Two streets over he ran into Dre Amistad, who was pushing an inflatable kiddie pool that contained a scrawny teenaged girl and a naked baby nearly as thin. The girl threw Tookie a hostile, defensive look as he approached, but Dre seemed relieved. “I’m so glad to see you, man. Can you push for a while?” He looked exhausted.
“I can’t,” Tookie said, nodding apologetically to the girl. “I got to find something to carry this old lady who’s stayin’ at my house. My neighbor.”
Dre frowned. “Old lady?” He glanced up at the young girl and baby pointedly. But the girl frowned at Tookie, some of her hostility fading.
Heartened by this, Tookie added, “She ain’t got nobody, man. Her daughter over in Texas—” Tookie cut himself off then, annoyed at his urge to justify his actions. Above their heads, another helicopter flitted past, going to rescue someone else. “Look, where you headed?”
Dre shook his head. “We was gonna go to Chalmette, but we heard the cops was shootin’ people there. They even shootin’ white folks—anybody comin’ out of New Orleans. Guess they think the flood’s catchin’, like the flu or somethin’.”
“Gretna, not Chalmette,” said the girl, in a tone that suggested she had said it before. Dre shrugged. He looked too tired to care.
“Where you goin’ now?” Tookie asked, trying to restrain his impatience.
“We heard people was goin’ to the navy base,” said the girl. “The government was gon’ close it ’cause all the soldiers is off in Iraq. Maybe they got beds and medicine.” She looked down at her child, her small face tightening.
Tookie frowned but decided not to say anything. If they wanted to trust a bunch of soldiers, that was their business.
“See if you can get everybody up on a roof, rest for a bit,” Tookie said to Dre, turning to splash away from them. “I got food and stuff. Let me fetch the old lady and then I can help you push.”
“I ain’ waitin, Tookie.”
Tookie stopped and turned back to him, incredulous. Any fool could see they had a better chance together than alone.
“I just got to get somewhere dry,” Dre said softly, a plea. “Tookie, man. I just …” Dre faltered silent, then looked away. After a moment, during which Tookie just stared at him, Dre blinked quickly and then resumed his dogged pushing of the kiddie pool. The girl watched Tookie until they were out of sight.
Turning away, Tookie stopped as he saw the lizard, this time crouched atop a crazily leaning traffic light pole. It was looking in the direction Dre had gone.
“Them soldiers ain’ gon’ let nobody in,” it said scornfully. “Buncha poor-ass folks like that? Soldiers gon’ shoot ’em and get a medal for it. Mus’ be out they damn minds.”
“You ain’t dead,” Tookie said, surprised at how glad he felt.
“Nope. Hey. It’s a little rowboat ’round back of that house.” It nodded toward a house on the corner that had been washed off its foundations. It leaned at a drunken angle, surrounded by its own vomited debris. “And it’s a barge a couple of streets over, all dry and high.”
“A barge?”
The lizard shrugged. “I ain’ lyin’. Big as three or four houses, sittin’ in the middle of the street. Guess they didn’t tie it up, put down anchor, whatever. You can hole up there for a little while. Safer than these houses.” It tilted its head up to peer at another passing helicopter. “They gon’ have to start actually helpin’ people soon.”
Tookie nodded slowly, too polite to say he’d believe it when he saw it. “It’s a dead nutria over on Reynes,” he said. “On a rooftop, maybe three houses from the neutral ground.” Which was underwater. Tookie grimaced. “The corner, I mean. Its leg is broke, but the rest is all right. I just killed it.”
The lizard grinned its needle grin again. “What, I look skinny?”
Tookie shrugged, smiling in spite of himself. “Yeah, you right, you the most fucked-up-lookin’ lizard I ever saw. Skinny ain’t half.”
The lizard laughed. Its laugh was a strange, high-pitched trilling sound, and with each exhalation, the water around Tookie reacted, tiny pointillations dancing on the murky surface. When it stopped laughing, the water became still once more.
“Nutria’s good eating,” it said thoughtfully, and bobbed its head at him in a gesture that might’ve been thanks. “Might call some folks to come share.”
