My name is Dennis Hovey. I'm fifty-four years old, and since the spring of 1996 I've driven a mule-drawn carriage around Jackson Square and the French Quarter, eight hours a day, with a molly mule named Dolly doing the real work. Before that I spent twenty-seven years at a refinery up the river, until the refinery decided it could do without me. I've kept this journal since August 1996. The newest entries are on this page. The older ones are by year:

1996  ·  1997  ·  1998  ·  1999, winter and spring

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Sunday, September 26, 1999

A year ago tonight I was sitting on Willie Hamilton's couch in Baton Rouge waiting on a hurricane, and the phone rang.

I've been thinking about that all day. I had a good Sunday on the Square. There's a bit of fall at the edges of the morning now. A brass band set up by the Cathedral and played for an hour, and Dolly bobbed her head to it, which she swears she doesn't do. The artists had their paintings hung on the fence all the way around. A man sketched Dolly in charcoal while we waited at the stand and gave it to me for nothing. It's on my wall now, over the television with the gold coconut.

At four o'clock Joyce came down the street with her paper sack of broken pralines for the drivers, like she's done every afternoon for twenty years. She gave me mine last, like always, and she stayed a while, like always lately.

Tonight Edwin called at the usual time. He said he'd been watching golf all afternoon, the Americans against the Europeans, and the Americans had been way behind and came all the way back to win, and he hollered so loud his neighbor knocked on the wall. I never have cared about golf. But I listened to every word, because he was so happy telling it, and because I understood about being way behind and coming back. I told him so. He was quiet a second and then he said, "Yeah, Dad. Me too."

Three years ago I started this journal because I didn't have anybody to tell things to. Tonight I have more people to tell things to than I know what to do with. I'm going to keep writing it anyway. Somebody out there might be sitting where I was.

Goodnight from the Quarter.

Tours: 9 · Tips: $83 · Dolly: danced, allegedly

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Thursday, September 16, 1999

Hurricane Floyd came ashore in North Carolina early this morning. We had the little television going at the barn all day, between tours, and every time I came back to the stand somebody gave me the latest. All week they've shown the evacuation out of Florida and Georgia and the Carolinas, the interstates jammed solid, and I knew how every one of those people felt.

Now they're saying the rain is the worst of it, and the rivers back there are rising. I pray for those folks. Last year it was us looking at the maps, and it turned. This year it didn't turn for them.

Edwin called tonight, a Thursday, just to say, "You're not in North Carolina, are you?" I said no, son, I'm on my same couch. He said he knew that. He just wanted to call. That's the second time this year he's called on a weekday, and this time for no reason at all. I'm starting to like weekdays.

Tours: 6 · Tips: $42 · Dolly: watched the television with us, I'm not kidding

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Tuesday, September 7, 1999

He came. He stayed. He's gone home. I'm going to try to put it all down while it's fresh.

Friday night he pulled up at half past nine. He got out of the car and he's taller than me now, or I've gotten shorter, and he looks so much like Sandra's daddy I had to hold onto the railing. We shook hands, and then the handshake turned into the kind of hug two men give each other where they pat each other on the back like they're putting out a fire.

Saturday morning I took him to the barn at seven. Dolly put her nose straight into his shirt pocket, which is what she does to people she's decided about. He laughed. I hadn't heard him laugh in person since he was twenty-four. Then he rode up on the seat next to me the whole day, the way I rode next to Mr. Jerome when I was learning. He heard my tour eight times. By the fourth time he was saying the part about Clark Mills along with me, under his breath. By the sixth, he was telling the tourists where Bourbon Street was before they asked.

Saturday night Joyce cooked like it was Christmas: shrimp creole, and bread pudding with whiskey sauce. She told Edwin stories about me that I didn't know she knew, and he told her stories about me that I had hoped nobody knew, and the two of them laughed at me most of the evening. I've never been so glad to be laughed at.

Sunday morning we walked along the river, just the two of us. And that's where we talked about it. 1995. What I said to him, the day I said it, and what I put his mother through before that. I told him I was sorry. I'd said it in a letter, but it's different out loud, with a person looking at you. He said he'd been angry a long time and he was tired of carrying it. He said, "You're different, Dad." I said I was trying. He said, "I can tell."

