Tony Dunbar - Tubby Dubonnet 07 - Tubby Meets Katrina (12 page)

“That’ll work,” Bonner said. “For starters.”

“You’re hired. You wanna begin now?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. Grab you some of them signs.”

So Bonner had a legitimate job. After putting up all the signs he had to tell the man he had no place to stay, and he saw a flash of doubt cross his employer’s face.

“My apartment’s trashed,” he explained.

“I got a garage you can sleep in. It ain’t fancy, and you wouldn’t have it to yourself. I got some other guys sleeping in there, plus my dogs, and my wife also has her washing machine in it. How long you need a place?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, okay. Let’s see how it works.” The boss was flexible. “I got some more signs to put up around the neighborhood. Then I’ll get you on the job.”

This arrangement suited Bonner Rivette just fine.

Gastro had been accepted by Steve’s family at their compound of Jim Walter homes and house trailers south of Myrtle Grove, where their backyard was basically the Gulf of Mexico. And Gastro, since he was a free-thinker and had a literary bent, readily accepted the Oubres, who in better days had survived by catching shrimp and selling magazine subscriptions. Thirteen Oubres and seven of their dogs were in residence upon the three-acre lot, separated from Highway 23 by a fringe of orange trees. Most of them expected to be there only temporarily, until they could get back to see what was left of their estates further south in Port Sulfur, Empire, and Venice, areas so wasted by the hurricane that they had been cordoned off by the military.

Miraculously, no one in the family had died, though Cousin Charles described being blown a mile back into the swamp. His wife had figured he was gone for good until he walked back two days later with most of his hair missing.

None of the Oubres currently had a job, so they had plenty of time to cook, and play cards, and tell stories, and eat and drink. Gastro got to try out shrimp gumbo “with mama’s belt,” blackened shrimp, “shrimp with lotsa garlic,” and shrimp boudin, since the deep-freeze had to be emptied out.

There was nothing around to steal, Gastro noted, except for the family’s plentiful guns which he did not really know how to use. Truth was, he didn’t want to take anything that belonged to the Oubres. Their mutual affection toward each other and their kindness toward him were all new to him, compared to the two families he had known. There was his own back in Montgomery, featuring Dad the butt-kicker, and there was his street clan, where even his friends didn’t think twice about shafting each other. Gastro was tempted to try to do something nice for the Oubres, but he didn’t know what that would be. He didn’t have much experience being nice.

He took a walk “through the country” with Steve one afternoon for the fresh air and to get a little high.

“Cause no one ain’t gonna test us right now, bro,” Steve said.

“You’ve been tested? I never have,” Gastro boasted.

“Sure. I had a permit to carry a gun in Jefferson Parish, and you got to get tested there. Not here, of course. You don’t get that too bad in Plaquemines Parish unless you work for the tow boat company or offshore. But we’ve always had our own boats and did anything we want so long as we can net the shrimp.”

“What’s with that now?” Gastro was enjoying the calm of the open space back by the levee, where the land met Barataria Bay. There were even a few cows grazing in the sparse grass.

“They say the shrimp is very plentiful now. The hurricane worked the water around good, and the shrimp got lots of what they like to eat. Only we got no boats to catch them with. Everybody’s boat is smashed up or way up on dry ground. Who knows when we’ll get all that straightened out.”

Newly returned seagulls were sprinkled like Fourth of July sparklers in the wide blue sky, turned into silver by the bright sun.

“Your family,” Gastro said haltingly. “They’re nice.”

Steve laughed.

“They think they’re pretty tough. They don’t know about being nice.”

“Okay, whatever. But I think they’re, like, good.”

“They’re okay,” Steve agreed.

Gastro was still thinking about what he might do to benefit the Oubres. “Maybe,” he said, “if we go up to New Orleans, I could score some dope and make some money, and it might help.” He was looking into the muddy black earth when he said those words.

“I don’t know about that,” Steve said. “I might still get called back to work for Mr. Flowers. I wouldn’t want to mess that up.”

They walked on a little further.

“Right there’s where the levee broke,” Steve said, explaining the mud flat spreading out before them.

There was an old black man sitting on the levee and watching the birds overhead. He had on dirty khaki pants and torn sneakers, and he had a brown paper bag with a bottle in it between his knees.

