Recovering Charles (10 page)

One night before my final exams, Dad heard me crying in bed and came in smelling like Aquaman and Altoids. I told him it was finally setting in that Mom was going to miss graduation. I told him how much I missed the
old
her, the woman who raised me and loved me no matter the amount of stress I inflicted.

Dad told me in his best impersonation of a functional father, “Mom’s legacy to you is early entry into the adult world. Take advantage.”

It might have been the best advice he ever gave me.

When Dad arrived drunk for a photo expo in the school library during my senior year, I called a cab, calmly took him outside, and asked him to go home.

“But I want to see your work,” Dad stuttered.

“Go. I’ll bring the pictures home and show you in the morning.”

When Dad stood during graduation and yelled so obnoxiously after my name was called that he drowned out the names of Daniel Moore, Kelly and Jonathan Morrison, and Chucky Muth, I made him apologize to the parents of all three in the parking lot.

Despite the drama, I always told myself the time after Mom’s death wasn’t entirely wasted. I learned to cook pretty well, sign my father’s name, make mortgage payments, deposit his paychecks, do laundry, and apply for scholarships on my own.

I even learned that no amount of pressure would ever make me take a single drink of alcohol. Through all the high school parties, college raves, trips around the world, and high-class banquets, I’ve never had a taste.

One other good thing came from that year of living alone with Dad. Shortly after he quit his job—or got fired, depending on whose version one cares to believe—I convinced Dad to start playing music again. I told him what I thought the counselors he refused to see would have told him anyway. Music would soothe his soul. Help him cope. Give him purpose. Dad hadn’t played the guitar or his sax since Mom started complaining of the noise just before she died. It pained him, but he agreed it was for the best, and buried his instruments in their cases.

I was standing in the doorway of his den when he pulled his prized saxophone out of its case for the first time since Mom passed. His hands shook. The ding caused from the defining moment of my 8th grade year was still visible. Dad had taken it in to be fixed, but the brass never looked quite the same. A thin wrinkle in the bell scowled at me.

Dad cradled the sax in his hands like a newborn and wept.

“It’s OK, Dad. Mom would
want
you to play again. It’s time.”

“I can’t.” He looked up at me. Unshaven. Disheveled.

“Yes, you can. Play for her. Play for me.”

He put his lips to the reed and played a slow blues riff. The sound flooded the room, spilling through the open door to overflow the secret nooks and crannies throughout the house that must have felt like they hadn’t been touched by such magic in a lifetime.

When he finished the riff, he looked up at my wet eyes and smiled. He calmly returned the sax to its case. “More tomorrow,” he said. “I promise.”

Then he drove to the liquor store.

When I was accepted to NYU, Dad flew with me to New York, helped me enroll in school, and stayed sober for a couple of weeks. When I put him on a plane home to Texas, I hugged him and told him how proud I was that he was finally trying to quit drinking, finally ready to get his life back on track.

He soon sold the house, cashed in some investments at great penalty, and sent me money I didn’t ask for. Nevertheless I was grateful and told him so. The money was enough to survive quite well as a college student in New York.

Dad moved to Nashville to play music.

It didn’t take long for him to find a new liquor store.

Chapter
15

They were the longest miles I’d ever driven.

The trip from Hattiesburg to New Orleans was less than two hours, but I felt like I’d never arrive at the city’s edge. Downed trees and abandoned cars lined some stretches of the highway, and the temperature seemed to rise a degree with every mile marker I passed.

Someone had spray-painted
Turn Around
in red on a green-and-white mileage sign.

I tuned in to the only AM station I could find and listened as a DJ gave his assessment on the state of the city.

“Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Life is good in the Big Easy, my people. The city is slowly draining back into the rivers and into the blessed lake to our north. Now only sixty percent of our streets are in hiding from the government. That’s right, people. Is it possible our great city is in no rush to be saved by
this
government?”

I turned up the radio.

“No, not
this
government, not
this
government that pretended we weren’t here just a few weeks ago. Not
this
government,
this
federal government that has no use for a predominantly black city.”

I could hear the DJ shuffling papers on his desk.

“No, my people, this city is in no rush to go back to the way it was. Back to being ignored when we’re weak and held down when we show strength. No, we will not be ignored again, will we, people? No, we will
not.
This city will dry out. This city will rebuild and recover and restore its spirit in spite of those we elected to lead us. In spite of the agencies that slept through Katrina and only awoke when CNN told them to.”

I pulled into a gas station that appeared open, but a cardboard sign on the pumps read:
Still no fuel. Ride a bike
.

