: Oskar Hammar has done something extraordinary.
He has called in sick to his job as the assistant manager of the meat department at Zummo’s Grocery.
It is the only time in thirty years he has ever missed a day of work in the woefully small grocery store at very end of Metairie Road. No one today is really certain how Zummo’s is still open in this age of mega-supermarket box stores. The concept of parking is limited to three spots in front of the door, and good luck to you otherwise. Still, amazingly, this anachronism plods on with a small, aging, but faithful clientele. But, today, there will be no freshly cut lamb chops for Mrs. Skaggs, or ground meat for Mrs. Jenkins’ Saturday meatloaf. And Mr. Laborteaux will have to go without his lamb shanks this weekend.
If all goes well, it will never have happened.
He has spent the entire day in the main branch of the Jefferson Parish Public Library, surrounded by old books that have yet to see the light of the internet. Old, dusty volumes on 19th century land sales; large, ungainly bound volumes of forgotten newspapers with names like the Item, the State, the Bee; and, a scattering of seemingly disparate books, each with pieces of information he needs to know.
An imperceptible cloud of bibliosmia, the name given to the smell of old books, insulates him. It catches the slightest breeze and halts it. He scribbles away into an unused antique ledger purchased at an old rummage store in the Quarter. The faded marks inside the cover date the book to 1853. As old as the ledger is the collection of antique pencils. He’s carved the tips into two of them with an antique pen knife, again unused before Oskar bought them. The pinch-faced owner of the shop was confused by Oskar’s demand for antiques that were never used, but was very happy to take the money.
He stops again, grabbing an old handkerchief near him on the table and wiping away the graphite dust common to old pencils. He blows away the remaining bits of silver-black across the page, and absently sinks the cloth into his back wallet pocket. He’s sunk a lot of his money into this trip. Again, if he does everything right, it won’t matter.
His fat, round fingers clean once more, he picks up another book and turns to the page he has bookmarked a few hours earlier. He flips through a few pages, a microscopic spray of decaying paper dancing in the fluorescent lighting. He’s nearly gotten everything he needs to know.
At last, he’s found the last piece he’s looking for. He scribbles frantically but neatly into the ledger, tossing aside the nub he’s been using and grabbing another. He mutters to himself as he writes.
“...Pope…12th…21st…closing…Magazine…10 am…that’s all.”
He says the last two words out loud, the sound of his clammy voice almost absorbed by the walls of books. From behind him, a thin woman wearing a beige cardigan, glasses, straight mousy brown hair and a sour look approaches determinedly and says,
“We are closing, ‘sir’. Time to check out and go.”
Oskar turns and glares up at the woman as she italicizes the word ‘sir’. The woman looks down her thin, straight nose at him, not a hint of a smile to be seen. He closes and pulls the ledger to his chest, then grabs the pencils and looks again at the woman for a moment. He wonders what she will be like afterwards. Uncomfortably, the woman crosses her arms and walks back to the desk in a huff. Oskar watches her go, then walks towards the institutional glass and aluminum doors and marches himself out into the night air, the doors locking behind him.
He decides not to wait for the bus. It’s still 45 minutes away, and it will take less time to just walk home. He pulls his oversized Zummo’s jacket around him, the one with the shiny yellow material, and pads along the sidewalk up West Esplanade towards Causeway and Shirmaine Street.
As he walks, his mind is going over all the information he’s learned in the last four years. The ledger, his repository for all the knowledge he needs to make his plans a reality. Names, places, days, events, financial records, genealogy, star charts, stock market records, the information floods his brain, falling into the many little checklists he has created for himself. Tomorrow morning, he will be ready.
Tomorrow, he returns to 1854 to enact his plan to prevent Mardi Gras in New Orleans from ever happening…This is My New Orleans.
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