Andrew Jackson was pushed off his perch, horse and all, three weeks after the French Quarter flooded. Jackson toppled, headfirst, into the grassy knoll between the remains of St. Louis Cathedral and the concrete sidewalk of the eponymous Jackson Square. The statue landed with the bronze legs of his horse sticking straight up, like they were kicking into the rain. 

    Remy had used the horse’s legs as posts when he erected his first shelter; wrapping discarded bungee cords around a tattered blue tarp and securing the ends of the tarp in the grass with broken cement blocks. The memorial to Jackson had been disgraced and disregarded for almost six months when Remy finished his work in Jackson Square, but it was only a week later that another Gulf storm came and unceremoniously destroyed his crudely built shack. 

       His next attempt was better. Remy salvaged the blue tarp and used the wrought-iron fencing around Jackson Square as the backbone of his work. He managed to harvest a sheet of heavy plywood from a boarded-up window of a Macy’s on Canal Street and used this as a front wall. He attached the plywood to the fence using industrial clamps he collected from an abandoned restaurant. Remy nailed a cross he found in the rubble and debris of St. Louis to the front of his shack. He meticulously set out three folding chairs—the only ones he could find that still unfolded—in front of the structure, facing the front of his creation. 

       But it was what he had found in the remains of the church’s small sacristy that would complete Remy’s vision. Dragging the wooden pulpit he had discovered under a pile of broken sheetrock and timber to the edge of Jackson Square had taken him most of the morning. The wooden lectern was almost whole, save for one missing board on the pulpit’s footing. And the missing pine panel was on the reader’s side of the pulpit, an imperfection that a congregation would not be able to see. Remy laid this treasure on a quilt and carefully dragged it across Jackson Square, trying to use the grass areas as much as possible as to not scar the polished wood surface. 

     Sweating, Remy raised the pulpit between his shanty and the folding chairs, assuring the stand was centered. And when he finished, and he saw that it was good, Remy rested. 

        And it didn’t take seven days for Remy’s first visitor to arrive. 

       On the third day after setting the pulpit, with the sun’s rays reflecting shallow light across the few unbroken windows of downtown office buildings and hotels, Remy woke to the sound of coughing. He’d fallen asleep sitting against the plywood, underneath the cross, and turned to look at a woman sitting across from him. He had to shield his eyes with his hand because the setting sun was peeking behind this woman, but he could see her sullen frame draped with a threadbare sundress. On top of her tattered dress was a faded Army jacket, the kind you would find in a surplus store. 

     “Beth?” Remy asked, but the woman did not answer. Instead, she shifted her position, and the movement tested the integrity of the chair’s rusty legs. Remy stood and stared at the woman, squinting his eyes in the harshness of the light and the shadows of the square. A smile spread across his sun-cracked lips. 

      “Welcome!” he said in a graveled voice, then cleared his throat into his hand. “My name is Remy. Are you here for Mass?” 

       He was smiling widely now, showing a row of neglected teeth. The woman sat motionless in the chair. She was not looking at Remy, but rather at some distant point on the horizon. He allowed the moments of silence to pass, then Remy walked to the woman and sat on the folding chair next her, placing a delicate hand on her knee. 

        “What is your name?”

        The woman turned her face to Remy, finally looking at him. “What?” she asked.

        “Is it Beth?” 

        “No,” she said. Her brow furled, causing the dried streak of mud on her forehead to bunch up like crusted paper. 

      “I didn’t think so!” Remy said and clapped his hands in the air. “Beth was my wife’s name.”

        The woman pulled back slightly, then, as if remembering something she tugged back the sleeve of her jacket. Remy could see writing on the dark skin of the woman’s bare arm. She looked at the writing, tracing several letters with her finger then replied, “Marla.” The right side of the woman’s mouth turned up into a half-grin and then she looked at Remy for confirmation. “My name is Marla.”

        “Mar-La,” Remy said slowly, pronouncing each syllable as if her name were two words. 

        “Why . . . I don’t,” Marla said, looking at Remy, at his eyes. “I can’t remember?”