I'm not going to write the rest of what we said. Some of it is just his and mine.

Sunday afternoon we sat on Mr. Jerome's porch and Mr. Jerome told him that Andrew Jackson's horse is buried under the statue. Edwin looked at me. I shook my head. Mr. Jerome said, "Lord, he's raised you to be a truth-teller too."

Monday he left at noon. At the car he said he'd like to come back for Mardi Gras. When I got upstairs I went to the refrigerator, to the piece of paper that's been stuck on it since February, and I crossed out the word "Maybe."

He told me his girlfriend's name, by the way, and that he's thinking about a ring. I'm not putting her name on the Internet without asking. But I'll say she's a lucky girl, and I'd say that even if I weren't his father.

Tours Saturday: 8, with a co-pilot · Tips: $70 · Dolly: approved of him

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Thursday, August 26, 1999

Eight days.

I have cleaned this apartment like a man expecting an inspection. I bought new sheets for the bed, which Edwin gets, and a camp cot for me, which I've already tested and which is a fine piece of equipment for anybody with a good back. I bought a second towel. It hadn't occurred to me before this week that I only owned one towel. Joyce found that very funny.

The other night I made a list of things I want to say to him. It went on two pages. I showed it to Joyce. She read it, folded it in half, and tore it up, and handed me back the pieces and said, "Let him talk, Dennis. You've got two ears and one mouth." She's right. I kept the pieces anyway.

It's been hot as the hinges. We came off the street early four days this week. The mules don't mind. They stand in front of the fans at the barn like old men at a filling station.

Tours: 5 · Tips: $37 · Dolly: off at one, heat

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Monday, August 2, 1999

Three years of this journal today. I sat down with a pencil and figured that near as I can tell I've been around the Square about seven thousand times. Dolly's done most of them with me. She's sixteen now and a little gray around the muzzle. So am I, the gray part. Neither of us seems to mind.

I got a letter this week from the lady in Texas, the one who rode a carriage here on her honeymoon in 1961. Her husband passed in the spring. She wanted me to know she still reads, and that she's coming in October with her daughter and wants to ride with Dolly. I wrote back and told her she's got the first tour of the day, whatever day she likes, and the right side of the seat if she wants it empty. I learned that from the gentleman from Mississippi.

One month till Edwin.

Tours: 7 · Tips: $52 · Dolly: sixteen and fine

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Monday, July 5, 1999

Fourth of July last night. The barn doesn't put the mules out for the fireworks. A mule can stand a lot, but a sky that explodes is too much to ask. We left the radio on loud at the barn and the fans running, and one of the young drivers volunteered to sit up with them. Dolly, I'm told, ate her hay through the whole thing and didn't look up. Hank spent the evening in the back of his stall with his ears flat.

Joyce and I watched from the levee with about ten thousand other people. The fireworks come off barges in the river and light up the whole bend. I held her hand. I don't usually write things like that down. I'm writing it down.

Edwin called from a cookout in Houston, with a lot of noise behind him, just to say Happy Fourth. Two months till Labor Day.

Tours (Saturday): 10 · Tips: $96 · Dolly: unbothered, Hank: bothered

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Tuesday, June 15, 1999

The boss asked me to break in a new driver. Me. Three years ago I was the new driver.

Her name is Margaret Ezell. She's twenty-three and she's studying history at the university at night, and she took this job because she says she wanted to get paid to talk about history instead of paying to hear about it. She rides up on the seat next to me, the way I did with Mr. Jerome, and she listens. Then on the way back to the stand she tells me three things I didn't know. Today it was the Ursuline nuns, who came over from France in 1727 and started a school for girls that's still running today. I went to the library on my day off to check. She was right.

So she knows more history than I do. But I know more mule. Today I showed her how to tell when Dolly's about to stop for no reason (the left ear goes back first) and how to talk to Hank when a brass band comes around the corner (low and steady, like you're telling him about the weather). She wrote it all down in a notebook. A spiral one. That got me, a little.

I went by Mr. Jerome's on Sunday and told him about her. He laughed and said, "Is she telling the truth too? Lord, Dennis, you've started something."

Tours: 8 · Tips: $61 · Dolly: patient with the new girl

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Older entries: winter and spring 1999 · 1998 · 1997 · 1996