Dazed victims

I pass below the silent, un-used corpse of I-10. Heading further south. Into the midst of the real damage. And reality implodes on me. I do not recognize half of what I am seeing. Store fronts ripped off. Signs twisted like perverse origami sculptures. Endless lengths of tattered cabling droop from exposed walls. Chunks of brick strewn everywhere. Shingles by the tens of thousands. Fragments of wooden beams. Cars flipped onto their backs. Sand covering the streets. Dirt covering the sand. Leaves and limbs covering the dirt. And somehow clothes in the mix. And somehow furniture in the mix.

Gulfport has become the sobbing twin of post-bombing Nagasaki. Complete with dazed victims who wander the streets, wading through the drying remains of their former lives.
I can’t absorb it all. It doesn’t make sense. This foreign city under siege. It can’t be Gulfport. Can’t. So I don’t look at it any more. I just drive. I have to get home.

Packetless

A minor victory. Our warehouse is untouched. No wind damage. Thankfully no water damage, either. Cindy will be relieved. Everything that wasn’t in my basement is now in these two spaces. Beds, furniture, the kitchen and garage. All of the children's items. And they’re still safe.

My Father-in-law, Robert, lives close to our storage lot. I check on his place and discover he faired well. His house doesn’t have any visible damage. The trees in the neighborhood took a beating, though. Quick estimate: one in four are lost. But few houses appear to have suffered. Mostly shingles missing.

They're all okay, Buddy.

Maybe they are, after all.

Heading south on HW49, I drive past Robert’s business. It is intact, too. I’ve been on this road for half an hour. After exiting HW11, it has been a near-speed-limit journey. Fewer trees across the road. Very few cars going south with me. Still took three hours to make a 60 mile trip. Just dawned on me that I haven’t seen a traffic light in two days. Everything is a four-way stop, now. Probably stay this way for several weeks.

Police out in full force. Patrolling some of the not-yet-looted locations. Some of them acting as traffic signals at major intersections. All of them sweating like a faucet. As I pass each officer, I roll down the window and thank them. I’m sure they haven’t slept in two days. (Not that I have, either, but I’m not wearing Kevlar.) They refuse the cold bottles of water I offer. I figure they have to. Don’t want any unexpected surprises in their water.

Waiting to turn off the highway, I flip on my PDA. Search for a wireless connection. Nothing. Search for a cellular connection from T-Mobile. Nothing. Dead air. All the packets swept up and displaced by Katrina.

We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.

Would-be rescue mission

Inching closer. Maybe thirty miles south of Hattiesburg in the dreary little town of Lumberton, MS. Population 2500 according to the one sign still standing next to Highway 11. I hope to pull into Long Beach by nightfall. A questionable goal at this rate.

At Aunt Judy’s house, I said my goodbyes after lunch. Everyone could feel my panic. Couldn’t eat. Couldn’t stop pacing. Kept trying the dead landline. Kept trying the dead cell phones. None of them worked. And I couldn’t stand to listen to the damn radio any more. It didn’t say anything I wanted to hear. The neighbors and the county police both said Highway 49, which leads straight into the guts of Gulfport, MS, was blocked to anyone going south. Aunt Judy and Uncle Terry suggested Highway 11. An old country road. So I did.

And I have been trailing another redneck for the past two hours. Smaller truck. Smaller gun rack. Only four people in the cab. But they’re heading to Biloxi and I’m on their tail like a carpet bagger.

I met these guys at a very-much-closed Shell Station. We had both pulled next to the pumps seconds after spotting the local manager unlocking the front door. Thought he was going to open the store. He didn’t. He was just getting some supplies for himself. But every single pump was occupied and a line had started to form in the street by the time he emerged and told us to leave.

The ‘necks said they had come down from Jackson, MS. Needed to get back to Biloxi, where they lived. Jackson’s power was offline after suffering Katrina's embrace. No gas to be found there, either. The boys had half of a 5 gallon can of fuel to get back to the Coast as well as power their chainsaws. (Of which they had EIGHT.) Said I could buy one and get reimbursed by FEMA. I said I was just trying to find my parents, not carve up trees. And I’ve been following them ever since.

