Zane and the Hurricane

by Rodman Philbrick

  She shouts the last part at the top of her lungs. So clear and strong that for a moment everybody in the crowd outside the dome stares at this skinny girl with the wild hair and the big voice. Not the least embarrassed, she looks right back at them and grins. “True dat!” she says, raising her fist, and her words seem to echo through the crowd, repeated from one to the next.

  “True dat,” they all agree.

  Normally it’s kind of embarrassing when somebody makes a big fuss in public, but not this time. It’s really cool hearing all those strangers agree with Malvina, even though a lot of them probably don’t know what she’s talking about, exactly.

  The crowd doesn’t pay attention for long, though. Because a big, booming noise comes rolling down the street. A shiny black Cadillac Escalade cruising along with wicked rims and a sound system that makes the ground shake under our feet. So loud you can feel it in your chest, rattling your rib cage.

  I recognize the song because it’s been playing everywhere all summer: “Lose Control” by Missy Elliott.

  Boom, boom. Boom, boom.

  Chrome pipes, outta sight. And sure enough, the Escalade has chrome pipes and blue lights and mirrored windows tinted the deepest shade of dark.

  Boom, boom, shaking the air, shaking the earth.

  The Escalade stops beside us. A rear door opens, and out of the cool leather interior slips a scary-looking dude in designer shades and gold chains.

  Dylan Toomey, big as life.

  Okay, I’ll admit to being scared stiff. Like my feet are glued to the hot pavement even though I want to run away. When something bad comes your way, something you can’t fight, that’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Run for your life? And Dylan Toomey is something bad. First time, back there at the cookout, I wasn’t sure — he made it sound so tempting, a nice dry place to stay, and TV and games and stuff — but this time there’s no doubt. I get this awful cold feeling in my guts at the idea of him taking charge of Malvina. And that’s clearly what he intends to do. Standing cool on the street, like the heat doesn’t exist, at least not for him, and ever so casually stroking a thumb along his gold chains, his cool shades reflecting the Superdome.

  He makes a sign with his left hand and the music stops, although the Escalade stays running. Waiting.

  “Malvina!” he says with a big smile. “Honey, we been lookin’ all over. Your momma worried sick about you.”

  Malvina says, “How you know that?”

  “Just talked to her,” he says, displaying a cell phone. “Had us a long conversation.”

  “You did not!”

  Sensing trouble, people in the crowd start shuffling off or backing up, wanting nothing to do with the gold-draped dude with the cool-rim SUV.

  Something is about to go down and everybody knows it.

  Toomey grins and saunters closer. For him all the thousands of survivors in the vicinity of the Superdome might as well not exist. Even me and Mr. Tru don’t exist for him. He’s entirely focused on Malvina, the way a cat focuses on a chipmunk that chatters back.

  “Don’t you dare!” Malvina says, raising her voice. “I ain’t go with you!”

  Dylan Toomey keeps on coming, taking his time.

  That’s when I notice we’ve attracted the attention of the National Guard. They react reluctantly, but one of them says something into his walkie-talkie, and then another one nods. The pair of them warily take up new positions, holding rifles at the ready. Not interfering yet, but keeping an eye on the situation.

  Mr. Tru says, under his breath, “Time you both get runnin’.”

  He’s gripping the arms of his chair, ready to launch himself at the man in the gold chains.

  Malvina, seeing what’s about to happen, steps away from the chair and raises her arms, as if to distract attention from the old man. “Somebody help us!” she screams. Not like she’s afraid, more like she’s angry. “This man ain’t no family to me. He a gangsta! He a thug!”

  Toomey reacts with a smirk, confident that no one will risk interfering. Smiling this fake smile, he reaches out as if he wants to take hold of Malvina and lead her to the safety of his shiny SUV.

  She ducks under his outstretched hand and screams, “He got a gun! He got a gun!”

  Everything happens all at once, and it seems like in slow motion even though it’s not. The National Guard dudes react by taking aim and shouting, “Drop it! Drop it!” and “Show us your hands!” and “Get on the ground!” pretty much all at the same time.

