Nine Lives

by Dan Baum

  FRANK MINYARD

  CANAL STREET

  August 29, 2005

  Frank stopped his pickup at the corner of Canal Street and Claiborne Avenue and peered through the rain-bejeweled windshield, wondering what the hell he was looking at. A smooth sheet of water covered all of Canal, lakeside of Claiborne. Out in the middle, hundreds of cars, parked side to side, stretched in a row as far as the eye could see. They were on the neutral ground, where people parked before a storm because the extra five or six inches of elevation out there might keep a car’s oil pan out of the water. These cars, though, were up to the middle of their hubcaps—the close ones, that is. Farther away, they were up to their windows. Frank rolled down the window, letting in a hot, spitting rain. He leaned out and looked down. The water was noticeably deeper than when he’d pulled up—maybe six inches now. The hurricane had passed hours ago; the water should have been receding. He put the truck in reverse and swiveled his neck to back up. Something pushed against the front bumper, and when he turned around to see, the hood was wet, steam rising. The engine sputtered and died. Frank leaned out. Water nearly covered his tires. It had been a wave that had bumped him. He tried twisting the ignition, but nothing happened. The water had killed it.

  He felt his senses beginning to leave him, as though he were trapped in a nonsensical dream. He opened the truck door, and water poured in. He lifted his feet to keep his thousand-dollar ostrich-hide boots dry. He loved these boots—buttery yellow, with sharply pointed toes, an homage to his Texan dad. Grunting, Frank pulled them off and lay them on the seat. He opened the door and stepped out in his socks, gingerly. The water was cool. It covered his knees. He began wading up Canal, toward the lake, not really sure what he was doing or why. Within two blocks, water was at his chest. The reflection of the Tulane Health Services building shimmered. A plastic margarine tub, a Zapp’s potato chip bag, a turd—scoured up from the storm drains and sewers and a hundred thousand trash cans—floated past. On the surface lay a rainbow of oil, and Frank’s eyes stung from the fumes. He stopped and looked around. Not a soul in sight.

  If the water is over my head at Canal and Prieur, what was it like by the lake? How much of the city was underwater? Now he began thinking like the coroner: How many bodies were floating around, and how many more would die? Not the uptown swells with cars, second homes, and wallets full of credit cards, but those who had no car, no friend with a car, those who’d never left New Orleans and weren’t about to flee just because the mayor said to go. They were giving up their lives, as he stood up to his chest in water on Canal Street, in ways too unspeakable to imagine.

  Who would put a name to the corpses and keep them from a mass grave or a potter’s field? Would run hands over their bloated, reeking remains, looking for the last truth they’d ever give up?

  Frank took a deep breath, pushed forward, and began swimming toward his office.

  TIM BRUNEAU

  VILLERE AND PERDIDO STREETS

  August 29, 2005

  The Sixth District detectives sat on the hoods of their units, gazing on the massive gray wall of the Superdome. “Hey, man,” they called as Tim climbed out of the Crown Vic.

  “Is it true?” Alan handed him a beer. “Are you driving a dead woman around the city?”

  Tim gestured toward the backseat. The detectives came over, looked in, and laughed. “They’re evacuating Charity,” Tim said.

  “Charity?” Jeff whistled. “Shit.”

  Tim looked down. The street was wet. Not speckled with rain, not puddled, but laminated with water. “Was the street wet when I drove up?”

  “We need to get you a little blue cap and a better car, if you’re going to chauffeur this lady around,” Alan said.

  “Full-service homicide investigator.” Alan pulled another six-pack of Abita from his trunk, and they leaned, straight legged, against their cars, sucking at the bottles, watching the crowd thicken around the Dome. “Can you imagine what it smells like inside?” Jeff said.

  “Like the inside of Timmy’s car?”

  “One six six four,” a tinny voice called.

  Tim rolled his cold beer bottle across his forehead.

  “One six six four.”

  “Timmy, isn’t that you?” Jeff pointed to the radio on his belt.

  Tim snatched it up, pressing it to his lips. “One six six four.”

  “Word from the top,” said the dispatcher. “You’re to undo what you did.”

