That summer was the summer of Henry-and-Louis. Henry learned that Louis was seventeen and as much a part of the river as the fish and the moss-slicked rocks. Before he’d died, too young, Louis’s Cajun father had given him a love of music and the gift of a fiddle. His mother had given him an appreciation for self-reliance by leaving him first with distant relatives and then, finally, when he was barely seven, at a Catholic orphanage in New Orleans. Louis had run away when he was twelve, preferring life on the streets, the fishing camps, and the riverboats. A case of tonsillitis had given him a raspy voice that made everything he said, from “Fish are biting” to “Dit mon la verite,” sound like a flirtation. He lost money at Bourré and played the sweetest fiddle in the French Quarter. He never stayed in any one place for long, but for now, he was bunking in a hideously hot attic garret above a grocery store on Dauphine. He was crazy about his hound dog, Gaspard, whom he had found abandoned by the river. “Just like me,” Louis said, scratching the slobbery pup’s fuzzy ears. They took Gaspard with them everywhere. No one in the Quarter seemed to mind, and often there was a bowl of scraps set out for him.
Henry confessed to Louis something he hadn’t told anyone else: Ever since he’d been sick, he’d developed a curious habit of lucid dreaming. One night while sick with the measles, he woke gasping for air as if he’d nearly drowned, a terrifying sensation. When he settled, he realized that he hadn’t woken. Instead, he was fully conscious inside the dream.
“Did it scare you?” Louis had asked.
“Yes,” Henry said, enjoying the feel of his lover’s arms around him.
“Could you do whatever you wanted?”
“No,” Henry answered.
“If I could dream of any place, I’d dream of a cabin on the bayou,” Louis had said at the time. “A little cabin. Fishing boat. A newspaper fulla crawfish ready to eat.”
“Would I be there?” Henry asked quietly.
“Wouldn’t be a good dream if you weren’t.”
And just like that, Henry knew what it was to be in love.
That night, he walked in Louis’s dream. There was a rustic cabin on a sun-dappled river where ancient live oaks trailed braids of Spanish moss into the water. A hickory rocking chair sat on the front porch, and a fishing boat bobbed nearby. It was a brief walk—the dream shifted, and fight though he did, Henry was unable to stay in that beautiful spot. Still, it made Henry happy to have glimpsed it, even for a few minutes.
In June, they signed on for a stint aboard an excursion boat, playing for their supper. When they’d stop at various sleepy southern towns along the river for the night, Louis and Henry would buy food for the Negro musicians who weren’t allowed into the white hotels and restaurants.
“Doesn’t seem fair,” Henry had said to Louis.
“That’s because it ain’t fair.”
“There’s a lot of that,” Henry said. He wanted to hold Louis’s hand, but he didn’t dare out in public, where anybody could see them. Instead, they’d wait until the judging world fell asleep, then they’d sneak away and kiss till their lips, already weary from the southern sun, would make them quit.
July saw hot days of fishing and swimming. Most nights, they’d prowl the nightclubs and speakeasies of the French Quarter, from Joe Cascio’s Grocery Store, where all the bohemians came to dance and drink, to Celeste’s, where the proprietor, Alphonse, served them bootleg beer in teacups. Sometimes they’d buy a jug of homemade hooch, strongly scented with juniper berries, from an Italian widow who’d taken over the bootlegging business from her late husband. Then they’d take the Canal Street trolley out to the cemeteries to drink, talk, and dream. Surrounded by stone angels and appeals to God’s mercy set in marble, a half-drunk Henry would spin out grand plans for them both: “We could go to St. Louis or Chicago, or even New York!”
“What’d we do there?”
“Play music!”
“Same thing we’re doing here.”
“But no one would know us there. We could be anybody. We could be free.”
“You’re as free as you decide to be,” Louis said.
“Easy for you to say,” Henry said, hurt. “You’re not a DuBois.”
Being a DuBois wasn’t a legacy; it was a noose. They were one of the first families of New Orleans society, with a grand antebellum mansion, Bonne Chance, to show for it. White-columned and flanked by strict rows of stately oaks, Bonne Chance had been built by Henry’s great-great-grandfather Mr. Xavier DuBois, who’d made a fortune in sugar off the backs of slaves. His heir, the first Henry DuBois, grabbed land from the Choctaw during the Indian Removal Act, and Henry’s grandfather had accepted a commission as a colonel in the Confederate Army, marching with General Lee to protect all that stolen land and the stolen people who came with it. Henry often wondered if there had ever been a DuBois who’d done a single noble deed in his life.
The only war Henry’s father seemed interested in fighting was the one with his son. It was a bloodless war; his father’s infallibility bestowed a certain calm confidence. He never questioned that his edicts would be followed, so there was never any need for him to raise his voice. That was for lesser men.
“Hal, you will not upset your mother.”
“Naturally, Hal will matriculate from Ole Miss.”
“Law is what you should pursue, Hal. Perhaps a judgeship from there. Music is not a noble profession.”
“These jazz and riverboat riffraff are not suitable companions for a young man of your breeding and position, Hal. Remember that you are a DuBois, a reflection on this family’s sterling reputation. Comport yourself accordingly.”
Henry’s delicate, unbalanced mother had long since been worn down by his father’s domineering manner. When she’d had her first breakdown, Henry’s father refused to send her to the sanitarium for fear of gossip. Instead, the family doctor had prescribed pills, and now his mother wandered the endless halls and rooms of Bonne Chance, a lost bird unable to alight in any one spot for long, until, finally, she’d take refuge in the family cemetery. She’d sit on the weathered bench, staring into the garden, thumbs working the beads of a rosary.
“It was the vitamins. I never should’ve taken them,” she’d say to Henry in a nervous voice. “I was afraid I’d lose another baby. So many lost babies. The doctor said the vitamins would help.”
“And they did. Because here I am, Maman,” Henry would say.
“She sent me a letter and told me I have to hide the bird,” she’d say, worrying the black beads between her frantic fingers.
Flossie would come out and lead Henry’s mother back to the big white house. “Come on, now, Miss Catherine. The saints won’t mind if you have your lunch.”
Henry would sneak away to Louis once more, and the two of them would hop the Smoky Mary out to the West End of Lake Pontchartrain, where they could fish from a pier in Bucktown, take a picnic near Old Spanish Fort, or play music in the Milneburg resorts and camps.
Louis never called him Hal. It was always Henri, said in a drawl as sultry as the air over the Quarter: “Let’s get us a mess of crawfish, Henri.” “You hear the way he laid out that line, Henri?” “Henri, don’t be a slowpoke. Ever’body’s waitin’ on us down at Celeste’s.”