by Tony Dunbar
He was preparing to dive in himself when he saw he had waited too long. A boat with two SWAT-team officers tied off at one end of the bridge. As soon as he saw them, Bonner walked the other way quickly. There was a female sleeping beside the crone, the one who had given him the granola bar. The prone figure clutched a worn poncho around her shoulders. He poked her once in the ribs and pulled the poncho off her back.
“Hey, what—” She sat up. The old lady started to say something. Bonner put one finger to her lips, “SHHH,” and wrapped the blanket over himself to hide his uniform. He could not see the officers now. The woman he had ripped the cover from was too weak to protest, and she lay back down.
Then it got worse. Two white buses had been parked in front of the prison, water over their tires. They began to move, creating a wide wake, driving slowly toward the overpass. Miraculously, they navigated the hundred yards belching exhaust bubbles and crept triumphantly onto the pavement. They chugged to the top of the overpass and stopped. A pair of prison guards got out and had a conference. They had brought with them about forty inmates each. Through the wrinkles of his poncho Bonner saw the SWAT guys again. They hiked up their side of the ramp and huddled with the guards. Bonner looked up at the windows of the buses. He saw lots of faces. Surely the prisoners inside could see him and imagine who he was. He stayed as still as possible. The old woman beside him also watched in silence. The day went on.
Many more refugees arrived on the Broad Street overpass on Wednesday. They swam in or came by boat. The SWAT guys finally left for someplace else. A food vendor showed up in front of Bonner and offered a can of Lay’s Bean Dip for five dollars. Bonner grabbed the man by the throat and whacked his head into the concrete abutment. He tossed the can of dip to the old lady. He muscled the scalper over behind one of the white prison buses. “Meet Katrina, buddy,” he whispered in the unconscious man’s ear. Bonner liked the sound of his new voice. Glancing quickly up at the rear window of the bus, he saw eyes disappear. He bashed the man’s skull on the concrete a couple more times, and then began to undress him. It took only a few minutes to steal a pair of filthy wet blue jeans, an Acme Oyster House T-shirt, and a pair of Adidas. Bonner stripped off his own prison garb and put on the new clothes. He tossed his orange jump-suit over the side. Then he tossed the food salesman over the side. Then he jumped over the side and began paddling downtown.
At the Place Palais, alone with an empty building to protect, Manuel the security guard had lots of time to reflect about what is truly important in life. In normal times his wife and kids drove him crazy. When he was at home he couldn’t even read the newspaper at night or watch his favorite shows for all the interference. It had been so long since he’d had the TV to himself, his shows probably weren’t even on anymore. He couldn’t take off his shoes without hearing that his feet smelled. He couldn’t yell at his son without his wife sticking up for the kid. She crabbed all the time, and wasn’t interested in sex. Then she bitched at him for always being angry and going to bed early. So, normally, he liked being at work.
But now he missed the whole crew of them. Manuel had not seen his family for two days, and he did not know where they were. On the police band at his security office, he learned that Chalmette, the town where he lived, was flooded. His house was near the Forty Arpent Canal which would be the most dangerous place to be if the levee broke.
No one from building management had called or shown up. The land-lines were still working, but he couldn’t connect with anyone. He had tried to reach Bucky, the chief of operations, but just got his voice mail. When he called Bucky’s home phone the line rang busy.
It was an important job, being in charge of a forty-nine-story office building, but what the hell. All he could see on his security cameras were grainy black-and-white images of empty floor after empty floor. The cameras focused on the loading bays and the front doors revealed lots of water in the streets and very little else. Sometimes a person waded or floated by. The battery was running out on the cameras anyway.
The lights in Manuel’s office and one elevator worked only because he kept feeding gas to the emergency generator. He had enough for about twelve more hours, but did he want to stay here that long?