An ugly trip. Rarely more than a half mile of clear road. Probably one out of every five trees along the way have fallen. And there are thousands of them on the ground. By the time I had started my trip, somebody had started the job of clearing at least one usable path. Note I said ONE path. Meaning that many times I was driving into oncoming traffic.

Imagine a pine tree that has peacefully existed for almost a century. Until yesterday. Now, it has fallen across scenic Highway 11, taking all of its limbs and cones and some of its neighbors with it. Earlier today, some generous man with a chainsaw spent a great deal of time carving off an eight foot chunk of this magnificent tree. Now the debris is piled up in one lane. While the other lane is clear. But the pile of remains in front of your lane is higher than your car.

This is your situation: You’re trying to get home to either the smiles or the corpses of your family and in-between you and them, on the one road which leads to them, is this hulking mound of rubbish so thick and unforgiving that you can not see around, over, or through it. Remember, your mother could be neck-deep in a black cocktail of seawater, rain, and raw sewage gasping for a few more toxic breaths in between her prayers that you’ll be there to save her. You can either try your phone and tell her you’ll be a few minutes late, or you can drive blindly into the opposite lane and hope that a semi-full of logs does not plow into you.

Which is what I did. Hundreds of times. Just nosed into the on-coming lane without any notion of what would happen, and held my breath. Not once did I find another vehicle heading toward me. The lane was clear. Every time.

Karma? I dunno. I’ll ponder that one later.

But here is the really odd thing. I’ve been going for a couple of hours and I couldn’t begin to count the number of houses that were damaged in some form or other. When you’re driving and trying to mount a would-be rescue mission, you tend to barely notice the subtle details of a damaged barn door. Especially when you’ve been seeing it every ten minutes. But the one thing I definitely noticed was the complete lack of damage to any of the dozens of churches I’ve passed. They’re untouched. No roof damage. No trees cleaving into the vestibule. No flooding of the pulpits. Pristine, majestic churches greeting me the whole length of the trip.

Another mystery to ponder at a later day.

Hold on, Mom! I’ll be there soon!

Best Case Deaths

Lunch does not go down well. Supposed to be sweet tea and ham sandwiches. Feels like a belly full of concrete and barbed wire.

With the yard cleaned, we’re listening to Aunt Judy’s battery-powered radio. It doesn’t help. Biloxi and Ocean Springs are crippled. “Waveland is gone.” "Bay St. Louis is gone." Gulfport may go the way of New Orleans, but police are quickly getting control of the looting. Nobody has heard from Pass Christian. Nobody has heard from Long Beach, where my family lives.

So I’m back to hanging out with Denial. But I’m not really listening to him any more, and I have started to mentally create these Best Case Deaths for everyone. They usually involve a minimum of suffering. They all happen quickly: Mom & Dad struck by the collapse of their home. Grandma caught in a tornado with Grandpa. Jason & Mel flattened by a small forest of fallen trees.

I can handle this. I just don’t want to be the first one to find any of their bodies.

They’re still alive, Buddy.

Shut up. Asshole. I’m tired of you. I’m giving Acceptance a call.

I’ve skipped the middle three Stages Of Grief (I can’t remember them from my days in Intro To Psychology) and I’m on the last one: Acceptance. Might as well come to terms with the fact that Mississippi was just hit by the largest natural disaster in history. And some people did not survive it.

The radio keeps painting the picture in darker shades of black and grey. No power for 4 – 6 weeks. Don’t drink the water. CDC warning about disease from a soon-to-emerge swarm of mosquitoes. Don’t eat fresh seafood. Gas leaks threatening entire neighborhoods. Don’t drink the water. Looters going into historic houses after the owners evacuated. Raw sewage filling the municipal pipes of Biloxi. HW90 impassable. Nothing within a mile of the beach survived. Waveland, Pass Christian, and Long Beach hit full force by Katrina. Don’t drink the water. Gaming as we know it is gone, on the Gulf Coast. Every casino gutted. Thirty percent of the state’s revenue at risk. Bridges collapsed. Stray animals roaming the streets. Curfews from sun-down to sun-up. Ladies and gentlemen: let me introduce you to our new form of government: Martial law. And God help you if you drink the water!

