1 Dead in Attic (13 page)

Funny thing is, in the beginning, she didn't really know what had happened.

Montgomery has been living the consummate, isolated cat lady existence for years, and she was only vaguely aware that a storm was even coming.

The shattered cedar tree and the loss of power, water, and phone—and the disappearance of all her neighbors—told her it was something big.

“I went to church that Sunday morning before the storm, and a sign on the door said, ‘Services canceled,' so I bought a paper and that was the last news I heard,” she says.

“There were four or five days where I had absolutely no idea what had happened. But I was safe, the cats were safe, so I thought: Why be scared? I firmly believe in God and prayer. I knew I would just ride it out. I am probably more prepared than anyone else in the world to spend time alone.”

It wasn't until several days later, when a neighbor returning to retrieve some items loaned her a radio—and stocked her with food and water before leaving again—that the magnitude of the event settled upon her.

“I try to listen to the news a couple of hours a day, and it's unimaginable, really,” she says. But she has seen no images of it all; has not seen that more than half the city was underwater and has not seen the human misery that filled the Superdome and Convention Center, sights that are now burned into the American consciousness.

“At first, actually, it was kind of nice around here,” she says. “The birds came back, and the squirrels would come deliver me the news. It's all been so peaceful, really. But it's nice to have the thought of people coming back. I suppose there'll be lots of chain saws and hammers and all that, so I might miss the silence. But, the truth is, I'm just about out of candles.”

It's not hard to identify the point at which, during my second tour of press duty here, it was time to get out.

That would be when, in the course of accompanying a photographer to shoot pictures for a feature I was writing, I stood up, blacked out, pitched face forward into a tree, and lay in the grass drifting in and out of consciousness for the next couple of hours.

It was during those “in” points of my in-and-out consciousness, looking up into a profoundly beautiful blue New Orleans sky, that I thought: Maybe I need to eat more. Maybe I need a break. I wonder what my kids are doing today? I wonder if there are any job openings in the Midwest?

There I was, a body lying face up in the grass on the side of the road for several hours in a once-major metropolitan city, a sizeable gash across my forehead, one that—as I study it in a mirror—actually seems to be in the shape of the letter
K
, which seems a fitting lifetime reminder of what has happened here.

A little more authentic than a tattoo, no?

I was also thinking: Isn't anyone going to come get me? Several notions came to mind.

First of all, even before Katrina (pre-K, let's call it), a man passed out on the side of the road in New Orleans was not a uniquely alarming sight. But that's usually a vision reserved for the tourist areas, not the shady streets of Uptown, where my meltdown occurred.

Second—and I don't mean to be too macabre here—in the days since Katrina, a body lying anywhere on the street around here has not been a completely unusual circumstance.

You may ask: Why didn't the photographer get me out of there? But he was the only shooter we seemed to have in the city that day and the police chief was about to resign and he had to go get the picture and so I waved him off. “Go ahead,” I said. “I'll be fine.”

The story is important, I was thinking. Go get the story.

That was about 3:30 in the afternoon. I heard birds singing, and every now and then, I could hear the woman we had come to photograph—a Katrina holdout and survivor—cooing to her cats in the distance.

It was not altogether unpleasant, the parts where I was awake. I had some shade. But it occurred to me that this environment is no place for the overemotional and faint of heart.

If you cry when you watch
Terms of Endearment,
you don't need to be here. Problem is, I even cry at the end of
When Harry Met Sally,
so this whole experience is Stress City.

Though people are trickling back into town and businesses are starting to light up, it's still an impossible vista, this whole damn city, where Lakeview looks like a nuclear wasteland with automobile trunks, doors, and windows imploded from being underwater and so many things lying upside down in the street that shouldn't be upside down.

Including reporters.

There's a car down the street from my house that careened over a concrete retainer wall and through an iron fence and crashed into the front porch of the Cafe Luna coffee shop and I've actually gotten used to the sight, after all these weeks.

