Another Kind of Hurricane (5 page)

“Have you tried to go inside?” Papa asked a man standing outside the door to the convention center. He and Zavion couldn't find the man and woman and grandmama to give them some of the chocolate bars.

“No,” the man said.

“We shouldn't go in there,” said a woman standing next to him. She shook her head and Zavion saw them again. Fear footprints. All across her face.

“Someone saw a boy carrying a knife,” she said. She pointed to Zavion. “A boy his age.”

“Someone saw a man with his throat slit open. His pockets turned inside out,” said the man. “It's the end of the world in there.”

“I don't believe it,” said Papa. “That firefighter told us to come here. We need to get inside. It's the middle of the night. We have to sleep.”

The convention center was overflowing with people. It was hard to walk forward even a few feet. Papa pushed his way farther into the lobby. “It's less crowded just up there,” he said over his shoulder. Zavion walked behind him, the sweet taste of stolen chocolate stuck on his tongue. His leg pulsed with a dull ache. His head did too. He just wanted to lie down.

Papa stopped abruptly. He was silent for a moment.

“Sweet Jesus,” Zavion heard him whisper under his breath.

“Cover the kid's eyes,” said someone in front of Papa.

But it was too late. A woman sat in a wheelchair, slumped forward. A dead woman. Zavion had only ever seen Mama's body, after she died, still and quiet and laid out flat. This body was different. It was puffy. Bent into a strange shape. Like a puppet from a Mardi Gras parade. Zavion hadn't ever seen a body like this, but he knew it was dead.

“No kid should see this,” someone else said.

But it didn't matter what he saw. He couldn't escape the smell. The smell of urine. Of sweat. Of death.

Papa turned around then. He pulled Zavion away from the convention center. Away from the boy with the knife. Away from the man with the slit throat. Away from the dead Mardi Gras body. He pulled Zavion away from the parking lot where the man on the pallet tossed and writhed and screamed out in his sleep, away from the man and the woman and the
grandmama who hummed “This Little Light of Mine.” A gunshot rang out. Papa pulled and pulled Zavion away from it all, but fear stretched its body long and taut. It followed them. Stepped on their heels.

They walked until they came to the Crescent City Connection Bridge. A soldier, maybe a National Guardsman, turned them around. Told them they couldn't cross the bridge unless they were in a car, and he pointed a gun at them when he said it. So they walked up and down side streets until they found an abandoned car. Papa got in the driver's side and opened the door across from him.

“Survival,” he said firmly. Just like he could read Zavion's mind. “Get in.”

Survival?

Or stealing?

Zavion couldn't tell the difference anymore.

No, that wasn't exactly true. He could tell the difference, but he couldn't make a choice
based
on the difference. He was so tired.

And then Papa said, “That soldier had a good idea. To find a car. This is a good place to rest. Sleep, son.”

Papa locked the car doors and closed his eyes. Zavion closed his eyes too. But fear kept him awake. It padded its small, cold feet up and down his back all night long.

Henry woke up sweating and shaking and—wet. The side of his face was wet. Wet, then cold, then wet again, then cold again. When he was finally able to focus his eyes, he saw that Brae was licking his cheek.

He had been dreaming about Wayne.

—

Henry ran back up the trail. Brae bounded ahead of him a few hundred yards. Henry tried to keep up, but he couldn't. He tripped on a root and fell on his hands again. The sting vibrated like before, only this time it traveled all the way up his arms, into his chest, his neck, his head. He got up, and stumbled again on a muddy rock face. He slammed his elbow and knee hard
.

Brae ran back to Henry and licked his cheek and whined a low, throaty sound into his ear. Henry scrambled up and ran and ran and ran. How far back up the mountain was Wayne?

The trail turned right and a rock wall loomed in its path.
Brae sat under it, leaned his head back, and howled like he was trying to set the sun and raise the moon all at once. The sound pierced the sky, and Henry thought the rock wall would crack in two. Brae closed his mouth, took a few steps back, and ran at the wall. He jumped. His front legs reached the top of the rock and his hind legs bicycled in the air until he got a foothold. Henry climbed up after him
.

