Number Nine: Chapter 25

BRIDGE TO FREEDOM



FADE IN:

EXT. – DISASTER-WAR MONTAGE – NIGHT AND DAY

As before, we see scenes of devastation from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan juxtaposed with scenes of desperation in New Orleans after Katrina. We hear the voice of Neil Young from the album LIVING WITH WAR.

I’m living with war in my heart
I’m living with war in my heart in my mind
I’m living with war right now

Don’t take no tidal wave
Don’t take no mass grave
Don’t take no smoking gun
To show how the west was won
But when the curtain falls, I pray for peace
Try to remember peace…

The song fades, replaced by John Lennon’s YER BLUES from the White Album.

EXT. – INTERSTATE 10 – ARIEL VIEW – DAY

We see the abandoned multitudes of Katrina victims walking toward the Superdome. ZOOM IN to Jake and Ruby among them.

Yes, I’m lonely wanna die
Yes, I’m lonely wanna die
If I ain’t dead already
Girl you know the reason why

The eagle picks my eye
The worm he licks my bone
I feel so suicidal
Just like Dylan’s Mr. Jones…

EXT. – SUPERDOME – DAY

The masses, standing outside the Superdome, plead desperately for help.



Jake and Ruby walked with the multitudes, like a giant serpent, in one direction, one mind, one heart, one soul, toward the Superdome, towering in the distance like a desperate prayer.

Along the previous day’s journey and during the night, they heard stories, each grimmer than the last, about what was going down in the Superdome.

In the back of his mind, Jake knew it was a false prayer, a prayer to a false god or rather to men in power that did not carry the interests of the people in their hearts. One look at Ruby and he knew she was thinking the same thing: They had to find another way.

They had to get away from the mindless throng being herded like cattle to an enclosed space where they could be watched and controlled. It was like the Cherokee, rounded up and herded into cattle yards before the long walk on the trail of tears to the unwanted lands of Oklahoma. The scattered police and guards were not there to protect them or show them the way; they were there to keep them from escaping.

The last thing the authorities wanted was a mass infusion of desperately poor, homeless, sick and dying people into the French Quarters, where adventuresome tourists celebrated Katrina’s wrath, or the Garden District where the privileged remained relatively dry and well.

When they came to where the people were being ushered off the highway, Jake and Ruby kept going. A guard in plain clothes ordered them to stop. Ruby offered an excuse that they had relatives in Audubon and when Jake slipped him a hundred dollar bill, he let them pass.

They headed south by southeast along the expressway, the liquid heat pounding them down with every step until they had to stop, get off the concrete furnace, rest, drink and eat from their diminishing supplies.

Leaving the expressway, they traveled west into the lush, green grounds of the Garden District where private security guards constantly questioned them and warned them to keep walking.

They were joined along the way by others who had managed to evade the blockades. They were told that the only way out of New Orleans, where they could cross the Mississippi to relative safety on the West Bank outside the disaster zone, was the Crescent City Bridge to Gretna. Word was the Gretna authorities were increasingly concerned. It seemed the escape route would not be open long so they should take it while they still could.

The light of day was fading but the relentless humidity was not and their bodies were stiff and trembling. They chose a moment when no one seemed to be watching, ducking into a garden where they slept like exhausted children through the lonely night.

In the morning, they ate a can of cold soup and discovered that they were no more than half a mile from their new destination: the bridge to freedom.

Jake still had plenty enough money to buy transport out if only they could get out of New Orleans. They could take refuge for a week or two, count their blessings and make a plan for the rest of their lives.

After all this time and all they had been through, they had nearly forgotten that Ruby was no longer a wanted woman. She was free of the mob, free of Pale Louie and as free of her past as it was possible to be. She had a career as a singer and a universe of possibilities were opening to her like a rose in magnificent bloom. Ruby had a home, a family and roots that ran deeper than she could ever have dreamed.

As they approached the bridge, they found dozens of people with the same idea, all relieved to have come this far, convinced that the nightmare would end on the other side of the river, all wearing smiles of weary satisfaction.

Half way across, their smiles were wiped away. A mob of armed, grim-faced men, some uniformed, many more in civilian clothes, stopped them in their tracks with rifles and shotguns poised for action.