  Toomey kind of freezes in place, although he’s still smiling. I can see, even if the Guards can’t, that his hands are empty.

  While all this is going on — my heart doesn’t have time for more than one beat, that’s how fast everything is happening — Malvina grabs my arm and somehow I know what she wants me to do even though she doesn’t say anything. Mind melding, my mom calls it.

  Whatever it is, I know.

  I put Bandit in Mr. Tru’s lap and without saying a word we take hold of the old man’s chair and run it along the street, fast as we can, never looking back. Just flying. Mr. Tru holds on for dear life, bouncing around as the little plastic wheels blast over the pavement. Bandy hunkers down, his ears flat. Behind us the National Guard dudes are freaking out and screaming at Toomey not to move or they’ll shoot. We’re running as fast as we can and I expect to hear gunshots but they don’t shoot and nobody tries to stop us getting away, either. In fact people are making room, opening up places for us to run and then closing behind us, either on purpose or by accident, it doesn’t matter so long as we can keep running, shoving that chair over the rough pavement.

  We’re making a pretty good getaway, all things considered, but there’s no way we can outrun that Escalade if it wants to catch us. Malvina must be thinking the same thing, because after we go a few blocks, out of sight from whatever we left behind, she comes to a stop and goes, “We need a place to hide!”

  A place to hide. Oh yes. That’s my urge, too. If I could lift up an edge of the sidewalk and burrow into the earth, I would. But there’s no place to go, no place to hide. All around us are boarded-up office buildings and a few vacant lots that are blown so bare there’s not even a tree to hide behind.

  “Maybe they’ll arrest him,” I say. “Maybe we’re safe.”

  I don’t believe it and neither do they. Mr. Tru goes, “That man slippery as a snake. Even if they put cuffs on him, he’ll send somebody after us.”

  “Zane? Can you take that plywood off the windows?”

  I make a quick inspection. “No way. Even with a screwdriver it’d take forever.”

  “Okay,” she says, taking a deep breath. “We keep runnin’.”

  That’s when I notice this huge Dumpster alongside one of the office buildings. A nasty green thing overflowing with piles of garbage and trash, spilling out into the street and leaking in all directions.

  “You serious?” she asks, her nose wrinkling.

  “It can’t smell worse than the Superdome.”

  Oh, but it does. Imagine a thousand backed-up toilets, and ten tons of fresh steaming dog doo, and a hundred dead cats, and all the dirty cat boxes for all the dead cats, and every spoiled rotten thing from every nasty garbage pail in the world.

  The Dumpster stinks worse than that.

  Way, way worse.

  And it’s not like we climb into the Dumpster or anything. There’s no room inside because it’s overflowing, okay? We’re only hiding behind it, behind the piles of rotting garbage. Gagging on the smell, eyes watering from the overwhelming stench. Even Bandy keeps shaking his head and snorting through his nose, like he can’t believe a smell this strong.

  It seems like forever, but really it’s only a few minutes later that we hear the boom, boom of the SUV rolling down the street with the sound system blasting. The deafening bass rattling off the buildings and making it twice as loud.

  Boom, boom. Boom, boom.

  “Lose Control” by Missy Elliott.

  Man, I’m st
arting to hate that song.

  I peek around the corner of the Dumpster. There it is, the gleaming black Escalade with the wicked cool rims and chrome pipes. The Escalade looks like it has muscles of steel and throbbing light.

  This time Dylan Toomey doesn’t even bother to get out of the car. A back window rolls down. His face hangs in the interior dimness like a shadow of a moon.

  He smiles, flashing gold.

  The music stops.

  “Malvina Rawlins!” he bellows. “Aw right! You a smart girl, juss like yo momma! I like that! Sic the Guard on me and run off, that was smart. And now you hiding behind that pile of stink, assuming I don’t want to get my new Jordans all dirty. And you right! Got better things to do on this fine morning. Got me a business to run, folks to take care of!” Something about what he says strikes him funny, because he chuckles and shakes his head in amusement. Then he tips up his shades so we can see his clear, cold eyes staring at us like brown laser beams. “I be watching you, little girl. Wherever you at, wherever you go, I be there. We gone get together soon, you and me. We gone be friends, you see.”

