Hurricane preparations had transformed the Moreau house from a comfortable family home into a wooden fort under siege.
Footlockers, ice chests, and old suitcases lined the second-floor porch. The Moreaus’ newer truck and the General’s pickup were backed in near the front stairs. Under the house, the heavy wooden tables had been turned on their sides to serve as a fence, corralling all manner of large and small outdoor items. Propane tanks had been gathered up and lashed to foundation posts.
Captain Moreau met us as we drove up. He looked at my bandaged head but didn’t say anything to me.
“I told everyone we’d gather as soon as we all got here,” the Captain said to He-Gene. “Before we go up, help me run this cable around the outside of the tables.”
The General met Phil and Adrienne, each carrying a suitcase, coming down the stairs. I had to stand still once I got out of the truck to get my balance. Phil kept her eyes on me as the three talked. She put down the case she was carrying and came over.
“How’s that head feeling?” She tucked in the bandage above my ears.
“It’s b----etter. Still a little wobbly on my feet.”
She smiled. “Not too wobbly, I hear, to take care of Jimmy LaBue and his fancy boat.”
“Everything happened sort of fast.”
Phil had changed into a tank top. For the first time I saw the bruises and scrapes on her neck and shoulder.
“Is that where I fell back into you? Are you okay?”
“A little bruised, but I’m not so sore that I couldn’t catch me a swampy if I needed to.” She took me by the arm and guided me to the stairs. “Take your hands out of your pockets and I’ll steady you from behind. You need to go sit down.”
I grabbed the stair rails quickly so Phil wouldn’t see my hands shaking.
* * *
No one interrupted Captain Moreau as he laid out the evacuation plan like it was something he did every morning at the breakfast table over sausage sandwiches. His veteran-river-pilot voice was calm and direct.
He and the General would take the Rooster upriver to the barge. He-Gene needed to leave for the Federal Building in New Orleans as soon as they could get a waterproof tarp over his boat and its contents. She-Gene and Adrienne would drive the two pickups. The two brothers would ride with Adrienne in her truck and the two sisters with their mother. Since Phil knew Highway 23, she would drive my car and I would ride with her.
The idea of riding with Phil all the way to New Orleans appealed to me.
The Captain and the General would leave on the Rooster as soon as it could be loaded and the house secured. They would need the extra time in New Orleans to add heavier mooring lines to the barge and put the Rooster in a spiderweb rig to ride out the storm surge.
All gasoline stations this side of New Orleans would be out of fuel. Everyone should top off their tanks from the gasoline cans under the house. The traffic on Highway 23 might thin out a little an hour or so after dark. Leaving then should get everyone to the barge by sun-up and at least eight hours ahead of the brunt of the hurricane.
“Long night ahead for everybody, but we can sleep tomorrow,” the Captain said. “Any questions?”
Phil had been silent.
“Does this Betsy have the makings of a bad one, Daddy?”
“Coming back in this morning on the Rooster, I saw deer and wild pigs moving to higher ground and gators passing up good meals right in front of them. That speaks to me more than the weather forecasters.”
Captain Moreau stood. He had a final word for the group. “When I was piloting years ago I talked to a freighter captain who lost half his crew to the first Hurricane Betsy that hit the Caribbean in ’56. We won’t trifle with another hurricane with that name.”
He-Gene turned to She-Gene. “If you haven’t packed the coffee pot yet, Sister, I’ve got a Thermos I could fill. And can I talk to you outside, Henri?” The two men went out the front door.
Sounding much like her husband, She-Gene took over and began her own set of instructions to the family.
“You little ones get a trash can each for your clothes and belongings. Daddy has them cleaned out and drying under the house. Miss Adrienne will help you pack them. Phil, the best of the kitchen can go in our two big washtubs.”
I stood with the help of a chair. “What can I do?”
“Henri asked me to pack up the radio,” the General said. “You can help me with that if you feel like it.”
“Good to go.” My head throbbed no matter if I was standing or sitting. I had thought about asking He-Gene for another pain shot before he left but I wanted to stay as clearheaded as I could. I kept going over the events of the day to remind myself where I had been, where I was at present, and where I was headed.
Everyone — the Moreau family, the General, Adrienne — moved in that no-nonsense manner like a newsroom on deadline. Short conversations took place on the run and were all about the business at hand. Outside, Captain Moreau wrestled sheets of plywood up the stairs in the gradually increasing wind gusts. He nailed them in place over the windows. It was the same plywood that the dancers had done the Cajun two-step on just the night before at the fais do-do.