Pack your bags, Acceptance. I have to get home.

Survivor: Hattiesburg

Redbull and biscuits for breakfast. I can't really eat. The same ghosts and fears plague every thought. My stomach balled like a fist. Don't much talk, either. Just hug Cindy and Glenda and the kids. Trying to stop the voices. Trying not to talk to Denial. They're still alive, buddy.

We discover the landline died some time last night. A neighbor says that the power company cut phones in order to establish an electric foothold. And cell connectivity is down, too. We can't call anyone who is not within shouting distance. All we can do is clean up.

Uncle Terry says we'll just burn the debris. Get several fire pits started and turn everything to white ash.

Liam's eyes light up when he hears he'll get to torch something. Fire to him is like a new inmate to a prison. He can't wait to get started. Neither can I. Work will help stop the dance of voices and faces. Denial can sit inside drinking martinis while I do some cutting with power tools.

Dicing up limbs is cheap personal therapy. And God knows it helps. Creating some destruction of my own. Having control for the first time in two days. Feeding the remains to the fire. Watching them get consumed. Helping Liam play "Survivor: Hattiesburg." The Boys against The Girls. He's running from fire to fire, adding sticks or leaves. Even wet and/or green items will burn if you get them hot enough. Liam keeps pouring water on the back of his neck. We take turns dunking our heads in an old metal washtub that has filled with cold rain. Sweating from the efforts and the heat. I even take off my shirt. Nobody cares how pale I am. We're doing something helpful rather than being afraid. And not hanging out with Denial.

I'm actually happy. For a little while.

King of infinite space

Here's the deal: I'm dependant upon noise and moving air to sleep. Last night, I had neither. And the hour, maybe two, of sleep that I did get were haunted by the ghosts of my parents and my brother. And people calling my name. And images of our belongings getting flooded. Or crushed. Or flooded and crushed and looted.

(Since we were only going to close on a new house in a week, we didn't get any insurance for the warehouse space.)

No noise. Except the croak of excited frogs. No air moving anywhere. So I rolled and twisted and moaned and covered the sheets with sweat all night.

I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space–were it not that I have bad dreams. Like Hamlet, I'm glad I didn't sleep. I couldn't take the bad dreams.

Right you were, Shakespeare.

When in doubt

The return trip to Aunt Judy's takes longer than my voyage into the storm. More cops have hit the roads, with their rain ponchos, like yellow toy ducks littering the streets of Hattiesburg. More roads are blocked. The check points actually become choke points for traffic as the police try to get a grip on the situation. It becomes routine: drive up to the officer, "Can I see some ID?" He gives me the stink eye when he sees an Atlanta, GA, driver's license. And he checks to see I have Atlanta, GA, license plates. "Looks like I picked the wrong week to move down here," I say. Then he nods, returns my wallet, and I'm able to move another mile before repeating the process.

But night is falling. And the darkness isn't calm. Or inviting. No power in this ravaged concrete jungle. No street lights. Few other cars. Between trying to avoid these pseudo military excercises in futility and trying to find a cleared road back to Judy's, I get lost in a foreign town on foreign roads.

Keep the green compass on my rear view mirror on W. Move parallel to the major highways. Dodge the power lines. Every dead traffic signal becomes a four-way stop. I try to remember the eight or twenty turns I've taken in the past hour, but I find myself outside a frat house in the middle of the University of Southern Mississippi.

Then I spot a gigantic ass-hauling, country-music-blaring pickup truck. Massive knobby tires. Tailgate spangled with several different flavors of dried mud. Gun rack. And six guys crammed into the Extended King Cab.