  Tim clutched the radio. He could hear the murmur of the crowd at the Superdome. “You mean dump the body?” he said.

  “Undo what you did.”

  Tim closed his eyes.

  “What are you supposed to do, put a body back on the street?” Jeff said.

  “Jesus, that’s sick.” Alan shuddered visibly.

  Something cold moved across the top of Tim’s foot. Water was soaking through his boot laces. He pressed the button on the radio and said, with exaggerated slowness and clarity, “One six six four, leaving Villere and Perdido for the nineteen hundred block of Jackson Avenue, to dump the body.” He climbed in the Crown Vic, read off his starting mileage, released the radio button, and leaned out the window. “I’m going to end up in front of a grand jury.”

  “I’ll get a body bag and meet you there,” Jeff said.

  JOANN GUIDOS

  ST. CLAUDE AVENUE

  August 29, 2005

  “JoAnn?”

  All night she’d lain in bed, and all night they’d banged on the bedroom door. JoAnn, the generator’s overheating. JoAnn, there’s water coming under the door. JoAnn, the jukebox is stuck on “Sweet Home Alabama.” JoAnn, Kajun’s is the only place open; shouldn’t we charge more than a buck for beer?

  Put some fucking oil in the generator. Sweep the water out. Kick the side of the jukebox above the power cord. No, a buck a beer; we’re not gouging. She missed Kathy and Roney; they’d been smart, evacuating to the bungalow in Carriere. “Go away,” she yelled. “Solve it yourself.”

  Barbara stuck her head in. “Sorry. There are a couple of guys lurking at the pool table. I don’t like their looks.”

  That was a problem of a different magnitude. JoAnn jolted awake, swung her legs over the side of her plywood-and-cinder-block bed, and felt on the side table for the snub-nosed .38 revolver. She jammed it in the back of her pants, pushed past Barbara, and clattered down the stairs. A couple of guys stood by the pool table in dark sweatshirts with their hoods up and hands deep in their pockets. They weren’t playing. They weren’t drinking. They had the look, to JoAnn, of a couple of punks trying to work up the nerve. JoAnn shouldered through the crowd and pushed her massive breasts up under the nose of the big one, squaring her place-kicker shoulders. “May I help you?”

  The kid’s eyes bulged, and his mouth dropped open. “No, ma’am,” he squeaked. He and his friend scurried out.

  WILBERT RAWLINS JR.

  BEAUMONT, TEXAS

  August 30, 2005

  The sky was blue over Beaumont. Wilbert was in the driveway of his cousin’s house, loading the car for the trip home.

  Two nights jammed into Joanna’s two-bedroom apartment with her, her two kids, Ma, Lawrence, Reecie, and Reecie’s kids was plenty. Sleep had been impossible. The children giggled until late and woke at the first sign of daylight. The place was a zoo; everybody was getting on everybody else’s nerves. Wil needed his Dreux Street house and his band room. He needed his hundred-odd kids, and he needed to reschedule St. Aug. Seven or eight hours of driving and he’d be there. The sky to the east was clear and pink.

  Lawrence appeared at the garage door. “Hey, man. You better come in and look at the TV.”

  TIM BRUNEAU

  JACKSON AVENUE

  August 29, 2005

  I let you down, Marie, Tim said, pulling the Crown Vic to the curb in front of the burned-out house. You’re going to leave this world like a piece of garbage.

  Jeff pulled up and sloshed over with a bright yellow body bag. Jackson Avenue wa
s under a couple inches of water.

  Tim tried not to look up at the people on the stoops as he and Jeff pulled Marie from the backseat. She hit the pavement with a squishy thud. Jeff unrolled her like a wad of burrito filling. They lifted her into the body bag.

  She lay on her back with her eyes closed and her lips parted slightly, like a sleeping child. Tim tucked her little beaded bag beside her, to help whoever might find her with identification. He zipped the bag shut and hoisted it onto the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb, out of the water. The big man stood in front of the Dreamers. As an authority figure for the nineteen hundred block of Jackson Avenue, he’d have to do. Tim walked toward him, feeling the resistance of water and sending big white splashes ahead. The man didn’t move; he glowered at Tim as though ready to tear his head off. A baseball bat leaned against the door frame. He was taking care of business and a New Orleans police officer was dumping a dead citizen on the curb like a bag full of crawfish heads. Tim stopped in front of the man, gestured back toward where Marie lay, and opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out. There was nothing to say. Without another word Tim turned back toward his car and drove away, following Jeff through the deepening gray water.

