The Sexton Queen

Andrea Adams

Today, a burial day at the Pere Antoine, is a joyous day for Nyssa la Reine. Some burials are better than others. Absinthe right out of bottles moldering with age, gold coins for the ferryman spilling out of the till at the gate, and more more more of those big, bouncy second-line beats. It’s enough to wake the dead dozing all around her.

They’ve been shouting about this one for days from the rooftops. It’s all over the feeds, the procession’s going to be so big it’ll shut the Quarter and some of the surrounding neighborhoods right down. The cops have issued riot warnings, but Nyssa la Reine, the Sexton Queen, isn’t worried; today is a celebration, and she knows the city knows it too. As the hostess of this necropolis, she’s going to welcome them all with arms outspread. Today, her job is a good job to do.

The cemetery, situated just north of the Quarter, is still quiet under an aqueous sky. When the man taking his leave at the Pere Antoine today refused to build up the levees and let Lake Ponchartrain sweep over the city, he probably had no thought for how beautiful the cemetery would still look. Ancient tombs rise from the steely water, its surface painted with oily rainbows. The ever-present stink off the Gulf is a mellow current under the melted-butter scent of tupelo nectar from the tree at the heart of the cemetery.

La Reine, in cutoff dungarees and a sweatshirt, poles along between the tombs. She skims the leaves and bugs coating the water with a butterfly net. Her punt sways in a soothing rhythm as she pulls rotting flowers from their urns, stems slimy and dripping, and dumps them into the boat. She leaves the gris-gris tied with damp yarn to the pointed tops of ironwork fences snugged around the monuments, the totems and coins and little plastic toys lined up along the carven ledges.

At the tupelo tree, she ties the punt to one of the fat, corded roots emerging from the water and clambers around its wide trunk. Scraps of paper with curses and prayers scribbled on them still tacked to the wood get picked off. They chopped almost all the trees in the city down once they started to rot in the noxious water, but the Sexton Queen wouldn’t let them touch her tupelo; it thrives in the slough. This tupelo was a hanging tree, so its roots reach down to the devil and its branches reach up to Jesus. Either way, no point in leaving a mess today.

If she looks down, she sees the old concrete paths of the cemetery meander beneath four feet of grey water speckled with little fish. If she looks to either side, she sees the tombs shoulder-to-shoulder, dappled marble scored and streaked black. If she looks up, she sees iron crosses against the clouds skating past. A bent-backed angel perched on top of a cupola, her face worn to a convex stone bowl, is a melancholy sentinel.

The tomb for today just needs a quick sweep inside the open vault. The undertaker came yesterday with the little brass bell to mount to it. She watched him bolt the bell to the front of the tomb and drill a hole through the marble next to the bell plate, and then they shared a bottle of Sazerac. La Reine and the undertaker, they go way back; she knows him from her days in New Storyville when he made the rounds with his barge, picking up corpses hurled off balconies or sprawled on beds. She gives the vault a once-over, knocking the dead bugs out of the caveau; it needs to look nice on camera, after all. The bell tinkles merrily when she flicks it with one finger. Knock three times, turn three times, kiss three times, she thinks, and all the saints preserve us.

Ragged sea birds call out to one another over the muffled clamor of boat traffic from the flooded Quarter streets beyond the cemetery walls. La Reine can hear the guards at the gate talking shit about the soon-to-be interred. Their bouncer jobs are boring unless some drunk with a gun shows up to grave-rob. Most of the time they swap jokes and chain-smoke while they man the gate. They squat out at the gate on their posts just above the water-line. Time was, the Pere Antoine cemetery needed a whole phalanx armed with automatic military-issues and graphene armor. Graft, corruption, cronyism, fraud: the governor did it all, letting the city gasp for breath as storms tore her apart and the waters rose.

“Bonjour, fuckers,” la Reine calls as she punts back to her hut. One of them, the bigger one, waves his cigarette at her over the top of the wall.

“Bonjour, Mademoiselle la Putain,” he returns. “You excited for this one today?”

