The sun has already set below the bluff, and the truncated roars of flaming gas jets sound from beyond the great mansion whose grounds provide the setting for the towns biggest festival. Annie gasps as we round the corner of Rosalie, and I feel my heart quicken. The term
balloon glow
perfectly describes this night ritual; from a distance the balloons glow like giant multicolored lanterns against the black backdrop of sky. But up close, among the inflated canopies swaying in the wind, the experience is much more intense. When the pilots do burns for the spectators, you can feel the heat from thirty feet away. Yellow and blue flares light the night like bonfires, awing children and adults alike. The tethered balloons tug against the ropes binding them to the earth, and kids who grab the edges of the baskets feel themselves lifted bodily from the ground. The ceremony is a perfect prologue for tomorrows opening race, when the balloons will leap from the dewy morning grass and fill the skies over the city, pulling every attentive soul upward with them.
I'm glad yall decided to go ahead with it, Annie says, grabbing my arm as we hurry to join the people streaming among the balloons. This will help the refugee kids forget about the hurricane.
She tugs me toward the nearest balloon, and I use her momentary inattention to check my cell phone for further text messages. I don't know if I'm hoping Tim will cancel the meeting or move it forward. All I know for sure is that I want the truth about Golden Parachute. But theres no message.
I spend the first forty-five minutes with Annie, looking at everything she instructs me to and buttonholing pilots so she can ask them all kinds of questions about the flight parameters of hot-air bal
loons. I get buttonholed myself a few times, by citizens with questions or complaints about their pet interest, but Annie has become adept at extricating me from such conversations. TV crews roam the grounds of Rosalie with their cameras: one from Baton Rouge, ninety miles to the south; another from Jackson, a hundred miles to the north. I promise a producer from the Baton Rouge station that I'll give her five minutes at the gate of Rosalie, where they're interviewing pilots and Katrina refugees. I plan to take Annie with me, but two minutes after I make the promise, we walk right into Libby Jensen, and something goes tight in my chest.
Libby! Libby! Annie cries, running forward and giving her a hug. Arent the balloons
awesome
?
Yes, they are, Libby agrees, smiling cautiously at me above Annies head.
Libby is a Natchez native who went to law school in Texas, married a partner at her Dallas firm, had a child by him, then divorced him after discovering that hed kept a series of mistresses during the first decade of their marriage. She liked practicing law about as much as she liked being cheated on, so she brought her son back home and used her settlement to open a bookstore. Her charisma and sharp business sense have made the shop a success, and several author friends of mine stop to sign books there when making the literary pilgrimage from Oxford to New Orleans. After Caitlin left town, Libby and I found that our friendship quickly evolved into something that eased the loneliness we both felt, and that mutual comfort carried us through most of a year. But her son, Soren, has some serious anger issuesnot to mention a drug problemand Libby and I disagreed about how best to handle that. In the end, that disagreement drove us apart.
Tonight is the first time weve found ourselves together since ending our relationship, and I've worried it would be awkward. But Libbys soft brown eyes shine as she hugs Annie, and in them I see an acknowledgment that the sadness she feels is in part her own choice.
Wheres Soren? Annie asks, reminding me that Tim said hed seen Libbys son down on the
Magnolia Queen,
looking high as a kite.
Libby rolls her eyes to disguise the anxiety thats her constant companion. Oh, running around with his friends, complaining
about the bands they booked this year. Where are you guys headed?
Daddy has an
interview,
Annie says, obviously not enthused by the idea of standing by while I play talking head.
Well, you can just come with me while he acts like a big shot for the cameras. Libby gives me a wink. I just saw some of your friends diving into the Space Walk.
Can I, Dad?
I question Libby with a raised eyebrow, and she nods that she meant the invitation sincerely.
Okay. I'll catch up in a half hour or so. Were not staying long, though. I have some work to do tonight, and I want to be rested for that balloon flight tomorrow.
Id like to see that, Libby says, chuckling like a wiseass.
I'm making him take a barf bag, Annie tells her. Seriously.
I wave them off and head back toward Rosalie, wondering where Tim Jessup is at this moment. Dealing blackjack on the boat docked below the cemetery? Or hiding out in some hotel room with stolen evidence, chain-smoking cigarettes while he waits for midnight to come?
There are no hotel rooms available,
I answer myself. Implicit in my worry about Tim is a fear of violence, and it strikes me that violence has always been a part of the ground beneath my feet. Fort Rosalie, the original French garrison in Natchez, was built in 1716. In 1729 the enraged Natchez Indians massacred every French soldier in the fort to punish them for ill treatmentfor which French reinforcements slaughtered every native man, woman, and child they could find the following year. Rosalie went on to become General Grants headquarters during one night of the Civil War, but by then it had presided over untold numbers of robberies, rapes, and murders in the Under-the-Hill district that lay in its shadow.
Is it possible,
I wonder,
that in some dark clearing across the river men are gathering to watch starving animals tear each other to pieces while half-naked girls serve them drinks?
As I round the east corner of Rosalies fence, a tungsten video light splits the dark, and several brown heads begin bobbing in its glare. If the gas jets of the balloons look like lanterns, the video light is a white-hot star illuminating a blond woman with a handheld mike standing before Rosalies gate. Shes interviewing some children who
apparently fled here from the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina. Two TV trucks are parked nearby, and more than a dozen journalists call questions to the kids from the shadows behind the light.
As I near the spotlights halo, the producer I spoke to earlier waves me over and tells me what she wants: the basic Chamber of Commerce routine. When the kids finish, I take their place before the gate and squint against the glare while my pupils adapt.
On TV I tend to come across more like a district attorney than a mayor, and this has been a double-edged sword. Despite my diminished enthusiasm for the job, after two years in office I can give the citys PR line on autopilot. This years Balloon Festival, however, has more meaning than usual. With the citys hotels and shelters filled to bursting with suffering families, many locals believed we should cancel the races out of respect for the hurricane refugees, and also to keep from straining the citys overtaxed resources. But the Balloon Festival is a twenty-year tradition, and I, along with several community leaders, championed the idea that the work required to bring off the races under extraordinary circumstances would prove a unifying force for the community. As I explain this to the brightly blank eyes of the TV reporter, she acts as though my words amaze her, but I know shes thinking about her next question, or her eye makeup, or where she can get a sugared funnel cake like the one a refugee kid is eating. I try to wrap up my pitch with some enthusiasm for the citizens wholl see the report from home.