by Tim Downs
“Fire ants don’t live in no trees.”
“Neither do people, but you’re up there. The ants are trying to escape the water—they don’t want to drown any more than you do.”
“What’s he talking about?”
“Look—other Solenopsis species just bite and then spray the wound with formic acid. Not invicta. They only bite so they can hold on while they inject an alkaloid venom. The venom burns like fire—thus the name.”
“I don’t like the way he talks,” one of the men said.
“Guys, I’m not kidding. Invicta can kill small animals. Come on down now.”
Neither of them moved. Nick and Jerry just sat there, staring up at the two men, wondering what to do next.
“We don’t have time for this,” Nick grumbled, then called up to the two men: “We’re leaving now, but we’ll swing by again a little later to see if you’ve changed your minds. At least climb down from there and get onto a rooftop. I know it’s hot, but believe me, ‘hot’ is better than ‘on fire.’ By the way, you’ll feel them bite first. Try to brush them off before they sting—otherwise you’ll get little white pustules.”
Nick revved the motor and steered the boat away.
Jerry waited until they were well out of earshot before he said, “Pustules? Are you out of your mind?”
Nick shrugged. “I’d want someone to tell me.”
“Those guys would rather sit in a tree with a bunch of fire ants than be rescued by us. Man, we suck.”
“We just need practice,” Nick said. “We’ll be pros by this afternoon.”
A few minutes later they spotted a man standing on a rooftop between two gables with open windows; he was flagging them down with a red towel.
“Easy pickings,” Nick said. He eased off the throttle and brought the boat up alongside the house. As they approached, they saw a woman step out one of the gable windows and onto the rooftop; she turned and reached back inside, and someone handed her a small child. An older woman climbed out after her, followed by a girl of about eight or nine, then a younger boy . . .
Soon there were nine people crowded together on the roof.
“Thank the Lord,” one of the women said to the sky.
“The Lord needs a bigger boat,” one of the boys mumbled—earning him a swat on the back of the head.
“We sure can’t take all of you at once,” Nick said. “We’ll have to take you in shifts.”
“We go together or we don’t go at all,” the woman holding the child said.
Jerry looked at Nick.
“It’s physics, Jerry,” Nick said. “Even if I left you here, this boat wouldn’t carry ten people—not safely, anyway.”
Jerry turned to the group. “Folks, listen to me. We can take all of you to safety, but we can’t take all of you at once. We can take the women and children first, or you can divide up any way you want. We’ll take a group of you over to the levee, then come right back for—”
“We go together or we don’t go at all,” the woman said again. “Ain’t no use talkin’ about it.”
“Ma’am, be reasonable,” Jerry said.
“I am being reasonable—don’t tell me I’m not. This is my family. You boys got family back home? A wife? Babies?”
“I’m not married,” Jerry said. “Neither is he.”
“Then you don’t know. Lots of folks, they headed off to the Superdome —they say they got buses there to take people to other places—Houston and Baton Rouge and such. What if the bus is like your boat? What if they can’t take us all at once? Then we get split up, that’s what. Maybe we don’t find each other again.”
“Ma’am, that doesn’t have to happen.”
“Don’t have to, but it might. Where you want to take us?”
“To a rescue shelter—a safe place with food and water for your kids—maybe a place to sleep too.”
“Where is this place?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Have you seen it? With your own two eyes?”
“No, ma’am, I haven’t.”
“Who are your people, young man?”
Jerry looked confused, so Nick took the question. “He’s from Indiana, ma’am—that’s where his people are. I came down from the Carolinas.”
“Well, you boys are in Louisiana now, so let me tell you: They promise us all kinds of things down here—schools, jobs, roads—and we don’t see much of it. So maybe this place of yours is real and maybe it’s not. We’ll stay and wait for a bigger boat. We’ll do what we have to, but we’ll do it together. We don’t mean no disrespect.”
“None taken,” Jerry said. “To tell you the truth, I’d probably do the same.”
The two men managed to scrounge half a dozen water bottles from their equipment bags and handed them across to the family.
“Drink all you can,” Nick said, “especially the kids—they’ll dehydrate faster than the adults will. Stay in the shade as much as possible; you can use the floodwater to cool your skin, but whatever you do, don’t drink it—and I wouldn’t get it in my eyes either.”
“Thank you. God bless you.”
“I have to tell you, we’ve only seen one other boat on the water this morning. It’s bigger than this one; maybe he can take your whole group. If we see him, we’ll try to send him over, but I can’t promise you when that will be.”
Nick opened his equipment bag again and took out a black-and-yellow GPS receiver. He held it level and switched it on; he waited for the screen to illuminate, then for the unit to make contact with the satellites in stationary orbit overhead. He hoped that at least one technology was still working. It was—he jotted down the coordinates.
Jerry watched the house as it receded in the distance. He turned to Nick: “Still think we’ll be pros by the end of the day?”
Nick didn’t answer.
“Maybe we should turn the boat over to somebody who knows what they’re doing.”
“Good idea,” Nick said. “Maybe somebody in that big crowd back on St. Claude Avenue. Sorry, Jer, we’re the only ones out here. We’re stuck with this job; we just need to figure out how it works.”
