Johnny Temple - USA Noir - Best of the Akashic Noir Series

But she does see the power of God in this. For the first time, she understands why people talk about being God-fearing instead of God-loving, something that’s always puzzled her. You better have God on your side, she thinks. You just better.

She watches the transformers blow one by one, up and down the street, and goes to bed when the power goes out, finding her way by flashlight, wondering what she’s going to wake up to.

The storm is still raging when she stirs, awakened by the smell of bacon. Charles has cooked breakfast, but he’s nowhere to be found. She prowls the house looking for him, and the dogs bark to tell her: third floor .

“Cherice,” he calls down. “Bring pots.”

She knows what’s happened: leaks. The Berteaus must have lost some shingles.

So she and Charles work for the next few hours, putting pots out, pushing furniture from the path of inrushing water, gathering up wet linens, trying to salvage and dry out papers and books, emptying the pots, replacing them. All morning the wind is dying, though. The thing is blowing through.

By two o’clock it’s a beautiful day. “Still a lot of work to do,” Charles says, sighing. “But I better go home first, see how our house is. I’ll come back and help you. We should sleep here again tonight.”

Cherice knows that their house has probably lost its roof, that they might have much worse damage than the Berteaus, maybe even flooding. He’s trying to spare her by offering to go alone.

“Let’s make some phone calls first,” she says.

They try to reach neighbors who rode out the storm at home, but no one answers, probably having not remembered, like Cherice and Charles, to buy car chargers. Indeed, they have only a little power left on their own cell phone, which Cherice uses to call Mathilde. The two women have the dodged-the-bul­let talk that everyone in the dry neighborhoods has that day, the day before they find out the levees have breached.

Though they don’t yet know about the levees, Cherice nonetheless feels a terrible foreboding about her house, acutely needs to see how badly it’s damaged. She doesn’t have much hope that the streets will be clear enough to drive, but she and Charles go out in the yard anyhow to remove broken limbs from the driveway.

“Let’s listen to the car radio, see if we can get a report,” Cherice says, realizing they’ve been so preoccupied with sav­ing the Berteaus’ possessions, they’ve forgotten to do this.

She opens the car door, is about to enter, when she feels Charles tense beside her. “Cherice,” he says.

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.”