T. Johnson - Hold It 'Til It Hurts

There were people to rescue, food to distribute, and, best of all, looters to detain.

To aid in the relief, the army deployed National Guard and Reserve units, several of which were assigned local police officers or military personnel as guides. Achilles embedded with Charlie 1, which included two newbies, in immaculate uniforms, named Bryant and Wilson, and two vets, a white Mississippi farmer named Vodka and a black guy from Oakland who called himself Daddy Mention. The sole survivors of their squad’s last Iraq deployment, Vodka and Daddy Mention had one month earlier loaded ten friends into a brand-spanking-ass-new APC. Achilles felt for them — the heat rash, Jackson’s grip, Troy’s skin, cold as clay — when Daddy Mention said, “That’s how we learned irony. After nine months, the APCs show up just in time to be used as hearses.”

Achilles enjoyed being embedded with a squad at first. It took his mind off of everything. Every morning at sunrise, Charlie 1 received orders — those divine instructions — from the temporary HQ at the Convention Center, trucked over to their makeshift dock, a former grocery store tractor-trailer loading ramp, and then spent most of the day on a boat. Vodka piloted, Achilles navigated, Bryant and Wilson acted as spotters, and Daddy Mention kept them laughing. Daddy Mention had Merriweather’s sharp eyes and baritone voice, and like Merriweather, he maintained a running commentary on their progress throughout the day.

Achilles had a level of comfort that he now realized his Afghan guides had never felt. Charlie 1 swapped bullshit stories, made heroic plans, and commiserated about the food. They also shared pictures of girlfriends and wives, except Wilson, so Daddy Mention gave him one to carry in his wallet. After seeing Ines’s photo, Daddy Mention teased Achilles for having a skylight, and claimed to have several of his own. As he put it, “Back home, I trade bitches like baseball cards. That’s why they call me Daddy Mention.”

Achilles waited for the rest of the explanation, but it never came. Daddy Mention just extended his hand, offering Achilles some dap. Bryant, though, wasn’t as chipper, and said little. Whenever Achilles asked “What’s up?” Vodka explained, “His pussy’s bleeding.”

The first day, they coasted wakeless down Claiborne Avenue through the ghost town that was the Seventh Ward. Some streets were passable; on others, houses had washed out into the middle of the road. Their priority was the stranded and infirm, aka gate bait, but they took a few pedestrians back to the Superdome that first day. According to Vodka, the senior of the two vets, watching people wade though the water just wasn’t Christian, especially in this hot shit.

And there was a lot of hot shit. Alligators gnawed bodies, dogs floated at the end of their leashes like buoys, and the occasional corpse cruised by, hair fanning behind. Bryant wanted to make a skiff and bring the bodies in. After Vodka said that it wasn’t their job, Bryant went back to sulking. People begged for water and food, pleaded for them to take their children. A man in a wheelchair rolled right off his roof trying to get their attention. Everyone stood at the edge of the boat and watched the murky water bubble. Finally Achilles and Daddy Mention jumped in. The old man clung to Daddy Mention’s legs and they both would have drowned if Achilles hadn’t managed to unbuckle the man from his wheelchair.

Henry, Henry, Henry was distraught about his wheelchair. To reassure him, they said his name constantly during the trip to the Superdome, where they chair-carried him up to the triage tent. The stadium had been converted into temporary housing and an emergency hospital. From the raised entry platform they could see for blocks. Achilles had been to the roof of the school across from Wages’s house, the top of Jax Brewery, the upper levels of One Poydras Place. The view was always the same. It had to break Ines’s heart. The trees at City Park: no more. The café where they went to lunch with Margaret: no more. Seaton’s Diner: no more. Was this what it was like to host a war? To stand at the edge of a town and see your very memories in ruin? The city was an archipelago, and they stared in silence. Even Daddy Mention was quiet, though he was of course the first to speak, saying, “That bitch just lifted her skirt and horse-pissed on this motherfucker.”

“If she were a horse, you’d put her down,” said Vodka.

Everyone muttered their amens. Before they left the triage platform, Achilles and Daddy Mention were hosed down, given a change of clothing. Their old clothes were tossed in a burn bag.

Not thirty minutes later, they came across a heavyset woman seated on the edge of her porch roof, holding a shoebox on her lap and kicking her toes in the water, which was almost up to the roofline of her house. Sweat dripped from her housedress. As they drifted up beside her, Achilles grabbed the roof to steady the boat, burning his hand on the shingles.

She stared at them, narrowing her eyes but not bothering to raise her hands against the sun, as if she had long become used to it. She said, “I tell you like I told the others: I ain’t going nowhere until my baby gets back home.” She went back to kicking her toes in the water. “I ain’t leaving without my son.”

Wilson offered water. She opened her shoebox. It was filled with photos and bottled water.

“Ma’am, where is your baby?” asked Vodka. “We can take you there.”

She recoiled. “He’ll be right back. He went for candy. He likes Tootsie Rolls, and we was all out.”

The street was empty. Rooftops peeked through stale water, some with HELP painted in large, uneven letters. One sign rose above the water: CIRCLE MARKET.

“Did your son go the Circle Market ma’am?” asked Achilles.

“Just down the street. He’ll be right back.” She started rocking back and forth and humming.

Bryant tied off on a porch post and held the boat steady. Something thumped against the side window of the house, startling Achilles and Bryant. The body of a child turned in the murky water and disappeared behind the floating drapes.

Vodka climbed up to the porch roof and the woman shrieked and scurried backwards toward a hole in the roof, where she must have hidden every time the rescuers came through. Achilles pointed to the hole, and Daddy Mention ran over to block her way. The body thumped the window again. The bloated facial features were indistinct, but it was clearly the corpse of a child wearing the remains of a parochial school uniform, and now momentarily entangled in the tattered, flowered curtains.

“What’s your name ma’am?” asked Vodka.

“Mrs. Dennis Robicheaux.”

“How about we take you to where you can find your son? O.K.?”

Bryant couldn’t stop staring at the boy’s body and was shaking ever so slightly, tremors in his hands, which hung at his waist as if he was an outmatched gunman waiting to draw. She started singing. Daddy Mention joined in, calming her. “Soon now, very soon, we are going to see the King.” Once Mrs. Robicheaux was in the boat, Bryant cradled her head so she couldn’t look back. Daddy Mention patted one of her arms, Wilson the other.

She said, “He’s a good boy and he likes school, which is good, because I paid a lot for it. Almost all the money his daddy left.”

She refused water and food, telling them, “Save it for my son.” Her feet were raw and blistered from walking on the roof shingles. She and Daddy Mention starting singing again, their voices as one, loud and melodic— “Soon now, very soon, we are going to see the King” —and Achilles hummed along, wishing he knew the words.

At the Red Cross station, she refused to get on the gurney; she was a strong woman. The Red Cross nurses called two soldiers who were stationed there, and still it was a challenge to move her without capsizing the boat. She stiffened, and they lifted her like pallbearers, dropping her on a soldier, who collapsed under the weight. Mrs. Robicheaux resumed struggling, thinking she was still on the boat, clutching Vodka’s wrist. “My son, my son. Baby, you promised me. Don’t leave him here to die. He can’t swim. He’s afraid of the water. Even when he was baptized he cried all night.”