“Hello, Mr. Plauche,” Steve said cordially.

Mr. Plauche invited them closer with a wave of his hand. Steve introduced his friend.

“It’s a good day for thinking,” Mr. Plauche said.

“We’re mostly just walking around,” Steve replied.

“I’ve been thinking about the past,” Mr. Plauche said. “The hurricane stirred that up. You need to go back and remember sometimes.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sure that’s true,” Steve said. He ran his fingers through his red hair and looked up at the sky.

“You see that there?” Mr. Plauche indicated a crooked fruit tree growing out of the base of the levee quite close to the gorge the storm surge had carved out. Now it was almost dry.

“Right there used to be a Negro cemetery. Right under that levee. I’d say a hundred people was buried in there.”

“Is that a fact? What happened to all of them?”

“Some of their bones has washed away I expect,” Mr. Plauche said. He looked into the bottle that was inside the brown paper bag, but he didn’t take a sip. “Some of them is probably there right now. And I think that’s why the levee broke here.”

“Because they built the levee on a graveyard? You mean a curse?” Steve wasn’t really humoring the man—he respected curses.

“Yes, a curse. That graveyard and the church what used to be here was stolen, don’t you see, from the people who lived here. It was stolen by the Ortegas when they changed all of the land records and claimed this land for themselves so they could sell it to the government.”

“I always heard they stole it.”

“They sure did steal it! The sheriffs moved the colored people out, and they didn’t get anything for their land. And the government bulldozed that church and the cemetery and the people’s houses and built that levee right there.”

“Maybe it really was a curse then,” Gastro said, following the story.

“Sure it was. And more than that. It was weak soil. There was graves and bodies all up under in there. Of course the levee couldn’t stand. It just had to wash out where all those old graves were.”

They all studied the crater solemnly.

“Yep, right there’s where they were,” Mr. Plauche said.

Tubby’s warm glow from his Jackson vacation lasted for about two days. He made it back to his house without too much trouble. Of course, it took four hours to drive from Hammond to New Orleans because of all the people trying to return to their homes in the adjoining parishes and because of all the military convoys. He had to wait in the traffic like everybody else, but when he got back to the city there was only him and the roadblock at River Road to contend with. Alert National Guardsmen were checking everybody’s identification, and turning most of the people around.

When it came his turn, Tubby showed his National Guard pass to the military and tried to look like a first responder. The nineteen-year-old soldier, rifle slung over his shoulder, handed the paper back and waved him through.

A little bit of progress was apparent in that some chain saws were at work opening up St. Charles Avenue. Tubby drove to his house and found that Hope had cleared his front yard and packed about ten black garbage bags full of branches. The tree was still there, but the lawn was now visible under the trunk. In fact, she was working there when he arrived, sweating, heavy breasts heaving, in one of his eracism T-shirts, working a pair of loppers. She brushed her hair back with her hand when he drove up, and smiled.

Tubby got out of the truck and hugged her. It was an instinctive thing to do. These days he wanted to hug everybody, and her earthy fragrance suited his back-from-the-road tiredness very well.

“I brought you a present,” he said, and got the case of wine out of the truck.

“Oh. You’ve been shopping,” she said happily.

“The best of Wal-Mart,” he said. “And here’s the other stuff you ordered.” He handed her a plastic bag full of feminine supplies.

“Why, thank you, sir,” she said demurely.

It was almost like they were married, but without the sex. Or, as Tubby remembered the last part of his marriage, it was almost like they were married.

That night he cooked Wal-Mart T-bone steaks on the grill. Instead of charcoal, he used pecan branches from one of the fallen trees down the block. He and Hope powered up the radio, and, after tiring of the Katrina news on United Radio, found a country music station out of Shreveport. They drank some Wal-Mart California chardonnay, and listened to the flushed-quail sound of the occasional helicopter, red lights blinking, zipping overhead.

There were no mosquitoes, which was unnatural because it was very warm. The diners moved as little as possible to avoid overheating on the sultry night.

“I just heard a cricket,” Tubby said.

She listened. There it came again. The meek return of nature, to a habitat that had been very unfriendly of late.

“The first critter to return,” she said. “It must be a little loony.”

“I imagine its friends will be along in a day or two,” Tubby said. He took a nip and looked up at the stars.

