Thomas Adcock - New Orleans Noir

She turns and sees what he sees: a gang of young men in hooded sweatshirts walking down the street, hands in their pockets. Looking for trouble.

Charles says, “You go on back in the house.”

Cherice doesn’t need to be told twice. She knows where Tony keeps his gun. She means to get it, but she’s so worried about Charles she turns back to look, and sees that he’s just standing by the car, hands in pockets, looking menacing. The young men pass by, but she goes for the gun anyway.

By the time she gets back, Charles is back inside, locking the door. “Damn looters,” he says. “Goddamn looters.” And his face is so sad Cherice wants to hug him, but it’s also so angry she knows better. “Why they gotta go and be this way?” he says.

They listen to the Berteaus’ little battery-powered radio and learn that there’s looting all over the city, crime is out of control. “Ain’t safe to go out,” Charles says grimly. “Can’t even get home to see about our property.”

She knows he’s sorry they came, that they didn’t stay home where they belonged. “I’m gon’ fix some lunch.”

So they eat and then go out in the backyard, and clean it up the best they can, even try to get some of the debris out of the swimming pool, but this is a losing battle. After a while they abandon the project, realizing that it’s a beautiful day and they have their dogs and they’re together. Even if their house is destroyed.

So they live in the moment. They try to forget the looting, though the sound of sirens is commonplace now. Instead of Tony’s fish, they barbecue some steaks that are quickly defrosting, and Cherice fixes some potato salad while the mayonnaise is still good. Because they got so little sleep the night before, and because there’s no electricity, they go to bed early.

Sometime in the night they awaken to a relentless thudding — no, a pounding on the Berteaus’ door. “I’m goin’,” Charles says grimly, and Cherice notices he tucks Tony’s gun into the jeans he pulls on.

She can’t just stay here and wait to see what happens. She creeps down the stairs behind him.

“Yeah?” Charles says through the door.

“I’m the next door neighbor,” a man says. “I’ve got Tony on the phone.”

Charles opens the door and takes the man’s cell phone. He listens for a while, every now and then saying, “Oh shit.” Or, “Oh God. No.” Cherice pulls on his elbow, mouthing What ? to him, terrified. But he turns away, ignoring her, still listening, taking in whatever it is. Finally, he says, “Okay. We’ll leave first thing.”

Still ignoring Cherice, he gives the phone back to the neighbor. “You know about all this?” he says. The man only nods, and Cherice sees that he’s crying. Grown man, looks like an Uptown banker, white hair and everything, with tears running down his cheeks, biting his lip like a little kid.

She’s frantic. She’s grabbing at Charles, all but pinching him, desperately trying to get him to just finish up and tell her what’s going on. Finally, he turns around, and she’s never seen him look like this, like maybe one of their kids has died or something.

He says only, “Oh, baby,” and puts his arms around her. She feels his body buck, and realizes that he’s crying too, that he can’t hold it in anymore, whatever it is. Has one of their kids died?

Finally, he pulls himself together enough to tell her what’s happened — that the city is flooded, their neighborhood is destroyed, some of their neighbors are probably dead.

Their own children thought they were dead until they finally got Tony and Mathilde.

Cherice cannot take this in. She tries, but she just can’t. “Eighty percent of the city is underwater?” she repeats over and over. “How can that be?”

They live in a little brick house in New Orleans East, a house they worked hard to buy, that’s a stretch to maintain, but it’s worth it. They have a home, a little piece of something to call their own.

But now we don’t, Cherice thinks. It’s probably gone. We don’t have nothin’.

In the end, she can’t go that way. She reasons that an entire neighborhood can’t be destroyed, something’s got to be left, and maybe her house is. She wants to go see for herself.

“Cherice, you gotta pay attention,” Charles says. “Only way to go see it’s to swim. Or get a boat maybe. There’s people all over town on rooftops right now, waitin’ to be rescued. There’s still crazy lootin’ out there. The mayor wants everybody out of town.”

“That’s what he said before the storm.”

“He’s sayin’ it again. We goin’ to Highlands tomorrow.”

“Highlands?”

“Well, where else we gon’ go? Mathilde and Tony got room for us, they say come, get our bearings, then we’ll see. Besides, Mathilde wants us to bring her some things.”

There it is again — Mathilde asking a favor to get them to leave. So that’s how serious it is. Well, Cherice knew that, sort of. But it keeps surprising her, every time she thinks about it.

“How we gon’ get out with all that lootin’ goin’ on?” she says. “Might even be snipers.”

“Tony says the best way’s the bridge. We can just go on over to the West Bank — we leavin’ first thing in the morning. And I mean first thing — before anybody’s up and lootin’. Let’s try to get a few more hours sleep.”

Cherice knows this is impossible, but she agrees because she wants to be close to Charles, to hold him, even if neither of them sleeps.

De La Russe is in the parking lot at the Tchoupitoulas Wal-Mart, thinking this whole thing is a clusterfuck of undreamt-of proportions, really wanting to break some heads (and not all of them belonging to looters), when Jack Stevens arrives in a district car. Sergeant Stevens is a big ol’ redhead, always spewing the smart remarks, never taking a damn thing seriously, and today is no different.

“Hey, Del — think it’s the end of the world or what?”

De La Russe is not in the mood for this kind of crap. “There’s no goddamn chain of command here, Jack. Couple of officers came in, said they got orders to just let the looters have at it, but who am I s’posed to believe? Can’t get nobody on the radio, the phones, the goddamn cell phones—” He pauses, throws his own cell across the concrete parking lot. It lands with something more like a mousy skitter than a good solid thud.

He has quite a bit more to say on the subject, but Stevens interrupts. “What the hell you do that for?”

“Why I need the goddamn thing? Nobody’s gonna answer, nobody fuckin’ cares where I am, nobody’s where they’re supposed to be, and I can’t get nothin’ but a fuckin’ busy anyhow. Nothing around here... fuckin’... works! Don’t you... fuckin’... get it?”

“Del, my man, you seem a little stressed.”

De La Russe actually raises his nightstick.

“Hey. Take it easy; put that down, okay. Ya friend Jack’s here. We gon’ get through this thing together. All right, man?”

For a moment, De La Russe feels better, as if he isn’t alone in a world gone savage — looters busting into all the stores, proclaiming them “open for business”; whole families going in and coming out loaded down with televisions and blasters and power tools (as if there’s gonna be power anytime soon), right in front of half the police in the parish. Sure, De La Russe could follow procedure, order them out of there, holler, Freeze, asshole ! like a normal day, but which one of ’em’s gonna listen? In the end, what’s he gonna do, shoot the place up? It’s not like he’s getting any backup from his brother officers and, as he’s just told Stevens, it’s not like he can get anybody on the goddamn phone anyway. Or the radio. Or anyhow at all.