Bingo! Red necks.

These guys know the roads like I know computers. They're cutting through parking lots. Heading the wrong-way down unused access roads. Throwing up a constant spray of mud and sod and pine straw. Driving across open rain-soaked fields on the lightless campus of USM and inching our way back toward familiar highways unimpeded by cops or national guard.

An hour of very long short cuts later, I'm pulling into driveway of Aunt Judy's candle-lit house.

When in doubt, follow the red necks.

Unreal city

Just east of Aunt Judy's house. Heading down HW98. The roads are nearly empty. Only a couple of serious idiots like me braving the storm. Passed by cops, twice.

I wasn't even a mile down the road when I started to regret my decision. Only a couple of hours after Katrina cleaved through Mississippi, and the wind is pulling at my car. Threatening to drag me off the road at times. There are no street lights. Everything slick with mud and leaves. This is pretty damn stupid. I could end up dead myself.

Until I get to Brett Favre's house, I'm prepared for everything that I see. The usual fallen trees and splattered mailboxes. But as I crest a hill, I spot long patches of forest that have been completely leveled. Huge pines snapped in the center. Dozens of them stacked like dominos. Almost perfectly straight lines. Like fire breaks, carved by wind.

Words won't be able to shape the image or inspire the awe of seeing the carnage. The scope of the damaged areas has to be measured in acres. Just staggering to behold.

And then the shift from rural Hattiesburg to urban Hattiesburg. It doesn't seem possible. Huge steel billboards rolled down like the lid on an antique tuna can. The top of them (which should be four stories high) now brushing against the earth. Girders bent in half like sticks of chewing gum. Awnings at gas stations (wide enough to be covering a dozen pumps) have lifted off their steel moorings and flipped onto their sides, resting at bizarre angles. Power poles dangling every which way except upright. Miles of cables detached and orphaned on the road or draping over buildings. A sea of shingles. Layer upon layer of them blanketing everything except roofs. Debris. Debris. Debris.

At first sight you can't make sense of some of this. Until you stare at just one item. And then your brain tries to reverse engineer the damage and decipher the ORIGINAL shape of what you are seeing. Street signs can not look like that. Tree stumps do not look like that. Buildings can not slant like that. It's all unnatural. A wet perversion of reality to be processed and absorbed in seconds as I'm driving by it.

Half way to HW49, the main road which leads due south into the heart of Gulfport, MS, and I'm sliding to a stop as one of the locals finishes butchering a pine which straddles the road. He has a four wheeler and three chainsaws in the back of his truck. He's wearing camouflaged nipple-high waders. And a Ford cap. Looks like he should be hunting ducks instead of clearing the highway. He nods and stops the chainsaw. I let him get in his truck before I pass.

Not even a mile before my next stop. Police this time. Power lines have fallen across the street, hanging right at eye level. Dozens of cables in the way. Maybe they're still lit? The cops don't say anything. Just lean against their cruiser in their mustard colored rain jackets. I turn right, watching the digital compass on my mirror to make sure I'm keeping it on the green S, for South. Three blocks of freedom before I'm stopped by too many trees across this narrow backroad. I have to head back to the cops. But find an alley behind some stores that takes me two bloocks closer to HW49. It's the cleanest stretch of asphalt I've seen today.

Again with Katrina's trail mix: Shingles, tree limbs, and power lines. I'm driving over all of them, whisping, "Come on, come on, come on," to nobody. "You can do this," I say. "You can do this." Lying through my teeth. If I stop, I'll probably realize exactly how stupid this is.

And I'm on HW49. No traffic signals working. Most missing through out the whole length of downtown Hattiesburg. But there's no traffic anyway. I'm alone on the sea of wreckage.

South. South. South. You can do this.

Until I get to Camp Shelby. And the National Guard. Two of them standing in the rain, their dull green vehicles blocking me. One is waving his arms as I approach. The other is mouthing the word, "NO!" to me.

I need to go south.

No.

I have to check on my family.

No.

Is there another way to get to the Coast?

