Nine Lives

by Dan Baum

  “You telling me nobody got to that house until September 16?” Ronald asked.

  “That’s what it says.”

  Ronald wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Sprayed on the house was “4K9” and “1 DOA.” Ronald could picture the woman who lived there, a bitty thing who liked kente cloth.

  “It’s like this all the way to the far end of St. Bernard Parish. It wasn’t only the Industrial Canal. Levees broke all the way along that ship channel out to the gulf.”

  “Mr. Go,” Ronald said. The Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. “They been talking about closing that for years.”

  “Water stood here maybe three weeks,” Inskeep said. They turned down the wide boulevard of Caffin Avenue to Claiborne, and right on Tupelo. The farther they got from the levee, the less rubble lay in the street. Here, a mile from the levee, the houses looked more like they did after Betsy—every one a mud-caked ruin. Inskeep brought the car to a slow halt in front of Ronald’s house.

  The tan and brown house seemed to have settled several inches into the mud. Every window was gone—cold and dead. Ronald got out, hobbled up the driveway to the porch, and peered in the window. His living room looked like a slaughterhouse, everything jumbled up and rotten. He steadied himself by the iron railing, thumped down the steps, and turned up the driveway. The chocolate slime that covered the driveway sucked at his feet. He fished his keys from a pocket and pushed open the door to the House of Dance and Feathers. A blast of hot, stinking air knocked him back. It was dark inside, the single window opaque with mud. Indian suits lay impacted in a foot of sticky ooze on the floor, photos and masks jumbled among them.

  “This is my museum,” he said as Inskeep came up. He reached down and pulled a strip of beadwork from the muck, walked out to the chain-link fence, and hung it to dry. It could be rinsed off and saved. Inskeep watched him curiously, the microphone held at arm’s length. Ronald inhaled and leaned into it. “I’m not leaving my home.”

  He picked up a blue alligator shoe and carried it outside. Inskeep followed him. Ronald banged the shoe on the fence post and chunks of mud fell off it. “I have a good relationship with my senator, council aide, and state representative. I’m going to champion the cause.” Inskeep pushed the microphone closer to Ronald’s mouth, and Ronald took it. “It’s going to take organizing within the black community, from our leaders—our church leaders, our civic leaders. But we might be okay.”

  JOYCE MONTANA

  ST. AUGUSTINE CHURCH

  2005

  Joyce parked her gray Toyota around the corner from St. Augustine Church. Although the morning was already hot, sticky, and pungent of rot, Joyce’s heart lifted with every step at the prospect of Father LeDoux’s voice, the exuberance of the choir, and the touch of her friends.

  It must have been fifteen degrees cooler inside the church. Sturdy, resolute Sandra Gordon ran over and wrapped her in a long hug. Marion Colbert, perfectly erect at seventy-something, her hair in a regal bun, kissed Joyce on both cheeks. Cecilia Galle—close to ninety—had lost her daughter and son-in-law in the flood, but here she came, rolling in the side door in her wheelchair, as beautiful and elegant as ever in pink earrings and gloves. It took an hour to greet everybody. Everybody had a story to tell.

  “The grace and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you,” Father LeDoux said, lifting his arms and looking tired in a flamboyant tie-dyed dashiki.

  “And also with you,” Joyce said.

  ANTHONY WELLS

  They put me and Roger in a project out in Newport, which is a long way from Knoxville. It wasn’t a project like in New Orleans. It looked like an ordinary neighborhood, except all the houses were the same. Brick. Nice lawns. And everybody else in there was white. Tripped me out, man. Housing project of white people. But I was okay with that. I ain’t prejudiced. I’m a simple man. Eat, sleep, be discreet. Watch the people you meet in the street because everybody ain’t out to give you a treat.

