On Archimedes Street Read Online Free PDF

that cherubic angel, looking all of eleven years old?” he demanded silently of the saints, and their silence had been his answer.
    “Mother Cabrini, intercede for me,” Ed whispered hoarsely. “Help me deal with the drink. Lead me to a job where they won’t ask too many questions. I’m down to my last seven dollars and change. And I know I only call on you when I’m in trouble, and I’m sorry about that.”
    He lit a candle and, as he was leaving, a priest approached him. “Trouble, my son?”
    “There’s always trouble, Father,” Ed answered.
    “Can I help?”
    Ed pondered the priest. “Yes,” he said finally. “I need two things: I need to get out of Orleans Parish, and I need a job. I’m new here. Where can I go that’s not Orleans Parish, and how can I get there for less than seven dollars?”
    The priest hesitated and looked at Ed speculatively. “The West Bank is your best bet. But not Algiers. Algiers is in Orleans Parish, even though it’s on the other side of the river. Gretna is the closest. It’s in Jefferson Parish. Go to the foot of Jackson Avenue and catch the Gretna ferry there. It’s only fifteen minutes away. As for the job….”
    “Don’t worry, Father. I’ve put Mother Cabrini on it.”
    The priest smiled, and it was the first friendly face Ed could remember seeing in a long while. It was a good sign, and he felt some of the weight ease up.
     
     
    E LWOOD WAS desperate. The kitchen was still crawling with casseroles from the neighbors, and MeeMaw already in the crypt for six days. Now the lawyers would start talking about the estate. And the envelopes and bills were piling up.
    He wasn’t all that sad about MeeMaw. She’d had a long life— he’d probably never see eighty-three—and she’d died painlessly in her sleep. But only now did he fully appreciate how much he had depended on her, and not just for food and a sense of family, as he had thought he would. No, there were other, more pressing, things.
    Recalling what MeeMaw had been harping on for the last few months of her life, he sat at the kitchen table, picked up a pen and his green notebook, and began writing in it with great concentration. He kept at it for twenty-five minutes until he finally decided that was enough for one day.
    He moved over to the piano, also in the kitchen. Elwood then drew himself up and looked at the ceiling as if for inspiration, poised his fingers over the keys, and started a furious sequence of chords and dissonances, most of them heavily pedaled. Wailin’ Elwood wailed into his music: “ Whooo you gonna ax? Tell me dat. Now who you gonna ax ? Tell me dat .” Larceny, as he always did whenever Elwood “sang,” howled raucous accompaniment and pawed the air. “I hate the fack dat…. I hate the fack dat…. I hate the fack dat…. I hate dat fack !” And he trailed his fingers off the keys in the tenuous tinkling Elwood always used to end his weird—some people said inspired—impromptu compositions.
    “Ain’t no use, Lawsony,” he said to his dog. The tail was a-wag and the ears intently at attention. “I need some help, and dat’s a fack. An’ I’m just gonna have to get over myself an’ ax for it. Right now.”
    He walked out of the shotgun single he had shared with MeeMaw on Archimedes Street and headed west to the hardware store. An ecstatic Larceny bounded after him.
    “Hey, Doodie,” said Elwood to the proprietor of Gretna Best Hardware.
    “Wailin’ Elwood the Tree Man,” said the skinny owner. Age had turned his skin from coal to a dusty, dark-gray flannel. “Sorry to hear ’bout your MeeMaw.”
    “Thank you, Doodie. She had a good life and died peaceful.”
    “She were a great lady and will be missed.”
    Elwood was grateful that Doodie left it at that. The old biddies had talked his ear off after offering their condolences, reminiscing about his grandmother’s glory days, long before Elwood had ever been born.
    Elwood braced himself. He needed help, and