        “Sometimes people forget,” Remy said, carefully pulling down her jacket sleeve and covering the writing. “Sometimes, people get sick, and they forget.” Remy’s eyes looked up to the sky as he said this, and he nodded a small, knowing nod. With that, his eye winked—almost like a tic or twitch. 

      Thunder rumbled in dark and distant clouds, threatening to add depth to the already ubiquitous puddles of water around them. Remy hurried back to his shelter and retrieved a red box from the storage shelf of the pulpit. The container was a heavy plastic, no bigger than a breadbox, and had a white cross embossed on the front cover. He carried the box back to Marla, holding it in both hands, as though it were a baby bird or a newborn puppy. Remy sat on the chair next to Marla, carefully balancing the container on his knees as he placed his hand on top of her hand again. 

        “Now Beth,” Remy said. 

        “No . . . Marla,” she replied.

     “Marla,” Remy said as he held her hand and stroked it softly. “What do you remember?”

       “Everything. Nothing,” she said. Her thin lips parted, and Marla started to say something else then stopped. “I’m looking for someone.”

        Remy frowned. “Do you know who?”

        Marla’s eyes squinted as though thinking this hard hurt her, deep in the primitive part of her mind. “I don’t know,” she replied. “But I can almost see it.”

      “You are sick,” Remy said, and opened the box in his lap. “I can help, I can, I can.” He reached into the box and pulled out a plastic sleeve of crackers. Sliding one out of the package and into his hand, he offered her a small, brown cookie. 

        “It’s . . . wet,” Marla said after she took several insignificant bites from her small meal.

      “The whole world is wet,” Remy said, looking around at the puddles of water that collected in the deep recesses of the once grand promenade. “Forty days and forty nights, the Lord said. But I think He forgot to pull the plug on this one.” Remy laughed at his own joke and looked at Marla, who only stared down at a half-eaten, soggy cookie. 

        “You need to rest,” Remy said. “I think that will help.”

        “What if I can’t remember?”

       “Sleep first, remember later,” Remy said and smiled at Marla. “I have blankets and pillows, I took them from the Westin, I did.” Remy hurried over to the plywood panel leaning across his shack, slid it carefully along the tarps, and showed Marla several makeshift piles of bedding on the interior of his shack. 

      “This is a safe place,” he said as he pulled her gently from the folding chair, leading her to a crumpled pile of sheets and pillows. “You rest, no? Remy will take care of you. You will sleep.”

       And Marla followed. She followed him under the blue tarp, dodging the bungee cords that fell like tendrils from the doorway, and slid into a bird’s nest of dirty linen and feather pillows. After she curled into a tight ball of weighted exhaustion, Remy pulled a heavy comforter over her and used a finger to draw a line across her forehead, carefully pulling the tight curls of her bangs from her eyes and looping them behind her ear. He waited until her breath slowed, then went outside and sat under the leaning overhand of his church. It had begun to rain again, and the drops of water pelted the tarp in a soothing way. This was the new music; a percussion of raindrops that replaced the memories of man. 

​

When Remy was sure Marla was sleeping, he opened his red box and removed the sleeve of cookies. He slid one of the round wafers into his hand and muttered quietly, alternating the words between English and broken French. Holding the cookie up, he grabbed both sides of the wafer with his fingers and twisted, exposing the soft white cream in the middle. When his prayer was finished, he placed the cream side of the cookie on his tongue, let it sit there and dissolve in his own saliva. Slowly, he licked the sugary white inside of the cookie until it was completely gone, then he carefully slid the wet wafers back into the sleeve. 

       The rain settled to a slow drizzle and Remy let the sound of drops pelting the tarp settle him. In the tent, Marla mumbled something in her sleep. Maybe it was the name of the person she was looking for, but Remy knew that it probably wasn’t. People like Marla were given a gift. They didn’t have to remember what happened. 

        Remy leaned toward the door and listened. When he was sure Marla had settled, he leaned back in his chair, placing his hands behind his head, the way people do when they feel safe and comfortable in their world. 