  We didn’t have no car and they ain’t got no buses, so we couldn’t go nowhere. FEMA sent me a letter saying I been granted twenty-two hundred dollars housing assistance, but the name on the letter was Carmelita Waterhouse. Who the fuck is Carmelita Waterhouse? I called, said I’m a Katrina victim. They wanted to know where was the disaster. Where was the disaster? In fucking New Orleans. Then they wanted to know did I have any receipts. It’s the old badger game; how long can you hold out? The more money they keep people from getting, the more money they keep. Then Newport Housing Authority turn around and tell us we got to pay fifty dollars a month for the house, plus the light bill. So what are they doing for us?

  But you can’t wallow in dismay, disappointment, failure. Failure is within a man. His self-esteem. Tennessee was not where I really wanted to be, but if I had the means and the financial help, I could be happy. I could go see my people. Maybe eventually, if they’d given me the right kind of assistance, I could have gotten a house.

  FRANK MINYARD

  ST. GABRIEL

  2005

  “Frank,” a tech called, from two rows over. “I think we got a homicide here.” Frank hurried to the fingerprinting cubicle.

  A tech, all but invisible in a Tyvek suit, was unzipping a bright yellow body bag. Frank pulled on his surgical gloves and mask. “Look at that,” the tech said. “Somebody bashed in her head.”

  “Jesus.” The body was a purplish green, the left side of the head flattened. The girl was young, maybe in her twenties, wearing capris and a white open-collared shirt.

  The tech reached into the bag and came up with a beaded purse. He pried open the clasp and pulled out the wallet. “Well, this helps with I.D.,” he said. “Her name is Marie Latina.”

  TIM BRUNEAU

  BOURBON STREET

  October 2005

  Tim took a walk down Bourbon Street for the hell of it. It was good to see lights coming on at dusk. A few bars were open. The Tropical Isle and Cafe Lafitte in Exile had their doors open and jukeboxes blaring. Déjà Vu had a lumpy naked lady gyrating on the little stage, as did Big Daddy’s Bottomless Topless. Galatoire’s was closed, but outside Alex Patout’s Louisiana Restaurant a wizened cinder of a chef was stirring a cannibal pot of spaghetti sauce on a gas burner he’d set up on the sidewalk. Tim lingered by the heavenly smell. Six feet away, though, the ever-present vomit-and-mold smell of the high-heaped garbage took over again.

  Tim turned around and walked back toward Canal Street. By this time, Razzoo and Daiquiri’s were open. The city was coming back to life before his eyes.

  The street was packed with strapping guys in T-shirts from restoration companies or law enforcement golf shirts with their guns in the open like the genitals on short-haired street dogs. As for women, Tim spotted a couple of big, muscular bleached blondes in FBI golf shirts and Glocks, a reedy scientific-looking lady from EPA, and about a dozen doe-eyed don’t-joke-with-us dog rescuers from the Humane Society.

  He crossed the darkened Central Business District and looped behind the Convention Center to the ship. His uniform stuck to him in the heat, but a shower and clean sheets awaited. He ran his plastic badge through the card reader and started up the gangway.

  Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! A heavyset security man positioned himself with his arms folded at the top of the gangway. On the dock, a woman in a blue blazer shouted, “Excuse me, sir!” There was nothing to do but trudge back down in the heat.

  He held out his card. “Can you just look me up? I have a room on the ship. I promise.”

  “Just a moment, please, sir.” She took his card, frowned at it, and walked to her laptop. She examined the screen and called over a man who had the tanned, bland look of a golf pro. They whispered. The golf pro opened a cell phone and made a call.

  “May I go aboard, please?” Sweat was trickling down his ribs.

  The golf pro smoothed back his hair and walked over. “Ah, sir, it seems you have been excluded from the ship.”

  “What?”

  “There was
an incident in your stateroom? Involving a firearm?”

  “I was fast asleep and there was a stranger in my room!”

  “I don’t know about that. I suggest you talk to your supervisor. In the meantime, we have instructions not to allow you to reboard.”

  Tim gazed up at the ship for a long time, as though it were steaming off into the night, carrying his beloved. Other cops arrived, swiping cards and prancing up the gangway.

  Tim walked through the Convention Center parking lot to the Crown Vic, digging his keys from his pocket. He drove to the Wal-Mart parking lot, quiet and empty since the cops had left.

