by Tony Dunbar
She wheeled up to the St. Charles Avenue side of the Place Palais. Since it was the freight entrance she sought, she started a slow circle of the building. Rolling through two inches of water in the street speckled her pants with mud. There it was. There was an open door. And there was Joe, the security man.
“Are you Mr. Dubonnet’s daughter?” he asked, holding the door behind him open with his foot.
“Yes. Joe?”
“That’s me. Bring that bicycle inside. Here, let me help you.”
He got her inside, where it was dark.
No human bothered the resting couple under the Expressway, but a hungry stray dog woke them up. It was what Tubby thought of as a “New Orleans yellow dog,” a small lab, maybe, or part retriever, but whatever the breed he and his cousins were a common sight around town. This one had a very wet cold nose.
“Whoa!” Tubby exclaimed, jerking up. Hope caught herself from falling to the pavement.
“Back, you cur,” the lawyer said pleasantly. He got to his feet and helped his friend up. They must have been passed out for an hour.
“Let’s see if we can make it all the way this time,” he said, offering his arm.
“Piece of cake,” she replied. Eyes darting right and left to ward off the enemy, they completed the last leg of their journey. The lonesome dog followed them, tail between its legs.
There were no city policemen at the Ernest Morial Convention Center, but there was a minivan outside marked Federal Emergency Management Agency. There were aid workers wearing orange vests milling about, and helicopters hovering overhead. A big parked truck was painted with a Red Cross.
“Finally, we made it,” Tubby said to one of the official-looking people. “Can we come in?”
“Keep walking, sir. You are in.” The dog whined, but he got left behind.
A tall black man asked, “You got anything in that bag, sir? Drugs? Weapons?”
“No,” Tubby said and kept on moving. “Who do you suppose that guy was?” Tubby asked Hope. “He didn’t seem very official.”
Yellow police tapes marked their path into the building.
“Excuse me, sir, this lady is a diabetic,” Tubby tried to get a passing FEMA shirt to listen. The man hurried away. Hope and Tubby followed the yellow tape into a large meeting hall.
It was packed with humanity, mostly African American humanity. Babies were crying. Men pushed and shoved each other. Family groups defended their spots on the floor. Long lines snaked through the confusion.
“What’s up there?” Tubby asked a man at the tail end of one of them.
“Food. MREs,” the man said. “That’s what I heard.”
“How about medical help?”
“Somewhere in that direction,” He pointed across a room as large as a football stadium teeming with people. It was sweltering in this place. Tubby could barely tolerate the throng at a Saints game. This scene was over the top. He saw a woman urinate on the floor. Hope began to sag.
No, this can’t be our refuge.
“This is bedlam!” Tubby shouted. No one could hear him, for the bedlam. He stepped on an old woman’s outstretched foot. She was passed out on a pink blanket.
“I’m sorry,” he called. Someone shoved him from behind. He lost sight of Hope. A man was talking on a bullhorn nearby. An old man asked him if he had any cigarettes. He heard a woman scream, “Rape!” He saw Hope, down on one knee and retching, and he pushed and shoved until he reached her.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
Helping her up, he tried to retrace their steps out of the building, but they were stopped at the door.
“You can’t leave, sir. This is an evacuation site. There’s a mandatory evacuation. No one can be on the streets.”
“I was just on the streets,” Tubby protested. “They’re a whole lot better than this.”
“Please return to the assembly room, sir. No one is allowed to leave the building.”
“I can’t believe this. I’m a lawyer. You have no right to keep me here.”
“Sir, if you do not return to the assembly room, I will have you forcibly restrained.”
Tubby sputtered, but Hope held him tightly. “Let’s go back in,” she said. Her voice was so weak he could barely hear it.
“How long do we stay here?” Tubby called over his shoulder.
“Until the buses come,” the official said.
Tubby and Hope squatted on the floor, people stepping all around them. He couldn’t face up to the long food line. He heard someone say there wasn’t any food ahead anyway. Hope’s eyes were glazing over.