  The window slides up, like a cloud sliding over the moon, and a moment later he’s gone, riding boomba-rattle-boom out into the ruined city.

  Algiers, Algiers,” Mr. Tru keeps mumbling. “Get you over to Algiers, Belinda help us.”

  If you didn’t know better you might think the old man had been drinking, because of the way he slurs his words, but the scary fact is, he’s not drunk, he’s sick. Bad sick. Sick with fever from his foot and ankle, which have turned all purple and swollen up to about twice normal size. We’re pushing his chair down the middle of the street, what Malvina calls the “neutral ground,” with the sun blazing and the heat rising from the pavement and yet poor Mr. Tru is shivering.

  “Little Belinda,” he mutters to himself. “She a good one. Oh yeah, mighty good.”

  “We find her, Tru. Don’t you worry. Everything gone be okay,” Malvina tells him. But the tears streaming down her face tell a different story.

  Can a person die of a bad foot? I don’t know. Maybe, if there’s no one to take X-rays, or give medicine, or the normal stuff they do. Or maybe it’s that he got infected from the bad water, or a snake bit him and we didn’t know it.

  I never felt so stupid or helpless, wandering down that street, not knowing where to go or what to do. It gets so bad I almost wish Dylan Toomey would find us, so I wouldn’t have to think about anything, or make decisions.

  Malvina says, “You take the chair, I’m a go ask where we go.”

  She stops people in the street, asking where to find a hospital or emergency room. This one skinny dude says, “Hospitals, they all backed up or flooded out,” but when Malvina insists, he points us in a certain direction. “Maybe you find what you need,” he says, doubtfully, and then he’s gone.

  We follow his directions for a few blocks, and come to the edge of the floodwater. From the nasty look of things it has gone down a little, but the water is still way too deep to push Mr. Tru along in his wobbly chair.

  If we had a boat or a canoe, maybe. But we don’t.

  Bandy barks at the stinky water.

  “Come on, boy. Leave it alone.”

  He looks up at me and I swear he shakes his head in disgust. That’s how bad it is, when a dog who slurps from toilets turns up his nose.

  Back to the big wide street where dazed survivors huddle in the shade, looking stunned. Back to inquire again where we might take a sick old man. Most people just shake their heads, or mention someplace north of the city, too far away to make sense. Others say the Superdome, where we’ve already been, and know how bad it is, with too many sick and not enough medical help. Someone else tells us the local hospitals have all been flooded, and have their hands full trying to evacuate patients by helicopter.

  “They been forced up on the roofs, you know? First floor underwater, so they lost power. No electricity, no machines to keep folks alive. Somebody tell me the Red Cross comin’, with clinics and nurses and all, but I ain’t seen ’em yet.”

  Malvina finally finds a policeman, a black man in a blue uniform sitting in a broke-down patrol car that won’t start. The cop looks about ready to cry, turning the key and nothing happening. He tells her pretty much what the other dude said about the hospitals being flooded and overwhelmed, and that maybe we should take our chances at the Superdome.

  Same old story.

  After a few more futile attempts the cop gives up, leaving the patrol car with the windows down and the door unlocked. He walks away from the car and from us. Malvina calls to him but he doesn’t look back.

  After the cop scurries out of sight this one guy comes over and hands us a bottle of water. “Plenty of fluids,” he suggests. Then, taking a closer look at Tru, he adds, “Might better pray.”

  Which makes Malvina mad, the suggestion that the old man is so far gone. “Never mind what he say — you tough, Tru. You gone make it! Go on, drink!”

  The bottle drops from his trembling hands and Malvina kicks it. “Stupid water!” she shouts, and people shy away from us, sensing trouble.

  “Hey,” I say.

  She jumps on the bottle with both feet, crushing it. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

  After she settles down I go, “So what do you want to do?”

