Tony Dunbar - Tubby Dubonnet 07 - Tubby Meets Katrina

by Tony Dunbar

  20

  So, Tubby’s first night back was great.

  But after that, it suddenly wasn’t so good anymore. Tubby could not have explained why this happened, but his Katrina-world turned gloomy. It could have been Christine’s departure, the unfinished business with Bonner Rivette, or perhaps the oppressiveness of the mess everywhere, but the zing went away.

  Hope looked beautiful to him each morning, but he didn’t deserve her. New Orleans was a wreck. He had no right to personal happiness. The hurricane was still everywhere he looked.

  It didn’t take long for Hope to notice the change. Instead of tickling her awake he was getting up by himself at four o’clock in the morning and sitting on the front porch. Left alone, he might sit there till noon.

  “You don’t want to clean up the street anymore?” she asked.

  “They’re not even giving us electricity or water,” he complained. “I’d like to know where all those power company guys from Ohio went.”

  “It’s coming,” she promised. “Be patient.”

  “This is going to take years to fix,” he said.

  “We’ve got years,” she said.

  “Just think of all the work,” he said.

  Tubby grew a beard and began to forget what it was like to tie a tie. He learned that the courthouses were re-opening fifty miles away in a town called Gonzales, since everything in New Orleans had been flooded, but why did he need a courthouse? No clients were calling. Or if they were, they were calling his old office, where the phones had been shut off and much of the glass had been replaced by plywood.

  The mayor proclaimed that people in his zip code could come back, and some—mostly men—started to. They brought in more chain saws and generators and set about trying to find electricians to turn the power back on. Even this didn’t cheer Tubby. A lot of these men had actual jobs.

  He saw the signs on the St. Charles Avenue neutral ground advertising law practices opening up, but his own building was still locked, and his doorbell wasn’t ringing.

  He began to brood and became unhappy if he had to be around anyone.

  After a week of this Hope told him that it was all well and good having a man in her life after some time without, but she was too old to have another sulking teenager. Displaying the survival skills a great many people seemed suddenly to have found since the storm, she got on Tubby’s phone and tracked down an old neighbor of hers and together they hatched a plan to share a guest house owned by a friend of another friend in Algiers while someone’s son-in-law, a contractor, could be persuaded to go in and fix up one of their Mid-City houses. The plan was long and involved, and based on optimism, the goodness of the government, and a supply of city utilities not yet in existence, but Hope said she was leaving. “To get my life back together.”

  “And honey-bunch,” she said, kissing Tubby tenderly on the forehead, “we can try this again some other time when things get back to normal.”

  Tubby watched her leave, driving away in the truck of whosever son-in-law that was, and he wondered what he was going to do. At least Rex had stuck with him. One more mouth to feed. The dog yawned at him.

  Then began the really bad days, while parts of the city came back to life.

  He even got in a fight with Flowers. The detective showed up unannounced in his big truck, radiating purpose and good health, and Tubby asked where he’d been so long.

  “Working across the river, boss,” Flowers replied, a little startled at the tone. “How’ve you been making it?”

  “Everything is magnificent.” Tubby ran his fingers through his beard. “Absolutely magnificent. Did you just come to visit?”

  “Uh, I’m going downtown to meet with Homeland Security about a job. So I stopped by. Do you need any help around here?”

  “Sure, you can help me wash the dishes.”

  “That’s not a problem.”

  “I was just joking. No, I don’t really want any help.”

  “I’d be glad to,” Flowers said.

  “I don’t need any help!” Tubby shouted.

  The conversation was flat after that, and it didn’t last long. Flowers slapped him on the shoulder and drove away.

  Tubby wondered what his own life would be like in the future. What kind of life did this poor spent city now have to offer him?

  On Magazine Street, things were straightened out enough so that he could reclaim his car.

  “You kind of screwed me up,” he told his mechanic, “blocking my car in like that.”

