“We can’t.” She started to cry. “On the radio they said the National Guard won’t take pets in their boats or helicopters.”
“Then I won’t go!” he shouted, wiping his own tears.
That’s when I chimed in. “I’ll take care of Lucky.”
They both looked over at me.
“You will?” Bradley exclaimed.
“You’re not coming with us?” Sherry asked.
“No, I’m not going, so I can keep him with me. If you don’t mind me staying here until the water goes down.”
She gave me a house key and the phone numbers of all her relatives where they might end up. I gave her my apartment phone number, since I doubted it was flooded. Of course the roof might have blown off. But one way or another, we’d find each other again.
“Thank you so much, Jane.” Bradley gave me a hug so tight it hurt. “Lucky’s a very good dog. And he’ll protect you, too.”
“I know.” He already had. I had no doubt that I was alive because of Lucky. And now I had to stay alive if I was going to keep him safe for Bradley.
Oh well. If I still wanted to commit suicide, there would be plenty of time to do it later.
They didn’t actually leave until the next morning in a boat with the same two guys. We’d come to know Manny and Fred pretty well, and they told us that the National Guard was finally flying people out. We knew that because ever since last night the sky had been alive with helicopters.
I waved them goodbye. Lucky barked until they were out of sight. Then we just sat there, him and me, staring at the surreal landscape of our poor doomed city. I still had plenty of food, so Manny and Fred continued to drop by every day for lunch. In return they fed me news and tried to talk me into leaving. But I refused to leave town. At least the water level had begun slowly to drop. Very slowly. And Manny and Fred promised that when I was ready, they’d take me back to my house, or at least as close as they could get in their boat.
“There’s looting going on,” Fred warned me. “And the cops have orders to shoot to kill.”
“Fine with me,” I replied, “since I don’t have any intentions of looting.”
Only when the flooding was over and the most desperate people evacuated did I decide to leave. All Lucky and I took was water and food, as much as the boat could hold. Behind the boat we towed a rolling garbage can. Manny and Fred let me off at Elysian Fields and Urquhart Street. We exchanged phone numbers and addresses. Their addresses probably weren’t any good, though. They lived on Wickfield, a block from where we now knew the London Avenue Canal had failed. Both houses were up to their ceilings with water, and Manny’s had shifted off its foundations.
But they were great guys, helping their fellow New Orleanians any way they could. I hoped I’d see them again. After many hugs, goodbyes and admonitions, it was just me, Lucky and a damp garbage can full of food and water.
How can I possibly describe the devastation? Everyone has seen pictures of flooded neighborhoods or burned-down houses. Or even bombed-out neighborhoods, usually in the Middle East. But no one has ever seen anything like this. The vastness of the destruction. Blocks and blocks and blocks of emptiness and debris. It was bad enough in the flooded areas. But I saw now that the water hid the worst of it. I was viewing the complete shambles of a great American city. And this was only the Gentilly area.
Elysian Fields Avenue is about five miles long from the lake, south to the river. A good four miles of it was flooded. I walked the final mile to my house, partly in knee-deep water, the rest on dry ground.
On the entire boat ride we’d only seen three people on their porches. On my walk I saw a few more, but they weren’t the normal New Orleans folks you expect to see. They were fearful and shell-shocked. Wild-eyed. But they all shared whatever information they had.
“The police are making everybody leave.”
“The National Guard’s taking over.”
“Don’t give anybody any back talk. They’ll arrest your ass so fast and throw you in the jail.”
The new jail, that is. The old one was flooded, so the train terminal had been taken over as a temporary prison.
I thanked them and kept moving. My dinky apartment on Dauphine Street had never seemed so appealing. But as I approached my block, I started to cry. The crepe myrtles at the corner house were both down. The awnings on the second floor of another house dangled from one remaining support, threatening to decapitate someone in the next strong wind. Slates and shingles littered the street, as did cable, electric and telephone lines. A three-block section of utility poles leaned like drunken men, and a sycamore tree on the opposite corner had toppled onto two cars, completely blocking the street.
It was like looking at a dead place, and I felt this sickening hole expand in my chest. What were we going to do? How could anybody recover from such devastation? And this neighborhood hadn’t even flooded.
I guess I must have been working on autopilot, pushing my garbage can like some old bag lady and holding tight to Lucky’s leash. Once we’d gotten out of the water, he’d become much happier, treating our trek like some long overdue walk in a new park full of new sights and new smells and new places to explore.
But as we negotiated the trash-strewn block and stopped in front of my house, he seemed to sense how overwhelmed I was. And panicked. I was home, but it wasn’t home. It was a scary place that looked more or less the same. Only nothing seemed familiar anymore. If a Hollywood director could capture the chilling unreality of this surreal gray place, he’d have an Oscar-worthy horror flick. If he could do it. Somehow I didn’t think anyone could.
I shoved aside a plastic lawn chair and a piece of shiplap siding to open the gate, then muscled the garbage can in. As I slammed the gate, though, and looked out at my ordinary New Orleans block of shotgun houses, both singles and doubles, I burst into tears. That’s when Lucky bumped his bony shoulder against my thigh and started to whine.
“It’s okay,” I said, dropping to my knees and hugging his neck. “It’s okay. We’ll be fine.”
But I was lying to him and to myself. At least it felt like a lie. Because it didn’t seem as if anything could ever be fine again.
CHAPTER 3
My apartment was relatively unscathed, just one broken window in the kitchen. I found the culprit: a roofing slate shattered in the sink. A young pecan tree in the next yard leaned against the house, blocking my bathroom window. But other than that, I was very fortunate.
Yet my house still felt dead. Lifeless. There was no whir from the air conditioner, no hum from the refrigerator. No chronic drip from the kitchen faucet. And boy, was it hot.
I opened all the windows. Then poured a bowl of water for Lucky from the stash I’d brought. I was home, such as it was. Now what? It had only been one week since Katrina hit, but from what I’d seen, the city would be years recovering.
Depressed anew, I decided to go to bed. It was only one-thirty, but two Tylenol PM took care of that. When I woke up it was weirdly dark and weirdly quiet, as if I was in some Twilight Zone city. I should have been used to it by now, but I wasn’t.
I took Lucky outside to relieve himself, but I carried a flashlight and a gun that had belonged to my ex. So much for my fear of guns. It wasn’t loaded, though. I didn’t even own any ammunition for it. But it was big, shiny and very scary looking. When I got back inside, I fed the dog, took three Tylenol PM and crawled back into my sweaty bed.
I wished I had something stronger: Valium, Xanax, Dilaudid. But after my spectacular crash and burn seven years ago, due to the overuse of said pharmaceuticals, I’d confined