Rexanne Becnel: Blink Of An Eye

“She was too scared to swim,” Sherry said, laying a hand on her son’s head. “Isn’t that right?”

I nodded. “But Lucky made me brave.”

That seemed to satisfy Bradley. We spent most of the day listening to their battery-powered radio. There wasn’t much information, though. Most of the stations were down, and what little we heard was awful. Flooding everywhere. St. Bernard, New Orleans East, downtown, Metairie. All we could do was wait for the pumps to be turned on. Meanwhile we settled in for a long ordeal.

Sherry had already filled every container she had with water, and she had a lot of canned foods and crackers and a gas stove, like I said. We decided to eat the refrigerated food first. Later in the day I braved the water again and retrieved four big garbage cans, which we rinsed out and filled with even more water, mainly for bathing and washing up, just in case. She made up a bed for me on the couch, and I took a long nap. And in all that time, we didn’t see another human being.

That night no dying cars serenaded us, but that made us feel even more alone, as if we were the last people on earth. In the universe.

But the next morning, Lucky started barking. We heard voices, and what do we see when we rush to the porch but a flat boat with two guys using fence boards for paddles.

“Y’all okay?” the older guy called. “Anybody hurt?”

“We’re fine,” I called back. “What in the hell is going on?”

The other fellow spat in the water. “Damned levees broke. More than one of ’em, we heard. The whole damned city is filling up with water.”

I guess we knew that already, but hearing it said out loud sucked the heart out of me.

Next to me, Sherry started to weep. “What are we going to do? What are we going to do?”

“We’ve been ferrying stranded folks up to the I-610 overpass. But there’s no water there, or shade.”

“What happens after that?” I asked.

“We don’t know,” the younger guy said. “But somebody’s gotta come eventually.”

“If you want my opinion,” the other guy said. “As long as you have food and water, you ought to just sit tight. There’s people a whole lot worse off than you. Sitting on their roofs, trapped in their attics.”

“I’m staying put,” I decided on the instant. I looked at Sherry.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Can we take Lucky?” Bradley piped in.

“The dog? Sorry, kid, that’s probably not a good idea. There’s not food and water for people, let alone pets.”

Bradley hugged Lucky’s neck. “I’m not going anywhere without Lucky.”

But Sherry wasn’t so sure. “What if we bring our own food and water?”

“There’s over a hundred folks there already, lady. By tonight there’ll be a lot more. You gonna bring enough to share?” He shook his head. “Sit tight here for another day or two. We’ll check on you again, okay?”

So we stayed.

It was a surreal existence. We played cards and Monopoly, and cooked all the meat in the refrigerator. We saw the two guys on the boat three more times that day ferrying people up to the overpass, and on the last trip we gave them extra fried chicken and apple juice.

We went to bed at dusk. That was Wednesday.

Thursday was more of the same, except that we saw more boats, more rescuers searching for people stranded in their flooded homes. And with every boat that passed the question was the same: what’s going on?

For the most part, nobody knew anything beyond the obvious. The levees had broken; the city was flooded; and there was no getting out. The elevated I-610 was full of people now, scared, hungry and baking in the relentless heat.

The radio added to the horror. The Superdome was crammed with too many people and not enough food or water. In the dry parts of the city, like the French Quarter, Bywater, and parts of Uptown, looters were taking advantage of the crisis. A fire started in a shopping center, and other places, too.

To make matters even more horrific, police from the small town of Gretna wouldn’t allow people to evacuate across the Mississippi River Bridge from the flooded Eastbank to the mostly dry Westbank. With weapons drawn, the cops sent the poor people back into hell!

Had the whole world gone mad? I wasn’t a churchgoer, but even I knew the story of the good Samaritan.

In our little moated castle we were okay, and yet not okay. We had plenty of food and water, but Sherry was a basket case. To begin with, her cell phone didn’t work too well. I guess a lot of the towers must have been damaged in the storm. Added to that, there was no way to charge the phone up. So it was bad when her phone died. Then she went to take a shower and discovered that the city water had been turned off. That’s when she lost it.

“We have to get out of here! I can’t take any more! We can go to my sister in Denver. Or my aunts in Memphis.”

She started packing—two backpacks of clothes and important papers, two tote bags of food and water.

“Don’t forget dog food for Lucky,” Bradley said, pulling out a giant bag of Purina.

“We can’t take Lucky with us, honey.” Sherry knelt in front of her son. “We’ll leave him on the porch with lots of food and water, and he’ll—”

“No!” Bradley wrenched free of her. “No. We have to bring Lucky with us!”

“We can’t.” She started to cry. “On the radio they said the National Guard won’t take pets in their boats or helicopters.”

“Then I won’t go!” he shouted, wiping his own tears.

That’s when I chimed in. “I’ll take care of Lucky.”

They both looked over at me.

“You will?” Bradley exclaimed.

“You’re not coming with us?” Sherry asked.

“No, I’m not going, so I can keep him with me. If you don’t mind me staying here until the water goes down.”

She gave me a house key and the phone numbers of all her relatives where they might end up. I gave her my apartment phone number, since I doubted it was flooded. Of course the roof might have blown off. But one way or another, we’d find each other again.

“Thank you so much, Jane.” Bradley gave me a hug so tight it hurt. “Lucky’s a very good dog. And he’ll protect you, too.”

“I know.” He already had. I had no doubt that I was alive because of Lucky. And now I had to stay alive if I was going to keep him safe for Bradley.

Oh well. If I still wanted to commit suicide, there would be plenty of time to do it later.

They didn’t actually leave until the next morning in a boat with the same two guys. We’d come to know Manny and Fred pretty well, and they told us that the National Guard was finally flying people out. We knew that because ever since last night the sky had been alive with helicopters.

I waved them goodbye. Lucky barked until they were out of sight. Then we just sat there, him and me, staring at the surreal landscape of our poor doomed city. I still had plenty of food, so Manny and Fred continued to drop by every day for lunch. In return they fed me news and tried to talk me into leaving. But I refused to leave town. At least the water level had begun slowly to drop. Very slowly. And Manny and Fred promised that when I was ready, they’d take me back to my house, or at least as close as they could get in their boat.

“There’s looting going on,” Fred warned me. “And the cops have orders to shoot to kill.”

“Fine with me,” I replied, “since I don’t have any intentions of looting.”

Only when the flooding was over and the most desperate people evacuated did I decide to leave. All Lucky and I took was water and food, as much as the boat could hold. Behind the boat we towed a rolling garbage can. Manny and Fred let me off at Elysian Fields and Urquhart Street. We exchanged phone numbers and addresses. Their addresses probably weren’t any good, though. They lived on Wickfield, a block from where we now knew the London Avenue Canal had failed. Both houses were up to their ceilings with water, and Manny’s had shifted off its foundations.