  “We had no idea there would be such a storm, Mr. Dubonnet, and we were very busy on the day we left.”

  Tubby wasn’t mollified, but he paid his bill. He didn’t say another word.

  “I wonder what his problem is?” the mechanic said to his greasy cat when his customer drove off.

  With his car, Tubby could cruise downtown and see shopkeepers cleaning out their stores. “We’re Open” signs were sprouting from all the bistros. In the Central Business District, though his own building was still closed, he actually saw men in suits on Canal Street. He hid from them, feeling out of place in his dirty jeans and unclipped hair.

  Further on he drove, and the streets were blocked with refuse. Tubby was more comfortable in the wreckage. He heard that the I-10 was open so he drove out to New Orleans East, a sprawling neighborhood of ranch-style homes spanning four highway interchanges.

  Everything he saw was dead.

  All the houses were caked with mud, and all the streets were empty of everything but flooded and abandoned cars. He drove for miles, pausing at intersections guarded by nonfunctional traffic signals, and realized he was the only person for blocks around. Everybody had been carried away, and why would they ever want to return? The water had been ten feet deep in these houses. Thousands and thousands of them. Clients and friends, they were gone.

  He drove out St. Claude, and before the soldiers ran him off he spotted Fats Domino’s house, bleak as all the rest. All caked with mud. Coming back into the city on Ramparts Street, all the night clubs he passed were shuttered. The buildings were empty. All the stores were wide-open and stripped.

  Just miles and miles of mess.

  He took to drinking more than he should, but he did, when invited, accept invitations from other men in his neighborhood to grill steaks in the yard. They would all laugh and drink and eat, and go home to houses without women and children. Maybe the families would come back in January, when the schools would be open again.

  Tubby got good at using his cell phone. He started to call his daughters every other day. He called people he hadn’t seen for years. An Office Depot opened, and he charged a laptop computer. It was wireless. He learned that the CC’s Coffee House at Jefferson and Magazine was wired, and even after the shop closed every afternoon at 3 o’clock, because of a shortage of help, he and a dozen others crowded around outside. Tubby learned how to receive and send e-mails. He grew to love the EarthLink girl, café-au-lait, smiling at her screen. But he was pissed.

  He began telling everyone he could find in the web world what New Orleans was like, what the hurricane had been like.

  Many of these people, he could tell, had actually forgotten about Katrina and were instead thinking about nonsensical events like Thanksgiving. Didn’t they know what it was like here?

  No, they actually didn’t.

  Didn’t they know that three hundred thousand people had left a great American city, and they couldn’t come back because there was no electricity?

  No, they didn’t.

  Didn’t he know who was in the World Series? That a Supreme Court Justice had died? That there were suicide bombings every day in Iraq? That there had been an earthquake in Pakistan? That Christmas was coming?

  No, he didn’t. What did any of that have to do with Katrina? Not one damn thing!

  Tubby got fed up with these so-called old friends who just didn’t get it.

  He got fed up with the government, which just didn’t get it.

  Ma
ssive federal response? Where are the FEMA trailers? Where’s the trash man? Where is the goddamned power company?

  Where’s my insurance adjuster?

  Where’s the twenty-second roofing contractor who said he’d be out to give me an estimate?

  He knew he was leaving the atmosphere. He knew he was drinking too much. He wondered what was going to become of himself.

  Gastro and Steve showed up in the dented Nissan and caught Tubby pouring bourbon at eleven in the morning.

  “We brought you some jambalaya my mama made,” Steve said.

  Tubby took the weighty Tupperware container. “This will last me a week,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Are you all alone?” Gastro asked.

  “Yep. Hope moved out. Christine’s up in Mississippi. All I got left is Rex.”

  The sleeping dog heard his name and slapped his tail on the floor.

  “Your world is going to rise again, Mr. Dubonnet,” Gastro told him. The words surprised even him.

  “What’s that?”

  “Your world. It’s going to rise again, Mr. Dubonnet. It’s going to get better for you.” Gastro didn’t quite know what he was saying. But he was trying out a new personality, a positive personality.