A week ago they had been planning their vacation at the beach—Fort Morgan, Alabama, the redneck Riviera. Hell, this was supposed to be his vacation time. Family, that’s what’s important in life. If you ain’t got family, what have you got? You’ve got a job, with thirteen years built towards retirement, and a 401k. You can’t just leave. What if someone broke in? And did what? Loot the shops on the first floor? And how am I supposed to stop them? With one handgun and a case of pepper spray? Should I call 911? Manuel laughed to himself. It was a bitter laugh. Where’s Bucky, I wonder? Baton Rouge, at a Holiday Inn, no doubt. (Actually, Bucky was in Providence, Rhode Island, conferring with the company brass about ways to maximize their insurance claim.) The whole damn city may be flooded, and I’m here alone. Where are the soldiers? Why am I the one stuck?
Manuel looked at his half-eaten Payday candy bar, wrapper folded back, peanut crumbs escaping, on his desk.
“I’m getting hungry. And I am sick and tired of eating candy,” he said to the walls.
Bonner paddled from Broad Street all the way downtown to the main public library. At that point he could stand up and wade. Along the way he had hidden from police boats, run into trash cans lurking beneath the water, made a circle around swimming rats, avoided dogs baying from rooftops, watched old people dangling from windows, seen tons of garbage drifting aimlessly in the current, and witnessed the looting of a liquor store.
He had a destination in mind, though he wasn’t sure what he would find there or how permanent it would be. No matter. Bonner survived by being flexible. That was the way of nature, and Bonner had grown up in the woods. His father hardly ever knew where he was, and his mother was a drug whore. That’s a fact. Fortunately he had an uncle, an old corn farmer who owned some land down the road and fed him and exposed the young and impressionable Bonner to books. The boy was versed in all the Aryan principles, but he had an independent streak and rejected many of them. For example, he never accepted that the mud people were the enemy. Hell, they sounded just like mom and pop. For a time he was worried about the “Money Changers’ Servants,” as portrayed by the Little Flower of Jesus. But then he encountered the works of some little-noticed German and West Virginian tract-writers and concluded that all humanity was the enemy. The cops, the teachers, the jails, the parents, and the towns they lived in. But he rejected the Christian part because he didn’t see its relevance to the woodland powers. He saw a mission for himself to lead these Teutonic spirits into battle against every ugly element of so-called modern society, and this view was supported by the fact that nobody else his age liked him, and he did not like them either.
The hurricane had revealed to Bonner that there was another vast power he had never expected, and it came from the sea. He had never seen salt water, and he was as curious as any young man would be. Girls with bikinis dwelt there, and they had to be obliterated, too, which was quite confusing to his mind.
Rivette’s immediate destination was the law office of Dubonnet & Associates. Number one, he might find a lawyer he could get help from or rip off. Number two, it was the only address he had in New Orleans, except an old house in Harahan where he had briefly lived, and that was too far away. Number three, if he were caught by the police while trying to reach the Place Palais, he had a pretty good excuse. Which was, your Honor, I was not tying to escape, I was washed away by the flood and I was trying to reach my lawyer so he could tell me how to give myself up.
By the time he got into the New Orleans business district he was walking in only a few inches of water and trying to straighten out his funky clothes. He wasn’t sure where the Place Palais was. He saw only one police car rolling on the streets, but there were other figures lurking about. He kept to the shadows of buildings and doorways. It was urgent to stay out of si
ght.
Manuel had had it. He stuck his unfinished Julie Smith mystery and an unopened bottle of water into his red nylon satchel, checked the gun on his waistband, stuffed a handful of keys and access cards into his pocket, and walked down the frozen escalator to the first floor. The lobby, given over to retail shops, was as deserted as a tomb, and his steps echoed off the marble . Stylishly dressed mannequins stared blankly at him from behind their imprisoning windows. He hurried to the tall glass entrance doors and made sure they were locked. Then he descended the service stairs to the freight entrance. He came out on a pitch-black loading platform. Manuel felt his way down a short flight of concrete steps and walked across the empty bay to the emergency exit. He had the master key ready in his hand, but he knew it would not be necessary. This door opened freely from within. He pushed hard and was out in the street. Finally he was free to go about his own business.
Bonner Rivette, still wet, was hiding inside what had once been the doorway of the Bun and Biscuit. Now it was an abscess in the building with a wrecked aluminum frame showered in broken glass. He was standing among the shards when he saw Manuel come out of the emergency door. He saw the glint of the security man’s badge. He also saw Manuel take a big ring of keys, try to attach them to a ring on his belt, then stuff them into a red bag. The security man turned left on the sidewalk, which brought him very close to Bonner.