No.

I have to go south.

If you insist, we'll have to detain you.

Detain me?

Yes. Take you into custody and release whenever we get this all cleared up.

Detain me? (I say the syllables slowly to myself: de-tain-me) Okay. This is me, leaving.

Just doin' my job, buddy.

I know. I'm leaving. No detaining needed.

Back to Aunt Judy's. Shingles and tree limbs and power lines. Oh my!

Tormented. Tormented. Tormented.

I've been pacing for hours. Can't stop thinking about them. Cindy knows what is on my mind. Everyone knows. Their family is all here, or further north. Beyond Katrina's reach. Everyone I love is either with us in Hattiesburg, or on the Coast.

How many survived? How many didn't? Are they trapped right this moment? Are they counting on me to rescue them? How long can they wait?

I can't wait, through. Cindy knows. She sees it on my face. She doesn't want me to leave. Wants me to stay with her. And the children.

But I'm dying inside. Suffering these long moments of quiet desperation because I have so many questions and fears and doubts. And I keep thinking about my Mother and my Grandfather and my Brother and my Father and my Grandmother and twenty five years worth of friends who were all in the path of Katrina. Their faces and voices haunt me.

Cindy knows. Helps pack a couple of bags. Then makes two PB&Js for me. When she pulls me close and whispers to be careful, I feel her sigh. She doesn't agree with me. But she knows I have to leave. I have to see for myself who survived. And who didn't.

We pack the SUV. Share more hugs. Good luck. Be careful. Good luck. Be careful. We love you. And I'm on the road. Driving into the wake of the storm.

"Because you're mine, I walk the line."

Stages Of Grief

Denial is the first of five Stages of Grief. I don't know when the other four of them are going to show up, but I've been having a killer tea party with Denial. He's a wildman after a couple of vodka tonics. Likes to hang out and get to know you.

They're not dead, I tell myself.

Sure they're not, buddy, he says.

They survived Camille, I tell myself.

Yeah they did, buddy, he says. Yeah they did.

Katrina's only Category Four. Camille was a 200MPH Category Five monster. They'll be fine, I tell myself.

Denial nods to me, slowly sipping his cocktail. Those guys are fine, buddy, you're just getting all worked up about nothing, he says.

I don't think I've said more than six words to anyone in the past hour. I just keep holding the children. I hug Liam, thinking about my brother, Jason, and my father, and my Grandfather.

They ain't dead, Denial tells me. The phone line is just down. And their cell phones are off. You know they gotta save their batteries.

I hug Meg, pressing her red red hair against my check as I kiss her. Mom and Grandma.

Come on, buddy, you know they're tough old birds. Grandma lived through the Great Depression. And your mother survived Disco, didn't she?

I think we ate lunch. I think Katrina's eye is upon us right now. The wind has nearly stopped. Aunt Judy didn't lose too many trees. We made it through. And my stomach is doing cartwheels up my spine. I'm gonna puke any minute now.

But they are not dead. They survived. I just have to get in touch with them. If I can not call, I'll drive down there. In the wake of the storm.

The sky isn't so dark, now. I could probably make it to them. If the roads aren't too bad.

They aren't dead, I tell myself.

I know, says Denial.

Maelstrom Part Deux

Dry again. Watching two humming birds flit effortlessly around Aunt Judy's plastic red feeder. Fascinated by the green blur of their wing tips. Only ten feet away from them, one of Judy's oak trees is bending nearly in half. But the humming birds appear unaffected. Each taking turns at the dangling feeder.

And the tin roof, on the back shed, peals away. Sloughing off like snake skin. Flaps angrily in Katrina's embrace across thirty feet of field before slamming into the ground. It starts rolling, end over end, like a Southern tumbleweed. Behind it, the shed begins to rock on its foundation.

Of course, MY CAR, is in there. "It survived Camille," Terry said when I asked where to park. It isn't going to survive Katrina.