“Before we unplug, we’ll give the Coast Guard weather another listen,” the General said.
Betsy’s eye had passed just south of Miami with sustained winds of 140 miles an hour. The Overseas Highway and its 42 bridges to Key West were underwater. The Category 3 hurricane was picking up intensity again as it headed on a northwesterly track in the warmer waters of the gulf.
The General switched off the shortwave radio. “Those are our marching orders,” he said to everyone.
The newsroom had begun to feel like a family to me in Memphis, and I felt the same thing in Venice, Louisiana, in the Moreau house that was calmly going about the business of preparing for the worst.
* * *
The rain came out of the south, light but steady. Phil drove to the marina with the General and the Captain seated on the lowered tailgate of the truck that was packed with food from the Moreaus’ freezer and refrigerator. I had discarded my bloody clothes at the house and changed into a pair of clean shorts and a shirt that belonged to the Captain. I also had on a pair of his old deck shoes, which were at least two sizes too big for me.
Most of the charter boats had already left their slips for safer harbors. Other boat owners, gambling that Venice would escape a direct hit, simply added extra dock lines. Phil explained how a spiderweb rig worked, but I had trouble following her. I had the sense she was talking to me to see if my brain was working the way it should, and I couldn’t be sure it was.
Captain Moreau jumped off the tailgate before the truck stopped. It seemed to be a family trait. He came to the passenger-side window.
“The office saved me some block ice,” he said. “You two run over there in the truck and bring me what they have.”
Captain Moreau looked at me. “You probably need to let your folks up in Memphis know you’re okay.”
“I should.” My answer was on the sheepish side. The thought of contacting my parents had not crossed my mind for some reason. They would have read about the hurricane in the afternoon’s Press-Scimitar.
“Tell Buster to let Vic have a long-distance line and to put it on my account. If the phone lines are tied up, see if they can still send a telegram.”
Phil backed the truck up to the marina icehouse. Buster met her and then came over to my window.
“I don’t knowed what you and Jimmy LaBue had going on, but I’ll say you did what most of us been wantin’ to do for a long time,” Buster said. “Might have something to do with that bandage on your head, mightn’t it?”
I nodded. “Long story.”
“All the long-distance lines are jammed. You want me to try to do you a Western Union?”
I had read a few telegrams that came to my father but had never gone about the process of sending one. I liked how they were written with the extra words left out.
In the office, Buster gave me a Western Union pad and a pencil. After I filled in my home address and composed my message, he converted it to telegram talk and read it back to me.
“I’m safe. STOP. Back tomorrow PM. STOP. Lots to tell. STOP. Victor. END.”
“How’s that sound?” Buster asked.
I liked the short words and the no-fooling-around of the sentences, but something was missing.
“Can you add ‘love’ in front of Victor?”
“You bet. I’ll get it off straightway to Memphis. And listen, you come back to see us if’n old Betsy girl don’t blow us away. From what I hear, Jimmy LaBue ain’t gonna be round no more to bother nobody.” Buster laughed. “Hooo-boy. I bet he feels like he done been crotch bit by an alligator, sure.”
* * *
Phil scurried around the Rooster Tale, helping prepare it for the night trip upriver to New Orleans. The Captain asked her to build a line-and-spring rig so their small boat could be towed safely behind the Rooster. Still not steady enough on my feet to be walking on a dock, I sat on a nearby bench in the drizzle and watched her nimble fingers work.
I wanted to make small talk.
“Think you could teach me to tie kn----ots like that?”
“You mean they won’t teach knot-tying in that fancy college of yours?” She smiled but never took her eyes off her work. “You may be smart with books, but I don’t know if you college boys can handle a double running bowline.”
I collected Phil’s sassy talk like I had collected Mr. Spiro’s grand words. I wanted to have them close to me when it came time for me to leave.
The lights on the wharf came on. Captain Moreau jumped to the dock near me with a light windbreaker in his hand.
“Take this,” he said. “I don’t know if we’ll have a chance to talk in New Orleans, but I’d like for you to come down to visit us again and we’ll make it a point to see you don’t get so banged up next time.”
He stuck out his weathered hand. “I admire your standing up to that no-count LaBue boy. Gene will see that young scoundrel gets what’s due him. Most people think my brother-in-law just sits in Pilottown and talks on his squawk box all day, but nothing goes on out there on the river that he doesn’t know about.”
