Buddy (10 page)

20

We ain't got nowhere to live now so we stay in that shelter. There must be about a million other people living there with us, all in the same room. Half the people are from Mississippi. They're telling about a giant wave that washed everything away—streets, houses, apartment buildings. I can't hardly believe it but they're telling about it on TV, too. The other half of the people are from New Orleans. I lay there on my cot and I think about what if I see somebody I know. What if my teacher walks down the aisle? Or that boy Rusty? What if I see the lady who cuts Mama's hair or Mr. Nelson with the truck or Mrs. Washington? What if I see J-Boy walking by with his mama following behind him in her nightgown? I think about that and I look at all the faces, but I don't see nobody I know. All those faces and not a single one of them is somebody I've ever seen before.

Every day different workers come in and talk to the people. They're trying to get us clothes and toothbrushes. They're trying to feed us and find us places to live. They're trying to match up families.

People make signs and go walking up and down the aisles between the cots. The signs are just lists of names—all the people they can't find. One lady says the names are her children. She says she was visiting her mama in the hospital in Jackson when the storm came. The neighbor was watching her babies. She calls and calls but the phones don't work. Now she don't know where any of them are. She's riding from shelter to shelter carrying her sign. Every day she walks the aisles someplace else.

I wonder if anybody is looking for us. I wonder if the news is telling about the storm all the way up in Chicago. I wonder if anybody tried to call us. I wonder what would happen if somebody wrote us a letter. Where would it go?

The shelter's getting fuller and fuller. We squeeze the cots closer together. They make rules about who uses the bathroom when.

“You should have gone with Joyce,” Daddy tells Granpa T. “I'll bet she would come back and get you if we called her.”

“What am I going to do sleeping on the sofa in her daughter's apartment in Atlanta?” Granpa T says.

Daddy shrugs up his shoulders and Granpa T lays back down on his cot. He closes his eyes and goes to sleep—or wherever.

Because to tell the truth, can't nobody really sleep in that shelter with all those people always moving and talking. All day long they're talking loud. All night long they're whispering. They're tossing and turning. They're going to the bathroom. The babies are crying. And when it's just barely light, the loud talking starts up again. “Move over.” “Where you from?” “How much water did you get?”

And one thing everybody's talking about is what it looks like in New Orleans. You can't get away from it. They're saying how the only thing you can see is the roofs of the houses. For miles and miles there ain't nothing but black water and roofs. How the helicopters come and take the people off their roofs. How they've got boats everywhere pulling people out of the water. How they've got bodies floating around and tangled up in the trees and putrefying in the houses where they were trapped when the water rushed up.

They've got the TV going all the time. They're showing pictures of the buildings burning, right in the middle of the water. Can't nobody get close enough to help, and the buildings just keep on burning.

I'm watching that news and I'm thinking that can't be real. That can't be my home. That's got to be a movie. And then I see I'm sitting on a cot in a shelter in Mississippi.

One day they show a dog swimming through the water. He's black and his tail is sticking out straight behind him. I jump up off my cot and run over to take a look. He's making a V-shaped ripple through the water and he's barely able to keep his head up. The rescuers are standing in a boat and wearing yellow vests with orange belts. They're saying, “Come on, boy! You can do it!” And they're reaching out to him and grabbing him and dragging him up into that boat. That dog shakes water all over the place. The rescuers hold their hands up to protect their faces and you can see they're smiling and I've got my face right up to that TV.

But when the rescuers step back and the dog stands still, I can see he ain't got no caterpillar eyebrow. His throat ain't white underneath. He's got all four of his legs.

I lay back down on my cot. What am I doing thinking that dog might be Buddy? Even if he got out, even if he struggled through the window, even if he heard me calling and calling him in my sleep, how's he going to swim with only three legs? What's a dog like Buddy going to do in a world filled up with water?

One shelter lady gives me a Game Boy. I sit on my cot and play it every day. I don't do nothing else. I don't talk. I don't eat except when I have to. Mama keeps saying, “Are you okay, son?” and I don't answer. Baby Terrell starts walking in that shelter and Mama has to chase after him. Tanya makes friends with two girls with cots near hers. They fix each other's hair. Tanya looks pretty stupid afterward but she's happy.

A lady two cots over starts having a baby. They whisk her off while her fiancé is in the bathroom and he don't have any idea where they took her. He sits there crying until somebody comes and leads him away by the hand. One old man stands up on the far end of the room and starts trying to take off all his clothes. His wife is screaming at him and he's saying he's itching all over. Granpa T sits up and watches that show awhile. When the lady finally makes the man stop, Granpa T lays back down and closes his eyes.

I go to the next level.

