The Quarter was swollen with sound: clarinet wails boiling over like kettles too long on the stove, hollering soap sellers looming in shop fronts with candy-like samples slivered on mirrored trays, kids tap-dancing with bottle caps glued to the soles of their sneakers, and farther off, beyond the levee, the haunted calliope of the Steamboat Natchez, whose carnival song could be heard even a mile away, two miles, ten, onward…