  He opened the back door and gazed at the blue vinyl seat where Marie had lain. Sighing, he crawled inside, took his Glock from his holster, and fell asleep holding it.

  WILBERT RAWLINS JR.

  5972 DREUX AVENUE

  2005

  Wil swung off the I-10 onto Downman Road and turned right on Dreux. His once-beautiful block of trim homes and neat lawns was gone, trashed, smeared with filth as though a regiment of evil six-year-olds had finger-painted it to death. His house was still there—that was something. Belinda stood in front of it.

  Amid the desolation, she looked incongruously elegant, regal in high heels and a plum-colored suit with a straight skirt and jacket. But that was Belinda. She stood in the muddy yard, holding a white handkerchief to her nose. He climbed out, and the stench—mildew, vomit, gasoline, death—about made him retch. “Hey.”

  “Gold teeth,” she said. “That a Reecie thing?”

  “No, baby.” He smiled in spite of himself, like a ten-year-old. “You know I never liked that chipped tooth. I got ’em done in Texas. It comes right out.” He flicked his tongue and the two gold teeth, connected by a thin bar, rattled off his top incisors.

  The house looked as though it had been raped and murdered, every window smashed, the neat red brick and white trim fouled with black mud.

  “So, how you doing, Wil?” Belinda lowered the handkerchief, waving in the air in front of her face.

  “I’m all right. Whoo, it stinks out here.”

  “How’s your mama and them?”

  “They all right. How are you?”

  “Better. Those three months in Houston about did me in.”

  “I’ll bet it did, all alone.”

  “No, Wil, I mean it. I had no purpose. My husband was in Beaumont, starting a new life with Reecie. My kids were in Hearne. I couldn’t get FEMA help. Someone stole my identity and ran up bills. I couldn’t get unemployment. My brother was in Iraq. You know about Aunt Polly and them. I mean, I had nothing.”

  Wil hung his head. It had always been hard for him to imagine other people’s suffering; it was part of the optimism that kept him going. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hmf. Well, you may as well come see. I warn you, though, it’s bad.”

  Wil followed her across the yard in a daze. Nothing moved, not a cat, not a bird, not a breath of wind to stir the stench. It was like walking through a still photograph. Lying on the path, six feet from the front door, was a wet, decomposing dog. Maggots wriggled in the hollowed-out skull.

  The interior was unrecognizable. His couch. His TV. His chair. The refrigerator lay on its side in the living room. Wil felt numb, beyond crying. It wasn’t real. Belinda moved through the living room, the kitchen, the hallway, glancing into bedrooms, opening a bathroom door, conducting him on a silent haunted-house tour. Their feet slipped in the mud.

  “So what do you want to do?” she said, lowering the hankie from her face as they emerged from the side door.

  “I don’t know.” His head was light.

  “Well, we’ve got decisions to make, Wilbert. The mortgage company is willing to sign it over to us—what’s left of it.”

  “Good, good,” Wil said, to say something. They walked out toward their cars, giving the rotting dog wide berth. Wil’s brain was grinding sluggishly, seeking traction. Get the place cleaned out, get the place repainted.

  “It’s good and fine,” Belinda said. “But it’s in both our names. They won’t sign it over to just one of us. You listening?”

  He blinked. Her sharp caramel-colored face tipped up at his, her stylish rectangular glasses framing coffee-colored eyes.

  “So let me ask you straight-out, Wil,” she said. “Do you want to sell me your share?”

  “My share?”

  “Do you. Want to sell me. Your share. Of the house,” she said, as though talking to an imbecile.

  “No, baby, you know I don’t. This is my house.”

  “Well, it’s my house, too, according to the papers.”

  “I don’t mean …”

  “Here’s the thing.” Belinda tapped him on the chest, a long magenta fingernail clicking against his big jeweled WR medallion. “I don’t want to sell my share, either.” She paused to let it sink into his skull. “So I guess we’re stuck with each other.”