​

The boy was standing behind the wrought-iron gates of Jackson Square, trying to make his frame invisible in the overgrown bushes that lined the fence. The morning sun had chased the rain away, and Remy watched the boy as the boy watched him. 

        “Who is that?” Marla asked. Remy turned to see Marla standing in the doorway, her Army jacket replaced with the borrowed hotel comforter draped over her fragile shoulders. 

        “I had a son,” Remy said, studying the boy. 

        “Is that him?” Marla asked. 

        “No,” Remy said, “He passed. Before the Sickness.”

       “Do you know him?” Marie asked, pointing a slender finger towards the figure watching them. She walked out from the door, her eyes squinting as if pressing her lids closer together would bring the boy into focus. 

        “I don’t think so,” Remy said, then asked, “Do you remember your name?”

        Marla frowned, looked down at her shoeless feet. 

         “Look at your arm,” Remy said, and tapped at his own sleeve like he was a patient teacher, and his student only needed the slightest encouragement. 

        Marla looked down at her sleeve, pulled on it and then mouthed her own name in a whisper as she read the letters written on her skin. “Marla,” she said, and Remy nodded. 

       “People like churches,” he said, “Makes them feel safe.” He pointed to the cross hanging from a nail on the outer wall. “But some people need a sign. They doubt, like Thomas, no?”

        Remy took the red box from under his chair, shuffled through it and removed a black marker. He tore a section of cardboard from one of the walls of his shack and began writing on the corrugated board. Marla coughed—at first in short, throat-clearing spasms—then in full violent heaves. Remy looked up from his writing, watched her. She was in bad shape, with the whites of her eyes almost completely ashen now. The normally pink veins around her pupils now gnarled and dark like cypress roots. He patted her back softly to ease the coughing. People with the Sickness could live a long time, though. Their bodies could fight the infection, it was the brain that struggled. The Sickness made people forget. 

        When Marla stopped coughing, Remy helped her wipe sticky amber tears away from her eyes so she could see. He was careful not to touch the black ridges of skin that protruded from the corner of her eyelids. When he finished, he lifted the cardboard sign he had finished and held it for Marla to see. 

        “Well?” Remy said, grinning. “We have a sign now.” In dark black marker, he had written “WELCOME TO REMY CHUCH.”

      Remy then turned and held the sign up to where the boy was still standing. “Hey, boy. Welcome!” 

       The figure partially hidden in the bushes did not move, he stood motionless as though he could hide behind the wrought-iron posts of the Jackson Square fence. Like he was now part of this barricade. 

        “I don’t think he can read your sign,” Marla said. 

        Remy frowned. “But churches are safe places,” he whispered, almost to himself. He shook his head, then looked at Marla, “My son’s name was Henri.” 

Marla nodded, then looked back at the boy standing at the fence. “Names are important,” she said. 

        “Yes, they are,” Remy said, and carefully placed his sign at his feet. 

        They waited, sitting in folding chairs in front of Remy’s makeshift church, as the sun set over a wet and broken city. They waited until the boy was covered in the shadows and disappeared into the darkness. 

​

Marla woke in this same darkness, with only slivers of light from a half-moon breaking into the shack from small gaps in the walls. But it wasn’t the light that jarred Marla awake, it was the dampness. The coolness she felt on her skin. In the haze of sleep, she thought it might be a dog licking her arms, or some feral animal with a cold, rough tongue slowly tasting her skin. She raised her head from her pillow and looked down, across her body. 

        There, Remy was over her, washing her with a damp towel. 

       “You have a fever,” Remy said softly. He finished wiping her arms, then folded the wet towel into a rectangle and placed it gently on her forehead. “C’est bon?”

        The air inside the shack was heavy and smelled like a hospital, with the odor of soap and cleaner lingering in the humidity. “I wasn’t born here,” Marla said. “In New Orleans.” 

        Remy leaned back, planting his arms behind him, and looked at Marla. 

         “I don’t remember things, I remember memories,” she said. “It is like I’m watching a movie of my life, but the important things are missing.”

