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The gift of memory.

Some might call it a curse.

Antoine remembered most every little thing about his sixty years on this planet. Some memories were stronger than others, clearer, like the crystal clear reflections of Eden lake. Others, not so much, dredged and submerged in the bayou bog water of his Louisiana Creole kin. Yet all were still there, all came back to him in waves of nostalgia, tinged with pride or penance. As his days in retirement rolled onwards like a young soldier, Beau found himself deeply lost in the waters of his mind, wading through the good and the bad as he wistfully looked beyond the horizon to truly find what made him the man he was and to search for the exact lessons he learned so that he could pass that knowledge on to those that he would eventually leave behind. It would always be Antoine’s mission to leave the world a better place than when he first entered it.

[i]The French Quarter. 1st October 1961[/i]

Marcellus Beauregard had broken his back trying to do what a man must, provide. 

In no uncertain terms, he had been slaving away, building homes and hearths for the white man that spat on him every time he walked by the very walls he had crafted skillfully with his bare hands. Their words, whilst guided like poison tipped arrows aimed directly at his heart, could not stop him from his path. Held together with honey and duct tape, Marcellus was on a mission through the crowded streets of the Quarter. Despite the jagged feeling of pain he was enduring, he would not slow down his march as he made his way to his wife, his beloved, Monique, as she was about to give birth to their first child. No amount of pain in his body or thinly veiled racism in the midst of what would soon be a full scale riot would stop him from being there to bear witness to that miracle. 

It all began the week before; Jacob Ellis was thirteen years old and was walking home from school. As with most boys of colour, his walk home was one always littered with words of hate, the bile of his contemporaries but Jacob ignored them. He had learned to wrap himself in a cloak of toughness, like the wizards and warlocks in the fantasy books he loved so much. No cloak or shield would be enough to starve off what happened next. In absent-mindedness, his head buried in JRR Tolkien's magnum opus, the young boy didn’t pay any attention to his surroundings and accidentally knocked over ten year old Alice Menard. Alice, a small girl even for her age, cracked her head on the pavement. Although she stood up and proclaimed her health, the onlookers immediately accused Jacob of assault.

When he never returned home from school that night, Jacobs' parents went out looking for him. After an exhaustive search, he was soon found strung between two low hanging trees, hands and feet bound together and his head fully submerged in the dirty swamp water of the bayou. Nobody would ever be charged for the crime but for the ensuing riots, a small army of black and non whites would be charged for their protesting. Violence would soon erupt amongst the residents and police if the Quarter which would only end upon the further seven deaths of four rioters and three servicemen. The event would be lost to time for all but those that were there.

Attempting to navigate the sea of bodies with a shattered vertebrae was by no means an easy feat but Marcellus could not allow himself to feel the fragmented bones that were piercing his muscles further with every laboured step. He had worked too long and too hard to miss the best day of his life despite being surrounded by those experiencing the worst of theirs. His entire family, from himself and his twelve siblings, fighting to survive on the streets with nothing but each other to rely on. He thought of his father, hacking rocks on the chain gang, locked away for the colour of his skin. Marcellus remembered the stories of his grandmother, who toiled away on the tobacco fields of Monticello, unable to speak any language beyond her native Haitian tongue.

A Beauregard fought through pain. Giving up wasn’t a thing.

As the uprising around him swelled to a crescendo, Marcellus could feel the claustrophobia closing in. The crowd was getting denser, the combative words between his brothers and the white man that stood on their balconies worsened only to be followed by tossed homemade bombs of cleaning fluid and a lit cloth. Amongst all this, their arms linked together in unbreakable links, silently bowing to not disperse and never let go, to never give up. Beauregard’s one and all. Marcellus dove away from the flaming automobiles and the shattered glass of broken shop windows and into a side street. On any other given day, he would stand with his brothers in solidarity for a boy who did not deserve that which the fates bestowed on him but on this day, they would understand that he had to unshackle his chain to get where he needed to be.

The stairs up to the apartment he and his wife shared with three other families might as well have been Everest and he might as well have been Edmund Hillary, without Tenzing to guide him to the summit. Clutching the railing with a trembling grip, whether from nerves or deteriorating energy, Marcellus began his perilous ascent. With every new step, the man made of oak pushed through what felt like a wall of sand. As he climbed further away from the raucous noise from the riot, another sound began to whisper into Marcel’s ear. A melodic tease of something more, something new. Then there was something else, a cry, a shrill shriek from unfinished lungs. It was enough to strengthen his resolve, to feel the hands of those that came before him push Marcellus to the top of the stairs and through the front door. 

With the dulcet sounds of Sam Cooke singing his latest track [url=https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zBn5aIfZElE&pp=ygUKQ2hhaW4gZ2FuZw%3D%3D]Chain Gang[/url] as a backing track, Marcellus, drenched in the sweat of his ancestors, dragged his almost lifeless body to the bed where his wife lay, in her arms a bundle wrapped in a blue blanket. Pulling his huge frame onto the bed, he all but collapsed next to Monique with a hefty sigh. With roasted coffee colored eyes he gazed upon the baby boy that matched his stare intently.

“Hey hey, no tears for me”

The gathered neighbours cooed and cried at the sight of the newborn, Marcellus reached out with a calloused finger tip and the child reached back, wrapping his tiny hands around his fathers digit.

“Antoine. I think we should call him Antoine.”