The trail turned left and opened into treetops and exposed rock. The fog had settled down thick, and Henry couldn't see far ahead. When had the fog come? Brae disappeared and reappeared, like a magic trick, as he ran up the trail, then doubled back to check on Henry. Brae here, Brae gone, Brae here, Brae gone. But the fog remained, like Henry's fear, heavy and gray and everywhere
.

Brae stopped. He inched over to the edge of the rock. He whimpered. Henry's feet slowed down. His heart sped up. Oh crap. Oh crap, crap, crap. Had Wayne fallen over the edge of the rock? They had peered over that rock ledge a million times before. It was a sharp drop and there was rock at the bottom, but it wasn't very far down. Henry knelt, his hands still stinging, and crawled up to the edge. The fog followed him
.

Wayne
.

Henry's heartbeat sped up again and thumped out his best friend's name
.

Wayne. Wayne Wayne. Wayne Wayne Wayne Wayne Wayne
.

—

Brae whined and pushed his cold nose under Henry's hand. Had Henry just said Wayne's name out loud? Henry sat up in bed and swung his feet to the floor. The wood was freezing, and he buried his toes into the thick fur on Brae's warm back.

“You up?” Mom's voice came from the kitchen.

“Yeah!” Henry yelled back. He slid his feet onto either side of Brae and sat like he was on a black and white horse. Brae was that big. When people asked Henry what breed he was, he always said part Border collie, part Holstein cow.

A knock at the door. “Henry,” came Mom's voice. Jeez, hadn't she heard him? She walked in.

“How many times are you just gonna walk into my room without asking me?”

“How did you sleep?” Mom tried to brush Henry's hair from his face, but he pushed her hand away.

“Like crap.”

“Me too. I kept thinking about all those families in that hurricane. Can you imagine? Your house floating in tiny pieces down the street? You floating down the street with it? Can you imagine if that were you, Henry?”

What if Henry had lost his home and was rowing a boat
that used to be his dresser drawer? What if he was careening down a river that used to be his street? He didn't want to play a dumb
What If
game with Mom. He had enough of his own
What If
s to keep him busy.
What if
Henry and Wayne had stayed home that night?
What if
they hadn't raced?
What if
he had been able to save Wayne?

“
What if
that was me in the hurricane?” said Henry. He put his hands on Brae's head and pulled his ears. “I'd ride Brae like he was a dolphin until I hit dry land,” he said, jumping up from the bed and pushing past Mom. “I gotta get ready for school.”

In the morning, Papa and Zavion walked back toward the Crescent City Connection Bridge.

“I wish there had been keys in that car,” said Papa.

“You wanted to steal it?” Zavion asked. “We haven't repaid the store for the chocolate bars, and you wanted to steal a car?” He rubbed his eyes hard, hoping when he opened them again that he would blink a few times and find himself home in his bed.

“We'd have borrowed it, Zav,” said Papa as he lifted his hand to flag down a van. But it drove by them. “If the keys had been in the console, I would have taken it as a sign.”

A sign that Zavion wasn't home in bed.

Borrowing, surviving
—Papa had all these words for it, but it was still stealing.

The early sun burned the fog off the river and out of Zavion's gut. Survival sizzled and popped and disappeared, and stealing remained in the bright light.

Zavion had argued this point with Papa plenty of times before. Papa would grab a paint can out from in front of someone's house without asking and not feel one ounce of worry that the person might not be finished with it. It drove Zavion crazy. How could he be absolutely sure? It was only a few weeks into the school year and Zavion had already asked his teacher twice if
thinking about
looking at someone's paper was the same as looking at it. His teacher had said no, but it still left Zavion feeling unsettled, knowing that he had the potential to look because he had an idea of it in his brain.

A pickup truck pulled up next to them. A man leaned across the seat toward the open window on the passenger side. He wore a New Orleans Saints baseball hat. “Need a ride?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Papa.

“Hop in.” The man pushed the truck door open.

“Go on, Zav,” said Papa.

“We shouldn't do this,” said Zavion. “We don't know him.”

“We have to get out of New Orleans, and I can't paint my way out.”