  “Is that what you believe, Sid?” Tubby asked skeptically.

  “That’s what I’m learning.” Gastro made a rare smile. “There’s a lot of human energy coming into focus, right here in New Orleans. I can feel it.”

  “You know, kid,” Tubby said, “I’m not ready to hear that right now.”

  And they were like kids visiting an old cranky uncle, and they left as soon as they could.

  Tubby stared in the mirror and tried to recall that he was a responsible man. He had shouldered the problems of his clients and argued their cases before powerful courts. He had raised a family, and he had paid tuition for private schools. Thank God they were all closed now, since he was nearly broke. It was hard to know exactly what he had since the banks were closed and there was no mail delivery. He had paid his bills for most of his life. Now his mortgage company had given him, and thousands of others, a grace period, and the bill collectors couldn’t find him. In a way, he told himself, he shouldn’t complain. He should be enjoying this break. But his sunken eyes stared back at him sadly, and the creases under his cheeks made a frown. How could he enjoy himself? He didn’t have a job.

  He thought maybe he could hustle the kind of legal business friends of judges typically got—such as being appointed lawyer for someone who couldn’t be located, or curator for someone’s property. Tubby had a friend who was a judge.

  Earlier he had saved a newspaper article reporting that the Orleans Parish Civil District Court had rented space in a strip mall in Gonzales, Louisiana, fifty miles away. He tried for two days to get someone to answer the phone at the number listed in the paper, and all he got was a busy signal. So he made the drive. He even put on a suit.

  Sure enough, in what might once have been a row of crummy storefronts he found the “courthouse.” “Division T” was a group of desks cordoned off by filing cabinets where sporting goods might once have been sold. At one of the desks was somebody he knew, Mrs. Evans, the judge’s long-time clerk.

  “Hello, darlin’,” he said, as if he were the same old confident Tubby. “Whatcha doin’ way out here in the country?”

  She peered at him over her glasses. “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I’m looking for the judge. Don’t you know who I am? Tubby Dubonnet.”

  “Oh, Mr. Dubonnet. I didn’t recognize you with the beard. Isn’t this something?” She spread her arms to take in the whole situation.

  “It doesn’t look that bad,” he said. “Where do y’all eat lunch?”

  “We pretty much have to bring it with us. There’s nothing around here but the RaceTrac gas station, and they mostly have chips. We do have a microwave, though.”

  “Is there anything that looks like a courtroom around here?”

  “Yes,” she said proudly. “The judges take turns. It’s next door, if you want to see it. There haven’t been that many hearings though.”

  “How about the judge, is he around?”

  Her eyes fell.

  “No, he’s not in today.”

  “Is he okay?” Tubby was alarmed. “When will he be in?”

  “Well, Mr. Dubonnet. You know the judge lost his house in Gentilly.”

  “No, I didn’t realize. Where is he?”

  “He hasn’t called me today.” She was being evasive. “You know he and Mrs. Hughes went to the Bahamas for a few days.”

  “I’ve been completely out of touch. Are they still there?”

  “Well,” she paused again, “Mrs. Hughes is. She’s not ready to come back quite yet. And I don’t blame her. The judge has been staying in an apartment in Baton Rouge.”

  “Does he keep regular office hours?”

  “Not exactly. But I am here every day.”

  “I need to see him. Can you give me his phone number?”

  “I don’t think he has a phone,” she said.

  That was odd, for a man who had shown up on time for court for twenty years.

  “How about an address?”

  “He said, not…” She thought about it. “Mr. Dubonnet, I think it might be good if you went to see him. He’s had a hard time.” She opened her desk drawer and found a slip of paper and a pencil. She jotted down “4401 Lime Street, Apartment 922,” and handed it to Tubby with a worried look on her face.

  “Of course, I’ll pay him a call,” Tubby said. “I don’t have anything better to do.”