“Let’s just see about this,” he muttered, digging Flowers’s cell phone out of his pocket.
He tried Flowers’s number, but got a message, repeatedly, “We’re sorry, all circuits are busy.”
“Damn,” he cursed. That’s why he hadn’t had one all of these years.
“Try text messaging,” Hope said thinly. Her eyes were closed. “I heard you could send a text message.”
“What the hell is a text message?” Tubby sputtered.
A kid with black dreadlocks, a black shirt, and an earring stuck in his lip, was splayed out next to them. He laughed.
“I can tell you that, dude,” he said.
“Yeah?” Tubby was suspicious.
“Let me see your phone.”
Reluctantly, he handed it over.
“Now,” the kid said. “Who do you want to call?”
Tubby gave him Flowers’s number.
“Now, what do you want to say?”
“Say ‘I am trapped in the New Orleans Convention Center. Can you get me out of here?’”
The lad tapped on the microscopic keypad with his dirty index finger.
Bing. “Message sent,” he said. He gave Tubby back his phone.
“That’s it?” Tubby asked. “How will I know if he gets it?”
“Maybe he’ll call you back.” The kid turned over. “You’re welcome,” he said.
“Yeah, thank you,” Tubby said contritely.
Now what to do? Leave Hope here and go stand in the food line?
His hip buzzed pleasantly. God. Some kind of nervous reaction to stress? No, it was the damn cell phone. Desperately he dug it out of his pocket and flipped it open.
“Got your message,” read the little screen. “Can you get outside?”
“No,” Tubby yelled. “Hey.” He jostled the Goth youngster. “Look, he wants to know how to get me out. Can you send another message?”
“Look, dude,” the boy said sleepily. “If I help you anymore, you’ve got to get me out of this, too.”
“Sure.” Tubby was ready to promise anything. He thrust the phone back into the kid’s hand. “Tell him they won’t let us out. Tell him I need some pull.”
The boy went to work. It took time, as messages bounced back and forth. There were some lost attempts, when someone tripped and fell amongst them, or when the phone inexplicably refused to function, but somehow an arrangement was made.
There was a Captain Beateroff outside the building at Entrance C. He knew Flowers and was going to release Tubby Dubonnet and his party, consisting now of a woman named Hope and a youth named “Gastro,” make that Sydney Peavy, from the “evacuation headquarters” for pick-up by one certain detective named Sanre Fueres. Their mission was to get to said Entrance C in half an hour.
Tubby organized his crew. Gastro checked his socks and pockets to make sure his possessions were still there, a few bucks and a turquoise ring he had scrounged off the Convention Center floor in the dark. They set off into the crowd.
“Like a mosh pit,” Gastro remarked.
It wasn’t easy. They almost got discouraged and failed, but with perseverance they achieved their objective.
“Officer Beateroff!” they all screamed in unison.
12
Detective Flowers was waiting for them at the skirmish line hastily erected by FEMA and the Department of Wild Life and Fisheries to keep people in
. He was leaned up against a white Ford 350 crew-cab with a sign plastered on the side: disaster relief. do not delay. He had on black slacks, a crisp blue shirt with a “Superior Security Services” patch on the shoulder, and a gun belt. He was joking with an NOPD officer wearing camouflage fatigues tucked into his combat boots. Tubby and his party cried for attention, and Flowers interrupted his conversation to wave them through.
“Thank God.” Tubby shook Flowers’s hand and hugged him. “These are my people.” He introduced Hope and Sid “Gastro” Peavy. A dog nudged his leg. “This one, too,” Tubby said.
The cops couldn’t care less what happened to anybody once they were checked out of the building, so there was absolutely no hassle. The refugees scrambled into the super-sized truck, and Flowers climbed in behind the wheel.
“Was it kind of rough in there?” he asked.
“You wouldn’t believe it!” Tubby exclaimed. “We need to call the Governor or something to get those people out of there. It is totally inhumane. It’s like…” Words failed him.
“It’s totally like taking a crap on the floor with like a million of your best friends, while sick people are dying around you,” Gastro finished for him.
