Blink Of An Eye. Rexanne Becnel
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my auntie’s in Baton Rouge. After the storm, though, I’m gonna call you, okay? Just to see how the old place held up. You need any supplies? I’m going to Robert’s on St. Claude.”
“Thanks, but I have everything I need.”
She shook her head. “Okay then. You know where I hide my key, so take anything you need from the kitchen. And one more thing. At least move your car to higher ground, up by the river.”
“Good idea,” I said. Exactly what I didn’t want: higher ground. But later that evening as she drove off, along with several other neighbors trying to avoid the crush of traffic leaving town by driving at night, I thought about the whole water issue. The river levees aren’t the weakest spot for New Orleans during a hurricane. It’s the Lake Pontchartrain levees. That’s where the wind and tides drive the waves to top the levees. So that’s where I should go to drown.
Or maybe somewhere in St. Bernard or Plaquemines Parish. The levees aren’t as high there, and the tidal surges are a lot stronger.
That’s why I spent Sunday driving around town, picking my spot. There was the Lakefront Airport, outside the levees. But it might be guarded by the Levee Police. Or I could try the mouth of Bayou St. John. Or Little Woods where the camps along the lake were sure to be wiped out, just like in 1998 during Hurricane Georges.
I sat in an empty parking lot on the University of New Orleans campus and studied a map of the city. What about the turning basin in the Industrial Canal? That’s where the lake, the river and the Intercoastal Canal all met. There was sure to be a lot of water action there.
My stomach growled. I was hungry, and there was nothing decent at home to eat. Some crackers, maybe. Some peanut butter and tuna and canned soup. I started up the car and headed out, looking for a convenience store or burger place. Anything that sold food.
But nothing was open. I mean, nothing.
I had to drive past my house all the way into the French Quarter and even then all I found open was a couple of bars. Naturally. So I ordered a drink and ate peanuts until almost midnight. By then the wind was really picking up. But until the power goes out, it’s not really a storm. The weathermen were all predicting a landfall around dawn, with Katrina’s eye hitting New Orleans East around noon. The threat of flooding wouldn’t reach its peak until after the eye passed and the winds started coming out of the north. That meant I had at least twelve hours to wait.
It’s funny, but on the one night I should have just stayed in the bar, drinking until it was time to act, I didn’t feel like drinking. The bartender was being really free with the liquor, and a pair of guys from Ontario kept offering me drinks, too. But I was too keyed up. This was it. My time to go. I was hyper, and yet strangely calm. In countdown mode, I guess.
I didn’t want to go home, though. So I found my car and just cruised around, past the Superdome where knots of people were standing around despite the mayor’s announcement that it would not be a shelter of last resort this time. Uptown was a ghost town. Mid City was the same. I couldn’t get across the Industrial Canal into St. Bernard or New Orleans East. The cops had all four bridges closed, probably because of the high winds. And at the St. Claude Bridge, the Industrial Canal was already high, splashing and sending spray onto the roadway.
I stared at the dark, heaving waters, and the first tremor of fear hit me. Could I do it? I’d rejected shooting myself years ago, mainly because I was petrified of guns. That’s why I’d also ruled out suicide by cop. Sure, I could have pulled out my ex’s old handgun, confronted a cop and let him shoot me. But I didn’t want the poor guy to feel bad about killing someone who’d waved an unloaded weapon at him. Besides, what if he was a lousy shot and I didn’t die?
No, drowning in waters too powerful for me to resist was the surest way to do it. Once I jumped in, there’d be no turning back. And anyway, I’d heard that drowning was a relatively peaceful way to go. One big gulp of water would fill my lungs, and that would be it. My lonely loser of a life would be finished, but Clark would be protected. No matter how you looked at it, it was a win-win situation.
I guess I could have jumped in right then, but if someone saw my body too soon, the insurance company might suspect suicide. I had to wait. I decided the lake was my best shot, so around three in the morning I headed back toward the lake-front. By then the wind was really whipping. The trees were swaying and some of the branches had begun to go, littering the streets. The electricity was going, too, neighborhood by neighborhood. I picked my way down Elysian Fields Avenue, weaving through the fallen live-oak branches.
One fell on my car, hitting with a thunk that nearly made me wreck.
“Hell’s bells,” I muttered, gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles hurt. I should have headed to the lakefront hours ago. What if I couldn’t make it? The rain was coming down in erratic sheets, blowing mostly out of the east. But it swirled around, too, like miniature tornadoes. No way I could walk in this.
I watched as a streetlight went down, and right after it, a utility pole in a shower of sparks. Even in the car I didn’t want to get hit by one of them. Electrocution did not sound like a pleasant way to die.
“Dead is dead,” I muttered. But I was getting really creeped out.
This is for the best. For Clark. That was my mantra as my little Corolla fought the howling winds. At the train overpass a powerful gust caught the car and it actually skidded into the left lane. My heart was in my throat, but I kept going. What else could I do?
It was way beyond weird. Gentilly Boulevard was a mess of tree branches, signs and pieces of roofing. There was water in the streets, but not much. So far this wasn’t a very wet storm. It was near Brother Martin High School that I ran into trouble. First a big oak branch hit the trunk of my car. It bounced off, but I veered left into another branch. After I backed out of that tangle, the car stalled. It sputtered a few times. Then it went dead. And all the time, the wind howled like a banshee.
After trying futilely to get the car started, I realized that I was out of gas. Why that made me start crying I don’t know. Maybe because after my miserable failure of a life, now I was also failing at death. In any event, I sat there in my car a long time, feeling sorry for myself and wishing a giant oak limb would crash down on my head and finish me off right then and there.
No such luck.
By the time dawn fought through the heavy clouds and sheeting rain, I decided I’d have to walk the last mile or so to the lake. I hadn’t seen another car on the road since about 3:00 a.m. No wonder. If the winds weren’t reason enough to stay inside, the now impassable streets were. I’d have to wait until the worst of the storm was past before I could make my way to the lake.
So exhausted by lack of sleep as well as tension, I crawled into the back seat and made myself as comfortable as I could.
You’d think all those hours curled up alone in a disabled car would have given me time to rethink my suicide plan. Instead, my failure—so far—only proved to me that I had to do this. My life was a hopeless shambles with nothing to look forward to but getting old. I’d failed at everything else, but I refused to fail at this.
I think I must have fallen asleep. I’m not sure. But the next thing I knew, the car was moving. I jerked awake and sat up, only to find water in the floor of the car.
Water?
I rubbed a clear spot on the fogged-up window, then gaped at the scene outside. Elysian Fields was flooded. Houses, street, yards, and cars were inundated in a roiling mass of water. And my car was floating! Sort of. Had it rained that hard?
I glanced at my watch—9:42 a.m.—then back at the surreal landscape. No way was this much water caused by rain. The levees must have been overtopped.
The car lurched, then lodged against a street lamp that was still standing.
Famous last words. In the next blast of wind the pole went over like a toothpick, bouncing off a van in someone’s driveway. But the wind was so loud, howling through the trees, screaming in the wires, that I barely heard the crash.
I