At first, Andy wasn't even sure it was a parade, there was so little to it. One float. One tiny band of jazz musicians. That wasn't enough to be a real parade, was it? But no other traffic flowed on St. Charles Avenue.
For any other Carnival parade in New Orleans, for a real parade, the traffic would cease only when the police barricades held it back. For this parade, if it really was a parade, there weren't any barricades. The cars had just stopped coming on one of the city's busiest streets.
Andy watched the solitary float pass by. It was a flat-bed wagon decorated with a mildewed paper-mache bull and pulled by six mules. An old man walked beside the lead mule, hand on the animal's bridle. One of the bull's paper-mache horns was broken.
Three women in sequined dresses stood next to the bull. They, at least, were good looking. They looked like the Mardi Gras that Andy had imagined. The women threw bead necklaces, aluminum coins, and plastic cups to the people on the sidewalk who seemed as surprised as Andy by this sorry little afternoon procession. Behind the wagon, came the band, just half a dozen seedy old musicians. They were more of a shuffling band than a marching band. Trailing them was one young, well-muscled man, naked above the waist. His skin was very black, and he waved a greasily smoking torch as he marched.
The sky was dense with clouds. The absence of traffic and the gray half-light both made this odd procession seem like something in a dream.
There hadn't been any notice of a parade today in the Times-Picayune. Andy had looked. He was planning to hit every parade and crash every party he could possibly crash for the whole of Carnival. That was what he had come for, the biggest party of his life, one last blowout between college and the working-stiff tedium he was sure would follow for the rest of his life.
Carnival had officially started the night before, but there wasn't much happening yet. Andy had figured on doing some bar crawling on his own this afternoon while his New Orleans friends were at work.
"Hey, hey!" a man called from the sidewalk. "String of beads!"
One of the women on the wagon threw the man a string of green beads. As the wagon rattled slowly along the street, other people overcame their surprise and shouted, "Hey, lady! Cup!" or just "Throw me something!"
Andy ran in the street to pass the torch bearer and the band. When he caught up with the wagon, he shouted, "Hey! String of beads!"
One of the women threw a string of amber beads. He caught it in the air, hung the strand around his neck, and trotted to catch up again.
"Coin!" someone else cried from the sidewalk, and one of the women threw a green metal disk that dropped onto the street short of the curb. Andy darted over and grabbed it. It had a bull on one face. The reverse was stamped: The Mystick Krewe of Corpus.
"Mister, that's mine!" said a child who had stepped into the street.
"Tawna, you get back here," said her mother. "There's plenty more coming. Mardi Gras just starting."
"Sorry, kid!" Andy said. He stuck the coin into his pocket, then trotted after the float again.
Just as the streets weren't blocked off, there were no sidewalk barriers along this parade route, as there would be for the real parades. Even so, only Andy had strayed into the street. Everyone else who shouted requests did so from the sidewalk.
"Beads!" Andy shouted again. He was close enough to the wagon to see that the woman who had thrown him his first strand was wearing a wig. Her auburn hair was crooked. "Throw me some beads!"
The woman threw a strand of amber beads over Andy's head, to the sidewalk, where someone else whooped over their prize.
"Come on!" Andy cried, grinning and tapping his chest. "Need some more beads here! Throw me some beads!"
The woman looked at the next strand she held. The beads were purple. She said something in French and tossed the beads into the air. Andy ran under them and snatched them, laughing.
"You, Sir!" boomed a voice from above and behind him. Andy turned. A masked man on horseback loomed over him. The black ostrich plumes in the man's helmet made him seem even bigger than he was. Andy thought maybe the man was about to tell him to get out of the street, but instead the man leaned forward in his saddle and said, "Your gifts, Sir. Golden beads. Purple beads. And the coin? Let me see the coin!"
The man's voice was compelling. Andy dug out the aluminum coin as the float and the musicians continued down the avenue.
"Yes, I thought so. Green!" the man cried. His lips were red and wet beneath the mask. "Gold, purple, and green! The colors of Carnival! You, Sir, are chosen! How would you like to see Carnival as few see it? How would you like to be the King of Corpus! Our guest! Our guest for all of Carnival!"
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