I fumbled to zip the jacket but couldn’t line up the two halves of the zipper. The Captain fastened it for me.
“By the way, I put the urn in the front seat of your car,” he said. “No sense to lose track of it now after all you’ve been through with it.”
Captain Moreau stepped on the Rooster, hauled in the gangplank, and climbed into the pilot’s chair on the main deck. The Rooster’s engines rumbled to life.
“How’s your fuel?” Phil shouted to her father.
“Topped it off as soon as we came in.”
Phil looked at me over her shoulder. “Should have known better than to ask.”
“Throw the tow line to the General when I clear the dock,” the Captain ordered. “And make sure everybody gets out of here on time. I’m puttin’ you in charge.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Phil said.
We watched the Rooster Tale pull out of the dock area and turn north with the wind into the main channel. The General used a bright spotlight to scan the dark river ahead. The little boat, the one that Phil and I survived the river in, followed the Rooster like a puppy on a leash.
The rain picked up.
“That jacket needs to go over your head to keep your bandage dry,” Phil said. “You heard the Captain. I’m in charge.”
“Okay… I mean… aye, aye, Captain.”
Phil tied the windbreaker around my head, took my arm, and helped me to the truck.
“Probably no sense in telling you this now, but out there on the river I could see straight into the white of your skull bone.” She tightened her grip on my arm. “Coming back up the river, I never prayed so hard to my Jesus in all my born days.”
“How d----id you know to make that mudpack for my head?”
“The bottom mud in the river is about as clean as mud gets… and the old-timers say it has healing properties. That’s what we use to patch up dogs when they get in fights or when gators get hold of them.” She smiled at me. “Woof, woof.”
Riding in the truck, I tested myself again to come up with a manifest of my condition and emotions. My head in the tight bandage ached. I was unable to walk without wobbling in shoes that didn’t fit. A hurricane was bearing down on me. I was happy to be sitting beside Phil. Juxtaposition.
* * *
Only 24 hours before, the Moreau house had been a place of music, dance, delicious food, and laughter.
Through the truck’s windshield wipers, I saw the sad boarded-up windows and the radio antenna lying flat on the porch. Phil’s old motorbike and the family’s five bicycles were lashed to the porch railing. The Moreaus’ oldest truck was parked next to the concrete pad under the house, standing a lonely guard.
Footlockers and garbage cans with lids roped down filled the bed of Adrienne’s truck. More containers were on the ground waiting to be packed in the pickup that Phil and I drove up in.
“I’ll load the truck and then go top off your gas tank.” Phil looked over her shoulder as she backed in near the stairs.
“I’ll be h----appy to pay you for the gas.”
Phil turned toward me and leaned her head on the steering wheel.
“Lord, trust my words. I’ve never met anyone like my man from Memphis… and I know I never will again.”
I was happy with the “man from Memphis” part, but the “never will again” didn’t sound right to me. She was out of the truck and running while I was trying to make sense of what she meant by “never will again.”
Adrienne came down the stairs, her knees banging against a garbage can.
“Let me help with that.” I stepped out of the truck.
“You stay where you are. The General filled me in on the day you’ve had.”
I leaned against the tailgate.
“Seems like you’ve made the most out of your trip to Louisiana,” Adrienne said. “The General and I wondered what you were going to think of Phil if you got the chance to meet her.”
Adrienne didn’t ask a question, but she waited for an answer anyway.
“I guess I can say I’ve n----ever met anyone like her.” No way was I going to add “and never will again.”
Phil held my gym bag and yelled down to me from the porch.
“Do you have your car keys on you?”
I pulled the keys from my front pocket and dangled them. She ran down the stairs and grabbed them out of my hand.
“Show me how to crank this little doodle-bug of yours.”
Before I could get to the car, she had it started and in reverse. She backed it around to the side of the house near some red gasoline cans.
I went to the passenger side and saw the urn in the seat. When I reached down to try to pick up the typewriter from the floorboard, I lost my balance. I turned, leaned against the car, and eased myself to the ground.
“Let me do that.” Phil put down her gasoline can. “Tell me where you want everything.”
“P----ut the typewriter in the trunk with my gym bag. The urn can go under my legs.”
“I’m taking you up to lie down until we get everything ready to go. You’re wobbling like you just drank a six-pack of Dixie.”
“At least I’m not talking f----unny.”
Phil didn’t smile until my smile gave her the okay. We were getting to understand each other like that.