  BELINDA RAWLINS

  BATON ROUGE

  August 30, 2005

  Belinda sat on the unmade motel bed, fast-food wrappers overflowing the wastebasket and a plastic bag of ice draped over her knee. Her eyes were bleary from watching CNN.

  “How did the levees break if the storm was already over?” Curtis bounced on all fours.

  “I don’t know.” She should be getting up, taking Curtis to a park to let him run around, but it was hard to tear herself away from the TV. The video shots mesmerized her, the same ones over and over—the Superdome, a child being hoisted skyward in a basket to an orange helicopter, a distraught woman waving a towel from a rooftop, two women pushing a shopping cart full of babies through waist-deep water, and every now and then something new: boats on Canal Street, water at the rooftops in the Lower Ninth Ward, a man waving a bedsheet from a roof in Gentilly, an old woman slumped in a wheelchair at the Convention Center, covered with a blanket. The woman waving the shirt or towel came on again: about forty-five, black, with straightened hair. Next to her lay a young man with his arm thrown over his eyes. A jagged hole, hacked through from inside, told of their ordeal. The woman was frantic, trying to bring help. The TV didn’t say where the house was, and Belinda couldn’t make out the surroundings.

  She got up, limping, and stuffed the food wrappings deeper into the wastebasket. She dug in her purse for the stash of Goody’s powders she’d grabbed at the last minute from the medicine cabinet, and delicately unfolded the last wax-paper sachet and tossed the bitter powder back on her tongue. She checked her cell phone. Nothing.

  Time was starting to run together. Where was everybody? Did Wilbert get out? What about Faye, Ditty, and Aunt Polly? Faye had it together pretty well these days, but well enough to get them to high ground? How about Stevie?

  Belinda was out of cash, and the car was nearly out of gas. If she didn’t hear from someone soon and have money wired, she’d be stuck. Curtis lay facedown on the bed, and she rubbed his back. Pretty soon, he was snoring lightly. CNN cycled through the images: Superdome, child in basket, shopping cart full of babies, the woman on the roof.

  Belinda’s eyes popped round, and she lunged toward the TV.

  The woman on the roof, the young man beside her: Faye. Skeeter was with her. There was no mistaking them. But where were Ditty and his baby? Where was Aunt Polly?

  Belinda sat up all night, watching the clip of Faye and Skeeter play over and over. Nothing changed. She never got rescued. It was just Faye and her autistic son, Skeeter, eternally trapped on their roof island.

  FRANK MINYARD

  ORLEANS PARISH CRIMINAL COURTS BUILDING

  August 30, 2005

  Frank, a sheriff’s deputy, and half a dozen others sat on the broad steps of the courthouse, hoping for a breeze to stir the gelatinous air. Behind them, in the big marble lobby, scores of people—judges, clerks, neighbors fleeing their homes for the safety of a building propped high off the street—stretched out on blankets, waiting.

  No power, no food, no toilets. No news. Frank had been lucky to get one call out to Nancy from the deputy’s cell phone. He’d run off the morning after the storm and, as far as she was concerned, had disappeared for two days. It was good not to worry about her; she was safe at the farm. She said she’d let the authorities know where he was.

  Frank stared miserably across Tulane Avenue: Steve’s Bail Bonds, Quicky’s Po’Boys, and fifty trucks in the U-Haul lot, up to their roofs in olive green water. What an idiot he’d been to swim up here. The only way out now was to swim again, but the water, after sitting under the scorching sun for days, seemed thicker—more filth than water.

  Pok! Ptuuiiii!

  “Not again,” the deputy said tiredly as everybody on the steps rose and shuffled up the steps into the courthouse. A lot of people had been sent to Angola from this building, and every now and then since the crisis had started, somebody in the city had taken the opportunity to take a shot at it.

