The Feathered Bone (21 page)
Read The Feathered Bone Online
Authors: Julie Cantrell
I hug her. “It's all right, Beth. Sarah knows how to swim. And this could be her chance. Stay with me, okay?”
“Aunt Betty said people are stuck out there waving their shirts. It's almost a hundred degrees. Think of how hot those shingles are. The metal roofs.”
“If she's in that area, then she'll be on TV. Someone will recognize her. This is good.”
“No. That's the thing. No one is rescuing them. 911 isn't even taking calls anymore.”
“I'm sure the Red Cross is there, Beth. And the National Guard. This is Louisiana. We know how to deal with storms.”
“This isn't just a storm, Amanda.” She pulls away, exasperated. “You're not hearing me. The mayor said there could be as many as ten thousand people. Dead!” Her voice reaches an alarming pitch.
“Hurricanes don't kill ten thousand people.” I speak slowly. “Your aunt exaggerates sometimes, doesn't she?”
Beth exhales. Then she says, “Well, yes, she does.”
“There's no way the entire city is flooded. Think about it. And 911 would never stop taking calls. Tell you what. We'll keep trying to get in touch with Jay. He'll know something. And in the meantime, let's get a TV hooked up in here. See for ourselves.”
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Hello Sparrow,
We finally got our power back on. It's been HOT! The Man is in a very bad mood. The Lady thinks he's gonna “have himself a heatstroke.” The tree didn't land on the house. We got lucky. I hope you got lucky too, Sparrow. I'll be watching for you.
They're still letting me stay in the house with them. I'm glad. We have some chairs and an old mattress. I sleep on blankets. I brought them from Chalmette.
It feels like The Man and The Lady are starting to think of me as family. But I already have a family. I want to go home.
Hello Sparrow,
The Man found a TV, but he can't get any channels. That made him mad, of course. He's always screaming about something. Mom says somebody who acts like that is a little kid on the inside. Throwing a fit, trying to get their way. She says they don't know how to handle their feelings. I think
that's what's wrong with The Man. He doesn't know how to handle his feelings.
The Lady is mad about the TV too. So I told her how we have “No TV Sundays” at our house, and how we play charades and tell stories. She said, “You didn't have to watch TV because you had a TV family.”
I think she means we have a family like the kind you see on TV. I asked her what kind of family she had, but she didn't answer. So I taught her how to play charades.
When the lights flicker back to full brightness and the air conditioner roars to life, the reception hall fills with laughter. Someone starts singing “This Little Light of Mine,” and another boosts spirits by yelling, “Clap it up!” Soon everyone joins in. As their voices rise, hopes rise too. Even Preacher and Beth are smiling.
When the song ends, Preacher draws everyone's attention to the front of the room. “There have been a lot of rumors about what's going on down in New Orleans,” he says. “I know you're worried and communication has been difficult. We've got this TV now, so hopefully we can get a better idea of what's really happening.”
The families hurry closer, and Preacher gets busy connecting the set. Carl helps, and together they find a way to tune in to a static feed of a public station.
About a hundred of us gather, eager for news. When the images begin to flash across the screen, a stunned silence fills the room. A reporter narrates, and we piece together bits of information, slowly coming to terms with what has occurred.
“Remember,” the reporter says, “Monday night we were all focused on the Mississippi coast, the strike zone. Everyone was saying we had dodged a bullet here in New Orleans. But when we woke up Tuesday morning, the streets were filled with water. It was as if we went to sleep on land and woke up at sea.”
As the footage shows clips throughout the Crescent City, the refugees gasp and cover their mouths in shock. Some begin to cry.
“The last two nights, the only lights have been from police cars and cameras. It's become a dark, eerie place. We've heard gunshots and helicopters. Tension is beginning to build.”
The anchor chimes in. “And no help has arrived?”
“None. It's hard to believe. The people here at the domeâthey are not the looters. These are people who followed the rules, did as they were told, and have been waiting for nearly three days for help. It's ninety-seven degrees with full-blown humidity. Sweltering heat. You can see, tensions are rising. People are afraid.”
The camera shows countless refugees, each experiencing emotional extremes. Anger, fear, sadness, grief. The common expression is hopelessness. As Beth watches the screen, she wears the same sad eyes as the storm survivors.
The reporter continues exposing us to truths too surreal to believe. “There are dead bodies being lined up in the street.”
The camera shows images of corpses, some sitting in wheel-chairs, some lying in the gutter. Their faces have been covered with towels, sheets, ponchos. Any piece of cloth people have managed to salvage.
“These are old people. Sick people. Babies.”
The anchor says, “We're told more than a hundred thousand people could be stuck in the city. What do they need right now?”