  ANTHONY WELLS

  A letter come that January from the housing authority. Said I owed $1,025 on that shithole, plus $200 in court costs. Said I was evicted because they found out I had a criminal record on file. Shit, half the people of New Orleans got criminal records on file.

  We were supposed to be out by February 19, but shit, that was the day before Mardi Gras. Roger and me were going to make some masks, but we couldn’t get no glitter. Had but one string of beads between us.

  Mardi Gras, man. To miss Mardi Gras. I mean, I never went and watched the white folks on St. Charles Avenue, but I liked knowing they was there, you feel me? We didn’t have Indians up in the Goose, but I liked knowing they was out there.

  It finally got so bad I took a job over by Wal-Mart. I used to walk two miles. But the guy there, he was saying racial slurs. Called me “Buckwheat.” Called me “Leroy.” He’d say, “There’s that New Orleans dude; he’s hot and spicy.” He was playing the dozens with me, man. If I’d a stayed, we’d a got in a fight. I’m from New Orleans, man; I know how to work. But in Tennessee, man, it’s like going back in time. The white people think everything is theirs. Only reason we’re not sitting in the back of the bus is because they ain’t got no buses.

  They had a free clinic at Pigeon Forge. I go down there, stand in line. It was the first time I seen a doctor since Katrina. They check my eyes, my heart, everything. My pressure was up so high they sent me to the emergency hospital. I tell the lady I don’t have no insurance. She says, “That’s okay,” and they do the whole nine yards—EKG and all that. X-rays. Then they turned around and charged me twenty thousand dollars. I just get started fighting that, and come a letter from the U.S. Department of Education, I shit you not, telling me I owe them twelve thousand dollars. Why? The motherfucking Lawton School! Where I was studying to be a security investigator back in 1995! Ten years later, and they’re coming after me for that. Waiting until I’m all fucked from Katrina, kicking a man when he’s down. Twelve thousand dollars, and more than half of that is interest and penalties and shit.

  I used to wake up hollering. I kept dreaming I was in a place, L.A. or somewhere. People were trying to kill me, dudes with big rottweilers, pit bulls. “Get them off me! Get them off me!” Roger had to come in and wake me up.

  RONALD LEWIS

  LOYOLA UNIVERSITY

  November 2005

  Ronald picked up a Sharpie and wrote his name on a blue “Hi My Name Is” sticker: Ronald W. Lewis.

  “Whom do you represent?” said the woman at the card table.

  “’Scuse me?”

  “Are you with a university or a city agency?”

  “No, ma’am. I represent myself and the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.” He pressed the sticker to his chest and made his way slowly, on his aching feet, to the conference room. On his head he wore a red woven skullcap, which he called his battle hat. The flyer in his hand said the conference was about “reinhabiting NOLA,” but the people in the hallway did not make it look like a matter of survival. They were well dressed and rested, flipping through file f
olders and talking on cell phones. A Tulane professor had heard Ronald on National Public Radio and called him to speak. Ronald took a seat at the back of a big classroom.

  The morning’s speakers dwelled on “infrastructure,” “social networks,” and “natural and built ecosystems.” It all seemed very removed for Ronald; he still had a living room full of mud. Then his name was called. “My name is Ronald W. Lewis, and I come from cross the canal in the Lower Ninth Ward,” he said. He could hear how rough and uneducated—how black—his voice sounded. He didn’t have a lot of big words like “infrastructure” to throw around. But that was okay; he’d faced down Hero Evans.

  “When you drive over that Claiborne Bridge, you see that green space,” he began. “That was my world. When I wanted to go sit by my sister, on the porch, and watch my other sister doing her flowers in her yard, that’s what I did. James, over there, might be round by his house barbecuing, and we’d hear him cooking, and we’d be round by James. If the neighbor cross the fence was boiling crawfish, we’d cross over there. In the Lower Ninth Ward, we’re people people.” He took a deep breath. This was no time for speeches.

  “I have a museum,” he said. “Help me, and I’ll help you help others. I’ll show you the way.”