“Of course I be,” la Reine says.

La Reine ties off and climbs the ladder to her sexton’s stilt hut. She brews up a pot of chicory on the hot plate as she muses on today’s extra-special, just and fitting punishment.

Along the front door lintel twines a ward, sea grasses and sage twigs interwoven with crusty wraps from a mummy’s sarcophagus and severed chicken feet dried into question marks. In the center of each window hangs a rippled, blown-glass disc painted with the evil eye in la Reine’s own crude hand. Trouble will always pass by her sexton’s hut; she makes sure of that.

La Reine absently knots up the ropes of her hair and sheds her work clothes while the coffee cooks. The days when the Sexton Queen was the Louisiana Lily of New Storyville are long gone. She sometimes likes to indulge in reminiscences of the times she would lie on a divan in a gown made of stargazer lilies while men and women debased themselves for her. When she spread her legs, the city fell. Once she became the keeper of the dead, she thought it best to keep out the living. Nobody would want her worn-out, spidery body anymore anyway, she figures. No matter how many oils she uses, or how many sticks of incense she burns to the blessed patron saint Marie of the Waters, her black skin has that creased feel of an old leather book bag, the palms of her hands and soles of her feet permanently thickened and harrowed with cracks, her nails and teeth yellowish. That’s what the trade does to a body, no matter how you dress it up.

La Reine takes a quick whore’s bath and slides into what she’ll wear for the burial: an emerald green and black plaid dress in sateen that flares out over stacks of slightly frayed mint and silver crinolines, a gray basque corset, and tall, patched-up boots. She carefully threads a hat pin the length of her forearm through her black-felt topper. The mirror doesn’t lie: she looks sharp. She does a nice cat-eye in kohl and swaps the rings in her dahlia piercings for the silver set, the chains linking the corners of her mouth to her ears, the ones she only wears for the special burials.

Just as she finishes dotting a bit of white to the center of her bottom lip, here come the cops, blue-and-whites running silent and low in the water. They’ve been blocking off the Quarter all morning, and now they push the traffic aside with the easy bullishness of dogs moving a herd of sheep. One officer, trigger finger pointing down the length of his riot gun, looks up over the wall and salutes the Sexton Queen through her window with respect. The esplanade outside the cemetery swiftly clears, a tense quietude settling over the water.

“Time to work,” la Reine says to her icon of Blessed Marie.

The bells of the cathedral begin tolling across town, followed by the thin wail of sirens in counter-tenor. “Look alive out there, you,” she shouts out the open door. There’s an answering growl from the gate. La Reine lights a rollie and sits with a mug of chicory on her narrow porch to wait.

This is the part she wishes she could see, but never can, unless she watches it on a feed; but that’s like cheating, somehow. Her part to play happens here; the mourners drop their coins in the till at the gate, and then she takes center stage. She knows what happens out in the Quarter, of course, and it plays out in her mind much as it does in truth.

The main line forms in Jackson Square, in front of the cathedral, boats draped in purple and black and silver weeds jockeying for position. Even though the air is cool today, the procession sweats in their tight collars and thick purple blazers encrusted with braid and sashed with silver. The square is packed with pouting hookers and colicky babies, sad drunks and flinty-eyed politicians, shouting and swearing as rudders crack into hulls and camera drones hang low overhead, propellers whirring. The funeral dirge spirals up in time to the procession leader’s baton, horns blaring in lugubrious, halting discord while drums tattoo slowly, drowning out the noisy crowd.

The cops’ll have snuck the governor from the parish prison round the back way, to keep rioters from tossing bombs at him from the rooftops. He’s in a plain planked box, nothing fancy, not even a funerary drape. The caisson barge is in the center of the line, pulled by a beefy black mule, riderless, with black plumes nodding between its jackrabbit ears, the water parting at its chest as it plows along. Lace parasols bob, heads wag, hands are lifted and lowered in prayer as the procession makes its solemn way through the Quarter. People pack into every balcony, squeeze out of every door and window. La Reine listens to the faint, wild music of death on the noon breeze and feels a deep energy rising like the tide water swelling in the streets.

