Chapter 2: Baton Rouge Blues

In May 2018, desperate and out of options, I traded the only $150 I had for a one-way ticket from Fresno to Shreveport.

I could barely afford a stale sandwich at the airport, but I kept telling myself it’d all be worth it. The ticket felt like both a prison sentence and a lottery scratch-off. My hands trembled as I clicked ‘Confirm’—no turning back now.

I was supposed to work as a driver at a hotel construction site called Blue Bay in Shreveport, shuttling steel beams and materials back and forth to Baton Rouge.

The job sounded simple enough—just keep my head down and my mouth shut, driving the company van up and down the I-49 corridor. Baton Rouge was supposed to be the city where things could still happen, if you hustled hard enough.

The job was set up by a good buddy from my hometown—someone I’d never actually met in person, but whom I trusted. He told me he knew the boss at the site well and promised I’d earn between $1,400 and $1,800 a month.

We’d traded DMs for years, joking about West Coast weather and small-town boredom. He vouched for the work and sent me a blurry photo of the Blue Bay sign lit up at night. I wanted to believe him. I needed something to believe in.

This friend was known as Derek—he said he ran a small diner in Shreveport with a partner, just like the little places back in California.

He’d send me pictures of greasy burgers and fries on chipped plates, and sometimes I could almost smell the coffee. He made it sound like I’d be part of a family business, or at least a crew that looked out for each other. Something better than scraping by.

But prices in Louisiana were sky-high. A modest motel that would cost thirty or forty bucks a night back home went for a hundred and fifty here.

I nearly choked when I saw the numbers—guess all those reality shows left out the inflation. My first night, I lay on a sagging mattress, listening to the hum of the A/C, wondering if I’d made the worst mistake of my life. The tap water tasted like metal.

I envied him.

Derek seemed to have it figured out: a steady gig, local connections, and the kind of easy confidence that comes from knowing the lay of the land. Meanwhile, I kept glancing over my shoulder, clutching my backpack like a lifeline.

When I arrived, I registered at the construction site, got my uniform, and started work. The site felt just like those back home—nothing special at first.

The smell of fresh-cut lumber and diesel exhaust was the same as any job site I’d worked in California. Guys in hard hats cursing at each other, the constant beep of reversing forklifts, stale coffee in styrofoam cups. I let myself believe, for a day or two, that maybe things would be okay.

But the first time I drove to Baton Rouge, my worldview was shattered.

It was just supposed to be another haul. But the second I hit the city limits, it felt like I’d slipped through time, or landed on the set of an old movie. Nothing I’d read online prepared me for what I saw.

I’d assumed Baton Rouge, as Louisiana’s capital, couldn’t possibly be worse off than my hometown. But my first impression? It felt like America in the 1970s or 1980s.

Paint peeled from the storefronts, and old men played cards outside faded laundromats. It was as if progress had skipped over this place. The sense of nostalgia was heavy and sad.

Shops were everywhere, many with faded bilingual signs—Spanish and English—faded by sun and time. Small storefronts sold used microwaves, washing machines, and other household goods. There were rows of shops with CK and Nike written in big block letters.

A pawn shop with a neon Jesus sign sat between a vape store and a bail bondsman. The air smelled of fried catfish and burnt rubber. Somewhere, a radio played zydeco, and the sidewalks were sticky with spilled Big Gulp sodas. There was a strange comfort in seeing the same brands—CK, Nike—rendered in cracked vinyl letters, as if clinging to the last shreds of the American Dream.

For the first month, I kept my head down—just hauling materials and hurrying back to the site.

I learned early to avoid small talk. People here could spot an outsider by the way you said ‘pecan’ or the way you parked your car. I wore the same blue work shirt every day, kept my eyes forward, and counted down the days.

But by chance, I stepped into a casino for entertainment one day.

A couple of the guys at the site egged me on, laughing about the slots and cheap drinks. The sign outside flickered in the dusk, promising ‘LUCKY NIGHTS’ in pink and green neon. I figured one drink couldn’t hurt.

My heart pounded as I stepped past the bouncers, half-expecting someone to call me out as a fraud.

Instantly, I felt the rush that money brings.

It was like nothing else—the electric jangle of machines, the way cash seemed to multiply and vanish with a single pull. I caught myself grinning, wild and desperate, like I’d found a shortcut out of my problems. The cocktail waitress winked at me. For a moment, I almost believed I belonged.

Within two months, I became irritable and short-tempered. After losing, I’d pick fights with drunks on the street, laying on my horn like a maniac.

I started snapping at coworkers, swearing under my breath at traffic, honking even when the light was green. The casino had its hooks in me. My hands shook, not just from caffeine now, but from withdrawal—from the need to get back to the tables and win it all back.

Until one day, I heard a loud commotion outside my motel—the first time in my life I heard gunshots.

It was a Friday night, and the air was thick with the sound of cicadas and distant music. Then—a sharp crack, echoing off the concrete. My heart leapt into my throat.

My hands froze around the cheap motel curtains. For a second, I thought I’d imagined it.

I looked down from my window and saw a man lying in a pool of blood.

He was sprawled by the curb, one sneaker kicked off, the pool of red spreading faster than I thought possible. Someone screamed, and a siren wailed in the distance.

Later, I heard he owed the casino a fortune. When debt collectors tried to kidnap him in public, he resisted—and was shot in the head by the casino’s enforcers.

The rumors spread fast, each version darker than the last. People clammed up when the sheriff came around. Some said the guy had it coming, others just shook their heads and turned away. I saw the body bag loaded into the coroner’s van and realized how cheap life could be here.

After that, I stayed far away from gambling.

I deleted the casino’s number from my phone, tossed the player’s club card into the trash, and swore I’d never step foot near those neon lights again. For a while, I kept to myself, head down, working overtime just to keep busy.

But what you fear most often finds you anyway.

The streets here remember your face. No matter how far you try to run, trouble has a way of catching up. I started to wonder if I’d ever really get free of this place.