I grinned, took a picture of the sign, and continued listening.

“Now, of course I do read the papers. I see the news. I know that most of our city is gone. Our people scattered about like lost tribes in cities near and far, so far away. But we must gather those tribes, my people. Our mission, the mission for those of us who stayed or who have already returned, is to rebuild a city our brothers and our sisters can return home to. We want our blessed neighbors back, and even our enemies, yes, even that woman who stole your job, or the man who stole your wallet; it doesn’t matter. We want them
all
to return. We want to rebuild this city so that it invites them back. New Orleans needs her people back. She needs to heal them . . . Remember this. Without our people, there is no city. Without our city, there is no music. Without music, the world has nothing. Now let’s get to work, people. Back after this.”

If that man doesn’t have a congregation,
I thought
, it’s a crime.
Then I realized he
did
have a congregation—weekdays from nine to noon. I saved the station on the car’s radio presets.

A policeman pulled into the parking lot and walked into the gas station convenience store. I turned off the car and followed him in.

“Officer, can I ask you a question?”

The officer pulled a Red Bull from the drink cooler. “Shoot.”

“I’m driving down into the city, trying to get to the French Quarter. What’s the best way?”

“What on earth you want to do that for? Hardly nothing open.” He turned his back and walked toward a display full of Slim Jims.

“It’s for work. Not for fun, obviously.”

“What kind of work?”

“I’m a photographer.”

He looked me over. “Turn around, kid, there’s plenty of ya down there already.”

“Actually, I
am
a photographer, but I’m also going to identify my father.”

“He died in the storm?”

“Yes, sir.”

The officer turned his back again and walked up to the counter. He pulled a free map from a stand by the register. “Come here.”

He opened the map and grabbed a pen tied to a string attached to a donut case. “These roads are still closed.” He drew squiggles through a surprising number of lines. “This is the main artery. It’s open here and here, closed here. The Quarter is dry, but there’s not a real direct route unless you’re driving an ambulance or military Hummer. You should be able to get to here.” He circled an intersection a few blocks east of the Superdome. “When you get stopped, because you
will
get stopped, tell them you’re Coast Guard Auxiliary.”

“Thank you. And there’s ample parking down there?”

The officer looked at me like I was the biggest idiot he’d ever encountered.

“It’ll be tough, young man, but just keep driving around. I think you’ll find a spot open up. All those day-tripping, gambling tourists have to go home at some point.”

The clerk behind the counter snickered.

“Sorry.” The officer looked sincerely embarrassed. “That was wrong.” He shook my hand. “Good luck with your father.”

“Thanks for the map.” I nodded and walked toward the door. But in a simple, insignificant act that made me think of my father, I turned around, took out my wallet, and paid for the officer’s Red Bull and Slim Jim.

“God bless you,” he said.

Twenty minutes later I found myself navigating side streets and roadblocks. I saw signs and scenes that days earlier had only existed on my television in my comfortable Manhattan studio apartment.

Flooded cars. An abandoned shopping cart filled with personal belongings. Two older men sleeping in the shade under a bridge. At least I assumed they were sleeping. After I took their photos through my open driver’s window I realized they could just as easily be dead.

I parked on a residential street that appeared to have the most life. A man and woman dragged a taped-up refrigerator to the street curb. One of their neighbors had already done the same.

I locked my bags in the trunk, put my camera around my neck, stuck my notepad in my back pocket, and double-checked that the photo of Dad was still in my shirt pocket.

Then I set off on foot.

The French Quarter, my father’s last employer,
Verses,
Jerome, Dad’s fiancŽe—the existence of whom was a fact I’d forgotten until just then—could wait.

Across the street two women siphoned gas from a powder-blue Grand Prix into a red, five-gallon gas can.

Just a few yards from them crows pecked at what looked like a squirrel. When I passed by, I realized it was a cat with a collar.

Almost every home’s windows were boarded up. Some streets had debris pushed to the side, others hadn’t been cleared yet.
Helicopters flew overhead almost constantly, a welcome noise in the eerie quiet of the near-deserted city.

I stepped out of the road as two National Guard Hummers chugged by.

Amazingly, sometimes only a block separated the dry streets from the streets under four feet of water.

I walked toward the torn roof of the Superdome. It was as dramatic and as unsettling as it had been on my television set in New York. I recognized the I-10 overpass that had been home to so many live reports, and one of the favorite images for news helicopters to send around the globe. I hadn’t expected this double vision: my eyes and mind struggled to process the same scenes and specific geography I’d been seeing on television since the storm.

I took a few pictures of my own.