        “Do you remember your name?”

     Marla opened her mouth as though she might say something, then after a moment she closed it. 

        Remy wiped his chin with his hand, then rolled into his own pile of blankets and pillows. “Tomorrow, we will learn, non?”

     Marla turned towards him, careful that the cool towel not to slide off her forehead and considered this. Remy was already breathing deeply, his thick blanket rhythmically keeping time with his breath. 

        “Marla,” she said quietly, as though it were a prayer.

​

The next morning was bright hot, with the sun shining laboriously into Jackson Square. Remy leaned over Marla and shook her softly. “He is back,” he said. 

     Marla rolled over, blinked her eyes open. The air weighed on her and the humidity made her blankets stick to her skin like she was waking in an unbearable cocoon. The hospital smell was gone, replaced with the aroma of cooked food. Remy held up an empty bowl and smiled broadly. “I cook breakfast, non?”

        Through a spasm of coughing, Marla nodded. Reluctantly, she peeled the sticky sheets from her body and joined Remy outside. He had set up a small fire, using the cardboard sign that read “WELCOME TO REMY CHUCH” to fan the struggling embers. A modest black pot hung over the fire and three empty cans of baked beans lay near Remy’s feet. 

     “If my sign don’t work, maybe Remy’s special breakfast will,” he said, and chuckled. Marla’s gaze turned to the square, beyond the fallen Andrew Jackson statue. The boy was standing there, but this time he was inside the fence. Remy walked back to the pulpit and pulled his red box from under the lectern. From it, he produced several white packets of salt, the kind you would find in a fast-food meal. 

        “Secret ingredient,” he said, tore the small packets open with his dirty teeth and added them to the pot. 

      Marla watched Remy stir the pot for a long time. When he declared it was done, they ate. Marla chewed slowly, only stopping to swat away flies that landed on the rim of her bowl. When she finished, she turned to Remy and said, “I’m looking for someone.” 

        Remy tilted his own bowl and scraped the final clump of beans into his mouth. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Tomorrow, we will look.” He leaned over and rinsed his spoon in one of the puddles near the shack. 

        “You need more strength,” he said then looked over to the fence where the boy was still standing. “We will save some for him,” he said then removed the pot from the dying fire. 

       The sun, directly overhead, burned away everything but the mosquitoes. Remy helped Marla move their chairs under the shack’s tarp canopy, away from the oppressive heat. It was almost dusk when the boy finally began his timid walk towards Remy’s tent.

        When Remy saw the boy walking across the wet concrete, he jumped out of his chair and waved enthusiastically. “Welcome!” he said and held up his torn cardboard sign. “My name is Remy. Are you here for Mass?” 

        The boy stepped back; his eyes wide. “I’m sorry,” Remy said, “Don’t be afraid. We have food.” Remy leaned over and lifted the black pot by its wire handle, holding out as if it were a gift. “Is your name Henri?”

      The boy shook his head, stood there. His eyes were ashen and had the same black frame as Marla’s, like some macabre, apocalyptic mascara. 

      “I didn’t think so!” Remy said and smiled broadly. “Henri was my son’s name. Come, come.”

        The boy, with a slender frame and torn clothes, stepped towards Marla. “Hello,” she said. “My name is . . . ” Marla’s brow furled and for a moment she looked panicked, unsure of herself.

        “Mais cher,” Remy said, and tapped patiently at his sleeve. Marla’s eyes widened, like she remembered, and slid her own sleeve up to her elbow. She traced the black letters written on her arm, practicing her name silently. 

        “My name is Beth,” she said, and Remy smiled. 

     “You look hungry,” Remy said. He reached into his red box, rummaged past several markers and salt packets, and pulled out a sleeve of cookies. “What do you remember?” he asked as he slid several damp wafers into his hand. 

        The boy only shook his head. 

       “Don’t worry, this is a safe place,” Remy said. “We will take care of you, non?” He handed the boy a cookie, like an offering, and watched as the boy placed the wafer in his mouth and began to chew.