Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006 - (Page 72)

apart from ours that can never be truly owned. Soon these things will leave the home-spaces they so proudly held, trade their singular identity for the lumping anonymity of the pile waiting for the broom or bulldozer. Some are leaving early. They’re floating by now, carried by the current to the corner and beyond and with them goes maybe the last normality we’ll ever see. He treads water by the front door. He’s been swimming in rooms of cool black ink and there was an elation to it, a kind of farewell to flesh, a carnevale, before a long period of repentance and bitter memories. He dog-paddled to the back door. It opened easily. The kayak and paddle and life jacket were floating around the back yard and he chased them down by going hand over hand between the Chinese parasol trees. When he got them all together, he pushed everything to the porch swing and tied it off on the chain. Then he thought: How am I ever going to get into this kayak? He swam back inside and retrieved a wooden ladder. He set the ladder up next to the tied-off kayak and whispered that it would work when the time came. To whoever was listening. He looked at the water lapping against the fence. If it kept rising at this rate, by tomorrow morning it would top the fence and he could take the kayak right over. That’s when he would go. He was in no big hurry. There were plenty of downed power lines out there. By tomorrow morning the water in the house would be in the upstairs bedroom. He’d go out the window and jump off the roof and swim to the kayak. 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. After a lunch of the remaining sandwich, he sipped cranberry juice and wished for vodka. He’d have to settle for this idea: The enormity of things cushions their pain. If you had lost one of these things, you would have wept and whined. But all of them? Stay busy. He undressed and went downstairs. He fished a broom out of the water and swung it against the wall until the head broke off. Then he brought it upstairs and hunted for hammer and nails till he found them. It was hard to write something on the bedsheet. He decided on what he had always been told was the first sentence he had ever uttered, after some hide-and-seek: Here I Is. There was something symmetrical and existential too about it, so he scratched “Here I Is” on the bedsheet and nailed it to the broomstick. He undressed again and headed for the front porch. In the unlikely event a rescue boat came down the street in front of his house, somebody might see the bedsheeted message and stop. 72 LOUISIANA ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES\Winter 2005-06 A resident of New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward surveys the damage to her neighborhood from a bus window. As he struggled to fix the broomstick to the house-front, he heard a shout, like a man calling for hunting dogs. He heard himself shouting back. The boat slowly came. Two young men were standing and he could see the tops of two older heads. “Glad to seeya. Wouldja mind waiting for me to get some pants?” One of the young men covered his mouth in mock horror. “By all means,” he said. He dressed as fast as he could; it’s not wise to keep redemption waiting. Still he took time to salute good-bye.

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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