Another Kind of Hurricane (13 page)

The rows of rooftops sticking out of the water like alligator heads. People stuck, stranded on those monstrous heads. Screaming for help.

Zavion couldn't forget any of it.

A breeze blew in and Zavion glanced at the sky.
Please no wind, please no rain
. He wasn't sure, but he didn't think he had much time to spare. Diana would come outside soon. He had to walk down the driveway now or never. The breeze got bored and left just as quickly as it came.

A bird squawked louder than the others, from somewhere in the garage.

Go!

“Okay, then,” Zavion said to the birds.

He snuck a look back up at the sky. Did it look a darker shade of blue? A gray shade of blue?
If I get to New Orleans
, he thought, the words ricocheting against the inside of his skull
then the sky will brighten up, it will turn back to blue
—

A door slammed.

“No! No no no no no—” Zavion spit the pinball words out loud.

He could not get caught.

He could not go back.

Zavion switched gears. He stopped thinking and began to move. Someone had put two birdcages just outside the door to the house and gone back inside.

Zavion ran to the van. He tried the handle. The door slid open. Piles of blankets were on the floor. A cardboard box filled with flashlights sat in one corner. There were feathers everywhere. Zavion buried himself under a green blanket, and slid the door shut.

He poked his head back out. He could feel the static electricity in his hair.

“Not bad. I could pass for junk,” he said to himself. The same bird from the garage squawked and set off a chorus of beaked chatter. “The birds agree.”

The door to the house slammed again.

A woman was walking toward his side of the van. Zavion wedged himself between a cage and the sidewall. He breathed in. The banket smelled like a wet dog.

The driver's side door opened, and he heard someone put something on the passenger seat. Then the door closed again.

Zavion flattened his body against the floor. Something metal was digging into his rib. He reached his hand under the blanket and pulled out an ax. Oh, what was he doing? He took a deep breath and tried to settle himself more comfortably on his side. His nose caught a whiff of something different than the wet dog smell. Chocolate? Caramel? He hoped his stomach wouldn't rumble and give him away. He sneezed.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy—

Voices came close and then closer. The back door to the van opened.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy—

“Do we have enough cages?”

“It's all we can fit.”

The pinging sound of metal hitting metal rang in Zavion's ears. He felt a cage hit the bottom of his sneaker.

“Do you think the guards will let us through the checkpoint this time?”

Oh boy
.

They were going to New Orleans. Zavion was going to New Orleans.

Now.

“Probably. And if they don't, I already put the rest of the brownies in the front seat.”

“Good thinking.”

“None of them are getting any home cooking right about now. Come to think of it, I should have made a whole meal.”

“Uh, Ma—your cooking isn't all that good—”

“Oh hush.” And then the door slammed.

Zavion's plan was unfolding. The opposite of kneading bread, it was unfolding, turning and unfolding some more. He fought an urge to yank the blanket off his body. He wanted to stack the cages, throw the blanket over them, and sit on the very top. He thought he would be braver about going back to New Orleans if he could travel by mountain, not by van.

The two front doors opened, and the woman and her son got inside.

“We shouldn't wake Dr. Burke?” the son asked.

“No, let her sleep. She was up all night tending to the birds. And she'll have more to take care of when we come home.” The woman started the van. “Are you ready?” she said to her son. The tires crunched down the driveway.

I'm ready
, thought Zavion.

“Are you ready?” said Jake.

“I'm ready,” Henry said.

But he wasn't so sure.

Guards let them cross the Crescent City Connection Bridge into New Orleans. It was unlike anything Henry had ever seen. The sun was blazing down, but everything was gray. The street was gray. The houses on the street were gray. Their windows and doors were gray. The cars on the street pointed in all different directions. They were gray too.

HELP ME
was painted on the side of one of the houses. An enormous tree branch was partway through the front window of the house next door. At the house across the street, a hole had been ripped out of the roof.

And rows of refrigerators were duct-taped and lined up on the sidewalk. Refrigerators! Henry realized that the sun was so
bright because there were barely any trees on the street. There were more refrigerators than trees! He imagined the woods behind his house, imagined them filled with appliances. A stand of washing machines, a path through some dishwashers, a field of microwaves and toasters.

It was unlike anything he had ever smelled either.
Jeezum Crow!
Nopie had pushed him into the dumpster behind the school once. Not on purpose—Nopie wouldn't have dared do that, but Henry had been balancing on its rim and Nopie ran into it with his bike and knocked him in. New Orleans smelled worse than that. Like rotting vegetables and sweat and sour milk. Like the entire city was a giant dumpster.

Henry breathed in deeply. The thick air coated his lungs, his head, and his thoughts like glue.

He remembered Wayne's funeral. The way his body had come unglued. The way it had exploded into little bits all over the church.

They drove for a few blocks in silence. The only other vehicles on the streets—besides the pickup sticks array of cars facing every which way—were a Humvee, two construction vehicles, another eighteen-wheeler, and a truck pulling a boat.