This little tableau is so far down on the list of priorities around here that it could be four more weeks until somebody thinks to drag that thing away.

Those are things you think about while lying on the side of the road, stuck somewhere between Armageddon and the Dawn of a New Day.

Nobody drove by. Nobody walked his dog past me. No kid rode up on a bicycle and asked, “Are you okay, mister?”

When I noticed it was starting to get dark, I got up, a little more than wobbly, and wandered to my car and drove to the Sheraton Hotel downtown where I am staying; and in the morning I wrote the story about the cat lady we were photographing Uptown by the tree that now bears an imprint of my head.

Because the story is important. We have to get the stories. This is an assignment bigger than any of us. It's history in a hurry.

But if it's okay with you, I think I'm gonna take a few days off.

With a measure of modesty you don't often find among the creative class, Chris Cressionnie describes his vocation thus:

“I used to be an artist who waited tables. Truthfully, now I'm more of a waiter who happens to paint pictures. But since the hurricane, I really don't do a damn thing.”

Cressionnie's employer, Gautreau's restaurant, has not reopened yet. And he hasn't found the muse or concentration to stand at a canvas and paint. Thus, after nature's furious upheaval, a man is reduced to his fundamental primeval nature: hunter and gatherer.

And that's how Cressionnie has created one of the most stirring and amusing post-Katrina visual displays: his 1994 Chevy Blazer is covered with, of all things, refrigerator magnets.

And not just any old souvenir magnets you pick up at a gift shop. In fact, these are your magnets. And my magnets. And everybody else's magnets.

For weeks, Cressionnie has been collecting these delicate little tokens, at once so frivolous and common, but that tell a story of our city. They say where we go to school, what teams we root for, where we order pizza, what gods we pray to, what veterinarians we take our pets to, when our next dentist appointment is, where we like to go on vacation, and—this part stays with you—who we love.

At risk to life and limb (sudden stops of the car) and at risk to his senses (he gets into some seriously stinky situations), Cressionnie drives our streets by day—in the dead hours between dropping off and picking up his son at school—and he gathers mementos off discarded refrigerators and, in the process, has created a rolling art installation that is a snapshot of our culture.

American flags. Jesus. Mother Teresa. Daffy Duck. Saints schedules dating back to 2001. Fruits. WWOZ. Tulane. Elysian Fields, spelled out in those classic street tile replicas. Hollywood. Country Day. California. St. Francisville.

I ♥ New Orleans. All those Harry Lee magnets that the sheriff throws off Mardi Gras floats every winter; each year a different design. Dozens of insurance agents. The same for veterinarians. A photo of two young lovers standing on the Great Wall of China.

Who are they?

On March 27, someone has a doctor's appointment at 9:15
A.M.
on Napoleon Avenue. Will he or she remember? There is a white magnet with wedding bells on it that commemorates the marriage of Essence Allen and Wright Ellie Wright, November 11, 2003.

And there are the children: all these discarded pictures of someone's kids staring out at you from the side of Cressionnie's car. There's one that says: “Happy 1st Birthday Micah. March 12, 2003. Little Fingers, Little Toes. Today you're one. And everybody knows.”

There is something maudlin—maybe even mildly predatory—about picking over the remains of our devastation. But there is also something noble about archiving the personal details of our citizenry, particularly when those details were otherwise bound for the dump.

“In many ways, this is kind of sad,” Cressionnie said one day while combing the Mid-City and Pigeon Town neighborhoods. “They're like little trophies of people's lives. Keepsakes. But it also seems significant. In my art, I've always tried to make light of things; I've always been a bit of a thorn in the side.”

Indeed. As he climbs through piles of waste and abandoned appliances, he receives many odd stares. “People kind of check you out when you stop in front of their house,” he said. “You just give them a little wave, and everything's okay.”

