The driver lets the lion on at Harrah’s. The beast reaches into the furry folds of his hip pocket and fumbles for $1.25, exact change required, paws shaky as the drunks that pour from the watering holes and titty bars on Bourbon Street. At his seat near the back of the bus, he tucks-tail, untangles The Sun from his thinning mane, and reads silently, moving his lips when he gets to the juicier parts.
The driver knows the route by rote. He’s prowled the same five-and-a-half mile territory for years–Canal Street, Peters, Magazine, Camp, St. Charles Ave., Carondelet, South Rampart, Basin, Claiborne, Galvez, Broad, White, Jefferson Davis Parkway, Carrolton, with Cemeteries at the end. He began as a bus driver, back when he was still in his prime. He made the trolley quickly but has watched the younger drivers get the day shifts, watched their careers take off with each promotion until he has now given up the hunt. Night after night he pulls his greying hair into his black cap and does his job, neatly avoiding the pedestrians crossing the track. How simple it would be to pounce on one, to watch the traveler tear to pieces underneath the trolley. But the driver is careful. The driver caters to the tourist trade: “The trolleys have run in New Orleans for 150 years. Notice the mahogany seats, brass fittings, exposed light bulbs. People didn’t used to overlook such details. Today’s train cars are all plastic, aluminum, disposable.”
The driver turns off his microphone. The lion is not listening. Instead, he has put down his paper and squints into the shadows of the Central Business District, then Mid-City, then City Park and the historic city cemeteries, all but the graves empty and still as stone. At the tail end of the line, everything soft and fleshy is sleeping while the dead and the driver and the lion dance to the Jazz Moon and circle, back and forth, the same lonely route night after night.
The driver expects the lion to get off at the last stop, but the lion still sits there. In the glow of the exposed light bulb, his mane is tarnished brass; his fur, wood worn smooth with age. His ribs show through his sagging coat. He is flexing his knees and staring fiercely into the four a.m. darkness. There is something about the lion that makes the driver jumpy, ready for a fight. The driver ran a bit of track in high school. He wasn’t fast then, but he was steady. An endurance racer. He’d liked the contest of it all–the pursuit of prey, his ready reflexes crouched at the starting line waiting to pounce, all motion and muscle.
The driver waits, then turns around, going back the same way he has come. The trolley passes Carrolton, Jeff Davis, White. Eight minutes between stops. The lion is still and still staring. He could be dead but for the occasional twitch of his whiskers. The driver braves a question: “What brings you to New Orleans?” Slowly, the lion turns his rheumy eyes forward and answers in a voice that echoes the rumble of the trolley’s engine. The lion is from Toledo, has a job in textbook purchasing. His boss just gave his route to the young buck fresh out of college, and now he must expand his range south, must prove his worth by taking the worn path with fewer and fewer brick and mortar buildings, fewer blood and bone professors. The lion inhales the silence after his story. The driver exits Broad Street.
Now the driver and the lion pass Galvez, Claiborne, Basin. It will be hours until sunrise, but the driver has the odd feeling that he can suddenly see more clearly through the darkness. He hears the soft purr of wheel of against rail and the lion’s shallow breathing. The air smells different somehow. If he sniffs hard enough, he can detect the horses and herds of tourists in the French Quarter, the beignets and po’boys, even the swamp and the alligators. The driver cannot look the lion in the eyes. Instead, he looks further back–back when the driver was young, when he still had his pride and all his teeth. Back before his father took off and a new one took his place every few years. Before his mother kicked him out, a teenager alone in the world. The driver is angry about the lion. They should not have overlooked the lion. The lion has earned his rage, earned his right to be king of road. They should not have relegated him to some has-been route after all the time and energy and life he had given the company. They should not have stuck him with smaller and smaller spaces. They should not have left him with only night, aloneness, age, an empty stomach.
A driver, a lion, and a streetcar are make their way toward Canal Street’s foot. They are approaching a new day and breakfast. They feel their antique motors growl inside their chests. There are vehicles and bicycles and pedestrians out there, crossing the tracks–they can smell them, can see shadows moving through the early morning. What they wouldn’t give for another chance at the chase, for another teeth-in-meat moment. How easy it would be kill carefulness, to follow their feral nature. How perfect to put their giant paw on the gas and push into the crowd.
Carla Kirchner is a poet, fiction writer, and writing professor who lives in the Missouri Ozarks. Her poetry chapbook, The Physics of Love, won the Concrete Wolf Press 2016 Chapbook Contest and will be published in the fall of 2017. Her prose has recently appeared in Rappahannock Review, Eunoia Review, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and Unbroken Journal.
–Foreground Art by Claudio Parentela
–Background Art by Thomas H