Blink Of An Eye
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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 gripped the driver’s side headrest. What should I do?
Go drown yourself. That’s the plan, isn’t it? So go do it.
In three feet of water?
Except that those three feet looked as if they would soon be four. Or more. “Just wait,” I muttered. “Just wait a little longer.”
Within fifteen minutes, the water was over the seat and rising, almost as deep inside the car as outside. I shivered as my capris soaked up the chilly water. Was I going to drown in a Toyota with the doors locked and the windows up? Or would I get out of the car and head toward the lake and deeper water? Assuming I didn’t drown before I got there.
That’s when out of nowhere a dog slammed into my front windshield. Somehow it righted itself, scrabbling around for footing on the wet hood. Then it stood there, spraddle-legged and terrified, staring me straight in the face.
I heard one yelp—or maybe I saw it. Either way, when the next wave sent the frantic animal sprawling, sliding off my car, I didn’t stop to think. I shoved open the door, lunged through the opening and into the water, and somehow caught the animal by the tail.
I don’t know how I caught hold of the dog’s collar, but it was just in time. The next thing I knew, we were both underwater.
The weird thing is that it wasn’t rainwater. Don’t ask me why I noticed that. It wasn’t rainwater, but salty, brackish water. And as I came up sputtering, with Fido still in my grasp, I knew that the worst had happened to New Orleans. One of the levees had broken.
And that meant I didn’t have to go to the lake.
The lake had come to me.
CHAPTER 2
Some parts of that day remain a blur: how I managed to keep Fido and myself from drowning; why I kept Fido and myself from drowning. Between the tearing winds, the punishing waves and the debris missiles they both aimed at me, I could easily have just let go. Given in. Given up.
But I couldn’t.
It was because of the dog.
He was a medium-sized mutt, black and white, totally non-descript, like a million others. Mainly, though, he was petrified with fear. He’d decided I was his salvation and kept trying to climb into my arms. That’s because the water was too deep for him to stand in.
Unfortunately, between the wind and the waves, it was too rough for me to stand in. Tree branches, lawn furniture, street signs, garbage. It was like being inside a giant washing machine set on spin.
One thing I knew: avoid the cars. Because if one of them pinned me to a tree, I was a goner.
I know, I know. Five minutes ago I’d wanted to be a goner. And I still did. But I needed to save this dog first.
I could barely keep my eyes open; that’s how harshly the winds whipped around me. Like a drowning blind woman, I flailed around, looking for something solid to cling to. Then I slammed into a fence. A hurricane fence, designed not to fall over no matter how hard the wind and water pushed. The fence also had a gate—wide open, thank God. And the gate led to a house. Somehow I dragged myself up the steps. The minute Fido’s feet hit something solid, he was out of my arms. Right behind him, I crawled up the long flight of steps, out of the water and onto a porch. There I curled into a ball in a corner against the house. Fido, wet and stinky, wormed his way into my arms, and that’s how the two of us spent the next few hours. He shivered and whimpered uncontrollably. I shivered and alternately cried and cursed.
You’d think someone who wanted to be dead wouldn’t be afraid of anything. That she should stand up to the storm, beating her chest and screaming, “Come and get me, Katrina! Come and get me!”
But it was terrifying. I’d never seen such power. Mother Nature at her most furious. Ripping up trees, tearing off roofs, and flinging everything around like pick-up sticks. And all the while wailing her rage until I thought I’d go deaf.
Parts of trees and other buildings thumped against the house. I felt the floor shudder beneath me, and I prayed it would hold. A shingle flew across the porch just above my head, then cartwheeled across the floor before burying itself in the wood half wall, just like an ax thrown in a magician’s trick.
Suffice it to say, I did not fall asleep this time.
I kept checking my watch, but it had stopped. The water, I guess. It seemed as if hours went by with no change. I was afraid to lift my head above the solid porch rail; I could get decapitated.
Fido finally stopped shivering, but he didn’t sleep either. He just kept his anxious brown eyes on me, as if I might disappear if he looked away. Who did he belong to? And why on earth had they left him behind?