“We’re thankful for your help, Mr. Flowers,” Hope told him. “It really is terrible in there. Those poor people…” The dog nudged her chin and cut her off.
“This entire city is in terrible shape,” Flowers said grimly. “I didn’t know how bad until I drove in to get you. I mean, there was plenty of wind damage out where we’re going in Kenner, and I can pick up some of the news on the radio, but I didn’t realize how big the flood got.”
He was taking them away from the downtown area. Tchoupitoulas Street was deserted, and he sped around fragments of chimneys and, oddly, an overturned basketball goal on the roadway. A pack of dogs dashed in front of them and raced toward the wharves. Their canine companion in the truck barked enthusiastically.
“Let’s call him ‘Lucky,’” Hope suggested.
“Not yet lucky,” Gastro said. “Please get your nose out of my face, Not Yet Lucky.”
Christine was in the office tower’s elevator with Bonner Rivette before she realized that something was wrong. A red emergency light dimly illuminated the walnut-paneled box, and she could see that his mismatched sports coat and pants just did not correlate at all to what a security man’s uniform ought to look like. Rivette stared at her, and he didn’t smile. She picked her knapsack of groceries off the floor and clutched it in her arms.
“Where is my father?” she asked.
The elevator reached floor 43, and the door slid open.
She balked at leaving.
“He’s in his office,” Bonner told her.
Warily Christine stepped in the hall.
“Right there,” Bonner said, pointing.
She straightened her shoulders and marched to the big glass doors, which were standing open. Exit signs lit the hall.
When she reached the office reception area she swung around to confront the man. Her jaw was set, but she couldn’t speak.
“He ain’t really here,” Bonner said. “I made that up.”
She snarled and swung her pack at him. He caught it in one hand and reeled her in.
Flowers and his expanded retinue arrived safely at the Petrofoods complex in the remote end of Jefferson Parish known as Kenner. They were out by the airport, and as far as you could go without falling into a swamp. At Petrofoods there was a two-story administration building and warehouse, a garage for equipment and trucks, a bunker for helicopter maintenance, and a large concrete landing field, all surrounded by a chain link fence. The fence was topped with barbed wire. The site had once been a military installation and was rumored to have played a role in the Bay of Pigs invasion.
“What do they do here?” Tubby asked, looking at all the fences.
“Petrofoods is a supply company for off-shore oil rigs,” Flowers explained. “Everything from canned goods and frozen rib-eyes to hand tools and electrical wire. They’ve got a bigger facility in Lafayette, and that’s where the company is operating from this week. Once they get the juice turned back on here, they’ll move back in.”
“You’re here all by yourself?”
“Not quite.” Flowers rocketed the big Ford into the “No Parking” space in front of the main building. There was only one other truck on the lot, a beat-up Nissan Frontier with the tailgate missing. The Airodream helicopter Tubby had ridden in rested some distance away, its props wilted in sleep. The flight control tower of the Louis Armstrong Airport was visible half a mile off. For the time being at least, the airport was totally out of business. Tubby wondered how many tourists were stranded in the terminal. He imagined that they were being well cared for, but he was wrong.
“I’ve got a young guy, Steve Oubre, with me,” Flowers said. “I don’t think you ever met him. I only hired him last June… He’s just a good ol’ Cajun. And we had a visit yesterday from one of the company wheels. A vice president of something. He came to check on us and then go look at his house. He didn’t come back. Me and Steve are in charge here until told otherwise.”
Everybody got out of the truck, and the dog ran off to pee. Flowers took Hope by the elbow. “Let me show you the accommodations,” he said gallantly.
He led them into the company office, a bunch of empty desks and filing cabinets. Family pictures and little plastic flowers adorned the desktops, all left behind in the hurry to evacuate. In the back was the warehouse, a huge space full of floor-to-ceiling shelves, packed with merchandise. The electricity was off, and the available light came from an overhead door cranked open at the rear of the building.
