Number Nine: Chapter 24

WAR ZONE


FADE IN:

EXT, -- NEW ORLEANS – DAY

We see scenes of destruction, disorder and chaos in the aftermath of Katrina: Bodies floating, women crying, dogs running, children pleading for help, cars overturned, trees uprooted, homes destroyed, on and on.

INT. – AIR FORCE ONE – DAY

We see the president looking out the window of Air Force 1, surveying the damage below. Cut to the president with FEMA Director Michael Brown. The president says, “You’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie.”

EXT. – SUPERDOME – DAY

The people, ushered to the Superdome, are pleading for water and food. A CNN reporter looks into the camera, shaking his head: “Where is the National Guard?” Footage of Katrina destruction continues as we hear John Fogerty’s FORTUNATE SON.

Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Ooh, they’re red white and blue.
And when the band plays hail to the chief
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, lord

It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son, son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no…

Fade song. Fade scene to black.



The politicians kept warning the people that the war would follow us home someday. Looking out over the destruction in morning light, Jake wondered if it already had.

It was a war zone. The decimation was so complete, it was a miracle anyone had survived. It was a miracle their house was left standing. All around them, block after block in the lower ninth, from the Claiborne Bridge to Florida Avenue and beyond, homes were reduced to rubble, cars overturned in fallen trees, bodies floating face down in waters mixed with a toxic brew of sewage, gas and chemicals. Power lines were down and barges from the Industrial Canal deposited where homes used to be.

Ruby stood by Jake’s side, holding tight to choke back her tears. She had already spent them all in a night of horrors, when the only sounds were people crying, dogs yelping and isolated gunshots against a wall of thick, watery silence. Nobody slept.

They spent most of the morning sitting on the upstairs balcony, absorbing the breadth of destruction, watching planes and helicopters survey the damage and survivors making their way to nearby Claiborne Bridge. They were too near the levee break for casual visitors, the putrid water settling at six or more feet and brewing in the lilting sun. There were no rescue efforts here, not in lower ninth where the people were mostly black and poor.

Here in the lower ninth, they were safe from looters and criminal gangs. Of the seven parishes of Greater New Orleans, St. Bernard was low on the list of treasures to be looted and the lower ninth was in a class by itself.

By noon, the liquid heat was debilitating and they knew they had to get out. If they remained where they were, they would die of hunger, thirst or disease. They would die because no one thought or cared to rescue them.

With only cursory knowledge of the terrain, they were mapping out a plan with pencil on paper when Bones floated up on a yellow life raft with another in tow. He looked a hundred years older but he wore a smile of deep relief that Jake and Ruby were still alive.

He threw a rope ladder up and climbed it rather than wade through the toxic mix. He offered bottles of drinking water before he sat down with an expression of doom.

“Well, I’ve got good news and bad but I won’t lie, it’s mostly bad.”

“What could be worse than this,” said Ruby with a gesture to the desolation surrounding them, stretching as far as they could see.

Bones gazed at her with genuine admiration. Like most of the jazz legends that made their mark in the Big Easy, she was even more impressive up close and in the flesh.

“Looking at you and Jake here,” he replied, “ I am reminded it could be a lot worse. We all heard what happened with Pale Louie and we’re hoping its true.”

Jake assured him Louie was as dead as a fly wrapped in a widow’s web.

“That’s the good news,” said Bones. “Here’s the bad.”

He gave them the lowdown, straight and sober. Most of New Orleans, all of St. Bernard and Orleans parishes, was under water. Monk had survived but a lot of his people were dead. His mama was sick and hurt. His grandma was old, weak and needed her medicine.

“He got to get down there,” said Bones.

Jake and Ruby understood. They were on their own.

They all felt bad there wasn’t more they could do but in New Orleans blood family came first. Bones himself had family scattered in the flood zones and figured he would spend the better part of a week tracking them down and seeing to their needs.

The word on the street was the police were no different than anyone else was: They abandoned their duty to take care of their own. The police were only a sliver better than street thugs anyways. It was anarchy. It was everyman and everywoman for themselves.

“Monk says if you live through it, he’ll do all he can to help you rebuild. He sent you these here things.”