The criminal used a concrete block to put Manuel on the ground. It was that quick. Muttering, “I got you,” he pulled the senseless form into the wreckage of the biscuit restaurant and went through the man’s pouch and hip pockets. The guy was still breathing, so Rivette used the guard’s own handcuffs and locked him to a standpipe. He collected the keys, a batch of access cards, a can of Mace, and a small handgun. He scurried to the building’s back entrance and tried keys in the door until he found one that fit. He jumped inside and pulled the door shut behind him.
Bonner Rivette became the sole watchman over Place Palais. It was his own lightless castle.
“This isn’t bad at all,” he thought when he emerged from the loading dock into the world of retail. A bank branch, a dress shop, luggage, shoes, the whole enchilada. He tried the master key on a men’s clothing store and it worked. He waited for the alarm to sound. When he heard nothing, and saw no blinking red lights, he went for a quick shopping spree. What he came up with, groping in the dark, was a blue sports shirt with a nautical emblem on its chest. This was a valuable addition and a step-up from the T-shirt he had swiped from the looter on the bridge. A belt, a couple of pairs of socks, and a pack of underwear and he was good to go. He ran a circle around the fountain that was the centerpiece of the mall. There was a statue there of a Mediterranean goddess smiling down on him. He pumped his fists in tribute.
Realizing that he was spending a lot of time in a public place and that there might be other dwellers in this concrete realm, Rivette went exploring. He found a directory mounted on a marble podium behind a glass plate, which he perceived as the layout of the enemy’s compound. By putting his eyes close to the glass he could confirm that Dubonnet & Associates was still where the card had said, in Suite 4300, meaning floor forty-three. He had some knowledge of how cities worked since he had once been a janitor.
Rivette chanced upon the security desk. He found a half-eaten Payday candy bar and several packs of cheese crackers which he devoured on the spot. He washed them down with a bottle of Fiji water. He tried the elevators, mashing buttons till he found one that worked.
When he reached the lawyer’s office he could see the name on the door, backlit by a red exit sign. There was no hole for his master key, but he worked the security man’s cards in a slot until one did the job. Inside, the office was as empty as he had hoped. It was black as ink and as remote from sight as any escapee could wish. Now he could rest. He walked the carpeted hall stealthily, poking his nose into each dark room. It felt secure. He returned to the reception area and lay down on its leather sofa. Within minutes he was out, enjoying his first good sleep in five days.
9
Tubby Dubonnet jerked awake more than once during the second night after the storm. One event was the sound of glass shattering somewhere nearby. That kept him on edge for half an hour, straining to see in the darkness, weapon at ready, but the silence put him back down again. Another time he imagined faint screaming. He stood up to peer anxiously over the porch rail. The night was hot and breezy. For fear that his plumbing did not work, he urinated off the porch into the pond of his yard below. He inhaled the earthy, mushroom smell of lake water seeping into places it was not supposed to be, extracting the cleanser from inside kitchen cabinets, the grease from car chassis, the fluff from baby’s blankets, the mysterious sandy granules from within sheetrock walls, the gasoline from lawn mowers, the tannin from heaps of twigs and piles of leaves, the dyes of Oriental rugs, the garbage from black plastic bags formerly in cans. He drifted back to sleep.
Dawn came and with it a furious sun. Tubby, sweaty, smelly and bummed, decided it was time to find refuge. The water had risen even more overnight, and his trusty Lost Lady strained at the line holding her to the front railing. He put his remaining water and the green bag with the change of clothes aboard, and kept his handgun in his pocket. The shotgun he hid in the house, between the mattresses of his bed. He was afraid to brush his teeth in what was coming out of the faucets, so he squirted some toothpaste into his mouth and ate it.
Ho, Ho, ho and a bottle of rum, he thought as he got back into the boat. Only there is no more rum, and that was another problem. He trolled back to Claiborne, more familiar now with the underwater obstacles. As he turned downtown he saw another boat coming toward him under what seemed to a dangerous amount of power.
