Blink Of An Eye. Rexanne Becnel
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levee.
It felt like a mile to Lucky’s house, even though it was only four houses over. Once on his own porch, Lucky started barking and leaping at the door. When they opened it, both the boy and his mom burst into tears.
He was thrilled to have his beloved pet back. She was obviously relieved to have another grown-up with her.
“Do you have food and water?” I asked as she wiped her face with her hands.
“Sure. Come on in.”
I hesitated at the front door, dripping nasty water all over the porch. “Do you have any dry clothes?”
In short order I had a shower, washed my hair, and put on a House of Blues T-shirt, a pair of jogging shorts and red rubber flip-flops. Then as we sat in the kitchen and she cooked me breakfast on her gas stove, we shared our stories. She was Sherry and her son, Bradley, was nine.
“We tried to evacuate,” she said. “But my car started to overheat while we sat on the interstate. Traffic was awful and I sure didn’t want to break down somewhere on the twin spans. So I exited on Louisa, and after the engine cooled down, we came back home. How about you?”
“Me? Um …I didn’t plan to evacuate.” No duh!
“Right. But how’d you end up out in the storm?”
Sherry was already on the verge of a nervous breakdown. “Failed attempt to commit suicide” would probably upset her even more. So I smiled at her. “I was trying to get to a friend’s house, and then a big tree limb hit my car and it stalled. Then the water came and the car got swamped.”
“And then you saved Lucky,” Bradley said. He’d been sitting across the table from me, his chin on his hands, staring at me as if I were a superhero or something.
Perversely enough, it made me feel lower than low. I was such a phony. “Or maybe he saved me,” I suggested.
His mouth gaped open in amazement. “He did?”
I nodded because I realized it was true. “He floated onto my car and he was so scared that I forgot to be scared. I just grabbed him and then he and I found those steps and got up on the porch.”
Bradley’s young brow furrowed. “But how did he save you?”
I shrugged. “I think I might have drowned in my car if he hadn’t come along.”
“Really?” His eyes got huge. “Can’t you swim?”
“She was too scared to swim,” Sherry said, laying a hand on her son’s head. “Isn’t that right?”
I nodded. “But Lucky made me brave.”
That seemed to satisfy Bradley. We spent most of the day listening to their battery-powered radio. There wasn’t much information, though. Most of the stations were down, and what little we heard was awful. Flooding everywhere. St. Bernard, New Orleans East, downtown, Metairie. All we could do was wait for the pumps to be turned on. Meanwhile we settled in for a long ordeal.
Sherry had already filled every container she had with water, and she had a lot of canned foods and crackers and a gas stove, like I said. We decided to eat the refrigerated food first. Later in the day I braved the water again and retrieved four big garbage cans, which we rinsed out and filled with even more water, mainly for bathing and washing up, just in case. She made up a bed for me on the couch, and I took a long nap. And in all that time, we didn’t see another human being.
That night no dying cars serenaded us, but that made us feel even more alone, as if we were the last people on earth. In the universe.
But the next morning, Lucky started barking. We heard voices, and what do we see when we rush to the porch but a flat boat with two guys using fence boards for paddles.
“Y’all okay?” the older guy called. “Anybody hurt?”
“We’re fine,” I called back. “What in the hell is going on?”
The other fellow spat in the water. “Damned levees broke. More than one of ’em, we heard. The whole damned city is filling up with water.”
I guess we knew that already, but hearing it said out loud sucked the heart out of me.
Next to me, Sherry started to weep. “What are we going to do? What are we going to do?”
“We’ve been ferrying stranded folks up to the I-610 overpass. But there’s no water there, or shade.”
“What happens after that?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” the younger guy said. “But somebody’s gotta come eventually.”
“If you want my opinion,” the other guy said. “As long as you have food and water, you ought to just sit tight. There’s people a whole lot worse off than you. Sitting on their roofs, trapped in their attics.”
“I’m staying put,” I decided on the instant. I looked at Sherry.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Can we take Lucky?” Bradley piped in.
“The dog? Sorry, kid, that’s probably not a good idea. There’s not food and water for people, let alone pets.”
Bradley hugged Lucky’s neck. “I’m not going anywhere without Lucky.”
But Sherry wasn’t so sure. “What if we bring our own food and water?”
“There’s over a hundred folks there already, lady. By tonight there’ll be a lot more. You gonna bring enough to share?” He shook his head. “Sit tight here for another day or two. We’ll check on you again, okay?”
So we stayed.
It was a surreal existence. We played cards and Monopoly, and cooked all the meat in the refrigerator. We saw the two guys on the boat three more times that day ferrying people up to the overpass, and on the last trip we gave them extra fried chicken and apple juice.
We went to bed at dusk. That was Wednesday.
Thursday was more of the same, except that we saw more boats, more rescuers searching for people stranded in their flooded homes. And with every boat that passed the question was the same: what’s going on?
For the most part, nobody knew anything beyond the obvious. The levees had broken; the city was flooded; and there was no getting out. The elevated I-610 was full of people now, scared, hungry and baking in the relentless heat.
The radio added to the horror. The Superdome was crammed with too many people and not enough food or water. In the dry parts of the city, like the French Quarter, Bywater, and parts of Uptown, looters were taking advantage of the crisis. A fire started in a shopping center, and other places, too.
To make matters even more horrific, police from the small town of Gretna wouldn’t allow people to evacuate across the Mississippi River Bridge from the flooded Eastbank to the mostly dry Westbank. With weapons drawn, the cops sent the poor people back into hell!
Had the whole world gone mad? I wasn’t a churchgoer, but even I knew the story of the good Samaritan.
In our little moated castle we were okay, and yet not okay. We had plenty of food and water, but Sherry was a basket case. To begin with, her cell phone didn’t work too well. I guess a lot of the towers must have been damaged in the storm. Added to that, there was no way to charge the phone up. So it was bad when her phone died. Then she went to take a shower and discovered that the city water had been turned off. That’s when she lost it.
“We have to get out of here! I can’t take any more! We can go to my sister in Denver. Or my aunts in Memphis.”
She started packing—two backpacks of clothes and important papers, two tote bags of food and water.
“Don’t forget dog food for Lucky,” Bradley said, pulling out a giant bag of Purina.
“We