“I can’t remember ever seeing the Big Dipper before, not from here,” he said.

“Which one is it?”

“That one.” He pointed. “Here, I’ll show it to you.”

He knelt beside her, reclined in the wrought-iron arm chair, and guided her finger toward the North Star.

“See, follow that one up this way,” He raised her hand high above with his own, and suddenly had to bend over and kiss her.

“Umm,” she coughed. “The wine went down wrong. Wait, don’t stop.”

She put her hand on the back of Tubby’s head and pulled it down to hers.

“How romantic can this be,” she said, coming up for air. “Two flood victims.”

“Two flood victims all alone in a formerly grand but now empty city.”

“Cast adrift.”

“And only themselves. No one else around.”

So, Tubby’s first night back was great.

But after that, it suddenly wasn’t so good anymore. Tubby could not have explained why this happened, but his Katrina-world turned gloomy. It could have been Christine’s departure, the unfinished business with Bonner Rivette, or perhaps the oppressiveness of the mess everywhere, but the zing went away.

Hope looked beautiful to him each morning, but he didn’t deserve her. New Orleans was a wreck. He had no right to personal happiness. The hurricane was still everywhere he looked.

It didn’t take long for Hope to notice the change. Instead of tickling her awake he was getting up by himself at four o’clock in the morning and sitting on the front porch. Left alone, he might sit there till noon.

“You don’t want to clean up the street anymore?” she asked.

“They’re not even giving us electricity or water,” he complained. “I’d like to know where all those power company guys from Ohio went.”

“It’s coming,” she promised. “Be patient.”

“This is going to take years to fix,” he said.

“We’ve got years,” she said.

“Just think of all the work,” he said.

Tubby grew a beard and began to forget what it was like to tie a tie. He learned that the courthouses were re-opening fifty miles away in a town called Gonzales, since everything in New Orleans had been flooded, but why did he need a courthouse? No clients were calling. Or if they were, they were calling his old office, where the phones had been shut off and much of the glass had been replaced by plywood.

The mayor proclaimed that people in his zip code could come back, and some—mostly men—started to. They brought in more chain saws and generators and set about trying to find electricians to turn the power back on. Even this didn’t cheer Tubby. A lot of these men had actual jobs.

He saw the signs on the St. Charles Avenue neutral ground advertising law practices opening up, but his own building was still locked, and his doorbell wasn’t ringing.

He began to brood and became unhappy if he had to be around anyone.

After a week of this Hope told him that it was all well and good having a man in her life after some time without, but she was too old to have another sulking teenager. Displaying the survival skills a great many people seemed suddenly to have found since the storm, she got on Tubby’s phone and tracked down an old neighbor of hers and together they hatched a plan to share a guest house owned by a friend of another friend in Algiers while someone’s son-in-law, a contractor, could be persuaded to go in and fix up one of their Mid-City houses. The plan was long and involved, and based on optimism, the goodness of the government, and a supply of city utilities not yet in existence, but Hope said she was leaving. “To get my life back together.”

“And honey-bunch,” she said, kissing Tubby tenderly on the forehead, “we can try this again some other time when things get back to normal.”

Tubby watched her leave, driving away in the truck of whosever son-in-law that was, and he wondered what he was going to do. At least Rex had stuck with him. One more mouth to feed. The dog yawned at him.

Then began the really bad days, while parts of the city came back to life.

He even got in a fight with Flowers. The detective showed up unannounced in his big truck, radiating purpose and good health, and Tubby asked where he’d been so long.

“Working across the river, boss,” Flowers replied, a little startled at the tone. “How’ve you been making it?”

“Everything is magnificent.” Tubby ran his fingers through his beard. “Absolutely magnificent. Did you just come to visit?”

“Uh, I’m going downtown to meet with Homeland Security about a job. So I stopped by. Do you need any help around here?”

“Sure, you can help me wash the dishes.”

“That’s not a problem.”

“I was just joking. No, I don’t really want any help.”

“I’d be glad to,” Flowers said.

“I don’t need any help!” Tubby shouted.

The conversation was flat after that, and it didn’t last long. Flowers slapped him on the shoulder and drove away.

Tubby wondered what his own life would be like in the future. What kind of life did this poor spent city now have to offer him?

On Magazine Street, things were straightened out enough so that he could reclaim his car.