Zavion had a flash of one of Papa's brightly colored canvases stretched across the bridge. Walking on the hands of trumpet-playing musicians from one side to the other. He blinked and had another flash of the mural in his room. Grandmother
Mountain. Mama's mountain. Mama had promised to show Zavion where she had lived until she met Papa, to take him to meet Grandmother Mountain someday. He couldn't walk across the river on that mural, but maybe he could climb it to the sky.

He wanted to climb it—

“Get in.” Papa interrupted Zavion's thoughts. “We need to get across this bridge.”

Zavion climbed into the truck. A black canvas bag sat in the middle of the seat.

“Sorry,” said the man. “You can just shove that over.”

Papa extended his hand across Zavion. “I'm Ben,” he said.

“Joe,” said the man.

“And this is Zavion. Thank you for the ride.”

“No problem. I've been traveling back and forth for the last two days, giving folk rides when I can.” Joe started the truck up again and began to drive toward the bridge. “How can they not let people across on foot, you know? It's just not right.” He shook his head.

“What do you do?” asked Papa. Zavion wondered the same thing.

“I'm a photojournalist,” said Joe.

Zavion looked at the bag next to him. “Is this your camera?” he asked.

“One of them, yup.”

Zavion wondered what kinds of pictures were in the camera. Were there any from his neighborhood? Or his block? Was there a picture of his house?

Joe slowed the truck down as they approached an official-looking man, maybe another National Guardsman, stationed at the bridge. Joe rolled down his window. “Good morning,” he said.

“Morning,” said the man. “Where you off to?”

Papa leaned over Zavion. “Baton Rouge,” he said without hesitation. “To my friend Skeet's house.”

When had Papa thought of that idea?

“He knows you're coming?” asked the man.

“Yes,” said Papa.

Stealing—and now lying. The words glared shiny and bright in Zavion's gut. What if the man pulled out a phone to check on Papa's story? Zavion held his breath and felt his heart beating in the center of his throat.

“This is your truck?” the man asked Joe.

“Yes,” he said.

“These are your friends?”

Beat—Beat—Beat—

Up—Up—Up—

Just like Zavion wanted to climb a mountain, his heart wanted to climb out of his mouth.

“Yup,” said Joe.

The man gave a slight nod. “Have a good day,” he said.

Joe rolled up the window.

“We're going to Skeet's?” Zavion asked when they got to the other side of the bridge.

“I thought of it this morning,” said Papa. “Maybe he can help us out. Is there a way to get to Baton Rouge from here?” he asked Joe.

“Yeah,” said Joe. “You take I90 to 3127 and then cross the Sunshine Bridge.” He pulled a phone out of his shirt pocket. “Here,” he said. “You want to call your friend?”

While Papa made the call, Zavion looked out at the Mississippi River and imagined Grandmother Mountain rising up from its watery bottom. What if she had traveled all the way to Louisiana? That was the story that Mama always told, that Grandmother Mountain had been a wanderer. She would trek to a valley, stay for a while, but then get restless and move on. Maybe to a stream, or a forest, or a river.

What if she hadn't settled in North Carolina, but had lumbered farther south, to right here? Zavion's heart raced along with his thoughts. If Grandmother Mountain had put down her roots in the Mississippi River, Zavion could climb her all the way to the top.

He squeezed his eyes shut and wished wished wished that
when he opened them he would see red spruce trees reaching toward the sky.

But when he opened his eyes, Grandmother Mountain was nowhere to be seen.

The Mississippi River stretched into forever.

Zavion's guilt stretched right along with it. He had stolen those chocolate bars. He had. Zavion himself. The one who prided himself on Taking Care Of, and Looking Out For, and Being In Control.

And now—

He was ashamed. He was Letting People Down, Making Bad Decisions, and—

Out.

Of.

Control.

His knee began to shake wildly. He couldn't make it stop.

His house was gone. His things were gone. There was rain. There was too much rain. There was a dead body. Images flew through Zavion's mind like he was running a race. He needed to stop them. He needed to focus.

On one thing.

Now.

How was he going to repay Luna Market?