He wore a collar with a tag that identified him as Lucky.
Lucky. Yeah, right! Lucky to be huddled on somebody’s porch with a crazy woman while the whole damn city returned to the sea.
It felt as if two days had gone by before I sensed the first easing of the wind. It’s not that the wind slowed down, it was more that the worst gusts weren’t coming as often. Since the weathermen had predicted the eye would reach New Orleans around eleven, I figured it must be early afternoon.
Extracting myself from Lucky, I wriggled toward the porch steps. How many steps had I climbed? A full flight, I think. But only seven steps remained above water. That meant the water had to be at least four feet deep.
Holy crap!
I looked for my car. No sign of it, though I did see the top of what must have been the van we’d drifted into.
Holy shit!
It must have been late afternoon heading toward dusk before it was safe enough for me to venture down the steps and peer around the neighborhood. The water was still choppy and rough, driven by the wind, but also with a distinct flow to it. I tried to picture the map of New Orleans and where I was on it. Water was flowing generally from the east, even though the winds were now coming out of the north. The eye was past us, but the water was still coming in. It had to be a levee break. And if this part of town had five feet of water, what was happening in other neighborhoods?
I heard Lucky bark and turned to him. “It’s okay, boy. We’re okay.” But he kept on barking. Then I heard a shout, a kid’s voice.
“Lucky? Lucky? Where are you?”
It came from a few doors down. “He’s okay!” I shouted. “He’s up on a porch with me.”
Then I saw a kid with his mother hanging on to him as they ventured onto their porch. She looked petrified, but he was grinning like any kid who’d just found his dog again.
“Lucky!” He waved his arms over his head. “Good boy! I knew you’d make it!”
Lucky, of course, went berserk when he heard his kid’s voice. He bounced down the steps, only to back up the minute his feet hit water.
We carried on a shouted conversation.
“You two okay?”
“Yes. We’re fine. And you?”
“Fine.” Sort of. I was bruised and had a cut on my forearm that I didn’t remember getting. I was wet and I was hungry. But otherwise I was fine.
“Can you bring Lucky to me?” the kid asked.
“When the wind dies down,” I shouted back. And if the water quit rising. There were only six steps visible now.
I ended up sleeping that night on the porch, with Lucky curled up next to me. Whoever lived in the house had obviously evacuated. They’d also locked the iron security door and boarded up the windows with plywood. Under the circumstances, they probably wouldn’t have begrudged me breaking into their home, eating their food and sleeping in their bed. But I couldn’t get in, and believe me I tried.
So I spent a horrible pitch-black night listening to waves lap against the house—how incongruous is that?—and to cars dying. At least that’s what it sounded like. Cars that weren’t entirely underwater would spazz out when the water hit their electronics center. Horns honking, alarm systems beeping, trunks popping open. Even headlights coming on.
It was creepy beyond words, the prolonged death throes of Detroit’s finest.
At least the darkness allowed me to attend to my private functions. But by dawn I was hungry, thirsty and sitting on the top step contemplating my future.
It wouldn’t take much to complete my original plan. Just head north on Elysian Fields until I either drowned in the street or reached Lake Pontchartrain and drowned there.
But not until I got Lucky home.
The water felt a lot colder today, but what the hell. I had to pick up Lucky—he wouldn’t go anywhere near the water—and carry him down the steps. I thought he would claw me to death trying to climb onto my shoulders and head. He was that scared. So was I. The water was up to my chest and the sidewalk beneath my feet was an underwater minefield. Branches, a newspaper machine, garbage cans. At least the plastic cans floated.
And then there was the question of the living creatures that might be in that water. Snakes. Big hungry fish. Even alligators, if the storm had blown them over the 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 can’t take Lucky with us, honey.” Sherry knelt in front of her son. “We’ll leave him on the porch with lots of food and water, and he’ll—”
“No!” Bradley wrenched free of her. “No. We have to bring Lucky with us!”
“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.