“You kind of screwed me up,” he told his mechanic, “blocking my car in like that.”

“We had no idea there would be such a storm, Mr. Dubonnet, and we were very busy on the day we left.”

Tubby wasn’t mollified, but he paid his bill. He didn’t say another word.

“I wonder what his problem is?” the mechanic said to his greasy cat when his customer drove off.

With his car, Tubby could cruise downtown and see shopkeepers cleaning out their stores. “We’re Open” signs were sprouting from all the bistros. In the Central Business District, though his own building was still closed, he actually saw men in suits on Canal Street. He hid from them, feeling out of place in his dirty jeans and unclipped hair.

Further on he drove, and the streets were blocked with refuse. Tubby was more comfortable in the wreckage. He heard that the I-10 was open so he drove out to New Orleans East, a sprawling neighborhood of ranch-style homes spanning four highway interchanges.

Everything he saw was dead.

All the houses were caked with mud, and all the streets were empty of everything but flooded and abandoned cars. He drove for miles, pausing at intersections guarded by nonfunctional traffic signals, and realized he was the only person for blocks around. Everybody had been carried away, and why would they ever want to return? The water had been ten feet deep in these houses. Thousands and thousands of them. Clients and friends, they were gone.

He drove out St. Claude, and before the soldiers ran him off he spotted Fats Domino’s house, bleak as all the rest. All caked with mud. Coming back into the city on Ramparts Street, all the night clubs he passed were shuttered. The buildings were empty. All the stores were wide-open and stripped.

Just miles and miles of mess.

He took to drinking more than he should, but he did, when invited, accept invitations from other men in his neighborhood to grill steaks in the yard. They would all laugh and drink and eat, and go home to houses without women and children. Maybe the families would come back in January, when the schools would be open again.

Tubby got good at using his cell phone. He started to call his daughters every other day. He called people he hadn’t seen for years. An Office Depot opened, and he charged a laptop computer. It was wireless. He learned that the CC’s Coffee House at Jefferson and Magazine was wired, and even after the shop closed every afternoon at 3 o’clock, because of a shortage of help, he and a dozen others crowded around outside. Tubby learned how to receive and send e-mails. He grew to love the EarthLink girl, café-au-lait, smiling at her screen. But he was pissed.

He began telling everyone he could find in the web world what New Orleans was like, what the hurricane had been like.

Many of these people, he could tell, had actually forgotten about Katrina and were instead thinking about nonsensical events like Thanksgiving. Didn’t they know what it was like here?

No, they actually didn’t.

Didn’t they know that three hundred thousand people had left a great American city, and they couldn’t come back because there was no electricity?

No, they didn’t.

Didn’t he know who was in the World Series? That a Supreme Court Justice had died? That there were suicide bombings every day in Iraq? That there had been an earthquake in Pakistan? That Christmas was coming?

No, he didn’t. What did any of that have to do with Katrina? Not one damn thing!

Tubby got fed up with these so-called old friends who just didn’t get it.

He got fed up with the government, which just didn’t get it.

Massive federal response? Where are the FEMA trailers? Where’s the trash man? Where is the goddamned power company?

Where’s my insurance adjuster?

Where’s the twenty-second roofing contractor who said he’d be out to give me an estimate?

He knew he was leaving the atmosphere. He knew he was drinking too much. He wondered what was going to become of himself.

Gastro and Steve showed up in the dented Nissan and caught Tubby pouring bourbon at eleven in the morning.

“We brought you some jambalaya my mama made,” Steve said.

Tubby took the weighty Tupperware container. “This will last me a week,” he said. “Thanks.”

“Are you all alone?” Gastro asked.

“Yep. Hope moved out. Christine’s up in Mississippi. All I got left is Rex.”

The sleeping dog heard his name and slapped his tail on the floor.

“Your world is going to rise again, Mr. Dubonnet,” Gastro told him. The words surprised even him.

“What’s that?”

“Your world. It’s going to rise again, Mr. Dubonnet. It’s going to get better for you.” Gastro didn’t quite know what he was saying. But he was trying out a new personality, a positive personality.

“Is that what you believe, Sid?” Tubby asked skeptically.

“That’s what I’m learning.” Gastro made a rare smile. “There’s a lot of human energy coming into focus, right here in New Orleans. I can feel it.”