A blue landscaping tarp that I knew must be shielding an innocent body from the blistering sun.

Children’s shoes. A broken megaphone.

I weaved my way to the edge of the French Quarter. Very few of the doors to the clubs and restaurants were open.

Then I heard faint music from the next street up. I picked up my pace and rounded the corner to the right. Three blocks ahead I saw a small group of people moving toward me.

A funeral procession,
I thought.
The first since Katrina?

I noticed immediately that it was not quite the kind of jazz funeral I’d heard or read about. It was a ragtag group, with only a few instruments, no caisson, just a single casket being carried by a couple of men.

I wonder if it’s empty.

Along with the casket, there were another half-dozen people moving down the street in their own odd rhythm. I recognized the tune: “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” A few curious National Guardsmen watched from the sidewalk.

I walked halfway down the block, stood in the center of the street, and took some pictures at the highest resolution possible. I couldn’t tell exactly how many people there were, or even see their faces very well. Toward the rear of the procession, a woman appeared to be twirling a tattered purple parasol. Even from my distance I could tell they were all dead tired.

I took a few more photos of the surrounding buildings and moved on.

Back on Canal, I marveled at the number of satellite trucks decorated with every network logo on the planet. They hummed with the sound of generators and air conditioners. A reporter prepared for a live shot by scribbling notes on a folded piece of paper, standing on one leg and using his thigh as a desk.

I introduced myself to a man from Pakistan, a resident of St. Bernard’s Parish, who’d been selling hats and T-shirts from a table on the street near Harrah’s Casino. Now he scavenged for half-empty bottles of water along the curb. He told me the only thing he owned were the shorts on his legs, the sandals on his feet, and a white T-shirt emblazoned with an image of a classic, multicolored Mardi Gras mask. He offered to sell it to me. Instead I took his picture and gave him twenty bucks. His name was Muhammad Saleem.

I walked to the Riverfront Marketplace, a collection of shops at the end of Canal. This was one place where the flooding had been kept in check, but looters gutted many of the stores anyway. Some stole to survive; others stole to stay together. A few stole because they could.

I read the tourist markers along the river. The history of jazz. The food. The swamps. Creoles. The great flood of 1927 and the intentional, controversial explosion of levees that flooded St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes but saved the rest of the city.

I wondered how long it would take for there to be a new marker along the boardwalk explaining Katrina.

A white man and woman sat on the steps near the fountain in the Spanish Plaza overlooking the mighty Mississippi. The woman rested her head on the man’s lap.

“Hi, folks,” I said as I approached.

“Hello.” The man’s British accent startled me.

“You’re from the UK.”

“We are.” The man made eye contact though his wife’s eyes remained closed.

“You’re here with a relief organization?”

“No. We’re here—we
were
here—on holiday, actually.”

“You were here for Katrina then.”

He nodded and kissed the top of his wife’s head.

The man introduced himself as William Cline and invited me to sit. He told me how he and his wife, Louise, had come to the States for vacation. They visited Las Vegas, planned for three days in New Orleans, and then three more in New York before flying home.

“Then came Katrina,” he said. They’d arrived two days before it hit and decided, rather than rush off, they would stay and ride it out. “This is something we’d never see. Why not, we thought. An adventure.”

William continued. “We were stopping just up there.” He gestured to the Marriott a few blocks up. “We gathered in the lobby the night the storm made landfall.” He looked out at the calm Mississippi. “Hard to believe it could be so serene now.”

I followed his gaze up and down the river. “I wasn’t here. I’m from New York, just down here taking pictures. I arrived an hour or two ago.”

The man nodded politely.

“Would you tell me about it?” I asked. “What was it like?”

William tried to describe the hell of Katrina’s on-time arrival. There were sounds, he said, that he’d never heard before. Sounds he couldn’t give words to. Children clung to their parents in the lobby. Moms and dads tried to lighten the mood by singing or playing games, but the whips and snaps of the windows and doors made it difficult to do anything but pray to God to deliver them. Men used to wearing thousand-dollar suits blended with humble locals. Hotel managers huddled together and pointed at exits and windows, whispering in tones as frightened as the guests’.

“Then we watched the news the next morning and it seemed to us we’d been spared the worst. Sure we walked outside in the bright sunlight and saw damage, but we thought we’d been spared.”

“Then you heard about the levees.”

“That’s correct. The levees went, and we sat in our room watching it all. Almost numbing, you know?”

I know.

“My wife,” he finished, “she’s having a tough go of it. Been horribly depressed. We’ve been volunteering at a shelter in an elementary school about ten blocks north. It’s hard to see, you know?”