Tubby, now a survivalist, readied his pistol again, but as the other vessel drew near he saw that it was occupied by two men wearing T-shirts with police written on them. He put the motor in neutral and waited for the other craft to heave to.
The officer up front, a dark-skinned man with muscles bulging, asked, “Do you live around here?”
Tubby explained who he was.
“We need your boat,” the policeman told him. “There are a lot of people stranded in their houses.”
“Okay, I guess, but what about me?” Tubby asked.
“I’ll put Officer Jones with you, and you can drive, if you’re willing to help rescue people.”
Tubby was willing, and after some maneuvering they got Officer Jones into the Lost Lady. He plunked down behind Tubby.
“You know the neighborhood?” the captain of the other boat asked.
“Sure. I’ve lived here for years.”
“Then you can take her up the side streets on that side of Claiborne,” he pointed toward the lake, “and I’ll go on this side of Claiborne. Anybody you can rescue goes down to the Superdome.”
“Right,” Tubby said. “You got any food?”
“Here’s some water. There should be food at the Superdome.” He tossed one bottle, then another, into the air, and Officer Jones caught them. The policeman opened one for himself and handed the other to his oarsman.
“Later,” the flood warrior said, and shot away.
“I guess we can look around Jefferson Avenue,” Tubby suggested.
“My house is by the Rendon Inn,” Officer Jones said.
“You want to go by your house?”
“Yeah, let’s go there first.”
“Suits me.” Tubby headed to Jefferson Avenue and made his left.
“This is really bad,” he said. All the houses in this section were flooded. The water reached half-way up the windows on the first floor. Luggage racks protruded above the surface where SUVs were parked. “What a mess,” he said in awe.
Officer Jones just grunted. They didn’t see anyone needing rescue, though they spotted a couple of rafts in the distance when they crossed Fountainbleu.
“They may be looters,” Tubby suggested.
Officer Jones just grunted again. A palm tre
e felled across the street was creating a dam and a small waterfall. Tubby edged through a lawn to get onto Jefferson Davis Parkway. Everything here was wrecked.
“These were nice homes,” Tubby said aloud, talking to himself since Officer Jones didn’t seem to want to communicate. There was a man in a second floor window, and Tubby waved at him. The man gestured with a rifle, and Tubby waved good-bye.
“Rendon Inn, coming up.”
“I live on Eden, up on the right,” Jones informed him.
“Tell me when.”
“When,” Officer Jones said after they had gone another block. Tubby throttled back. Officer Jones stared at the roof of a brick ranch-style house. “Get me over there,” he ordered.
Tubby steered the Lost Lady to the roof, worried about hidden vehicles, bird baths, and telephone lines
Officer Jones leapt to the asphalt shingles while Tubby tried to keep the boat from capsizing. Like a crab he ascended to the top of the dry roof and grasped the bright, silver attic ventilator. Giving it a bear hug and emitting a howl he twisted it off and threw it aside. Tubby saw him stick his head into the hole, then come back up.
“You got an axe?” Jones bellowed.
Tubby shook his head, no. He watched the officer begin kicking the roof with his heavy boots. Kicking and kicking until he had the hole big enough so that he could lay flat on the black shingles and put his shoulders through. Tubby tried to find a place to tie the boat off so he could help, but the roof sloped down beneath the water. Before he could sort out the problem Officer Jones had extracted a baby wearing blue pajamas. He scooted down the roof and handed the infant to Tubby, who tried very hard not to drop it while rocking back and forth. The policeman went up again and began cajoling, almost in a sing-song, and ultimately bringing a squirming woman out of the hole. She was wearing a flowery nightgown over a pair of ripped blue jeans. She planted herself on the crown of the roof, and Jones tried to get her to stand up. The woman was having nothing of that. Arms crossed tightly over her breasts, she prayed loudly but allowed herself to be pulled in a sitting position down the roof to the boat. At a loss, Tubby secured the baby in his ice chest and lent a hand to get the woman get on board. Officer Jones almost tilted them over when he jumped in. Tubby sat the woman down, and Jones put his arms around her. The ice chest with the baby was right behind them. The kid stuck its head up and cried.