  She wipes her eyes. “Only thing left,” she says. “Go to Algiers like he want.”

  “How do we get there?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” she says. “But I’m pretty sure we have to cross the river.”

  When we ask which way to the river, everybody points in the same direction.

  We’re not the only ones who want to cross the river out of New Orleans. There are lots of other survivors heading in the same direction, staggering out of the city across that bridge. A few in slow-moving vehicles, but most on foot. Most of us filthy and exhausted and desperate. My first thought, as we push Mr. Tru up the long sloping incline, is that it’s like some scene from a movie about the end of the world. Like we’re all fleeing an alien invasion, except instead of invading Martians we had invading water.

  Give me a Martian any day.

  Whatever, it sure feels good to be leaving Smellyville. The darkness seems like it has lifted and Malvina is back to her old joking self.

  “Why the one-handed man cross the street? He want to go to a secondhand store! Why wouldn’t the cannibal eat the clown? Because it taste funny! What kind of ship never sinks? A friendship!”

  Mr. Tru perks up. “That last one a good one,” he says.

  “Soon’s we cross over we find somebody fix your foot.”

  “I believe you will, dawlin’. You can do anything you put yo mind to.”

  “Soon as you fixed you be marchin’ in the band, blowin’ yo brass.”

  “Oh yeah? And where you be?”

  “Dancin’ in the second line!”

  It does my heart good to hear the two of them bantering again. Maybe Mr. Tru is getting better on his own, although you can’t tell it from his foot and ankle, which are still swollen bad. At least he’s not shivering in this heat and it has to be a good sign that he’s looking around and paying attention, right?

  He points and says, “Zane, young man, do you see how the river curves? That why they call us ‘The Crescent City,’ ’cause the Mississippi River makes a bend in the shape of a crescent, and inside that crescent, that New Awlins. River curve along like you see, then head north for a little ways, then turn all the way south. That direction over there? That where we came from, and you can see the whole neighborhood still underwater. See them roofs poking up like the fins of a fish? One of ’em might be my house.”

  It’s true. Being up on the bridge gives us a perspective on the size of the disaster. The flatness of the floodwater shines like a dull mirror all the way out to the edge of the horizon. The city, miles of it, is mostly underwater, with some bits poking up here and there. But the flood won, that’s for sure. Below us the river is swollen and
clotted with wreckage. Pieces of broken houses, every kind of garbage and junk swirls slowly along as if the whole thing is a giant, backed-up bathtub trying to empty through a blocked drain.

  I don’t want to look too hard at all the stuff in the river. You never know what you might see.

  “We all whistling past the graveyard,” Mr. Tru says, tapping the brim of his beat-up top hat.

  I’ve heard my mom say the same thing and never really knew what it meant. Now I do. Except instead of whistling, Malvina is telling a steady stream of stupid jokes, and the old man chuckles at all of them, no matter how dumb.

  “What has four legs and a arm? A happy pit bull!”

  “Oh, you a terrible child.”

  “You think that bad? Try this. Why do elephants have trunks? Because they look silly with glove compartments!”

  “You right. That silly.”

  “Yeah, but you laughin’. How you make a hot dog stand? Take away its chair! Why do birds fly south? Because it too far to walk!”

  “We walkin’ south, dawlin’, mo’ or less.”

  “You ain’t walkin’,” she points out. “You ridin’ in style.”

  Some of the folks trudging over the bridge know Trudell Manning from his music, and say how good it is to see he survived, and how they expect to hear him play again when he’s ready.

  “My brass all gone,” he says with a shrug. “House, too.”

  Not complaining, just stating a fact.

  And it hits me. When this is finally over I’ll be able to go home to New Hampshire, to the house I grew up in, but all of these people, thousands and thousands of them, have lost everything. The flood has taken it all.

  After we get across the river the ramp gradually curves down, heading for ground level. The closer we get to the end of the ramp the more we’re squeezed over to the side by the cars going by, jammed full of passengers and belongings. Which I guess is why no one offers us a ride, because they’re already full.

  At least that’s what I tell myself.