So I'm running. Again. More rain in the face. This time I'm barefoot. In gym shorts and a t-shirt. And my God, I'm running like a damn teenager! Long, confident stride. Arms scissoring. Eyes focused solely on my SUV and the ever-widening sway of the old storage shed.

Since I haven't actually had to run in the past decade, I don't quite make the transition from running to stopping very gracefully. My feet come out from under me. Land of my left hand. And left hip. Sink two inches into the wet earth without hearing the subtle popping noise in my left wrist.

Thunder and rain and the constant howl of an unleashed hurricane have a way of compressing time. I don't know how I make it onto my feet, next to the car. Hunching there. Shoulders pushed to my ears in an insanely stupid attempt to keep my neck dry. Can't figure out why the door won't open. I'm pushing the remote like a trip hammer. Hand slipping off the slick handle because the damn lock is still engaged. After several long seconds of getting pelted in the face by Katrina, I notice the horn is honking as I'm fondling the remote. Of course it's doing that, I realize, I've been pushing the LOCK button. Over and over.

Soaked completely. My left side sheened in mud. I hit unlock and flop into the car. Onto my leather seat. The wooden frame of the old shed groans violently. The whole structure shifts toward my wind shield. I'm screaming something ugly about its mother, fumbling for the ignition. Which damn key? Rain falling in slow motion, almost horizontal. Which key? My stomach about to overtake my tongue and crawl out of my mouth. Another gust from the storm jerks the beams toward me. And I fire the engine, still cursing and dripping. The whole damn place about to collapse as I reverse off the slab and into the mud.

The shed manages to stay upright. Slanting at a painful, gravity defying angle.

I park in the open field. Hopefully out of range of falling trees or loose debris. Then I'm back in her embrace, cursing Katrina with every angry breath.

Run back to Judy's porch.

And my third set of clothes.

Braving the maelstrom

I'm sitting under the covered porch watching giant Southern pines sway in Katrina's path, when Judy's landline rings. I can hear the neighbor's voice. She's screaming. Barely understadable. Yelling that a tree has cleaved through their home. Their mother is pinned under one of the limbs. They think she is bleeding from some place on her head. But they don't know for sure. They can't free her to find out. And storm waters are pouring over her, from the open roof.

Terry and I bolt for our coats. I shoulder my 60 pound bag of cordless power tools.Then we brave the storm. Neither of us have said a word. Probably don't have a plan, but we are going to save that old woman. Save somebody's mother. Or die trying.

Behind us, Cindy and Glenda scream to be careful. And Judy has joined us. She's wearing shorts.
We're in the clutches of Katrina only a few feet when I start having second thoughts. Rescuer's regret? The rain HURTS. I'm soaked immediately. Leaning forward. Barely able to lift my head against the wind. Glasses sheeted with rain. Can'tsee more than ten feet. And we're running. Or trying to run. Lifting our feet high. Over slick tangles of broken tree limbs. And a routed army of stray pine cones.

Almost a blind sprint as we stumble upon our first obstacle. An uprooted pine tree. Across the road to the neighbors. Terry says half a mile to their house. Through hell and high water. The storm getting worse by the second as I straddle the tree. Katrina pressing me down, against the wet wood. I can feel the cold bark bite into my jeans. But we make it.

Twenty more blind feet. Brought to another halt. Smell of fresh cut lumber. And an enormous oak felled minutes ago. The fallen trunk resting chest high. Slick with water and debris. Even without a hurricane at our backs, we couldn'tclimb over this big bastard. It probably dates back to the Mesozoic Period. I've flown on planes smaller than this!

But Terry sees a way through. The tree is so massive that it spans a ditch next to the road. We can crawl under it. And do. Water up to my thighs and this damn tool bag on my back. The smell of wet earth choking me. My face kissed by roots dripping with mud. Almost lose my glasses in black ditch water. As if they're of any use.

Then we're running again. Half way to the neighbor's house. And I'm out of breath. Batteries slapping against my spine. And a hammer drill. And a reciprocating saw. And everything else. Cold wind in my throat. Hot sweat running down my arms. Glasses starting to fog. I'll be useless when we get there. If we get there.