She remembers him well, the governor, even though he only spent one night with her. He went in and out of New Storyville with his entourage years ago, when he was an eager councilman. A small man, with a big presence filling a room like greasy smoke that clung to the skin. Those were always the scary ones, she recalls. Her admirers would often bring her expensive gifts, and a movie star gave her a white gator she kept in the brothel parlor on a heavy chain. The councilman paid a lot of money to do some real bad shit to her, and she put up with it, but like all predators he could suss her distaste for him and killed her gator after he was done with her. Had his guys hold it down so he could cut its head off. It slung blood all over the place as its body corkscrewed on her rug. She was furious.

The noise is pressing now. Here comes the main line of the procession, blue-and-whites chugging in place, keeping the waterway ahead eerily clear. Overhead, the cloud of drones hovers like a plague, broadcasting the circus to all the feeds. The mule’s big head nods up and down in time to the swaying caisson behind it, the dirge a howl now; trombones swoop over the limping crash of cymbals and tambourines, and below it all a groan from the vast crowd coming after the hearse, the last gruesome exhalation of a corpse, life chased off by death. The guards crouch on their posts like a two-headed Cerberus. When a young guy, hooting with laughter, squirts past the cops, one guard takes him out quick as you like with the butt of his poleax right to the chest. La Reine sees the kid go down flailing. Serves him right, disrespecting the procession like that.

Positions, then. The Sexton Queen poles to the gate as the waters, pushed along by the crowd, swell beneath her. She can feel the Gulf vibrate beneath the worn soles of her boots, through the warped treads of her punt, rising through the water. La Reine stands tall in her little boat, feet planted wide, chin up; she draws the mantle of her authority around her, sure as if it was cloth-of-gold. The guards unlock the gate, and the mule halts just on the other side. It understands well that this is the place.

The music is a banshee shriek; it bounces off the water and the stained marble walls of the cemetery and ricochets on up to heaven, it sinks like stones on down to hell. The procession leader, a round little woman in vintage lavender with a silver-and-red sash tight across the shelf of her breasts, punts up to the open gate. Her face is beaded with sweat; she’s been working hard with her baton. She drops a gold coin into the till mounted next to the gate, and she and la Reine exchange mutually respectful curtseys.

“Blessings on you,” the procession leader says in a high, fluting voice. “We come to bear witness. We come in the gracious light of the Lord.”

“Blessings on you,” the Sexton Queen responds. “Enter and bear witness. Enter in the gracious light of the Lord.” She extends one welcoming hand with practiced theatre. The silver chains connecting her mouth and ears chime softly. She pivots her punt about and draws the procession into the cemetery.

They go real slow now, as the aisles between the tombs are just wide enough for the caisson barge and the punts. Every time a punt of the main line comes through the gate, they drop a coin into the box. The musicians sling black cloth over their horns and their drums, so the death rattle of the dirge is muffled between the tombs. Gulls gather above in anticipation, their cries ecstatic. Crows collect in the branches of the tupelo, discussing the procession in guttural tones. La Reine poles around her tree, the mule behind her picking up its feet carefully so it doesn’t get caught in the roots. From beneath the brim of her top hat, la Reine chances a backward glance at the box on the caisson, rocking gently in the water. Her stomach gurgles; she always forgets to eat on funeral days. Hopefully some of the folks brought picnics, for after.

At the open vault, the procession leader stops the mule with a hand on its bridle. The punts fill the cemetery, every open space between tombs clogged with boats sagging under the weight of tubas and kettle drums and musicians with guts straining their button-downs. The dirge winds down until there’s just one buck-toothed girl stirring a brush over an open snare, the susurration like autumn leaves trembling on the branch. The priest steps from punt to punt, gripping hand over hand; a little boy staggers after him, holding the ponderous folds of his creamy white robe out of the water.

The cops on the caisson pry the box lid off as the priest slings holy water from a vial and intones some Papistry that sounds like the nonsense the crows are croaking from the tupelo. La Reine doesn’t make a face; it’s her job to respect the ceremony no matter what, though the man in the box doesn’t deserve a single prayer.