We've been in that shelter almost a week when Daddy comes up to Granpa T and says, “Wake up. I've got something to tell you.”

Granpa T opens his eyes. “I ain't asleep,” he says.

“They told me it ain't all flooded,” Daddy says. “They told me around our street, there are places where the water ain't so deep. Some places.”

Granpa T raises up on his elbows.

“One man here told me he's driving down tomorrow morning just to look,” Daddy says. “He wants to see how much water he got in his house.”

Granpa T shakes his head. “Too much,” he says.

Daddy don't listen to him. “He can't stay, of course. There ain't nowhere to stay.”

Daddy crosses his arms over his chest and looks at Mama sitting on the cot behind me. “He asked me to ride with him,” Daddy says. “And I'm going.”

Granpa T sits up. I put down the Game Boy.

“I want to know if you want to come,” Daddy says to Granpa T. “There's room.”

Granpa T shakes his head. “You go first,” he says. “I ain't ready.” Then he lays back down and closes his eyes.

I open my mouth and out come the first words I've said in almost a week. “Can I come?” I say it real quick, and then I shut up.

Daddy looks hard at me. Mama stands up behind me.

“It ain't going to be easy,” Daddy says. “We won't get back here until late.”

“I can do it,” I say, and push the Game Boy off to one side.

Daddy looks up at Mama. I know she's shaking her head. I know her mouth's making the shape of “No.” Daddy looks down at me again.

“You're old enough,” he says. “You can come.”

We get in the man's truck before light. I'm sitting between him and Daddy. They're drinking coffee. We're riding with the windows open. The cool of the morning is coming in with the smell of all the pine trees. We're going along looking at the white, broke trunks pointing up to the sky. Behind us, the sun starts to come up. We have to go around the lake to get into town. That storm washed the bridge to pieces. The concrete slabs of that superhighway bridge just floated off like toy boats. Daddy says they've got real boats stacked up in the marshes like dead fish. He says they've got boats sitting on top of bridges down by Empire. He says they've got barges sitting on top of houses in the Lower Ninth Ward.

That's a lot of water,
I'm thinking. That's enough water to fill up a city. That's enough water to fill up a house.

We're taking the back roads. The man tells us they got the army blocking the main ways. They got piles of dirt and gravel dumped across the roads so nobody can get through. They got soldiers standing there with guns, and they won't let you pass. He tells us they got people tearing up the city. They're breaking down the windows and stealing everything they can lay their hands on. He says the mayor don't want nobody coming into town. They're afraid people from the country going to come and join up with the thugs. They're afraid it's going to get out of hand.

Daddy says, “It's already out of hand.”

“That's so,” says the man. “That's truly so.”

When we get into the city, the man stays close to the river, where the land is higher and there ain't no flooding. But everywhere we look, trees are broke or fallen down. It's just like Mississippi except these are oak trees. On some of them, the root balls are sticking up almost as high as a house. The trees pulled up sidewalks and fences and even houses when they fell over. All the yards are full up with broke limbs and trash. They got pieces of fence and strips of tin roof laying on the street. They got patio chairs sitting in the branches of the trees that are still standing up. They got a mattress twisted up in some wires hanging off a pole.

We're driving over electricity lines and phone lines draping all over the streets. We're crunching branches and trash. Everywhere you turn there are great big old potholes that could swallow your car. Daddy says to the man driving, “Watch out,” and the man swerves that truck one way, then another.

And this ain't even where the water is. This ain't even the part we've been seeing on TV.

It takes us almost an hour just to get to our neighborhood. The man lets us down near our church. That church is standing there all high and dry. It ain't flooded at all and the grass needs cutting. The front door is wide open. Daddy walks up the steps. Inside it's cooler. He shouts out, “Hello!”

A man stands up behind the altar. It's Brother James.

“Praise God,” Brother James says. “It's you.”

He and Daddy are standing there hugging like they're real brothers. Then Brother James turns and hugs me. He's sweaty like he ain't bathed in days.

“Your family?” he says to Daddy.

“Safe,” Daddy says. “We went to my cousin's place in Mississippi. After the storm, she went on up to her daughter's place in Atlanta. Now we're in a shelter.”

“Praise God,” Brother James says again.

Daddy sort of waves his hand around at the chairs standing in the church.

“Everybody?” he says.

“Mrs. Washington passed,” Brother James says. “She drowned in her attic.”

Daddy covers his eyes with his hand.

“Brother Thomas is in the hospital in Houston. His heart went bad on him. And those Cary boys have been pulling people out. They got their fishing boat and they've been going back and forth.” He stops for a minute and looks out the window. “But they've left now. They're worn out.”