They followed the light, past gallon cans of cheese sauce, bottles of apple juice, cases of flashlights, and cartons of instant grits. Near the back door, cots had been laid out. A large barbecue grill made from a fifty-five-gallon drum occupied center stage, and smoke drifted from under the lid. A generator droned outside. A young bearded man sat on a blue nylon folding chair watching a small television set and smoking a cigarette. He clicked off the set, on which he had a “Stepford Wives II” DVD playing, and got up to say hello.
“This is Steve.” Flowers made introductions. “Find some more cots for these folks,” he ordered. “Put the lady’s somewhere over there by those bags of plastic plates. See if you can find any more blankets. How are the ribs coming along?”
“Man, they’re looking good,” Steve said. He shook hands with everybody, including Gastro, whom he studied with keen interest, looking the black-clad youth up and down. “You got more earrings than I got,” he said. Indeed Gastro had two in the tops of each ear and one in his lip, for a total of five. Steve only had one, and it was through his left earlobe.
Gastro shrugged, not sure how to take it.
“The girls like that, huh?’ Steve asked.
“Seem to,” Gastro said.
“That’s good. Let me see how many cots I can find.”
“We’re eating okay,” Flowers explained, an understatement. “There’s lots in the reefer truck, which is hooked to the generator. Are y’all hungry? Just give me ten minutes,” the dark-haired detective promised.
Everybody was beyond hungry. With Steve’s help, Flowers set out a feast on a plastic folding table. It consisted of canned beans and cheese sauce, creamed potatoes from a three-pound pouch, a pan of biscuits, a pot of hot coffee, cantaloupe slices from the refrigerator truck, and a platter of steaming hot tamales. “The ribs need another hour,” he explained. They didn’t care.
When round one of the meal was finished, Hope asked to see her cot, and Steve showed her the spot he’d selected between stacks of styrofoam cups and disposable cereal bowls. Gastro said he needed a walk, and Flowers said he could go anywhere, but to stay out of the office and keep away from the helicopter.
“I’ve got a bottle of rum,” he confided to Tubby. “And a Coke.” He fixed them each a drink in sixteen-ounce plastic cups.
The dog,
full of leftover tamales and biscuits, lay at their feet expelling gas. “What are you going to call that thing?” Flowers asked.
“I don’t know. Hope said ‘Lucky’ and the street urchin said ‘Not Yet.’ If I name him I have to keep him.”
“I think he’s keeping you.”
“I believe he likes you better. You name him.”
“How about ‘Windy’?”
“How about ‘Rex’?”
“Rex it is,” Flowers said. “The king of our carnival. And you named him.”
Tubby woke up in his chair about two o’clock in the morning. The grill, cleared of its rack of ribs, now was serving as a sort of campfire fueled by chunks of broken fork-lift pallets. Gastro and Steve were still sitting around it, jawing. Tubby suspected they had found some beer or pot. The radio was turned low and alternated between country music and news. He listened to their conversation for a minute.
“It’s not that easy living on the streets,” Gastro was saying.
“Not easy in what way? You don’t pay no rent. You don’t work.” Steve burped, but he was interested in what Gastro had to say.
“I work,” Gastro said defensively. “I’m an oyster shucker by trade. But I got fired. And I do day labor, clean up trash, stuff like that. But you know the cops hassle you. And there’s a lot of sicko people out there.” He had, in fact, found little kindness in life, and when someone mentioned that concept he thought they were hustling him.
“Then why don’t you get off those streets and get you some place to live?” Steve asked.
“It’s not that easy. You’ve got to have rent money, and they want a security deposit. You’ve got to sign a lease. Man, I don’t know where I’ll be next week.”
“That’s for sure, these days,” Steve said. “Don’t you have no family you can turn to?”
“Not really. They don’t want anything to do with me.”
“True? I’ve known some people like that. What don’t they like about you?”
“Because of the way I dress and who I am.”
“I guess you can’t be anybody but who you are,” Steve said sagely. “ I had a cousin who tried to pretend he was a race car driver but he was really a forklift operator. He killed himself driving his forklift off the pier at the Port Sulphur Marina.”