  Night didn’t fall; it rose, hot, from the stinking lake.

  Every now and then, a small orange helicopter appeared in the distance. Somebody told Frank it was from the Coast Guard air station in Belle Chasse. Other than that, though, the sky was empty and silent. It was spooky; where was the help? The storm had ended a day and a half ago, and nobody had shown up to help.

  He was the parish coroner. Surely, he thought, somebody would send a boat for him.

  TIM BRUNEAU

  GRETNA

  August 29, 2005

  Tim lay on a pew in the Baptist church, listening to the Sixth District—cops, wives, kids—snoring, farting, and sighing in the darkness around him. He held a brick-shaped radio to his ear, the volume turned as low as it would go, to save battery power. The main police digital radio frequency was dead, but the analog frequency—a low-power, line-of-sight, walkie-talkie function—had come to life. Every cop, firefighter, and EMT within a sixty-mile radius of New Orleans was on, shouting. As a means of conversation, it was useless. As a window on the disaster, it was grimly fascinating.

  “About four hundred on the I-10!” came through the cacophony. “Boatfulla people,” said a deep Cajun accent. “Where sh’I bringum?” Nobody answered. “I’m on Louisa Street!” a man hollered. It sounded like he was crying.

  What were they doing, hiding across the river? The whole Sixth District has abandoned its post.

  Tim thought of Marie, eyes closed, lips parted.

  Russell was shaking him. The stained-glass window was bright with morning sun. “We’re going back across to secure the Wal-Mart.” His red-freckled face was within inches of Tim’s. He’d shown up late the night before with a crazy story about swimming out of his house with his dog.

  Tim struggled to his feet and pulled on wet boots.

  A line of Sixth District cruisers streamed across the Crescent City Connection against a tide of pedestrians—pushing grocery carts and wheelchairs, pulling dogs on leashes—like newsreel footage from an African famine. They tried to flag him down, but he kept moving. It was a horrible feeling; it went against everything he believed. Cops should help citizens in distress. Thing was, there was nothing he could do for them.

  When they reached the Wal-Mart on Tchoupitoulas, they turned on their sirens and charged across the parking lot side by side, hoping to frighten away the crowd that milled around the smashed front doors. To Tim’s horror and disgust, the people barely looked up. Furious, he jumped out, waving his pistol and yelling, “Police! Police!” His fellow cops joined in. “Get out now! Leave the store now or risk being shot!”

  People walked calmly past Tim, staggering under boxes, wheeling bicycles draped high with clothes on hangers. A smug-looking kid strolled right at him, hugging a boxed basketball backboard. “Put that down.” The k
id smirked and kept walking. Tim pressed his Glock against the back of the kid’s skull. “Put it down.” The kid’s arms flew up. The box crashed to the ground. Tim holstered his gun and yanked the kid’s arms into cuffs. Dozens of people holding loot swept past, watching with mild interest. Jeff got out of his car and walked up.

  “Easy,” he said. “What are you going to do?”

  “Take him in.”

  “Take him in, where? The jail’s flooded.”

  “Ha!” the kid said.

  “And then there’s all these.” Jeff gestured toward the multitudes flowing off with toaster ovens, fishing rods, and teetering ziggurats of sneaker boxes. “You’re going to take him and not them?”

  “There’s got to be a place.”

  “Where? The church?” Jeff put a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “Let him go, Timmy.”

  “Fuck.”

  “It is what it is.”

  Tim fished the keys from his pocket and removed the cuffs. “Mr. Police, with no jail,” the kid sneered, and sauntered off, scooping up the backboard as he went.

  Tim limped into the store. In the heat, it smelled of onions, Pine-Sol, and the fresh soles of new running shoes. Creole mix—chopped celery, bell pepper, green onion—littered the floor of the grocery section like confetti. Little by little, people were getting the message and drifting out. The last of the looters, in twos and threes, scurried from where they’d been hiding and made for the door, grabbing what they could as they went. In sporting goods, a fat woman strolled calmly, a basket of sports watches over her arm, as though whiling away a Sunday afternoon. “Get out!” Tim raised his gun.