The short legs of the mulatto boy pedaled the rickety bicycle southeasterly
down the bumpy, ballast-stoned streets of the French Quarter. A burlap bag,
full of fresh fetuses, sat loosely at the center of a chicken-wire basket tied
between handlebars. As the cobbled surface of Customhouse Street gave
way to the rocky dirt of the levee, the bicycle slowed and sudden turbulence
bounced the contents of Typhus' burlap sack. Easy does it, thought Typhus.
Should have tied those babies in, he knew, but Doctor Jack had run out of
twine. Simple problem, simple solution: Easy does it. That's all. See that?
Easy. The bouncing diminished accordingly and the bag did not jump, fall,
or spill. Typhus' children stayed with him.

Typhus Morningstar was only nine years old, but older of eye.

Old enough to have suffered some, but young enough to know there are
easy solutions to most types of suffering; solutions not too difficult to grasp
and quick enough to be done with if a person had half a mind to. Typhus
often considered the possibility that when a boy or a girl reached a certain
age of maturity (or reached a certain physical height) that simplicity itself
became a thing not to be trusted. Pain for grownups is easy enough to
feel -- their problem lies in the whys, hows and what-nows that always
accompany such pain. Simple questions are bound to yield simple answers,
but also; a thing too easy often feels like a trick. Typhus hoped never to
reach the age (or height) of a person who could only trust the harder, more
complex ways of handling life's trials.

Typhus maneuvered up the side of the levee, then down the slope towards
the river, where the water's recurring kiss had hardened and smoothed the
sand into a firm, grainy mud. It was tougher to pedal here, but a smoother
ride. He felt safer on this side of the sloping embankment anyway, beyond
eye and earshot of the busybodies and shady nighttime characters who
roamed the Quarter when the sun was down and gone. It wasn't unheard
of (or even uncommon) for a tan-colored boy with a package to be stopped
by harbor police for no good reason at all.

Plus, it was so much prettier this near the river.

He followed the slow curve of the riverside until it ambled him up and onto
the boardwalk that ran alongside the docks. The only light here was of the
moon, bouncing off the water like a million lemon slices, shimmering and
shining but yielding no useful illumination. Smudge pots bobbed atop buoys
fashioned from beer barrels fifty yards offshore, warning ships of sandbanks
too high for safe docking. Thick, black smoke from burning pitch -- its
powerful smell equally loathsome to man and mosquito -- etched creases
in the coal sky, quietly proclaiming that there's always something blacker.
Only the fatigued crews of smaller vessels dared navigate between the
hidden sandbanks, but even these few vessels seemed void of living beings
tonight. Every porthole of every ship: black, black, black.

It was all so peaceful and still here.

Typhus loved his midnight bicycle rides. The sound of the water, the feel of
night air against his skin, and the acrid smell of burning tar; it all conspired
into a comforting sense of oneness with his father's God. And that's all his
child's heart had ever really pined for. Not much else, anyway.

A block or so ahead, the shadow of a man cast long from the end of a
narrow pier. The dark shape jerked grotesquely as Typhus rode past, sending
a sweeping wave of warm gray across the river's yellow-sparkly surface.
Typhus smiled and waved back to the elderly gentleman known to most
as Marcus Nobody Special. He wished he could stop and talk to Mr. Marcus,
but he had business to tend. Maybe after -- but most likely, he'd be too tired
to socialize after the errand. The business of the errand always took a lot
out of him.

Mr. Marcus, who'd been caretaker of the Girod Street potter's field since
before the War of the States, had either buried or overseen the burying of
just about every man, woman and child of color who'd died in the last fifty
years around here. Mr. Marcus was seventy if he was a day, but never
complained of aches or pains and always spent the nighttime fishing off the
longest pier at this particular stretch of levee. It seemed the old man never
rested or slept at all.

Most of the locals thought Marcus crazy. Some even thought him a ghost,
people saying he'd died, buried his own bones and come back; that he was
on some kind of mysterious mission to find a particular fish that would let
him go back to the grave in peace. That fish, they said, had stolen Marcus'
soul.