“You okay?” said Jake.

Henry nodded. He couldn't speak.

“Keep your eye out for a sign. We need to find Camp Street. This might even be it.”

Henry nodded again.

They crossed an intersection.

A Chevy Blazer sat parked in front of a house. Or what was left of the house. Magnets covered the car, from the hood to the back bumper, from the wheels to the roof.

“Can you stop?” Henry managed to say.

Jake stopped the truck and Henry got out. He walked over to the Chevy.

There were hundreds of magnets covering it.

I
♥
NEW ORLEANS
.

An American flag.

A yellow smiley face.

Mickey Mouse.

Advertisements for doctor's offices, law firms, electricians, and towing companies.

And photos.

So many photos. School pictures, pictures of grandparents and grandkids, and animals.

Dogs and cats and birds.

Henry touched a picture of a small girl with pigtails sitting
next to a huge dog. The dog was practically sitting on her. He traced the outline of the dog's body.

A tall man with a beard walked over to join Henry.

“What am I doing, right?” the man laughed. “I know. I'm asking myself the same question.”

Jake joined Henry and the man.

“I'm an artist. And I haven't been able to paint,” he said. “I couldn't just leave them on these refrigerators out here— It seemed like a crime to abandon them—” He opened up his hand. A magnet of Frosty the Snowman sat in his palm. “Maybe I'm just crazy—” he laughed. “You want to put this one on the car?”

Henry took the Frosty magnet. He studied the mosaic of tiny bits of people's lives. Finally he placed the magnet on the front passenger door. Next to a magnet of a quote on one side
—JUST WHEN THE CATERPILLAR THOUGHT THE WORLD WAS OVER, IT BECAME A BUTTERFLY
—and a cartoon of a dog peeing on a man dressed in red pants on the other.

—

Sixteen hundred miles from home. Smack in the middle of a street filled with garbage, in front of houses chopped open and smeared with paint, in a place where everything was backward, where the inside, like those refrigerators, was outside and where the outside, like that tree through the front
window, was inside. In the middle of the worst kind of destruction Henry had ever seen and ever smelled, he felt the strangest sense of comfort. Because for the first time since he had been on the mountain with Wayne, what was outside Henry matched what was inside.

The van pulled up to the checkpoint around lunchtime. The brownies were a big hit with the guards.

“Best thing I've tasted all day,” said the first one.

“Yeah,” said the second. “Yesterday was a good day too, someone brought a whole roasted chicken.”

“Greens and sweet potato too,” said the first.

“Good thing you didn't come yesterday, Ma, or you would've been sent home,” said Diana's son.

The guards waved them through. Diana started the van back up and drove into the broken heart of New Orleans. The streets were quiet. That was the first thing Zavion noticed. From his hiding place, he couldn't believe how quiet they were. This wasn't the way home sounded. Where were the car radios and church choirs? Where were the marching bands and boom boxes? This was the moon. Even stuck under the blanket, Zavion felt like he was hurtling through space. Endless silent space.
“Stop here,” said Diana's son. Zavion heard a rustling of papers. “This is the first house.”

Diana stopped the van, and she and her son got out and went around to open the back door. They took the first two cages and slammed the door shut again.

Zavion sat up slowly. He was afraid to look out the window, so he stared at the blanket that had covered him. He brought it up to his nose. The wet dog smell was strong. Zavion wondered if Diana and her son had any dogs. There was a blue feather tucked in a fold in the blanket. What kind of bird did it come from? A parrot?

Zavion dropped the blanket from his face and took a deep breath.

He coughed.

The smell was thick and sharp.

Not wet dog. More like wet hog. Wet, dead hog. Wild and rotting. He shoved the blanket back up to his nose.

He finally turned his head.

He felt a jolt in his chest, like his heart had popped like popcorn. Turned inside out.

A purple car was parked across the street from the van. Parked upside down. Like a Mardi Gras turtle on its back.

Zavion shuddered.

What had he come back to?

He bit down hard on his top and bottom back teeth. Clenched his jaw.

He had a job to do.

He let go of the blanket and climbed into the front seat. He opened the door and got out of the van.

—

He put his face down low and raised his shoulder so that his nose was just tucked under his t-shirt.

At least the sun was out. Zavion gazed around him. Gray as far as his eyes could see. The world was gray. A strange combination, a dismal gray under the bright yellow sun.

Could he really do this? Now that he was here, he wasn't so sure. He looked down the block.
HELP ME
was painted on the side of one of the houses. Zavion remembered the man and woman on the roof of the house on his block. With the sign.
HELP US
.

HELP US
.

HELP ME
.

What had he been thinking coming back here? Could he really do this? Find the store and pay it back?

He took a deep breath, hitched his backpack up on his shoulder, and squeezed the marble in his pocket. He tried not to choke as the thick air went down his throat.