Neither of them said much for the next few minutes. Jerry just stared ahead of the boat, looking despondent, while Nick kept thinking how much easier it was to collect people’s remains than it was to collect people. What strange creatures human beings are, he thought. An insect responds to immediate stimuli; Solenopsis invicta is smart enough to flee rising floodwaters—but the instant the water recedes it will return to the earth. It never wonders if some greater danger might be waiting for it there—it simply knows itself to be a creature of the earth. But the human species is different—the human species will climb a tree and refuse to come down, for no other reason than a vague imagination of what might happen if they do. What a strange species they are, he thought, and he was glad he wasn’t one of them.
A hundred yards ahead they spotted a lone figure standing on the very peak of a rooftop, silhouetted against the morning sky. From a distance the figure appeared to be an adult male, but as the boat drew nearer Nick could see that he was younger than he first appeared. The boy was facing in the opposite direction, seeming to search the horizon for some unknown object or person. He apparently heard the sound of the boat’s motor and slowly turned to face Nick and Jerry as they approached.
He appeared to be around ten years old, just on the verge of his adolescence. His shoulders were already broadening and his hands seemed a bit too large for his arms. His skin was the color of black walnut, still smooth and rounded from the underlying layer of childhood fat cells, still a year or two from the day when testosterone would bind his muscles into taut cords and plow his perfect skin into sinewy furrows. His hair was black and closely cropped, glistening at the tips against the sun; his eyes, oddly enough, were blue, and they made Nick wonder about the boy’s ancestry. He was shirtless and shoeless, dressed only in a pair of dark crew shorts tied off at the waist.
The boy didn
’t throw his shoulders back as the boat approached, and he made no effort to flatten the slight S-curve of his belly; he stood with a complete lack of self-consciousness—something else adolescence would rob from him. The boy reminded Nick of a black statue of David, teetering between boyhood and manhood, with all the strengths and vulnerabilities of both.
Nick killed the motor and let the boat cruise silently up to the house. Neither man said anything; after their last feeble attempts at rescue, Nick was hoping that Jerry might make the first attempt—but apparently Jerry had the same idea. To their surprise, it was the boy who spoke first.
“My name is James Terrebonne Walker,” the boy said. “I want you to help me find my father.”
Nick and Jerry just stared.
“What?”
“I want you to help me find my father. I’ll come with you, but you got to promise.”
“Where did you last see him?” Nick asked.
“We got separated in the flood.”
“Is this your house?”
“No.”
“Do you live around here?”
“This is my neighborhood.”
“Can you take us to where you live?”
The boy looked around. “It’s kind of hard to find.”
“Yeah, I can imagine. How long have you been up there?”
“Since the hurricane.”
“Have you had anything to eat? Anything to drink, any food or water?”
The boy shook his head.
“I want you to come with us,” Nick said. “Come on down and climb into the boat.”
“Not until you promise.”
“Look, we’d like to help you,” Jerry said, “but right now our priority is to—”
“I promise,” Nick said. “I’ll help you find your father.”
Jerry turned to Nick and leaned in closer. “What are you doing? You can’t go throwing around promises like that.”
“They sent us down here to rescue people, Jerry. I’m not going to spend the rest of the day arguing with people in trees. Have you got a better idea?”
“You’ll get his hopes up.”
“He could use a little hope right now.”
“That’s false hope. What happens when you don’t find his father?”
“I’ll find his father.”
“How?”
“I have no idea.”
Nick looked up at the boy. “Well, Mr. James Terrebonne Walker, are you coming or not?”
“J.T.”
“What?”
“I go by J.T.”
“Good, that’s a real time-saver. My name is Nick—the big guy there is Jerry. Now, J.T., are you coming with us or not?”
“You promised,” the boy said.
“Yes, I did. I’ll try to find your father.”
“No, you changed it.”
“Okay, okay,” Nick said. “I will do everything in my power to help you find your father. Satisfied?”
The boy nodded and started down the rooftop. He stepped over the edge of the boat without hesitating and up onto the center bench; he jumped off with both feet at once, plopping down on the bench facing Nick.
“Can I drive?” he asked.
Nick raised one eyebrow. “Do you know how?”
“You’re doin’ it—how hard can it be?”
“I drive. You ride.”
“What’s he do?” J.T. asked, jabbing his thumb back at Jerry.
“Jerry? He’s the anchor.”
“Thanks a lot,” Jerry said.
“Actually, Jerry is a highly trained search-and-rescue professional. He’s famous around these parts.”
The boy squinted at Nick. “Man, you’ve got big glasses.”
“What glasses?”
He paused. “You’re shinin’ me.”
“I think you could use some shinin’,” Nick said.
J.T. lifted both legs and twisted around on the bench. “Okay—let’s get goin’.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Nick twisted the throttle and the boat started forward.
9
As the boat churned through the debris-choked water, Nick found himself staring at the back of the boy’s head. The kid’s got guts, that’s for sure. He wondered how the boy got up on that rooftop all by himself. It wasn’t even his house—did his father help him? Were they together when the storm first struck? Was it the hurricane that separated them? If so, Nick had a pretty good idea where he would find the boy’s father: on a gurney at the DPMU in St. Gabriel a couple of weeks from now.