Tookie stepped quickly aside as a ball of fire ants floated past. “What, it’s more of you?”
“Mmm-hmm. My whole family all over town right now.”
“That right?”
“Yeah right.” It drew itself up proudly. “My people been here generations. New Orleans born an’ bred.”
Tookie nodded. His people were the same.
“Hey,” said the lizard, its grin fading. “Listen. You be careful. It’s some kind of big thing around here. A mean thing.”
“Like what?”
The lizard shook its head. This movement was not remotely humanlike; its neck wove like a snake’s. “I ain’ seen it, but I smelled it. Saw a dead dog over by the playground, looked like somethin’ had been at it.”
“’Nother dog, maybe.” Tookie had seen several in the past few hours, roaming or swimming, looking lean and forlorn.
“Musta been hungry. Dog was bit in half.” The lizard shuddered, wings making a papery rattle. It looked away down the long street of listing houses, car-roof islands, and still dark water.
“Might be anything,” Tookie said, though he was aware that this was not reassuring. “That storm was bad. Worst I ever saw, even if the levees hadn’t broke. Feel like it ain’ done yet, somehow.”
Another helicopter passed, this one low enough that Tookie could see a person inside with a big TV camera aimed at him. He put his hands on his hips and regarded the helicopter coldly. If it wasn’t going to help, he wished it would just go away.
“It ain’t,” the lizard said softly, its eyes distant and burnished with worry. “Done, I mean. Somethin’ ain’ right. Somethin’ keepin’ this storm goin’.”
They both watched as the helicopter circled once, filming the whole area, and then flew on. Gradually the silence returned, peaceful and liquid, and Tookie relaxed, absorbing it.
“I got to go get that rowboat,” he said at last. “Thanks.”
The lizard made a dismissive sound. “I’m’a go eat my thanks right now.” Turning, the lizard spread its rustcloud wings and flicked its tail at him. Tookie waved farewell as it took off and flew away.
Tookie fetched the rowboat, used it to collect the old lady and what remained of the food from his attic, then headed over to the big barge on Jourdan Avenue.
The barge was jammed on a schoolbus and a couple of houses, causing it to list at a nearly 45-degree angle. Because of this, most of the deck was dry, the rainwater having pooled on the downside. The pilot house or bridge or whatever it was called—where they drove the barge—was even better, dry and enclosed with only one broken glass window. Tookie used his T-shirt to stuff the hole so they could sleep the night without feeding a million mosquitoes.
Then, as dusk fell, they ate the last of Tookie’s food. He hadn’t gotten much from the store to begin with, since he’d had to wait until it was closed; by the time he’d arrived with his crowbar, others had already pried the door open and gotten the best goods. He had collected enough to see himself through three or four days without electricity, since that was the worst any storm had done in his lifetime. Standing at the pilot’s window, gazing out at the ocean that had been his neighborhood, Tookie reflected that he had, perhaps, underplanned.
“We got to put somethin’ on the roof,” said Miss Mary. She was half asleep already, curled up with her head pillowed on an overturned leatherbacked chair. “Tell the rescue people to come get us.”
Tookie nodded, chewing absently on an oily sardine. “I’ll go out tomorrow, find some paint.”
“You be careful,” the old woman said. Tookie turned to her, surprised to hear this echo of his lizard friend. Mi
ss Mary yawned. “Haints be out, after a storm like this.”
At first Tookie heard hates, not haints. Then he realized what she was saying. “Ain’ no haints, Miss Mary.”
“How the hell you know? This the first real hurricane you been through.” She waved a hand contemptuously. “I was aroun’ for Camille. Lived in Mississippi then. Me an’ my man come here after, ’cause when that storm was through, we ain’ had nothin’ left. No house, no town, no people. All my family died.” She lifted her head to glare at him. The fading light fell along the smooth planes of her face just so; he saw that she must have been beautiful in those days. “Even after that storm, the killin’ kept on. It was somethin’ else around, keepin’ it goin’. Turnin’ people ugly.”