Not all are so friendly, though. Once, when a guy figured out what he was doing, he barked at Cressionnie, telling him to just come inside his destroyed house and take whatever he wanted. Just take it all, the man said.

That's why Cressionnie travels with his boxer, Mika. “Just in case anything happens,” he said.

But nothing does. It all settles. And truth is, Mika seems pretty bored with the project after all these weeks. “She doesn't even try to get out of the car anymore,” he said.

The job of an artist is never easy. Sometimes he has to wrestle with duct tape that has pinned down a particularly attractive magnet—maybe a religious icon or a good Disney character.

Then there are the maggots to deal with. Maggots on Magnets. Now, there's a great name for a punk band if I ever heard one.

To be sure, he tries the patience of anyone who happens to be driving behind him. “I slow down everywhere,” he said. “It's become an addiction, almost. The hunt for the hunt's sake.”

On Colapissa Street one day, Cressionnie asked a resident, Donald Murray, if it was all right to grab the magnets off his fridge by the sidewalk. Murray said sure and called over to some friends to witness the event in a sort of check-this-dude-out kind of way.

“That's nice,” said Murray, an African American, hands on hips, inspecting the car. “Real nice. But I'm going to tell you this to your face: Only a white guy would think of something like this.”

They all laughed. A lot and loud. Murray and his friends stared in silence and wonder again. Then Murray said, “You're going to need a bigger truck.”

In the trail of tears left by Katrina and Rita, blanketing an entire region of American geography, culture, history, and memories, it will be years, maybe decades, before we've compiled the compendium of what we've lost.

There are a million small stories to be told after the hurricanes: stories about corner stores, neighborhood bars, barbershops, local bands, local characters, influential teachers and football coaches, roadside attractions, and local institutions.

So much of this stuff, gone now, ingloriously surrendered or disappeared in the wake of the storms.

On August 29, many of these stories ran their final chapter with no two weeks' notice given. No going-out-of-business sale, farewell performance, or going-away party. Not even good-bye and thanks for the memories.

The Circle G Riding Stable in Picayune, Mississippi, is one of these stories.

If you are from southeastern Louisiana or Mississippi and ever rented a horse for a day ride in the country, you probably found yourself at one time or another at the Circle G.

For thirty-five years, it was a destination for summer campers and church groups, young lovers, city slickers, family picnics, office parties, conventioneers, and plain old looking-for-something-to-do weekend adventurers.

And reporters; the Circle G amassed an impressive portfolio of regional press clippings over the decades, including at least a half-dozen features and profiles in this newspaper alone.

That's because at Circle G you generally got more than just a horse ride for your money. With it you got an education in country living and plain speaking from the proprietor, a master raconteur named David Gluth, a former shirt-and-tie New Orleans businessman who moved to Picayune in 1969—at age twenty-seven—and transformed himself into a rural wag with a large and loyal New Orleans clientele.

He is also my father-in-law.

Picayune is where my family first evacuated for Katrina, figuring on getting out of New Orleans for a few days to avoid the predictable street flooding and power outages.

As the storm grew bigger and turned its eye toward the Mississippi coast, the tall, tall pines of Picayune—and its relative isolation fifteen miles inland—made me think it was no place for my wife and three city kids to ride out a major storm. I was right. On the western edge of the eye, Picayune got hammered.

“I had never really been concerned about hurricanes before,” David told me later. “I had weathered them my whole life. But the morning it came in, I was out on our deck and I was watching as sixty-foot trees came out of the ground and just flew across the property.

“Huge oaks and tremendous pines—ten feet around—were just falling all over us. There were tornadoes everywhere and that freight train sound. I started to worry that the roof might blow off, the windows would blow in, and the house would collapse. And for the first time in my life, I felt fear.”

When it was over, the arboreal devastation was nearly complete. Katrina simply cleared the place out, a once tree-canopied paradise laid open to bare sunlight. Miraculously, the house—and the horses, thirty of them—survived.