All night long people cried.
Out yonder in the sawgrass, voices called names, as each survivor was calling the name of another who couldn’t be found.
“Louise.”
“Jack … Jack … Jack …”
“Shirley May?”
“J.W.”
A child’s voice kept calling, “Rusty. Here … Rusty.”
The sawgrass was taller than a man, and razor sharp, and I could hear people scream when cut, or trapped. The vacant building I was trying to sleep in was listing like it was drunk and fixing to fall. Every so often the rafters, slowly drying, would creak in the dark.
I held my cat close, gently stroking her fur to make it fluffy, and telling her that she could stop trembling. She didn’t.
It rained.
When morning came, I crawled off the pile of boards I’d slept on, and carried my cat outside. Again, there was no land anywhere, but the water seemed shallower. Only ankle deep.
I saw a long wagon.
Two men were working, loading bodies on the flatbed. For the most part, the dead people were without clothing. One of the men was on his knees, digging another corpse up out of the mucky water and sand. “Oh no,” he final said. “It ain’t Margaret.” Then he looked all around as if his Margaret would appear.
Shovels were scraping.
Anyone who could find a shovel was using it, hoping to find a missing friend or relative. Other men were tearing boards loose from destroyed buildings, for coffin lumber.
Everyone searched for food. Few found it.
Every house had been destroyed. Many a roof had been ripped off; on other houses, the black tarpaper hung down in shreds, tore and twisted. No house was where it had first been built.
I helped a lady dig. We pawed wet mud with our hands. She was very old, quite weak, and kept calling a name. “Loomis … Loomis.” We never found him, but while I was helping her look, she died. Right there, not ten feet away from me. She lied herself down in the mud and died with her eyes and mouth open.
A lot of the wasted wood was so ruined by the hurricane that the timbers appeared to have got snarled like yarn by a kitten. There weren’t enough plank for all the coffins that was needed, so the dead were disposed of another way.
Piles of humanity got doused with coal oil, and then set on fire. Thick black smoke was billowing up from the mounds of cremating bodies. The smell made me gag.
As the water slowly retreated, I found what once had been a store. The water-rotted food smelled real bad, but it didn’t chase me away. Instead, I searched for something to eat, for me and my cat. It was all under some fallen trees, custard apples mostly, and deep in the wet soil. My hands raked the mud like a hungry dog after a buried bone.
I located some canned food.
No labels. They’d washed away for keeps.
Uncaring as to what kind of food I’d find, I busted open a steelplate can by pounding it on the upper edge of a sharp coral rock. It mashed open. The cat was into it fast. Watching her eat made me jealous, almost crazy, so I pulled her away and licked at what she’d been licking.
It was a kind of potted meat.
The cat come back, and we both finished it, without fighting each other.
Can after can I pounded open by the same method. Sweet potatoes, corn, stewed tomato, turnips, and applesauce.
We ate enough. And hid the rest.
Then we slept over the unopened cans, to protect them from the other people. Doing it, I knowed it was wrong, and telled myself so, without words. But nobody was going to steal my food. It was mine!
Waking up, we ate again. The cat wouldn’t leave me. She was smart enough to know that I was warmth and food and safety. And that I petted her. She wouldn’t drink the flood water. Not a lap.
As I whacked open another can, white drops of liquid splattered on me. It was canned milk.
“Cat,” I said, “Lady Luck is smiling your way, because I don’t like this stuff enough to hog all of it.”
The cat did.
Right then, I decided on her name, and tried it out on her, petting her some so she’d stretch out and sleep. “Lady Luck,” I called her, because there weren’t many a lady near Okeechobee that had survive with the good luck of my cat. Perhaps she’d shared her luck with me.
More people showed up and held a prayer meeting, thanking God that we’d got spared. We was still alive, above water.
Other people come.
City people, on a bus from Miami.
They didn’t come to help. Only to stare at us, and gawk at all our muddy misfortune. They pointed at the stacks of smoldering human bodies and took pictures with a camera machine.
Every day, people in clean clothes come on a bus to look at us. They never brung food, or water, or the medicine stuff that a ample of folks needed. I couldn’t believe that all they come for was to sightsee our burning dead.
All of the tourist people wore shoes.
I looked for Coo Coo. Nobody ever heard of him. Or of Delilah, or Our Father John, or any of the Sisters. People didn’t talk too much. A lot of the folks ducked in and out of the crushed houses, looking for their belongings, or somebody else’s to use. People looted such silly stuff. I saw a woman, with hardly any clothes on herself, hurry out of a house with a fancy needlepoint pillow, and a birdcage with no bird inside it. The man with her carried a baseball glove, a fake pinky flamingo, and a cracked mirror. Another toted a clothes tree. But nobody owned any clothes to hang on it.
The Red Cross people come.
They worked really hard, and long hours, to set up canteens and emergency centers, passing out free food, and water you could actual drink. Also some clothing. The Red Cross lady give me a fresh shirt that was too large, but I thanked her anyhow, about ten times. It smelled clean.
I don’t guess I can honest say that I’d liked everything the Red Crosserites give me. They stuck a long needle to my arm and squirted some serum into me so’s I wouldn’t take sick with malaria. So they said. Then, while I was getting over the hurt of that needle, a second Cross lady pumped me another jolt. She said I wouldn’t get typhoid fever.
Lady Luck didn’t get a needle at all. And, even so, she didn’t get sick as I did that night. I didn’t know which needle had given me the midnight misery. Next morning, I had me the trots. My backside burned like a smudge pot and I throwed up until I dry heaved. If all this wasn’t worse than malaria or typhoid, you’d really have to convince me.
I overheared one of the Red Cross ladies say, “There’s no electricity, no telephones, and no plumbing. It’s a miracle that the few who are still alive don’t go insane.”
More rain.
It was near to impossible to find a dry place, so, as a result Lady Luck and I were wet, day after day. Everyone was. The Red Cross people had looked pretty and neat when they’d first arrive. Now, most of them turned as soiled and tired as us rest.
But they almost always brewed hot coffee. It tasted really good, and had a way of making me forget how wet we were.
I didn’t get to know anybody’s name. People would come to where we were, dig in the mud for their missing relatives, call out names, and getting no answer, then leave. The only friendly face I saw again was my big colored lady who’d saved the white child and white dog, Hyacinth Day. The dog and child were gone. I hoped they’d both found their families.
She was alone.
“Hello, Mrs. Day,” I said.
“Hello.”
Made no reason to ask if she’d located Wilbert, her man. Her empty eyes told me no.
“How’s your cat?”
“Good. Her name is Lady Luck.”
Mrs. Day petted my cat. Then she wrapped her arms around both me and Lady Luck, holding us close to her. She didn’t smell bad at all. Only like somebody’s mother.
“We have food,” I said. “Come on.”
Mrs. Day wept.