The lid comes off the box, and the cops haul the governor out. He sags between them, head lolling, puke and drool sliding over his chin and staining the front of his orange jumpsuit. The drugs they gave him to keep him quiet take a while to wear off. He’s no more than a shade after so long in prison, cheeky fat melted away to leave a loose bag of bruised skin holding a bundle of sticks.

“Libera animam eius ab inferri voragine,” the priest chants while parasols twirl patiently. It takes a minute for the cops to manhandle the governor into the open caveau; they give him a good shove into the deep recess of the tomb.

It’s very quiet now, the cemetery full with the hush of the drum, the thwock of water against boat hulls, and the occasional snuffle and grunt from the governor. One cop trains his riot gun into the caveau while another bricks up the opening, wet mortar coursing over the concrete blocks. He does a quick and sloppy job, but it’s fine for now; la Reine has an excellent stonemason who’ll come by after the festivities are over and tidy everything up.

Then, they wait. The city holds its breath. The gulls have grown bored, and scattered. The priest hangs his head, hands folded. The little girl slides her brush in never-ending circles over her drum.

A single bead of perspiration forms at the base of La Reine’s neck and serpentines down the ladder of her spine. She remembers how the blood from her poor gator ruined that beautiful rug. Those things were only possessions, after all; but they were also tokens of whatever affection her admirers thought they felt for her, and that kind of heart counted for something back when she was no more than a thing to most.

La Reine watches the last block go in, a skin of grey slop troweled over it, and deep satisfaction in this justice rises in her, sure as the floodwaters. She has shepherded many into the afterlife, but nothing feels quite as righteous as this.

She takes up the little pot of crimson paint she has in the bottom of her punt. With her finger, she draws three red Xs into the wet mortar. The priest shakes back the sleeve of his robe, dips his finger gingerly into the paint, and draws three red crosses below her Xs.

“Per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum Filium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti Deus,” the priest says.

“For ever and ever,” la Reine answers.

“Amen,” sighs the crowd, no more than an exhalation, the whisper of souls stirring in their dank, watery holes, eager to witness the newcomer. Saint or sinner, governor or garbage-man, all are welcome in the kingdom of death.

The bell on the tomb tinkles hesitantly. There’s a thump from inside the caveau, followed by some indistinct shouting. The bell chain slides in and out of the little drilled hole in the tomb wall with a jerk, and la Reine imagines the governor’s fist around it. The drugs are leaching out through his skin by now, leaving him shaking in terror in the pitch-black hole inside the vault.

The procession leader raises her baton and blows a whistle with a blast like a ferry coming into port. The drowsing mule spooks in his traces. Sound explodes over the main line. Boats rock and hands wave with unhinged abandon. Out in the esplanade, the second line picks up the music, big beats pounding. Voices rise in raucous delight, rippling outward into the Quarter. The priest retreats as folks pull out bottles stashed in the bottoms of punts, corks popping, shoulders bumping. In the tupelo tree, the crows solemnly wag their tails like grandfathers dancing at a wedding. The music lifts on the fine breeze and is carried out to the ruined sea.

***

When the Sexton Queen comes to, it’s noon again, but another day. The cemetery is empty; the blank disc of the sun overhead burning a hole in the sky. A thread of smoke unspools from the gate. She’s in the bottom of her punt like a pile of wet laundry, wedged into the tree roots. Somebody covered her with one of the black funerary drapes.

She lies there for a time, head pounding, awash in the sweet warmth from the tupelo blooms above, enjoying the silence broken only by the faint song of the bell still desperately jingling on the governor’s tomb.

© 2018 Andrea Adams

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Andrea Adams has a degree from the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Southern Maine. She has an extensive background in many different aspects of visual arts, from theatre set construction to costume design to conceptual illustration for such clients as JPL/NASA, Project Runway, and HBO. Currently, she is an instructor and the Director of Education: BFA at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood.