Recovering Charles (14 page)

Frank led me through the lobby. We passed hazmat workers beginning the daunting process of undoing Katrina’s human consequences. A water fountain had been pulled off the wall. The metal gates covering a concession stand lay on the floor. Empty Styrofoam cups and plastic lids were tossed everywhere. Cabinet doors hung from their hinges.

Frank opened a service door, revealing a pitch-black hallway. He pulled a flashlight from the side of his belt. “Come on,” he managed. “I’ll show you the food-service area.”

The hallway smelled even worse than the airy lobby had. Small mounds of feces and stained newspapers or magazines appeared every so often. What appeared to be dried urine was everywhere. With little warning I doubled over, pulled my mask down, and threw up in a trash can. I was thankful I couldn’t see what was in it.

“Frank,” I called ahead to him, wiping my mouth on my shirtsleeve. “I can’t. I can’t go this way. Come—” I threw up again, this time on the floor.

He turned around and led us back the way we had come. I quickly scanned the lobby again as I trotted out the door. Bela was sitting in the shade. I took my camera off my neck, collapsed near her, and put my head between my knees.

“Luke? You all right?”

I nodded but kept my head down. I saw Frank’s boots approach. He said nothing.

“That bad?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m sorry. I would have gone, but I knew I wouldn’t make it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You need anything?” She put her hand on the center of my back. I stayed crouched another moment.

“I’m good.” After another long moment, I slowly sat up and continued breathing heavily through my mouth.

“Sorry, partner,” Frank said. “I knew it would be rough; I’ve had to go in there a few times myself. Hasn’t gotten much better. And trust me, I’ve thrown up too. Don’t sweat it. It happens.”

“Were there still bodies out in the open?” Bela asked Frank.

“Didn’t see any, but we didn’t get in quite that far. As of a couple days ago there were still some in the freezer. I think Command decided it was better to leave them there, safe, until they have someplace proper to take them. It’s not refrigerated, mind you, but it’s more decent than the street or the bathrooms.”

I was breathing easier.

“I’ll ask around,” Frank said. “See if I can find someone who knows what’s up and what’s down. Stand by.” He turned and walked toward a camouflaged tent.

“Are you sorry you went in?”

“No,” I answered quickly and confidently. “I wanted to see it with my own eyes.”

“Get any pictures?”

“Didn’t need to,” I said, putting my left index finger to my temple. “They’re all right here.”

I leaned forward again toward the ground, my palms pressed against the dead grass. Bela put one hand on top of mine and the other on my back. She applied the softest kind of pressure.

We sat quietly.

I felt a mixture of emotions impossible to have predicted.

Impossible to describe.

The smell from inside the Convention Center had coated my sinuses.

Frank returned, carrying a white slip of paper. “As expected, they don’t know much here. No real records of who went where. Rumor is they did all that at the other end—at the receiving city. But they gave me a number for the Red Cross. Call this and have them check every list they’ve got. If your dad took a plane or a bus out of here, these guys should know where he ended up.” He got down on one knee next to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “What else can I do?”

“Let’s go home,” Bela said.

Chapter
20

I don’t recall much about the drive back to Verses.

I didn’t stick my camera out the window, watch for unclaimed dead bodies, or gawk at the military presence. I just sat in the backseat with my head on the headrest and my eyes closed. Bela, too, was quiet.

“I still can’t get over this place,” Frank said absently. “It really
is
a bowl. Look over there, two blocks is all, water covers the street, but go another block and it’s five, maybe ten feet deep. Then you got this dry ridge of land along the river on the south side, up to the west, too. Craziness. Here I am going down a one-way street. No lights. No stop signs. I didn’t know what to expect, but in my craziest dreams I couldn’t have imagined I’d have seen
this
.”

Frank rambled on until we reached the club. He got out and once again opened Bela’s door on the curb side of the street.

“I’m sorry you didn’t see more of the city, or get to ask more people about your dad.”

“I saw plenty,” I said, shaking his hand. My stomach was still tight and achy.

“Anything else I can do?” Frank looked at Bela.

“No. But thank you, Frank, for trying.”

“You’ll try calling Houston?”

“Sure will,” she answered.

He said good-bye and drove off. I doubted I’d ever forget him or what he showed me.

We walked back into the club. Quiet again. A huge stack of MREs had been added to the collection against one wall.

“I’ll see who’s around,” Bela said as she walked back into the kitchen.

I climbed the stairs, still feeling a little queasy, and sat on my bed—the couch—in the hallway. I dialed the number Frank had given me and spent ten minutes on hold only to find out that the Red Cross didn’t have a “Charles Millward” or a “Charlie Millward” or even a “C Millward” on any of their lists of New Orleans evacuees.

“Try again,” the woman on the phone said. “We’re still consolidating lists. Keep hope.”

I thanked her, hung up, and spent some time in the bathroom brushing my teeth and washing my face. Then I sat back on the couch and powered on my camera to view the pictures I’d taken en route to the Convention Center. If the images were so powerful on a small digital preview screen, I wondered how they’d look blown up. I quickly turned off the camera to conserve power—I had no idea how long it would be until I could charge anything again—and I walked down the hallway toward the rooms I’d not seen yet.

The first room held a trumpet resting on a polishing cloth, what I recognized as two trombone cases, and enough other instruments to resemble a musical instrument ICU.

The room Tater and Hamp had entered yesterday was open enough I could see in without entering. Just inside the door a suitcase and two Wal-Mart bags appeared ready to accompany someone somewhere. There were also two piles of clothes—one
clean, one dirty, I reasoned. The small pile was probably the clean one. In the middle of the floor there was a twin mattress, an air mattress, and several blankets stacked on top of one another to create a third bed. A few MREs sat atop an overflowing trash can. The whole room smelled like the lake I’d learned to swim in.

The door to the next room needed a gentle nudge to see inside. A woman was asleep under a table that held an unplugged computer, a stack of binders, and some dirty paper plates.
The walls were adorned with watercolors of the Mississippi and the Bayou. Brass bands. Parades. Vibrancy. I pulled the door
all the way shut and returned downstairs.

“There he is,” Jezebel said as I came into view on the spiral stairs. “I understand you had a tough go.” She met me at the bottom of the stairs and hugged me.

“It was something.”

“I haven’t even been able to go in there. Haven’t had a need, really. But if it’s even close to what I’ve heard, then no thanks, right?” She hugged me again. “I can’t tell you how glad I am you came.”

“Thanks, I’m really glad too.” It hit me I hadn’t been hugged by a woman who I hadn’t been dating since my mother died.

“Jerome and Schubert are making some food out back in the crawfish boilers. Gas is still turned off, but we’ve got propane.” She rubbed her hands vigorously up and down my back before releasing me from her comfortable embrace. “We’re saying good-bye to someone tonight.”

“Yeah?”

“Toby, though we just call him Castle. He’s a longtime friend of the club, worked here on and off for maybe five years. His sister is dying up in Washington, D.C.”

“I’m sorry.” That’s what you say when you hear someone is dying.

“She got evacuated right before the storm, but Castle stuck around to deal with their dogs. Find them homes before he went up to be with her.”

“She was injured in Katrina?”

“No, no, she’s been with cancer for years. Don’t remember what kind. Doesn’t matter really when the doctors tell you it’s about over.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“So we’re saying good-bye to Castle tonight.” This time she said it with resolve. “We’ve got to make something out of this food or throw it away. Oysters, jambalaya, rice, and red beans. Won’t be four-star, but it could be worse. Normally places like us are all about frozen burgers, fries, pizza. College-kid cuisine, we call it.”

“Can’t wait.” I wondered where Bela had gone.

“I bet everyone who’s left in the Quarter finds us before the night is up.”

Home maybe?

“You want to take a walk? It will be a while still.”

I didn’t, but I said yes anyway.

“Back in a while, Jerome!” she yelled loudly, very loudly, to the back. “I’m locking the door behind me!” We stepped out onto the sidewalk and she did as promised. “I worry with no one up front.”

“Understood.”

“You been to Jackson Square yet?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I will seriously consider smacking you if you say that again.”

Despite the fact she wasn’t smiling, I still figured she had to be kidding. “You’re joking, right?”

“Test me.” Now she did smile, even bigger than last time we’d talked. “You need to relax, Luke. Loosen up.”

“Loosen up? How can you say that? How can you say you’re relaxed in the middle of this?” We began to walk the two and a half blocks to Jackson Square.

I tried to ignore the rotting, wretched-smelling food the bars and restaurants had tossed into the alleys and streets.

“You heard of denial?” she asked rhetorically. “It’s a beautiful drug.”

Given her understanding of my father’s past and what amounted to my mother’s suicide, it felt like an odd choice of words. She read that, too.

“I apologize for that.” She looped her arm in mine. “I only mean that I’m numb from it right now. I’m up and down. Crying one minute, laughing at fate the next. Dear, I suspect there will be plenty of time to dwell on this mess when the streets dry and the men with guns return home.” As she said that, seven or eight National Guardsmen crossed in front of us.

She continued. “Luke, I’ve lost people in this. Good friends. People I loved. Some are dead. Some were shipped off on a bus or plane to a new city where they’ll never want to leave. And I don’t blame them a bit.”