“My mama said haints was just ghosts,” Tookie said. “Scare you, but can’t kill nobody.”
“Demons, then. Spirits, monsters, don’t matter what you call ’em. They come with the storm, some bringin’ it, some seein’ it through, some sendin’ it on. And some keepin’ it on, so it can kill some more. So you watch yo’ ass.” She spoke the last three words leaning forward, precisely enunciating her vehemence.
“A’ight, a’ight, Miss Mary.” Tookie came over and sat down beside her, making himself comfortable as best he could against the hard metal of a bulkhead. “You get some sleep now. I’ll keep a eye out.”
She sighed, weary, and lay down again. A long silence fell.
“I’m too old to start over again,” she said softly.
He fanned himself with one hand; it was stuffy in the little chamber with the windows closed. “We gon’ both do what we got to do, Miss Mary.” She said nothing in reply, so he added, “Good night.”
After a while, she slept. And despite his intention to keep watch, Tookie did, too.
Deep in the night, when the city was still but for frogs and drifting water, they were jolted awake by the low groan of metal crunching and grinding against itself. Something made the barge jump, rocking alarmingly toward wobbly straightness before it settled back into its leaning stability.
Years of nights spent crouched low in his house, wondering whether the people outside his window were assassins or just ordinary robbers, kept Tookie silent beyond an initial startled curse. Years of whatever life Miss Mary had lived kept her silent as well. She stayed put while he crept to the window and peered out.
With no streetlights, the dark was all-encompassing. A sliver of moon was up, illuminating the water and fog curling off its surface, but everything else was just shapes.
The water was rippling, though, in the wake of some movement. Something big, to judge by the ripples.
Tookie waited. When the water was still again, he turned back to see that Miss Mary had pulled a crooked steak knife from one of her many pockets. His heart leapt in irrational alarm, though he should’ve laughed; the little knife would be no use against whatever had jolted the barge.
“What you see?” she stage-whispered.
“Nothin’,” he replied. “Just water.”
She scowled. “You lyin’.”
Anger blazed away days of waterlogged weariness in Tookie. She sounded like those old teachers of his, years gone, and for a moment he hated her as he’d hated them. “How you gon’ say I’m lyin’? You can’t half see, crazy ol’ biddy.”
“I can see you just fine.” There was no mistaking the menace in the old woman’s tone. Belatedly two things occurred to Tookie: First, that her knife wasn’t too small to hurt him, and second, that his gun was tucked away safe and useless inside the bag that had held their food.
Don’ need no damn gun, he thought, his hands clenching into fists—they both froze as, somewhere on the next street over, a house collapsed. They had heard this happen several times over the past few days, cheap wood splintering and plaster crumbling like so much sand, but never had the sound been so violent or sudden. It was as if something had knocked the house down, or perhaps stomped on it. Either way, the demolition hadn’t taken much effort.
Tookie met Miss Mary’s eye, and she gave him an I-told-you-so nod. She had put the knife away, he saw, so he decided to say nothing more about it. His own anger was gone, shattered like a ruined house’s walls, leaving him feeling foolish and ashamed. What the hell was he doing, getting so worked up over a little old lady anyhow? They had bigger problems.
In the morning they rose and went out on deck.
By the clear light of dawn, the city’s devastation somehow seemed more stark: the reeking water, the melting houses, the silence. Tookie stood transfixed by it, for the first time realizing that the city would never be the same no matter how well they fixed it. Yet he could not bring himself to mourn, because despite the evidence of his eyes, he could feel that nothing was dead. The city had withstood storms before, been destroyed and rebuilt and destroyed again. Indeed, as he stood there, he could almost feel the land somewhere below, still holding its breath, waiting and untroubled. Calm, like the eye of a storm.
Miss Mary was the first to spot something odd: a long flap of something that looked like stiff cloth near the barge’s prow. It had not been there the day before.
Tookie poked at the cloth with his toe, trying to figure out what it was and troubled by a nagging sense of familiarity, as Miss Mary muttered about haints and a plague of devilry. Finally Tookie picked up the thing to toss it overboard. As he did, he noticed blood on one corner of it. Only then did he realize that the stiff thing was not cloth. It felt of leather and thin bone under his fingers, and the underside was patterned with clouds, the deep gray color of when they were right overhead and about to drop a bucket.