“Water and food. Diapers and baby formula. Many of them
need medication. And they need a way out of New Orleans. They need transportation, and they need somewhere to go. The trains all shut down before the storm. Buses aren't running. No one seems to be coming to help. Just locals with their boats, pulling people from their homes. No one seems to be in charge.”
As scenes flash across the screen, someone behind me yells, “The bridge!”
“That's I-10!” yells another. “Lake Pontchartrain.” Entire sections of the twin-span interstate have collapsed into the water.
Beside me, a woman holds her head in her hands. “I can't believe this. I can't believe what I'm seeing.”
“We're showing footage from the helicopters now and it's devastating. Not only the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where nothing remains at all, but in New Orleans, where the floods have caused significant damage. We're talking an area the size of Great Britain. Destroyed.”
The clips show children floating in old refrigerators, shirtless men pulling women from flooded houses, and elderly people walking neck-deep in filthy waters, some holding babies above their heads. One civilian rescuer says he just helped five children.
“She ran out of oxygen,” he explains as the camera shows a woman's body, stiff and swollen, in her bed. “They've been sitting in this house with their dead mother for nearly three days. None of them can swim.” He's crying as the lens closes in on a boatload of shell-shocked children being carried away to dry land.
“That's Circle Food,” a woman near the TV says. The neighborhood grocery is shown with water at least halfway up the front door. “That's not by the lake. It never floods. What is going on down there?”
As the scenes continue, people call out recognizable locations, identifying landmarks in St. Bernard, the Lower Ninth Ward, and New Orleans East. All underwater.
“There's a lot of frustration. Fear. Rumors,” the reporter continues as the images are shown. “We've had a total breakdown in communication. Even city officials are unsure of the facts.”
On-screen, people lean from upper-story windows waving string mops, flags, anything they can find. Those on rooftops also signal for help. Below them, locals boat from house to house, pulling survivors into pirogues, bateaus, and airboats before hauling them out to bridges and overpasses, anywhere they can wait for transport out of the city.
“They're calling us the Cajun Navy,” a local boatman says into the camera. “But I'm a veteran. Served twelve years in the US Navy. All over the world, helping everybody. And now we can't help our own people?” His face reddens, and his voice gets loud. “You hear me, Mr. President? Call in some help. What are you waiting for? People are dying down here.”
Thursday, September 1, 2005
“They're busing people to the River Center,” Beth says. “Who's coming with us?”
Ellie and I don't hesitate to follow Beth and Preacher, but Carl doesn't budge from his spot.
“You coming?” Preacher asks Carl. “We could use two cars. Split up and cover more area.”
“Of course,” he says. “I'm right behind you.” As soon as Preacher turns his back, Carl shoots me a hateful glare, but I ignore it and keep moving.
It takes us more than an hour to drive from the church to the downtown performing arts center in Baton Rouge, a trip that
should only take half as long. We arrive to find a scene unlike any I've ever witnessed. There's a long line of charter buses, church vans, school buses, even RVs. They each wait their turn to drop the caravans of shell-shocked survivors at the designated entrance.
“So many people,” Ellie says. “They all lost their homes?”
Exhausted Red Cross volunteers seem as stressed as anyone. They do their best to keep things organized, checking in each person and striving to provide some sense of community for the displaced. They assign refugees from specific neighborhoods to camp together in various conference areas, a simple gesture of compassion that seems to be giving hope to those who arrive.
A large board has been set up behind the registration table. It's being used to track the locations of those who are seeking someone. We join a few distraught refugees who are carefully searching the board for names of their missing loved ones.
A volunteer approaches us. “Are you here to help?”
Preacher introduces himself by his occupation, and this causes the volunteer to retract. “I'm sorry, sir, but we can't allow any religious groups inside the shelter. You're welcome to help outside if you'd like. It's policy.”
Beth turns white. “We're looking for our daughter!”
I pull the volunteer to the side and explain the situation. Once he realizes why we are here, he apologizes profusely. “I'm sorry. We have rules. I had to turn away a group of nuns this morning. I'll let you come in. Just don't tell anybody you're with a church.”
Preacher waves it off, without offense, and shares more about Sarah. “Can we add our names to the board?”
“Sure.” The volunteer looks to be in his seventies, and his tired eyes suggest the stress is wearing on him too. He turns to Ellie. “Is Sarah your sister?”
“No, sir. My friend.” She stares at the crowds. “What's gonna happen to all these people?”
“Good question,” he says with exasperation. Then he leaves us to our search.
I tack Sarah's flier on the board of missing people. Beth and Preacher add their contact information to the chart. Then we split up and begin searching for Sarah. Carl stays at the entrance, watching new arrivals. Ellie and I head to one of the conference rooms where people are given their own eight-foot square of America. “You see this?” a haggard man says to us while claiming his spot on the floor. “A blanket, a toothbrush, and the clothes on my back. That's all I got to my name.”