For the first time since I became consumed with the storm, I contemplated what it must feel like to know your neighbors might not be dead, but you still might not ever see them again.

“They might as well be,” I said quietly.

“What was that?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

We arrived at Jackson Square. Soldiers and policemen were everywhere. Protecting the gates. Smoking. Swapping rumors. Men who looked suspiciously like Secret Service agents roamed the grounds inside the gates and by the church that overlooked the square.

“That’s St. Louis Cathedral,” she said, pointing to it. “On the opposite end is the Moon Walk overlooking the river.”

“Boardwalk?”

“
Moon Walk.
It was named for the mayor back then—Moon Landrieu.”

“Interesting. Related to the senator?”

“Mary’s his daughter. Rumor has it his son, Mitch, might run for mayor,” she said as we continued walking the perimeter.

I tried to appreciate two hundred fifty years of blended Spanish and French architecture fighting for its life amidst Mother Nature’s war zone.

“During my time I’ve seen it all here. Painters. Musicians. Some greats have played here for tips, in fact. This was
the
place when I was growing up. Our mother would bring us down on the weekends. What she didn’t know was that Jerome and me would sometimes come down by ourselves after school. Jerome learned to play the trumpet down here.”

“Neat.”

“You know who else got his start down here?”

“Harry Connick, Jr.”

“Maybe. But that’s not where I was going with that. Try Charlie Millward. Started right here.”

“His start?”

“I’m not saying he learned to
play
here, but this is where he started in New Awlins. Came down here and played jazz, blues, some folk, worked on that song of his constantly.”

A pair of policemen in T-shirts and carrying guns on their backs stopped us. One had a crew cut; one had no hair at all. The bald one spoke. “You two deaf?”

“Excuse me?” Jezebel said with all the attitude I would have expected.

“Are you
deaf?
” the bald one repeated.

“Not yet, but if you keep yelling at me I just might be.”

“Aren’t we a yippy little thing—”

“What’s the matter, officer?” I jumped in.

“There’s something called a mandatory evacuation order in effect. Heard of that? Mandatory? You two need a dictionary?”

“Oh, now
listen—
” Before Jez could finish that thought, I’d pulled her behind me.

“We’re working recovery, sir.”

“Recovery? Really? Cause you look like you’re on a lover’s stroll.”

His crew-cut comrade laughed.

“We’re Coast Guard Auxiliary,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“That’s right. We’re taking some downtime. A few minutes, that’s it.”

“Is that all right with you, Kojak?” Jez just couldn’t help herself.

I stepped in front of her again. “She’s tired. We’re all beat, right?”

“Whatever. Just stay out of the way.”

“Thank you. We will.” I remembered Dad’s photo. “Wait, officer.” I held the photo up. “Have you seen this man?”

They both looked it over.

“Nope,” they said one after another and walked away. Ten steps later Kojak looked over his shoulder and launched a string of mostly unrecognizable gibberish. But the words “jungle fever” were clear as day.

“Pigs,” Jezebel said as we watched them engage another man on the other side of St. Ann Street.

“Some are better than others.”

“And some share more DNA with farm animals than others.”

“TouchŽ,” I conceded. “Actually I always remind myself there are unkind, unethical, untoward people in
every
line of work. And sometimes otherwise good people have very bad days. Makes me feel better when I run across someone like that.”

“Your dad teach you that?”

I made eye contact. “I honestly don’t remember.”

She sighed and slid her arm through mine again. “Let’s walk.”

The sight must have bewildered more than just Kojak and his partner: a thirty-something white male walking arm-in-arm with a fifty-something black woman in the aftermath of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Never mind the fact she was supposed to have been my stepmother.

As we walked I wondered if this would be the one memory of the trip that I might recall with affection in my old age.

We turned left on Dumaine and walked north toward Louis Armstrong Park.

“So tell me what you
do
remember.”

“Come again?” I knew what she’d said.

“Charlie. What do you remember about Charlie?”

“Jez, it’s not like he’s been dead since I was a kid. I remember plenty.”

“Fine. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“A phone call from Texas. Broke. Drunk. And, forgive me, I know you loved him, but pathetic.”

“Tell me about the call.”

I did, reluctantly.

Jez didn’t look at me for three blocks.

We walked the rest of the way to the park in silence. More soldiers and police officers. Volunteers at a Red Cross truck were handing out Styrofoam containers of food to relief workers.

Trees were cut in half, like Goliath had snapped them in two.

Against one tree I noticed a body covered by trash bags that were held down by rocks at the corners. A pair of feet in brown tube socks poked out into the sun and a pair of broken flip-flops sat at the body’s side.