Special thanks, as always, are due to Pamela Areeneaux and the Staff of the Historic New Orleans Collection; to Paul, Bill, Sand, and Norman at Le Monde Creole; to Emily Clark; to Rebecca Witjas; to Kate Miciak; to Laurie Perry; to Stephanie Hall; to Bob Moraski for all his time and knowledge; to Jill and Charles for helping me through much awfulness; and to George.
“. . . nigger,” muttered a man’s voice, hoarse in the dark of the alley but very clear.
Benjamin January froze in his tracks. Would this, he wondered, be the occasion on which he’d be hauled into court and hanged-or, more informally, beaten to death on the public street-for the crime of defending himself against a white man’s assault?
The gas-jet above the American Theater’s stage door was out. A misty glimmer beyond the alley’s narrow mouth showed him that the gambling-parlor at the City Hotel on the other side of Camp Street was still in operation, and above the wet plop of hooves, the creak of harness, a man’s voice sang jerkily in English about Ireland’s em’rald hills. It was past three and bitterly cold. Even in Carnival season, New Orleans had to sleep sometime.
January considered turning immediately back to the stage door and retreating through the theater and out to the street by one of the side-doors that admitted patrons to its galleries or pit. He was a big man-six feet three-and built on what the slave-dealers at the baracoons along Baronne Street liked to call