He caught himself before he gasped, which would’ve gotten the sharp-eared Miss Mary’s attention. Instead he simply went to the deck wall and peered overboard, dreading what he might see.
There was no lizard corpse, but he noticed something else: the schoolbus that had been lodged under the barge’s stern? keel? The front underside. The bus had been almost comically jammed in place the day before, its hood invisible beneath the water and its rear end jutting undignified into the air. Now the bus’s butt was crumpled as if something huge had stepped on it in an effort to climb aboard the barge. The weight of whatever it was had pushed the bus down, and levered the barge upright; that was what had caused the shift the night before.
“What you see?” Miss Mary asked, not as belligerently as the night before.
“Nothin’ but water,” Tookie said again, and he dropped the wing back onto the deck bloody-side down, so it looked like a rag again.
When the waters receded, he vowed privately, he would find a place to bury it proper.
The water seemed lower when Tookie dropped into it from the ladder. It had been up to his neck the day before; now it was only up to his chest. Progress. There was no current, so the rowboat hadn’t drifted far. Tookie climbed into it and, using the nail-studded plank of wood that he’d appropriated for an oar, set off.
After an hour of fruitlessly searching the handful of corner stores dotting the neighborhood, he began searching houses instead. This went better, though on several occasions there were unpleasant surprises. In one house he found a bloated old man still seated in an armchair, with the TV remote in his floating gray hand. The water hadn’t risen that fast. Tookie figured the old fellow had just wanted to go his own way.
He was coming out of that house with his hands full of white paint cans, when movement in the rowboat made him start and drop the cans and grab for a gun he did not possess. He cursed himself for forgetting it again.
“Hey,” said the lizard, lifting its head over the boat’s rim. “Thought I smelled you ’roun’ here.”
Tookie stared at it. “You all right?”
The lizard looked puzzled. “Why wouldn’ I be?”
“Somethin’ came after the barge last night. I found—” He hesitated, suddenly recalling what the lizard had said about its family. “A wing. Like yours, but gray.”
The lizard stiffened, then closed its eye
s. “My cousin,” it said finally. “We was lookin’ for him.”
Tookie lowered his head respectfully. “I still got the wing, you want it.”
“Yeah. Later.”
“It’s that thing, ain’ it?” Tookie asked. “The ugly thing you been smellin’.” Miss Mary’s words came back to him. “The Hate.”
The lizard nodded grimly. “I aksed my daddy about it. Come around sometimes, this thing, after a real big storm. Killin’ is what draws it. Like mean got a shape and gone walkin’ around, spreadin’ more mean everywhere it go.”
Tookie frowned, recalling their near-brush with the thing the night before. It was somethin’ else around, Miss Mary had said, of the time after Hurricane Camille. Turnin’ people ugly. Was this the same kind of thing? If it had gotten onto the barge, would it have eaten them as it had the lizard’s cousin? Or—he shivered as he remembered Miss Mary looking so mean with that knife. He probably hadn’t looked all that friendly himself, with the urge to beat the old woman to death running hot in his blood.
“Last time it come ’roun’,” said the lizard, “it kill a whole lot of us ’fore we finally got it. It like us even more’n you folks.”
Tookie scowled. “Then you oughtta be inside somewhere, not out here talkin’ shit with me.”
The lizard scowled back and slapped a paw on the boat’s metal rim. “Ain’ gon’ let no damn monster run me out of town. They killed it before, my daddy said. Took a lot, but they did, so we gon’ have to do it again.”
Tookie nodded, then picked up the paint cans and began to load them onto the boat. “Come on back to the barge,” he said. “Let me get my gun.”
But the lizard came up to him and put its paw on his hand. Its skin was cool despite the heat, dry despite the humidity, and up close it smelled of ozone and soupy dawn fog. “Ain’ your fight,” it said.
How Long 'Til Black Future Month? Page 35