“You know, kid,” Tubby said, “I’m not ready to hear that right now.”

And they were like kids visiting an old cranky uncle, and they left as soon as they could.

Tubby stared in the mirror and tried to recall that he was a responsible man. He had shouldered the problems of his clients and argued their cases before powerful courts. He had raised a family, and he had paid tuition for private schools. Thank God they were all closed now, since he was nearly broke. It was hard to know exactly what he had since the banks were closed and there was no mail delivery. He had paid his bills for most of his life. Now his mortgage company had given him, and thousands of others, a grace period, and the bill collectors couldn’t find him. In a way, he told himself, he shouldn’t complain. He should be enjoying this break. But his sunken eyes stared back at him sadly, and the creases under his cheeks made a frown. How could he enjoy himself? He didn’t have a job.

He thought maybe he could hustle the kind of legal business friends of judges typically got—such as being appointed lawyer for someone who couldn’t be located, or curator for someone’s property. Tubby had a friend who was a judge.

Earlier he had saved a newspaper article reporting that the Orleans Parish Civil District Court had rented space in a strip mall in Gonzales, Louisiana, fifty miles away. He tried for two days to get someone to answer the phone at the number listed in the paper, and all he got was a busy signal. So he made the drive. He even put on a suit.

Sure enough, in what might once have been a row of crummy storefronts he found the “courthouse.” “Division T” was a group of desks cordoned off by filing cabinets where sporting goods might once have been sold. At one of the desks was somebody he knew, Mrs. Evans, the judge’s long-time clerk.

“Hello, darlin’,” he said, as if he were the same old confident Tubby. “Whatcha doin’ way out here in the country?”

She peered at him over her glasses. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m looking for the judge. Don’t you know who I am? Tubby Dubonnet.”

“Oh, Mr. Dubonnet. I didn’t recognize you with the beard. Isn’t this something?” She spread her arms to take in the whole situation.

“It doesn’t look that bad,” he said. “Where do y’all eat lunch?”

“We pretty much have to bring it with us. There’s nothing around here but the RaceTrac gas station, and they mostly have chips. We do have a microwave, though.”

“Is there anything that looks like a courtroom around here?”

“Yes,” she said proudly. “The judges take turns. It’s next door, if you want to see it. There haven’t been that many hearings though.”

“How about the judge, is he around?”

Her eyes fell.

“No, he’s not in today.”

“Is he okay?” Tubby was alarmed. “When will he be in?”

“Well, Mr. Dubonnet. You know the judge lost his house in Gentilly.”

“No, I didn’t realize. Where is he?”

“He hasn’t called me today.” She was being evasive. “You know he and Mrs. Hughes went to the Bahamas for a few days.”

“I’ve been completely out of touch. Are they still there?”

“Well,” she paused again, “Mrs. Hughes is. She’s not ready to come back quite yet. And I don’t blame her. The judge has been staying in an apartment in Baton Rouge.”

“Does he keep regular office hours?”

“Not exactly. But I am here every day.”

“I need to see him. Can you give me his phone number?”

“I don’t think he has a phone,” she said.

That was odd, for a man who had shown up on time for court for twenty years.

“How about an address?”

“He said, not…” She thought about it. “Mr. Dubonnet, I think it might be good if you went to see him. He’s had a hard time.” She opened her desk drawer and found a slip of paper and a pencil. She jotted down “4401 Lime Street, Apartment 922,” and handed it to Tubby with a worried look on her face.

“Of course, I’ll pay him a call,” Tubby said. “I don’t have anything better to do.”

Baton Rouge was just another twenty minutes up the highway. Tubby had no idea where Lime Street was, but he kept asking directions and eventually found a block of two-story apartment buildings arranged around swimming pools, with a few green trees installed here and there to break up the monotony. It was the kind of place Tubby always thought of as “singles apartments.”

He figured out how the complex was arranged and located Building “9.” Apartment “22” was an inside apartment on the second floor. He took the elevator and walked down a long hall. The door was open. Two maids were working inside.

Tubby tapped on the wall. “Is Mr. Hughes here?” he asked.

“Not right now,” one of the maids said.

Tubby could see a pile of green law books piled in the corner of the room. There was a bar set up under the window.

“Did he say where he was going?” Tubby asked.