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.A moment of free-fall in his mind before he slammed the door and reflexively started for the back of the house.Three steps and water was swirling around his feet, dragging at the cuffs of his trousers; he stepped higher, idiotically trying to keep his feet dry, when he realized he didn’t know where Lucy was.He hollered her name out, as loudly as he could, heard something break behind him and turned to see one of Rosetta’s vases fall off a pedestal and smash on a table, and as he watched the broken crater of the vase scoot across the room on the water the window on the right side of the house exploded—the image he had was of someone throwing up—it spewed inward, glass, sash and blinds, the foaming water following it into his house, and he turned and ran for the stairs, with the water up to his knees, yelling for Lucy, who had appeared in the door of the rear bathroom and seemed to be frozen in place.She was staring down at the water, and SJ went to her, the water now to his thighs, and took her by the wrist and when she didn’t move, said, calmly as he could, “We’ll be allright upstairs,” and she started following him and they made the stairs, the water now at their waists, and climbed, and by the fifth step they were out of the water, and he told her with his hand on her back to keep going, and he didn’t look back either.As long as the house doesn’t go, he kept thinking; as long as the house doesn’t go.He couldn’t feel the house shifting at all, but it was hard to tell with the wind shaking it.The upstairs bedroom was pitch dark and stifling hot.He felt for and found the flashlight he had laid on the dresser, and with it he located the matches and a candle, which he lit, concentrating on keeping his hand steady.He got Lucy settled and sat with her; they said a prayer together and she said it with her lips shaking.After she had stopped shaking, he got up and retrieved one of the gallon water jugs he had laid in upstairs along with some food for a couple of days, and pulled the plastic cap off of it and poured some into one of the glasses he had put up there and handed it to Lucy.She drank it.“I didn’t think we’d never use those supplies,” SJ said, trying to keep his voice as even as possible.“But that’s what Daddy always said, have a second floor and put food and water up there.”“I know that; Daddy said that,” Lucy said.“Daddy said that.Have you some water for three days.” SJ drank some, too.The radio was downstairs, useless now, even though he had batteries.He hadn’t thought to have a radio up in the room.When he was sure that Lucy was at least stable, he went to the stairs to try and see where the water was.The surface of the water was up to within two feet of the downstairs ceiling, and an unbroken river seemed to swirl from his living room out to the street.The façade of his house had been pulled off by the water.The seven feet he’d moved the house back from the sidewalk might have been the reason the house was still standing at all; the rush of water had been deflected by just enough.Then he thought about his van, and the truck.He sat still for a minute on the top stair, trying to breathe slowly, trying to gauge whether the water was still rising, and how quickly.It seemed to have slowed.He went back to check on Lucy.Lucy seemed to be hyperventilating and SJ sat with her in the wobbly candlelight and told her to look at him, which she did, and he said, “We are going to be allright.The worst is over.We are going to be allright.”She looked into his eyes, and nodded her head and said, “Where Wesley at?”“Wesley is allright.He’s in Gentilly by his friend.Wesley allright.Do you hear me?”She nodded, exaggeratedly, and then she began sobbing in his arms, shaking, and SJ held his older sister in his arms, and after no more than a few seconds, she said, “I be allright, SJ.I will be allright.But stay with me, don’t leave me here.”“Nobody going nowhere,” he said.“Nobody going nowhere.”8Craig woke up slowly, feeling as if he had had no rest at all, as if he were on a hospital gurney in a tank…some kind of tank…he drifted…then, suddenly, all awake, his heart pounding, he sat up, almost losing his balance out of the narrow, plastic-banded chaise lounge where he had spent the night, in the humid chlorine funk of the swimming pool room.Alice’s chaise was empty, as was Malcolm’s; Annie was dead asleep in hers.A sharp pain shot down through Craig’s shoulder blade; inhaling made the pain wow up.Your regulation sleep-in-the-wrong-position muscle freak-out.He stood up carefully.Around the cement floor that surrounded the rectangular pool were maybe fifteen other families in various attitudes of sleep.His watch said 8:30.The journalist in him felt as he did on the morning after a big and heated election, the itch to get the results.He wanted some coffee badly, and even worse he wanted to see the news, find out what had happened with the storm.But he couldn’t leave Annie there.He debated whether to awaken her.“I’m awake, Daddy.”Startled, he looked down at Annie, who was in exactly the same position as before, eyes closed, and wondered if it could have been someone else’s child talking.He kept looking at her, then he looked around the immediate area.He was tired.“Here, Daddy.”He looked back at Annie, quickly, and she seemed, again, unmoved, except for a smile that she was trying to hide, before she broke up in giggles.“You little fibber,” Craig said, bending down and tickling her.That was another thing he loved about his daughter: She joked, he thought, like a New Orleanian.Now she squealed at the tickling and Craig noticed someone nearby shift in their sleep and open their eyes, and Craig quickly stopped and said, “Shhhh…” to his daughter.He sat down on the chaise next to her.“Did you get any sleep?” he whispered to her.“Yes.I was scared for a while but then I went to sleep.Malcolm went to sleep right away.”“Malcolm can sleep through anything except a normal night.”“Where’s Mommy?”“I don’t know.You want to go find her?”Annie nodded and sat up and they started off to the exit, but Craig stopped, looking back at their stuff.“I don’t think anyone’s going to bother our stuff, do you?”Looking back at their little camp, Annie shrugged.Craig went back and retrieved his cell phone; Alice had apparently taken her Big Bag…They could go.Everybody there was in the same situation.Upstairs they found Alice standing in a group of people watching one of several TVs positioned throughout the lobby, where the news was being reported live from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.“Where’s Malcolm?” Craig said.Alice pointed to the couch right behind her, where Malcolm was totally immersed in a small truck that he was driving into an abyss between two cushions.“It missed New Orleans,” Alice said.“At the last minute it jogged east.”“What?” Craig said.“It missed the city completely?”“Not completely,” Alice said.“But it was weaker than they thought it would be, and it went off to the east.”All around the lobby people—black and white, young and old—ambled around, drinking coffee and eating doughnuts, or lolled, asleep, in sleeping bags on the floor and on couches.Around the televisions, denser groups of people sat, surfacing from sleep, hopeful that the storm had in fact, like so many others, missed the city [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]