Twenty-five years pushing barges, and Jean-Luc can read the river blind. Tonight he's running six barges south with GhostWire's Jazz & Bayou in his ear — and Jocelyn is setting an altar for the ancestors. The boundary goes thin. And the dead come to ride along.
The Marie Evangeline — named for his great-grandmother — pushed six barges steady at 8 knots, a route Jean-Luc could run in his sleep. He took the night shift for the quiet: fewer boats, less chatter, just him and the river and GhostWire. Three hours every night, Jocelyn Landry Gilroy played the deep catalog — Buddy Bolden as a man named Willie Cornish remembered him, echoes of echoes, “how we keep the ancestors alive.” Tonight her theme was memory, and the way she said ancestors had weight. “I've invited them to listen with us,” she said. And somewhere behind the tow, though he couldn't say where, the river felt different.
Jocelyn laid out what her grandmother taught her at seven years old. The ritual happens at the threshold — not full daylight, not deep night, but the moment one gives way to the other. Bones, because the skeleton remembers what the body was. Feathers, light things that move in the breath of the living and the wind of the dead. River water, because water connects everyone who ever touched it. And music — the most important part — songs the dead knew and loved, played with reverence, an invitation: come listen, come be present, come dance in the spaces between. “The ritual isn't about summoning. It's about inviting. And if you do it right — with respect, with genuine love for what they created — they come.”
The lights dropped for exactly one second, all of them, across six barges with six independent power systems — which no electrical fault could do. His instruments recorded no interruption. Channel 13 gave him static; Channel 16, static; a working radio broadcasting into a void, like everyone else on the busiest waterway in the world had slipped into a different Mississippi. On the second barge, a shadow crossed from port to starboard. On the water off his port bow, for just a moment, a boat running dark. “Get it together, Jean-Luc,” he said aloud — but he knew he was lying. Tonight the river felt crowded.
Not shadows. Figures — one on the first barge, two on the second, a dozen in all — standing perfectly still on the cargo holds, watching the river ahead like they were navigating too, like they remembered this route. One turned its head and looked directly at the wheelhouse. We see you. We remember you working this river like we did. And Jean-Luc heard his grandfather's voice, Jean-Baptiste, forty-seven years on this water before a heart attack took him: “Sometimes at night you're not alone out there. The river remembers everyone who ever worked it. On certain nights they come back — not to scare you, just to ride along. Don't be afraid, boy. They're family.” He'd thought the old man was being poetic. He'd been literal.
A wooden fishing boat that hadn't been used since before he was born slid alongside; an old man at the helm raised one hand, casual, a greeting — and Jean-Luc, on instinct, raised his back. The man smiled, nodded, faded like fog. The depth gauge claimed 400 feet, the current ran upstream, the temperature read 32 degrees — reality hiccupping, then snapping back. A voice under the music spoke in Creole French: La rivière se souvient… Vous n'êtes pas seul, mon fils. The river remembers. You are not alone, my son. When had he started crying? Then the figures turned, all at once, and bowed — not mocking, respectful. Thank you for carrying us. You are part of the chain.
At 3:33 the radio came alive — Clio Savoie, from Platform Delta-7. “I saw the helicopter crew that crashed in '98, hovering over the water. The rig-fire crew from 2010, standing on the catwalks. Jocelyn did something tonight. The boundary got thin — real thin. But they weren't here to hurt anyone. They were checking on us. Making sure we're doing it right.” Then one of the 2×0 Twins from New Orleans: the flood systems had run themselves for 73 minutes, no human control, perfectly executed — like someone who knew what they were doing. “The ritual was real,” Jean-Luc said. “The ancestors came.”
At 5:15 the music changed — no more funeral blues, now a brass band, “When the Saints Go Marching In,” alive and joyful. Jocelyn closed the ritual the way you're supposed to: not letting the ancestors wander, but thanking them. “I see you. I remember you. I carry your legacy forward. Now rest — we'll call you again when we need you.” Jean-Luc said it too, quietly: “Thank you, grand-père. Thank you, grand-mère.” At the Port of New Orleans, docking clean at dawn, the longshoreman Miguel met his eye — “You were on the river last night. My abuela told me about threshold nights. I always thought she was superstitious. But last night…” A text came in from a number he didn't know: “They saw you working their river. They're proud. Thank you for witnessing. Thank you for not being afraid. —J”
The same night, other eyes
The river's other end