BR: The author of today’s story couldn’t come to our studio because he lives some distance away -- not in New Orleans as you might guess, but in a distinctive enclave of New York sometimes known as “LawnGUYland”. So we have him on the phone line right now.
 
TN: And my apologies in advance if the sound quality is compromised by the phone connection. Welcome, Richard.
 
RS: Hey! It's my great pleasure to talk to you both today. I'm so glad I didn't have to cross those bridges . Tolls add up, you know. You've got to love that VOIP.
 
BR: So Richard, you and I have been sort of internet writing acquaintances for maybe a decade. And I’ve seen your author website, which has about 8 times as many books as I have. It seems most of your fiction deals with Irish history, so I’m wondering, why did you set this story in New Orleans?
 
RS: Well that's a very good question. It just so happened that I was on a reconnaissance mission down to Nola with my wife many years ago, when we discovered some buried family secrets surrounding the grandfather on her father's side that no one ever spoke about. Second Generation Irish American merchant seaman from Brooklyn. After some sleuthing, we found an old address of his down in the Seventh Ward not too far from a Naval Yard that was active in the Thirties, and through the war. The whispers from living children of his, suggested he disappeared and took up with another woman down there, so we wanted to find out. I mean any excuse to take a walk near the foot of Canal Street, if you know what I mean.
 
BR: Yeah, yeah.
 
RS: Anyway, what we found out changed the family history completely. He had been part of a secret Navy/US Maritime Commission convoy made up of brand new two-hundred foot long ocean-going tow tugs. They were built just upriver from Nola at Avondale... and barges. And it turns out it was critical to supply an airbase being built on Tinian Island in the South Pacific. And that airbase later became the home of the Enola Gay. Anyway, he never made the return voyage completely and he's buried down in Panama.
 
But the whole thing felt kinda like a book, you know? But the idea really got cemented into place when we ran into a couple of street musicians in the Quarter on Royal. We got to talking and it turned out they had just moved there from Red Hook, Brooklyn. They were history teachers in the public schools and spoke at length about all the connections between Red Hook and Nola along the lines of Irish merchant seafaring families that often kept homes in both places! So we were thinking about that when a guy comes out of the bar as we speak and he comes over to throw in. He asks us where we were from, and my wife, Vivian replied with her usual humor, “Well, where do they call it a drink o' wah-tah?' He said, “Either here in the Channel, or from Brooklyn!”
 
BR: Yep.
 
RS: So... you know, I mean...  What? So the story kind of reflects the need for the recent Irish immigrants to protect their communities by honing this rough-and-ready... I don't know... reputation? It seemed kind of appropriate, and when the tale of the bar-stool retribution began circling around in my head again, it found a new home and became a story. So we've been back many times, and I've enjoyed lots of drinks and pints in the bar the story was set in, right on Magazine Street. The book itself has been a six-year labor of love, so far. I'm about three quarters of the way through. But I'm thinking I might need to nail down some more local facts, don't you?
 
BR: Yes sir... another visit, right! I walked the full length of Magazine Street once, long ago. And I've walked up and down Royal more times than I can count. But it's an interesting coincidence that I'm currently reading A Confederacy of Dunces, which is famous for its New Orleans speech, and also one of the preface pages points out the same thing you just said – how the dialects of New Orleans and various parts of the New York City area share a common source.
 
RS: So it seems the whole world grew out of Brooklyn at one time or another.
 
TN: Yeah...maybe. But culturally New Orleans is a very unusual place, at least for an American city. A place with it’s own brand of magic, as in the Cajun witchy-woman in your story. So what else can you tell us about her?
 
RS: Im going to probably have to... next trip down go and visit Marie Laveau's grave in Iberville Number Two Cemetery at the St. Louis Church off Treme.
 
BR: Oh yeah, I've been there.
 
RS: Of course, the word has it that she's still hanging around outside her tomb. Folks of all kinds still leave requests and different forms of payment for favors granted. Even the historians think she may have been one of the most powerful, politically connected women in the entire South at one time. And I'm no one to scoff at the idea of magic, either. In or near New Orleans, near the city, we've found that practitioners of folk cures and healing both from Cajun and Creole cultures, are still plying their trades. You see occasional signs hanging on trees. They might not hang a regular shingle up but most of the older folks in a neighborhood know who to go to see if you need something special.
 
TN: Yeah I was there once, for a week or so, on a film job. I was walking late one night after having drank a little too much. Without realizing it, I'd wandered out of the Quarter and found myself in a desolate run-down neighborhood that felt threatening. There was no one around and I was lost. I was getting apprehensive and then I saw an old guy walking towards me on the sidewalk. As we passed, I stumbled on an uneven stone. He glanced sideways at me and said “watch your step Tom”. All my hair stood on end and I felt a shiver down my spine. How did he know my name? The next day I told the story to the guy I was working with, who was from the area. He laughed and told me that the use of the name “Tom” is like “Bud” or “Pal.” So the mystery evaporated.
 