What happened next no one would ever decipher. A shot rang out and a volley of gunfire followed. The people panicked and ran. Jake stepped in front of Ruby, taking a bullet in the chest. The law and order mob on the Gretna side of the bridge moved forward and the rabble on the New Orleans side retreated, leaving Jake bleeding on the pavement and Ruby hovering over him, crying, cursing and comforting.

A man Ruby had never seen before, a short but broad shouldered black man with the hands of a workingman, kneeled beside her.

“I don’t know who this man is but I do know one thing,” he said. “He put his life on the line so you could live.”

Her mind truly clear for the first time in days, maybe weeks (she could not tell), tears streaming from her eyes, falling on the wound of her fallen lover, her savior, her guardian protector, she looked at the angry mob fronted by officers of the law, marching forward, she looked back at the retreating, beleaguered citizens of an abandoned city, she gazed into Jake’s eyes, life still clinging to his broken body, and found the strength that enabled her to survive a thousand crises, a thousand assaults on her dignity, an endless chain of attempts to break her spirit and she refused to give in.

“I can’t leave him,” she said. “I won’t.”

The man knew by raw instinct there was no point in arguing. At a time like this, after all they had suffered, common sense made no sense at all.

“Can you walk?” he asked.

“Hell, yes!” she replied.

“Then help me stand him up. We got to get off this bridge.”

He hoisted Jake over his shoulder and they began to walk at a measured pace back to the city of misery, disease and death, where even dogs were shot down in the streets for having the audacity to survive and roam freely, where human beings fared little better, abandoned on rooftops, left for dead, wandering the streets through toxic waters, abandoned in the crushing heat of hospitals and old folks homes, abandoned in the city of jazz to reform an ancient bond to the music that defined them: gospel and the blues.

Bullets still flying overhead but no longer aimed at human flesh, the message received loud and clear: no visitors allowed, no lost souls, no black trash, no abandoned, needy people, they made their way to a sheltered refuge away from the docks, away from the madness, where Ruby struggled to keep Jake conscious.

The man went out to beg, hustle and steal what he thought they needed and came back with a roll of gauze, duct tape, iodine, a bottle of whiskey and a pair of needle-nose pliers. They started a fire, grateful that it was still daylight so it would not attract attention, and heated the pliers.

“Hold him,” the man said as he placed a stick in Jake’s mouth and plied him with whiskey.

Jake’s body lifted off the ground, taut and trembling, as the man pulled the bullet out. They used Jake’s knife, heated in fire, to seal the wound, bound him with gauze and tape, and treated his fever with cold rags through the remains of the day.

As the sun was setting on yet another terrifying day in New Orleans, where so much of the outer parishes were under siege, where the poor were allowed to live and buy homes under a cloud of inevitable doom, this man with tear-stained eyes, a man who might have lost everything he had and loved, apologized for having to leave them.

“I got to take care of my own,” he cried.

Ruby hugged him, kissed and thanked him from the depths of her soul. She promised they would be all right.

“What’s your name?” she called out as he walked back into the endless nightmare.

“They call me Bubba,” he replied. “If we live through this, I’ll look you up.”

It was the first real glimmer of hope she had heard or seen since the ordeal began and it warmed her heart.

She had bottled water, candles and everything she could think of to treat Jake’s wound. There was little more to do but hunt down food and wait by his side.

Ruby prayed to every deity she could think of or imagine. She prayed for the city, for the poor and disabled, for the nation that allowed it to happen, and for Jake – mostly for Jake.

Fifteen hundred miles away, a wise old man awakened from an afternoon nap and sent his spirit to look after his favorite son. In the spirit world, where Jake now resided, he heard his mentor’s chant and Ruby’s prayers and he was not afraid. He was worried and consumed with sorrow but he was not afraid.

It was as if all of New Orleans had been transported back to a long lost era – before technology, before industry, before electricity and indoor plumbing. With each day and every sweltering night, more bodies would be seen floating face down in the water filled streets, more would be sick and dying from the putrid water, more would be trapped, gunned down or terrorized and the further they would move back in time.

Most would refuse to give up the civilized nature of their beings. Most would refuse to yield to the law of the jungle, survival of the strongest, kill or be killed, but few could not understand those who fell short.

Beneath the misery and misfortune, there was rage. There was a promise broken. There was a bloodline and a vow of belonging to the greatest nation on earth, torn and shattered.