Mr. Okra has carrots

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on June 25, 2009 at 2:14 PM, updated June 26, 2009 at 3:11 PM

Two mimes had sweat beading on the silver dust that covered their faces and arms on Thursday. They stood in the shade, hard against the fence around Jackson Square. Their white buckets had no tips. Hardly anyone was walking by. They looked listless, defeated.

They didn't speak a word.

A yellow school bus full of little children drove up Decatur Street and the children were singing loud with the windows down. The kids, they don't know from heat.

They don't know from troubles.

There were only two tarot readers in the Square. If you paid them, they could tell you: "It's hot."

A little white wooden box inside the Square, under a tree, says "temperature station" on it and the thermometer inside it said 96. In the shade. There was a lone skateboarder in front of the Cathedral, making that clack-clack-clack that skateboarders make.

Mr. Okra cruised slowly down Dumaine Street keeping his steady sing-song monologue blaring out of the squawk box on top of his Technicolor pickup truck. "I have carrots! I have watermelons! I have bananas!"

A guy named Pete was sweeping the street in his black uniform. He was smiling. He said: "You gotta stand cool. You gotta make a living. You gotta do what you gotta do."

Mr. Okra drove down Chartres with his carrots, watermelons and bananas. It was 96 in the shade. Little children sang on the school bus home. A voice broke in on the radio. And it looked like rain the day that Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died.