The Girl

It was pure accident that I came to New Orleans. Or maybe it was meant to happen that way. Take a look back, don’t nothing that happens in your life seem like an accident, because you can’t figure how it could ever have been any way different. Which makes you to wonder.

How it come about was this. For a week, now, I had been traveling with this one fellow. It was against my rules, but we got along good together. All day long I’d ride shotgun in his big truck – he was driving one of them Peterbilts, with chrome stacks and all, which made him mighty high class amongst the other truck drivers. They all want to drive a “Pete.”

Or else I’d get up in the bunk, especially if I’d been entertaining fellows till all hours last night, and doze off, knowing even while I was sleeping that he was rolling me safely down the highway. Just the best long-haul truck driver I ever traveled with. A real gypsy, too, that traveled all over the place. Give him a choice between a milk run and someplace he’d never been before, and there wasn’t no doubt about where he’d go.

When we’d pull into a truck stop, he’d go inside first and get me all fixed up – I want to tell you, I was well-known by this time, and the fellows liked hearing that I was on the premises – and then he’d take his dollar turn first of all. After he had got satisfied, he’d go out and sleep in his truck, to save the money for another room, you see, and leave me to my business. First thing in the morning, he’d come in and wash up whilst I was having my breakfast somebody had brought from the restaurant, and then he’d look at me with his pretty black eyes, which had long lashes just like a girl’s, though there was certainly nothing girlish about him, and he’d say, “Going my way?”

I don’t understand to this day why it was, but every time he asked, I’d say, “Well, I reckon I am.” I don’t know why it was. Maybe it was that he was such a strange fellow, in a nice sort of way. He had this funny way of talking which I just liked to hear, no matter what he happened to be saying, because he was what they call a Cajun. His voice just lilted and sang like a bird. He was dark-complected, with black hair and black eyes, and though not a big man, was built as strong and pretty as that Peterbilt truck he drove so proudly.

One day, just as the sun was going down, we had come into this place called Algiers. He stopped the truck in front of a bus station.

“I will say good-bye to you, Cherie, because tonight I go home.”

He always called me Cherie for some reason, though it wasn’t anywhere close to my name.

It had come up so sudden, I hadn’t been expecting it. “I wish I could go with you,” I said. “Ain’t been in a house so long, I’ve forgot what it feels like.”

He laughed, showing his white, white teeth. “The fine wife, she take one look at you, she bit my head off,” he said. He snapped his teeth. “Just like an old ‘gator.”

Looked up and down the dingy street, letting myself get a little mad. “What am I going to do in a dump like this? Least you could have done was leave me at the truck stop this morning.”

“I wished to travel this day with you,” he said quietly. Then he pointed. “There is New Orleans across the river. A fine city. Have you ever been to New Orleans?”

“No,” I said shortly.

“Try it. You will like it.”

“I ain’t no city girl,” I said. Then I said, “But I’ll go take a look, I reckon. I could use a few days’ layover anyway, but me some clothes and all. So I’ll just do that before I hit the road again.”

He reached over me to open the door. I got out and stood looking up at him, holding my suitcase in hand. “See you around,” I said.

He smiled. “Take good care, Cherie. You are one fine girl.”

Turning away before he left me, I walked into the bus station. It don’t do to travel too long with any one fellow, as I well knew; you get an empty feeling when the time comes to go your own way. So I didn’t look back when I heard the truck motor start singing its song. He wasn’t going nowheres interesting, anyway, just rolling home to his wife.

I found out I didn’t need a Greyhound to get to New Orleans; just take a city bus. So I got on one and crossed the big river. I had asked the driver which was the main drag, so I got off at Canal Street. I had decided I was going to use this city, because it had been recommended by a friend.

You see, I had been to lots of big towns, but always only on the outskirts. Chicago, Denver, Spokane, Dallas, Texas – I had lived out my time in those places on the bypasses and interstates where the truck stops were located, where the truck drivers passed their sleeping and resting time.

So it was a whole new experience to get out of the bus on Canal Street and walk around carrying my little suitcase. The sun was just setting, the lights coming on, and there were more people than a body could wonder at. Off to one side, I took note of these narrow little streets that looked just as pretty as a picture postcard from over across the big ocean, iron-railed balconies hanging over the sidewalks and all, so I left Canal Street behind and went in there, looking into the shop windows.

An interesting place if you hadn’t ever seen it. I found out later it had a special name, the French Quarter. There were some weird folks populating the place, let me tell you, bums and junkies and tourists, and more bars and cafe’s than you could use in a hundred years, and all these shops selling strange things I had never seen sold before, old chairs and paintings and real old-timey jewelry and such. It made me to wonder who’d buy all that junk.

I come to a street that was built solid, shoulder-to-shoulder, with bars; fancy places with music coming out, and pictures of women that were durn nigh naked, and men standing in front fast-talking the people to come inside and take in the show. The street was just waking up, this early in the evening, but already people were surging up and down the narrow sidewalks chasing all that entertainment. A lively place.

After a while my feet got to hurting – I never was much of a one to stand on my feet for long at a time – so I started thinking about finding a place to stay. I’d already passed one big hotel, and lots of little ones that, every one, seemed to have these narrow staircases going up to the second floor above the street. I hadn’t ever stayed in a real hotel, though, so what I wanted was a nice Ramada Inn, something I was used to. Finally, seeing this quiet little bar on a corner, not one of them places where they were hollering about the girlies girlies girlies they had inside, I went in to see what I could find out.

I didn’t take a stool, just stood up to the bar to talk to the bartender. I hadn’t no more than took my place than this red-faced fellow sitting on the stool next to me looked over to say, “Now, here’s a little girl I aim to buy a drink.”

He was wearing a suit and a tie, but he was durn nigh as drunk as papa used to get. He just reeked of liquor.

“Just climb right up here on this stool and name your favorite drink.” He grinned sort of nasty-like.