National Story Project
With Paul Auster

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March 3, 2001 -- Paul Auster reads a story about an unforgettable character, submitted by Adolph Lopez of New Orleans, Louisiana

Brooklyn Roberts

He called himself Brooklyn Roberts. I got curious about him because he wanted to remain hidden. Then I heard he was shot and killed for almost nothing.

When I was twenty-three, I got involved in a non-profit cooperative coffeehouse that served home-baked goods, coffee and tea. It was also the land of the eternal open mike. The only rule about playing there was that the music had to be acoustic.

Eventually, we would be run out of the house where we had set up shop because the neighborhood association didn't like the "hippie" types hanging around. That was New Orleans in 1975; things got there a little late.

But when the coffeehouse was still thriving, Brooklyn Roberts used to sign up for the open mike now and then. He was thin, fine-boned, losing his dirty blond hair too soon. I guessed that he was a little older than I was. He always came looking like a laborer from the early 1900s, dressed in old-fashioned working-class Saturday evening clothes. His performances on the guitar and piano were polished. He played rootsy blues, Robert Johnson tunes -- that sort of thing. He'd finish his set, collect whatever tips he'd made, pack up his things and leave. No, he'd disappear. Always.

I once asked him to play at a benefit for the coffeehouse that was going to be held in a local park. He arrived, spiffily dressed as usual, carrying a little suitcase in addition to his guitar. The path to our tiny stage crossed an area where the children's railroad track ran. As he approached our gathering, he deliberately started walking between the rails of the miniature track. He looked up at me and smiled. He was in his persona, walking on a railroad track like a Depression-era wanderer.

He played a great set of old time blues that day, interjecting an occasional sleight-of-hand trick. At one point, he flipped a silver dollar in the air and bounced it off the heel of his shoe and back up in the air to his hand. When he caught it, he appeared as amazed as the audience. He finished his set and disappeared. Lots of people wanted to talk to him, but he just vanished.

Later that year, I attended an early incarnation of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. I was waiting for Muddy Waters to play his set, when I spied Brooklyn Roberts near the edge of the stage, talking to a stage hand or manager. I turned away to talk to some friends. Minutes later, when I looked back, Brooklyn Roberts was at the piano playing some wonderful ragtime and jellyroll blues. He played for about five minutes. I guessed that he had talked the stage manager into letting him play until Muddy was ready for his set. He'd had no introduction, nothing. Brooklyn Roberts just got up there and played, and then he disappeared.

The next year I helped organize a benefit for New Orleans street musicians. My group performed at it, and so did Brooklyn Roberts. Again, he played a terrific set of old time blues on the piano; again, he disappeared at the end of the set. He had come dressed in his usual period attire, but later, when I spotted him sitting in the audience a few rows away from me, he had changed into modern clothes and was wearing a floppy Gilligan-style rag hat. I called to him, to congratulate him on his great set. He stayed where he was and smiled in acknowledgment. Then he just turned away and pulled down his hat a little farther.

Years later, after I'd left New Orleans, I asked a friend about him. She told me that he'd been shot and killed for his money and his jacket. My friend told me she'd heard that he'd said to his assailants, "You're not going to shoot me for my jacket, are you?" And they did.

I made some other inquiries. All I ever found out was that he had been a well-liked coach -- Coach Bob -- at the local Jewish Community Center. I still have his business card. In the four corners are floral ironwork designs, and his name appears in capital letters in the center: BROOKLYN ROBERTS.

This is all I know about him.

– Adolph Lopez
New Orleans, Louisiana