Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006 - (Page 70)

By H dow and let the flashlight find the water-hidden porches and half-hidden windows and thought how this hiding would be ending one day, one day when these owners would come back and be just a wee less grateful “just to be alive.” Then they would begin to think of their grandpa’s pocket watch or the doily grandma knitted or the meerschaum pipes or ivory figurines or baseball rookie cards or photographs or whatever it is that people save to show that they were here and mattered. Things that had been telling their inner ears in some faraway dialect that they might have survived in some unclear and miraculous way. The time for that lie would be forever past when these things were finally seen again. He flicked off the flashlight and treaded his way to the stairwell. He flicked it again and made ready to follow its forward lick downstairs but it hadn’t gone far before it caught the shine of the water and threw it boat, plane and flip-flop the back in his eyes. God, dispossessed were coming here to be how many steps were covered now? Four, five? He pushed the herded, counted, assigned, while the flashlight insensate noise of rotary engines and low gears with his thumb and went back to bed. The portable radio drowned human sounds. was held in his left hand while he fineAvenue near the Circle Food Store and tuned with his right. The local stations the streets were flooded. But he was in were pleading for folks out there in a shopping cart, like a child. No one Radioland to phone in reports about was pushing the cart, but it was going what the storm had done to them very fast down the middle of the when it was clear that one of the street, shooting rooster-tails of water things the storm had done was to off the sides. insure that no one could phone anyHe dreamed himself awake and one about anything. awoke to a reality that seemed fast So he gave up on the locals, slowly and sinister already, here among the searching the dial for the whispered sheets. high-watt stations in Memphis and When he opened his eyes again, San Antone and Cincinnati. He heard there was two feet inside the house. all the late-night gripes about offshore leases and local taxes, laced with come laid in the upstairs bed, mercials for pain-free mattresses. It munching lemon cookies and was junk, but he loved that no one looking and listening. was talking about hurricanes. Outside the bedroom window there look up with sleep-besotted was only batcave-black, but a white eyes and moving along the light flashed inexplicably every maze of wires and treetops a minute or so. The only recognizable thing dark-skinned with a tail that is noise came from frogs. From time to blinking light? Ah, no. What’s being time, he’d hear things downstairs watched is a helicopter. No matter clink and scrape, things floating what you watch, take another look. around in the dark and getting closer. Now that the deluge has passed, The clinkings got him thinking the air is busy with the rescuers and about things. He walked to the win- Moving what? It could be one side of a desk. Or board or lamp table or bar-stool or any of many things. Things that normally float past our view, seen partly and quickly, vaguely and incompletely. They only catch our attention now because they are not where they belong. Yet the novelty of their placement doesn’t yield comprehension; some things stay hidden. Or half-hidden, which is even more maddening. And what are others seeing? Some will be looking out their windows at a world submerged and seeing proof of an unfeeling or uncaring universe. And others will be looking at the same scenes and seeing in the very act of seeing proof of a miracle. So many eyes and so many ways of seeing He closed his eyes and dreamed, and for once the dreams seemed to make sense. He was on Claiborne A recorders looking down on those who now want them. And those will soon begin their Victim’s Dance, waving towels, displaying entreating bedsheets, looking skyward with pleading eyes. All trying to win approval, enough approval that you will be permitted to continue living. Here comes one now. Wave that towel, crane that neck, try to make eye contact. Throw something, Mr. Pilot. A rope ladder or at least a look. Throw 70 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Winter 2005-06

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005 Contents Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Louisiana State Museum After Katrina: “It’s time somebody woke us us up.” Missing New Orleans On Perilous Ground The Buildings of Louisiana (Architectural History by Karen Kingsley) Historic New Orleans Collection Louisiana Association of Museums Back to New Orleans Diary of a Displaced Person Jazz Notes (Music History by Bruce Raeburn) Cradle of the Stars The Terrible and the Brave Bookstand (Book Review by Thomas Uskali) Sound Advice (Music Review by Ben Sandmel) Forum (Commentary by James Lee Burke)

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

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