And headlights coming through the storm. A truck heading our way. Come to give us a lift? No. To let us know they had pulled their mother free. They're taking her somewhere. But they have to use back roads. If any roads still exist. If any places are open. If any doctors survived. Their adventure is just beginning.

Turning home. Somehow the rain hits harder. When I was eight, a crazy old lady shot me with rocksalt for walking through her field. Katrina feels like that shotgun blast. On my face. On my neck. On my hands. Endlessly.

Silently starting the trip back to Judy's, we nod to each other. Knowing that we tried.

Warn them

I reach my brother, Jason. He's only one block north of my parents. Warn them, I yell across the faint, dying connection. Maybe he hears every third word. I tell him that I love him, and the eye wall is coming. I plead with him to tell our parents. Warn them. Somehow. Then hide. For his life.

He yells that he loves me, too. Then we both fall silent. Neither of us says goodbye. And we hang up.

Alone, I wonder if God had heard my one prayer. Among all the millions of other coming his way this morning.

Now I'll step outside. And pretend I'm not howling behind my eyes. That my stomach isn't trying to crawl up my throat. That I don't think they are all dying. I'll just smile and welcome Katrina's darkling approach.

Whispers to God

The power dies suddenly in Hattisburg. Everyone runs outside. To watch the storm from the covered porch.

On the radio, the news reports that the eye wall is maybe an hour from Gulfport. Katrina is ready to get the party started on The Gulf Coast. For her, the best is yet to come.

I try to dial my parents again, to warm them. No calls connect. Try my grandparents. No calls connect. Nobody's cell works. Nobody's land line. Nothing.

I can still hear my mother crying. She won't know. I can't get through. To any of them.

Alone, in Judy's bedroom, I whisper my first prayer in a decade, whispering: Please, God. Protect them. Please.

I won't let the children see me cry. I'll dry up. Join them on the porch. And watch the storm engulf us.

And her cell phone dies

I place a call to my Mother. Between rings CNN / Fox / MSNBC force feeds the headlines: Katrina slams into New Orleans. God, have mercy on them. She floods Lake Pontchartrain, sunders all of the antique levees, drowns every bar I've ever visited, and pimp slaps a hole in the top of the Super Dome. I try not to imagine the fear and screaming raised by tens upon tens of thousands of now-homeless huddled in that make-shift shelter. The women and the children wrapped around each other. The water slowly collecting at their feet. And they have nowhere to run.

My mother answers. She is in tears. Begs me to tell her the worst of the storm has passed. Says the roof is going to come off. She can hear the wood buckling. The shingles peeled off like onion paper. Almost every tree within site has fallen.

When will it stop, she cries? Can you tell me?

I don't let her know I'm crying. Or that I'm about to piss myself with fear. I tell her to hold on for two more hours. She's more than half way through it. Just hold on a little longer.

She tries to stop sobbing. But she's spitting out words between breaths. Panic and fear like I've never heard from my mother. She's always been strong. Always kept us in line. The Matriarch. And now she's uncontrollably weeping to me. From within the clutches of the worst damn storm in American history. And I'm in tears because I can not do anything but listen to what might be her last words to me.

Says they have been running through the house since before dawn. Fighting leaks. Empying buckets of storm water. They can't stop running. They are out of bowls to catch the drops. My grandfather, 85yrs old and nearly buckled in half, has been doing the same. Their phone lines and everyone's power died at five in the morning. They're using two-way radios from work to hear my grandmother's panicked updates.

Mom wants to know when I think it will be over. When can they stop the running? A final sob. And her cell phone dies.

Slower still

WOO HOO! Category Four, baby!!

I dunno if it is barometric pressure, water temperature, cosmic rays, good karma, or good old fashioned New Orleans voodoo, but whatever the cause (after maybe four hours of very bad sleep) I am jubulent to learn that I'm only going to feel the wrath of a Category Four hurricane.