BR: Ha. Good story. Well I’ve been to New Orleans many times, but for very quick trips, never really settling in. For me, the city itself is a challenge to conventional reality. I mean, to quote Tennessee Williams, “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.” I think a lot of people’s reality is basically Cleveland.
 
TN: What? A suburb with beige houses, clean sidewalks, manicured lawns?
 
RS: Oh you mean like Long Island? I haven't manicured anything on my property in years.
 
BR: Oh good.
 
TN: But back to the story… the topic of revenge. It’s a universal theme in literature.
 
BR: Like The Count of Monte Cristo, Hamlet, Stephen King’s Carrie… is that literature?
 
RS: Oh yeah.
 
TN: So what drew you to that subject? Or to go deeper, where does the revenge compulsion come from?
 
RS: Hmm, hmm. Well there's a childhood fantasy buried inside me, that I suppose comes from having moved around every single year I was growing up, so I was always the “New Kid” and kind of a target of pranks of all kinds. Thing is, we'd pick up and leave before I ever got the chance to settle the score. I've always been drawn to particularly appropriate and creative means of getting even. So when I hear a good, twisted tale of retribution, it kind of sticks in the muse locker.
 
BR: I see...
 
RS: For later use.
 
BR: Yeah okay. Now I saw Neal Bacon’s family protectiveness and pride, in your story and the actions he takes, as almost a form of tribal warfare -- a male thing. His sister never asked him to take revenge, right?
 
RS: Oh absolutely, and it's a very deep part of Irish culture here and all the way back to the old sod. It's the chieftain's duty to protect his people, even when it means getting in way over his head. I wrote a recent story around such an ancient tale of two clans brandishing weapons across the width of a creek after one tried to steal a cow from the other. There's genuine relish in conflict within the ancient culture at least, and I recall writer G.K. Chesterton, who described the Irish in his Ballad of the White Horse, as “The men that God made mad, for all their wars are merry and all their songs are sad.”
 
BR: That's good. So in your story it seems also a type of class warfare, if we might infer an additional motive, maybe a subconscious one. Reynal is rich. Neal’s the working man who resents him.
 
RS: Not so subconscious. “Thinking who you are” is a particularly bad kind of behavior among the neighborhood folks in Brooklyn, and I suspect, in Nola too. Lots of resentment for those who try to rise above their kin, then show it off. “Lord it around, over everyone.” It's a phrase I learned when I first came to New York.
 
TN: So what would you say about the morality of a poisoner? Someone who takes it on himself to mete out punishment.
 
RS: Hmm... That's another good question. The answer in this particular case falls between the extremes of complete justification and poor judgement. I don't think that Neal would have used such drastic measures to get “even” unless the slight had been, as it was in this case, against a family member, then flaunted about town. Maybe Neal will have to pay later. Or maybe he won't. Humor wielded as a weapon is also somehow, deeply Irish.
 
TN: Yes indeed. You know I often wonder… why do people get upset when others break the rules, and feel the need to react? Is it because in order to maintain civilization, our individual desires have to be compromised with those of others, so to flout that is in effect to undermine the group effort at survival? Something deeply rooted in our evolution?
 
RS: Well I think there are many things that were hard-wired into our behavior, tens of thousands of years ago, going back to our struggle to find homes in new lands among others who probably weren't all that friendly. In those ancient times it had to be our tribe, our clan, first. Prescribed behavior kind of kind of grew out of what was of benefit to all, long before the idea of individual achievement came along. A community... I don't know... seems to need to be settled before it can take the time to create art or songs and sit and tell stories around the fire. So breaking rules established in struggle like that can be seen as the equivalent of turning your back on your people. Loyalty and trust are probably the attributes most respected.
 
BR: Yeah well this has been a good discussion. So, Richard, do you have any new work in progress? Or… how do you spend your days?
 
RS: Well, sad to say my creative writing has been pretty much blocked since January of 2017. Inauguration Day. But besides River Traffic, which is the tentative name of my Nola tale , I've also got a sequel to an ancient travelogue through Gaul that I released a couple of years back, The Gift that I'm still... you know, I've got ideas revolving around my brain. But every time I try to return to these, since January 2017 I've found my usual, very engaging muse has completely fled the scene, leaving me to try to figure it all out on my own. Now that the mid-terms are over, I'm hoping my poor, stressed brain will recover enough to get on with my writing but in the meantime, I always have home repairs, cats to wrangle, ponds to paddle, guitars to pick, you know. And keeping ahead of the doctors can keep you on your toes too. I also still ply the design craft for a select group of clients, doing book covers and marketing graphics and things like that so that gives me some creative outlet.
 
BR: Yeah. You know sometimes I think -- considering how much exposure some of us get for our writing -- that maybe just imagining the work is just as valid as actually doing it. The quality is certainly higher, at least for me. But then I say to myself, Nah… it’s fun to sit down at the keyboard and bleed!
 
TN: Well, I write on my phone. Very small keyboard, a lot less pain. Though what it doe to your mind is something else. Thanks for joining us, Richard.
 
RS: No, thank you both. It's been a lot of fun, and thinking about my work may actually serve to help get me back to it!