He pulled up a large bundle with bottled water, a change of clothes and walking shoes for Ruby, a good flashlight, a canister of butane, canned food, a Swiss army knife and a battery powered pump for the raft.

“You’re going to need these here things,” he explained. “Whatever you do, you don’t want to stay here. If you ain’t dead already when the water dries up, they just as soon bulldoze your house with you in it. You want to live and you damn well better, you got to get out of the lower ninth. They don’t call this Arabi for nothing.”

Jake and Ruby did not ask what he meant. They knew. Anyone in the lower ninth was presumed a criminal low life just like anyone Arab was presumed a terrorist. Time was too short to fully appreciate the ironies but they were as rich as an insurance executive’s bank account.

“Most of the people is heading for the Superdome or the Convention Center.”

Bones stretched out a map and laid out a route down Claiborne to Interstate 10, explaining that the interstate was high enough to be dry but everything else except the bridge over the Industrial Canal was flooded. They could walk down the interstate to the Superdome.

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Heard some bad things but I don’t know any other alternatives. Soon as I round up my own, we’ll be heading out the same way.”

Ruby suggested that they team up and go together but Bones was still shaking his head only more so.

“Family ain’t like me,” he said. “They don’t trust no strangers and they ain’t about to travel with a white woman as pretty as you. Don’t matter who you are.

“One more thing,” he said quietly. “You got a gun?”

Jake pulled Ruby’s small caliber pistol out of his pocket.

“That’s nice,” said Bones as he unwrapped a .350 magnum with a box of bullets.

“Take it,” he demanded. “You’re going to need it. You don’t know what New Orleans is like when the lights go down. Don’t trust nobody. Not the police, not the rescue workers, not the army, no one.

“Monk says hide your money – if you got any left – but take it with you. Don’t let nobody be searching you and if you got to show your gun, be ready to use it.”

It was a hard lesson but it had to be said and there was no time to put it in gentle terms. If they wanted to live, they would have to get hard fast. What else was new? Their whole lives seemed a preparation for the next trial, the next crisis or the next tragedy.

They shared a moment of clarity, looking out at the devastation and Bones choked up, his eyes welling with tears. Ruby embraced him, steadied him and held him to the solid ground of his people. They all understood. It was time to be strong for all the people who could not be strong, for all the ones that would break under the strain. It was time for the strong to stand.

Bones must have apologized a dozen times before he was satisfied they understood and would do the same. He left with the smile that set him apart from most everyone else, feeling a lot better than when he came.

Ruby had the shakes of withdrawal from the drugs Pale Louie fed her but she would do her share. She could always count on an inner strength when she needed it and it seemed she needed it often.

It was near dusk when they were packed and ready to roll: a crescent moon over the crescent city and a mix of swarming insects with the still sweltering heat was almost unbearable yet it would only get worse.

They floated over to the Claiborne Bridge. The currents of the canal were much too strong to ford so they dragged the raft over the bridge and resumed paddling east through the streets of St. Bernard, stopping to talk and exchange stories along the way.

They refused to take on passengers. It was hard but the people who asked, always for someone else, an elderly woman or a child, always understood. It was the danger of rescuing a drowning man. It was the uncertainty of where they were headed and whether it would be any better than where they were. If a child or an old woman is going to die anyway, it was better they should die in the arms of someone they knew and loved. The people knew but they had to ask and Jake and Ruby had to refuse with a promise to send help if they could.

It was late and they were dragging when they reached the interstate. Even in the dim light of a last quarter moon, what they had seen filled their hearts with sorrow. They traded the raft for a shopping cart and made camp with hundreds, maybe thousands of others, on the high, dry concrete ground over New Orleans.

Huddled together, Ruby’s shakes ebbing and flowing without a word of complaint, they heard explosions and saw dark clouds rising over the darkened city. The only sign of life, beside the abandoned masses, came from the south where the French Quarters and the Garden District illuminated like a beacon of hope.

Isolated bursts of gunfire and darkness reigned. Fear and helplessness were palpable. The heartbeat of the city of jazz was muted and dim. They took turns pretending to sleep, all the while reflecting, absorbing, comprehending and knowing:

This was what it was like to live with war.


Number nine, Number nine, Number nine…