Brian Eckert

“The drugs!  Ditch the drugs!  He’s coming!”

When Pete doesn’t immediately comply with my frenzied request to jettison the narcotics I grab his backpack and attempt to throw it into the brackish water.

“Take it easy man,” he says, wrestling the bag away from me. “We’re gonna be fine.”

Stanton has no reaction. He silently and expressionlessly pilots the boat from his position in the back.

Seized by terror I pull my knees into my chest, bury my face between them, and tell myself that if I don’t look at the boat creeping ever closer this nightmare will somehow end.

***

Forty-eight hours earlier my plane touched down in New Orleans, where I was to spend the next ten days for Jazz Fest with Stanton, a college buddy, and Pete, a work associate from Denver.

I’d not seen Stanton since a reunion two years ago at his post-collegiate home in Austin. When we parted ways in Texas, Stanton, then living with a girlfriend, was about to embark on a trip to Central America. During his time there he found a cocaine habit that followed him home, leading to the ruin of his relationship and a hasty retreat to New Orleans, where he hoped to find employment in the post-Katrina construction boom.

Upon arriving in the Big Easy I learned Stanton had had no problem securing work. Or a direct line to opiates and amphetamines.

Poor Pete never really had a chance. A Born Again/hippy stoner hybrid who once told me that “getting high is my way of praying,” Pete arrived in New Orleans after driving 15 hours straight to find militantly atheist Stanton wearing a “Somebody Should Have Aborted Ralph Reed” t-shirt, irritated and scratching himself raw due to the after-effects of too much oxycontin, pacing about the room reading aloud passages from the Dialectic of Enlightenment.

Stanton offered Pete a perfunctory handshake and noted that “the shitter’s in there,” waving towards his bedroom, and “here’s where you sleep,” pointing to a spot on the floor between the weight bench and the wall, before resuming his gowed out sermon.

“Humans believe themselves free of fear only when there is no longer anything unknown.”

“Whatcha reading?” said Pete.

“The most influential text of the Frankfurt School.”

“Cool, what’s it about?”

“It addresses the failures of enlightenment—and by that I mean the use of rational thought to free humans from fear of nature—how myth became enlightenment and enlightenment resorted back to mythology, creating a new kind of barbarism.”

“Sounds harsh.”

“Yes, well, if you, like the authors, were a Jew escaping Nazi Germany perhaps you’d also have reason to question why in a supposedly enlightened world meant to maximize human autonomy there is still so much alienation.”

“The Bible says it’s because men are sinful by nature.”

“Christianity is the paradigmatic form of alienation that enlightenment sought to free men from.”

“Agree to disagree buddy. Anyway, I’ve been on the road for a long time. How about we put on some tunes, relax, smoke a joint, and go play some Frisbee golf?”

***

We arrive at the concert grounds by ten, spend what’s left of the morning checking out some of the smaller-name acts, and begin the afternoon by watching Herbie Hancock’s set. At around 1:00 we head to the other side of the concert grounds to see Bob Dylan.

He looks old and skeletal onstage. An aging hippy in front of me wears a shirt bearing an image of a young Dylan, who rode to fame a movement that sought to change America for the better by subverting its ethos of naked self-interest and materialism.

Today, 60’s countercultural sentiments have been co-opted by the very same “system” they were meant to undermine. They’re retro hip; a way to sell t-shirts and concert tickets.

Standing in post-Katrina New Orleans, where America’s disregard for the commonweal resulted in anarchy, destruction, suffering, and death, it’s easy to imagine that a similar fate might befall the entire nation.

A lost city one day. A lost civilization the next.

At 3:00 we head to the East stage to see Springsteen. During the walk Stanton explains the singer’s appeal.

“Springsteen is basically a blue collar guy from Jersey. He writes songs, practices, puts on a concert, with the hard-working dedication of a mechanic or factory worker. His music resonates with the working class because it depicts everyday life and struggles.”