Jerry seemed more interested in the floodwaters surrounding the boat. The water was completely opaque, and when Nick angled the bow of the boat into the sun, they could see a rainbow film of oil shimmering on the surface. There was debris floating everywhere; when they rounded some corners, their little johnboat was like a Coast Guard cutter plowing through an ice floe of disposable diapers, garbage bags, and broken tree limbs.
“This has got to be the most polluted water in the world,” Jerry said. “No telling what’s in it.”
“Oil and gasoline from the refineries,” Nick said. “Raw sewage from the water treatment plants; chromium and copper and zinc from metal plating plants; herbicides like 2,4-D and atrazine; residues from banned pesticides. How’s that for starters?”
“I thought we’d see more you-know-whats,” Jerry said.
“What?”
Jerry nodded at the boy. “You know—people.”
Nick shook his head. “We shouldn’t see them for a couple of days.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll explain it to you later.”
The boy turned and looked at Nick. “You talkin’ about dead folks? I seen one.”
Nick looked at him. “Where? On a rooftop?”
“Floatin’ in the water. Saw it yesterday, once the rain quit.”
“Are you sure it was floating? It wasn’t lying on top of something?”
“Floated right by me—I guess that’s floating. He was sort of blowed up, like a carnival balloon.”
Nick paused. “You don’t mind talking about this stuff ?”
“I seen lots of dead stuff: frogs, possums, canal rats—they fall off the ships and I find ’em along the levees by the river. Dead stuff always floats.”
Nick wasn’t sure whether to pursue this conversation with a boy his age. He looked over at Jerry for guidance, but Jerry just shrugged.
“Dead stuff doesn’t always float,” Nick said. “Suppose Jerry there fell off one of those ships. At first he’d float—that’s because he eats too much bratwurst and potato salad, and fat has a lot of air in it. But once Jerry drowned, his lungs would fill with water and he’d sink. He wouldn’t float again for a couple of days—maybe even a week or two. It all depends on the season and the temperature of the water.”
“What makes him float again?”
“Do you know what bacteria are?”
“Sure. I’m a smart guy.”
“Well, smart guy, you’ve got about a hundred trillion bacteria living in your belly—that’s ten times the number of cells. There are good bacteria and bad bacteria, and they sort of keep each other in check—until you die, that is. Then it’s like Mardi Gras, and they all run wild and start eating everything in sight. When they do that, they make gas—just like Jerry does. A hundred trillion little Jerrys inside you, each producing a tiny bubble of gas. It all collects, and when it finally does it’s just like you said: You blow up like a carnival balloon. It just takes time.”
Nick looked at Jerry. “That’s the problem.”
“What problem?”
“Time. A body in water decomposes in six stages. The first stage is called submerged fresh; that’s the period of time from when the body is first submerged until it bloats and rises to the surface. Then comes the second stage: early floating. We’ve done studies on pig carcasses submerged in water; in northern latitudes it takes eleven to thirteen days to reach the second stage—in the midlatitudes it takes less than a week. This wat
er is like soup; it would accelerate the process even more, but it should still take a day or two for a body to float.”
Nick looked at J.T. “You’re sure you saw this body yesterday?”
“You think I’d forget yesterday?”
“Do you think you could take me there—to the place where you saw this floating body?”
“Nick,” Jerry said.
“The body has probably moved since then, but we could let the boat drift to see which way the current is flowing, and then we could—”
“Nick—that’s not why we’re here, remember?”
Nick settled back like a deflating air bag.
Suddenly, J.T. jumped up and stood on the center bench.
“Hey, be careful,” Jerry said.
“Over there—on that rooftop. See them? Head over that way.”
Nick looked where the boy was pointing but saw nothing. He slid his glasses back and forth on his nose; the thick lenses provided him with almost microscopic vision up close, but at distances they were almost useless. He looked over at Jerry for confirmation, but Jerry just held up both hands and shook his head; apparently his distance vision wasn’t much better.
“You’ve got eyes like the Salticidae,” Nick said to the boy.
“Like what?”
“Jumping spiders—they’ve got the best eyes of all the arthropods. Little black eyes that—forget it, just tell me where to turn.”
J.T. perched on the center bench as if it were a crow’s nest, pointing out upcoming turns and barking orders like a ship’s master. He guided the boat down a series of narrow alleys and across three major streets to a rooftop with a large chestnut tree behind it. As the boat drew nearer, Nick and Jerry both recognized it.
“Uh-oh,” Nick said. “Been there, done that.”
Nick swung the boat around in front of the tree, but this time there was no one in the upper branches. He circled around to the rooftop behind the tree and found the two men sitting side by side on the asphalt shingles. Nick had no idea what to say that he hadn’t said before, and apparently the men didn’t either; they just sat there, glaring back and forth between Nick and Jerry.
It was the boy who broke the silence. “We’re here to rescue you,” he announced.
All four men looked at him.