  Baton Rouge was just another twenty minutes up the highway. Tubby had no idea where Lime Street was, but he kept asking directions and eventually found a block of two-story apartment buildings arranged around swimming pools, with a few green trees installed here and there to break up the monotony. It was the kind of place Tubby always thought of as “singles apartments.”

  He figured out how the complex was arranged and located Building “9.” Apartment “22” was an inside apartment on the second floor. He took the elevator and walked down a long hall. The door was open. Two maids were working inside.

  Tubby tapped on the wall. “Is Mr. Hughes here?” he asked.

  “Not right now,” one of the maids said.

  Tubby could see a pile of green law books piled in the corner of the room. There was a bar set up under the window.

  “Did he say where he was going?” Tubby asked.

  “Judge Hughes don’t say much,” the maid said. “But he left here in his bathing suit, so he may be outside by the pool.”

  Tubby retraced his steps and located the swimming pool on the other side of the building.

  There was a figure covered in a white towel on a reclining chair, shielded from the sun by an orange umbrella, and the lump was big enough to be the eminent jurist.

  Tubby approached and recognized the head poked out of the towel, though its brow was cooled by a moist washcloth and the eyes were shaded behind sunglasses.

  “Morning, Judge,” he said pleasantly.

  “Uh,” the body grunted, and the head tilted slightly in Tubby’s direction. “Why, Brother Dubonnet. Pull up a chair. Approach the bench,” the judge said with more resignation than excitement.

  Tubby found a dry one and sat beside his friend.

  “So, howya doin’, Al?” he asked.

  “Just about like everybody else. Gettin’ by. What brings you up here?”

  “I came to see you.”

  “I’m a sight to see, aren’t I?” He removed the washcloth. His brown face looked like melting chocolate in the sun. He had a sprinkle of black whiskers on his chin. “It’s a sad state of affairs,” he remarked.

  “What is?”

  “Being here instead of up where the scales of justice are at my right hand.”

  “This is not so bad, is it?”

  “No, it’s not so bad,” the judge agreed. “When we were in law school toget
her we would have thought this was heaven. You want a beer or anything?” He indicated a portable ice chest by his feet.

  “No, no, I’m fine,” Tubby said. “I thought your drink was Scotch.”

  “Only after hours,” the judge said.

  “I see.”

  “This is daylight, the time of day when I work. I’m drawing a check after all.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  Judge Hughes tapped his sunglasses down his nose and raised his eyebrows at Tubby.

  “Of course I get paid,” he said. “I’m a state elected official. But I don’t earn my money. I don’t have any cases. What’s with the beard?”

  “Just something I’m trying out. I’ve got time on my hands.” As if that explained it.

  “How’d you make out in the storm?”

  “Not too bad. Just some wind and a little flood. Not like some. I heard your house took a hit.”

  “Everything’s gone,” Hughes said sadly. “All the stuff we had after twenty-five years of marriage. The photographs, the personal things you save, the girls’ band uniforms, all that stuff…” His voice trailed off.

  “I’m sorry to hear it. Olivia must be taking it hard.”

  “Yes, she is. She definitely is. She’s only been to the house once. She took one look and says she won’t go back there again.”

  “I heard she’s in the Bahamas.”

  “That’s correct, and in the Bahamas she will stay, until her credit cards run out.”

  “So how is it here? You got an apartment I see.”

  “It ain’t so bad, old friend, but I’ve got to say I’m a little depressed about the whole thing.”

  “Well, me too.”

  They sat together in silence. The umbrella flapped in a little breeze. Tubby’s guiding principle in the practice of law had been, “Never screw a client. Never lie to the judge.” He wondered what he ought to say to this one.

  “Maybe I’ll have a beer,” Tubby said.

  “You do that,” the judge said. “I’m going to go to sleep.”

  21

  Bonner Rivette loved his new job. It provided him with an opportunity to see what his sister, Katrina the whirlwind, had caused and to pick through the decay.