Even from a hundred meters away I can feel the energy pouring out of Springsteen as he sweats and shouts into the microphone. The musicians are an extension of him, playing tubas, trombones, trumpets, fiddles, accordions, laboring over the instruments, earning every bit of sound that comes out. They play a cover of the slave song “Mary Don’t You Weep.”

O Mary don’t you weep, don’t mourn
O Mary don’t you weep, don’t mourn
Pharaoh’s army got drownded
O Mary don’t you weep

The song speaks to the degradation of man by his fellow man. While it offers consolation by acknowledging that the behavior transcends time and place, the message is ultimately disheartening, as it implies only divine intervention can save us from each other.

Short of that, though, people find other ways to compensate, as an evening stroll down Bourbon Street reveals. The neon-splattered haunts, the clinking of glasses in toast, the raunchy guitar riffs and horn blows, the greasy food, the dank alleyways, the cocaine resin on the back of toilet bowl tanks, the sex, smoke, piss, shit, and vomit, is catharsis.

The next day Pete goes alone to Jazz Festival while Stanton and I go for what he calls “The Armageddon Tour.” The drive through some of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina takes us down block after block of abandoned houses. On the lawn of each destroyed appliances and home furnishings are piled. The front doors are spray-painted with a mark that labels them condemned.

One of the largest homes we pass bears a striking resemblance to a fraternity house from my university campus that was known for its hard-partying ways. On Sunday mornings the evidence of a weekend of reckless abandonment—broken furniture, beer cans, bottles, plastic cups—littered the house’s front lawn.

If I didn’t know better, I would say that these neighborhoods were the site of the most outrageous bender of all time, of a mad pursuit for pleasure turned to hopeless destruction.

When Pete returns from the show all smiles later in the afternoon Stanton and I are drinking. Stanton, who has done little to mask his contempt for Pete, whom he regards as a “God-fearing Golden Retriever of a man,” now rises, goes to his room, and shuts the door. His disdain completely unmasked, I must pick a side. My choice is between Stanton, all rage and substance abuse and misanthropy, and Pete, a good-natured oaf of Nordic descent. I follow Stanton.

Later, when Pete is asleep, I raid his bag for weed. As I’m grabbing the goods he wakes up. Our eyes meet and neither of us immediately looks away or says a word. He gives in by rolling silently onto his side.

In the morning Stanton announces that he’s taking us boating. While he picks up the craft I cut Pete’s hair with a pair of clippers in the parking lot. Blonde locks fall away like lamb’s fleece. Doing my best to ensure he’s perfectly streamlined is the closest I come to apologizing.

Stanton returns with a 15 foot flat-bottomed boat with an outboard motor. We drive southeast, beyond the New Orleans city limits, and enter the bayou.

The prospect of a trip down the river together, along with a heroic dose of mushrooms, eases the tension between us. The first wave of the journey is chummy and amiable. Unspoken forgiveness hangs in the air.

Birds swoop around the boat. Fish leap out of the water. Turtles and alligators drop from their rocky perches into the river. Nature, while brutish, does not rob a man of his dignity. This is a safe place.

The peace disintegrates as we drift through a river shantytown where people fly confederate flags and stare at us from their docks. A marine patrolman sits in his boat talking to a group of locals. In the time that it takes to drift by he has more than ample time to appraise the unregistered boat littered with beer cans and its nervous, googly-eyed passengers. After we’ve passed he starts up the engine and sets after us.

The psychedelic dark side is the event horizon of a black hole. The fear that seizes my heart is too powerful to pull back from.

Pete issues hopeful words. Stanton refuses to speak. I evaluate the feasibility of a swim to the far bank.

When he’s within 50 meters of us the patrolman turns around and heads back up the river.

“It’s a miracle,” says Pete before joining me and Stanton in silence for the remainder of the boat trip and the drive back to the apartment.

Once there Stanton retires to his room and I go for a walk around the block to clear my head. When I return Pete’s truck is gone. Inside, I find his bag missing. The only trace of him is a tuft of yellow hair blowing across the parking lot.

I never hear from him again.