15% less carnage?

Slowly into the breach

Amid a mixed batch of news reports, I try to sleep. Bad news: Katrina continues her push to the East. She set her eye upon us. It is going to be brutal. Good news: The storm is slowing. She has descended to 160MPH and is on her way down! A little less anger from her, and she'll be Category Four. The slower, the better, I says.

Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more, or close up the wall with our Southern dead.

II Peter 2:6

I don't know how many people would admit this, but I have been hoping (and I'm sure many are PRAYING) that Katrina breaks left, toward Texas. If she would just nudge toward the far side of New Orleans, I think we might be able to dodge this bullet.

But it must be bad karma to ask God to send a hurricane somewhere other than your backyard because every unspoken prayer appears to be dragging Katrina further east. Either we're getting punished for our hubris, or Texas has a hotline to Jehovah and they're pesting him more than we are. That damn "cone of probability" on The Weather Channel (I think they should call it The Swath Of Possible Death, though that isn't likely to calm anyone's concerns) keeps pulling to the right. Moving closer to us with each hour. With the wind and the skies and the non-stop news coverage it is like watching the slow approach of a hooded, axe-wielding executioner.

One thing is certain: New Orleans is going to see destruction on a biblical scale. The levees are not going to hold. The streets are going to fill with water and shit and bloating dead bodies. And it won't be long before those folks get pissed. Then the looting. And maybe some rioting. Chaos will sweep across that ancient city. And nothing short of a invasion force is going to keep it in check. Biblical scale, I says.

In Aunt Judy's bible, I find this: "Turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly" II Peter 2:6

Calm before the storm

We sit outside drinking tall, seemingly endless glasses of sweet sweet tea. All of Aunt Judy's lawn furniture has been put into one of the many "sheds" on their farm. One hundred and forty acres of heavily wooded Mississippi countryside. Uncle Terry is a truck driver. Usually hauls hazardous chemicals up past the Mason Dixon Line. Aunt Judy recently became a realtor, after her youngest (Logan) went off to college. Maybe two years ago they built a new (all brick) house and we're hoping it will fend off Katrina.

Meg keeps yelling, "Swing me high, Daddy! Swing me HIGH!" She says it to me, because she knows Cindy will barely push her on the old rope swing. Cindy somehow imagines that too much extra ummph will result in Baby Bear flipping over backwards and somehow cracking open her skull, even though the swing barely skims above the ground most of the time and it hovers over a couple of inches of thick country grass.

And if my Herculean efforts to dislodge Meg aren't enough to stop Cindy's heart, she has to physically walk inside the house whenever Uncle Terry fires up the Four Wheeler and takes Liam for a spin through the fields. Then, "all the boys" as Liam calls us, pile into a thirty year old pickup truck and tour the unmarked "edges"of the family property. Including the creek (pronounced "crick,") the deer stands, and "the dumps" which are home to the gargage that "the city folk" won't collect each week.

For Liam it is one long party. Meanwhile, Katrina is pegging 175MPH.

And thus she begins

More gas in the tank and a belly full of O'Charleys. It is disturbing to sit in a diner expecting good service when you know full well that an ungodly huge storm is about to tap dance on your spleen. But everyone is dressed in their Sunday Best and the kitchen staff is yelling to the waiters that the Lunch Rush would not be so chaotic if fewer of the college kids had ran like cowardly little children.

Hey, Chef Jackass, I'm not sure if you missed this news alert or not, but just in case: There's a HURRICANE coming! Can we cut the college kids a little slack? I'm not sure if it is worth their lives just to serve Mr & Mrs Hattiesburg a bowl of potato soup and some hot yeast rolls.

Other than the morally-challenged barely-english-speakings chefs, it is obvious that everyone is starting to get EXTRA friendly. "Good luck," ends most conversations. We're all being polite while we can. We know what looms ominously on the horizon. Know it might be our last words to a stranger. And know we need to generate some good karma.

On the ride home, the black clouds appear. Pushing north. And thus she begins.