passed, they both learned to find in each other the delicate nature of wood carving. It was something his father took great pride in and passed on to Luke. For some reason, Frank never took to the practice. He was off doing other things most Saturday afternoons. Even after poor days of game hunting, Luke and the ole man would sit there in the backyard in their New Orleans Seventh Ward duplex and carve, hours upon hours.

Roy Winston enjoyed being a police officer and it provided him with a living; however, the time spent with his sons during the weekends, and particularly the time spent on carving with Luke, seemed to provide him with the greatest pride.

After 10 years, the boy still missed his father. He couldn’t quite understand why God had taken him away from him at the age of 50, but he’d resigned himself to believe in a certain man’s destiny, that is that the separation of spirit from the physical world was necessary and that one day he would be with his father in some capacity.

A solid individual who learned discipline at an early age, though seemingly carefree in his mannerisms, he was disciplined. But even more than that, he was intuitive, like his father.

Just as he was loading his shotgun, a dark feeling rippled through him making bumps at the base of the hairs on his forearm stand up in formation. Sniffing the air, looking for clues, he saw none. Whatever it was, was happening in his spirit. “Something’s wrong,” he said out loud to the silent woods. He remembered how his father used to say: “A dog can tell the difference between being kicked and being stumbled over…” whenever he had this sensation. He didn’t know quite what it was, but he knew it was something.