Hurricane Song

Oh, when the sun begins to shine
Oh, when the sun begins to shine
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the sun begins to shine

Katrina had finally run out of steam, and the sunlight poured through the holes in the roof of the Superdome. Then the noise inside rose up louder than it had ever been. People a couple of sections over were grabbing all their things and running into the corridor.

Almost as soon as he’d said it, there was a squad of soldiers by the exit sign behind our section getting people into a line. Then just as fast, they started sending everyone down the stairs. The Superdome was shaking with footsteps. I picked up the duffel bag with Pop’s and Uncle Roy’s horns inside, while they took the rest of our stuff and most of Fess’s, too.

Cyrus’s daughter and her two girls had joined up with Preacher Culver and his family. They were all still getting their things together. Uncle Roy and me looked at each other like maybe we should wait for them. But there was no slowing down Pop.

I saw Cyrus’s granddaughters and thought about what Katrina had cost them. I didn’t know who they could grow up to blame or sue—the soldiers, the governor, or even the president of the United States. I was thinking how even the Supreme Court wouldn’t be high enough. That maybe they’d have a beef directly with God for sending the storm and making their skin the color that didn’t get saved fast enough.

Then I looked down at the football field. Even under all the ripped papers, water-soaked cardboard, and piles of garbage, it was still the brightest green I’d ever laid eyes on. But I knew when I finally made it to the city’s championship game, that field wouldn’t feel the same under my feet as it did the first time. It couldn’t— not after everything that happened here.

We started down the stairs so close on each other’s heels you’d think we were chained together. There was shit smeared across the wall of the first landing. Everybody turned their noses and had to lean hard the other way not to brush up against it.

“They oughta knock it down to the ground after what people went through in this place,” said Pop, breathing through his mouth.

We hit the big open hall at the bottom and saw the doors the soldiers were pushing people through to the outside.

The floor was slippery as ice, covered in soaked ceiling tiles that had come crashing down. People were falling everywhere in front of us. Pop grabbed Fess by the belt so he wouldn’t go down, and we practically skated to those doors.

I had both hands on the back of Pop’s shoulders when I stepped out of that tomb. The bright sunlight stung my eyes, but I couldn’t turn my head from it. Then I swallowed a breath of clean air, and I guess that was as close as you could come to being reborn.

I stopped to feel the sun on my face, and to be sure that my feet were really on solid ground. Then I focused my eyes and peeped at what Pop had already seen. The soldiers had put up barricades all around the concourse—a flat cement area surrounding the Superdome. They were guarding every exit tight. Nobody was going home. We were just being herded somewhere new. Only this pen was outside in the open. And all the worn-out, beat-down people dragging their stuff started scrambling all over again to find a spot to claim.

Then Pop pushed forward till he reached the barriers where Captain Hancock and Sergeant Scobie were stationed with a squad of soldiers. He got right up to the waist-high fence, and was almost face-to-face with them. But Pop never said a word. Instead, his eyes were fixed in the direction of Pharoahs, where we lived. That dark filthy water was everywhere. It was over the roofs of cars in some places, just below the bottom branches of trees, and people were swimming towards the Superdome.

The concourse was way above street level, so we were safe. Opposite us were maybe a hundred people who’d climbed the highway overpass to escape the water, and were trapped now on every side by the flood, yelling and waving for help.

Almost all the windows in the big office buildings were blown out. Dark smoke funneled up into the sky from probably a dozen different fires around the city, and a black rainbow stretched across New Orleans.

“No one is allowed to leave this area! We are under an evacuation order,” announced Hancock over a bullhorn. “If you do not follow our instructions and remain lawful, you will be subject to arrest. Continue to comply with our orders. Everything we do is for your protection.”

We settled in right up against the barriers, just outside the Superdome. The sun was blazing, and there was hardly any shade. The concourse sidewalk got superheated, and after a while, I could feel the bottoms of my feet burning inside my sneakers.

By eleven o’clock, people were passing out. The soldiers still hadn’t handed out any water or food, and every twenty minutes or so, Hancock picked up that bullhorn and hammered us with his voice.

Fess told Sergeant Scobie, “At least Moses was movin’ when he faced his desert. You got us pinned down here bone-dry, and with all that water in the street, too.”

“That water’s got to be near poisoned from the sewers backing up and such,” Scobie answered him. “Be patient. There are more supplies comin’, and buses to take you outta here if they can get through the flooded streets.”

“I don’t care how nasty that water is,” Pop told Uncle Roy on the side. “I’d make through it like a river rat to see what’s left of our home.”

“I’m with ya, Doc. But you heard what these soldiers said ’bout stopping anyone who wants to split,” said Uncle Roy. “They might mean business.”

There were TV reporters on the concourse doing interviews and asking all kinds of questions. Two women standing right in front of them squared off and threw punches over who owned the last of some baby formula. The cameras were on them in a second, so the soldiers rushed in and broke it up quick.

“Maybe them soldiers wouldn’t have disappeared last night if there were news cameras inside,” mocked Fess.

The reporters found a man crying, holding a young boy in his arms. First they found out what his story was. Then they put him in front of the cameras to tell it on TV.

“The water came rising up so strong you couldn’t stand,” the man said, sobbing. “I got onto the porch roof with my son and was tryin’ to pull my wife up, too. ‘You can’t hold me!’ she was screaming. ‘You can’t hold me!’ Then the current ripped her away. I don’t know where she is. She’s all I had in this world. Her and my boy.”

Right away, I started thinking about Mom, and how it didn’t take anything near that big to pull us apart. But at least I knew where she was—safe in Chicago.

That boy was staring straight down at the sidewalk the whole time, pretending not to hear. The reporter announced the woman’s name and said if anyone had information about her to please call in. But when that TV crew walked away, I couldn’t figure out if they’d done anybody any good, or just used that family’s pain to keep people watching their channel.

Maybe fifty feet from us, a soldier tipped back his canteen and took a long drink in front of everybody. That’s when a woman reached over the barrier and snatched the canteen right out of his hand.

That soldier tried to suck it up, but he couldn’t, and snapped all at once. He was about to jump the barrier to get his canteen back when a bunch of other soldiers, with their heads screwed on tighter, stopped him. Then Scobie got ahold of him and walked him off to a different section to stand guard.

When that woman was done drinking, she passed the canteen over to somebody else. Even after it was empty, people were holding it up high, waving that canteen like a trophy they’d won. Everybody was cheering for whoever held it. Then after the fuss died down and the canteen disappeared into the crowd, somebody chucked it overhand into a crowd of soldiers, crowning one in the head.

I’d played football for coaches who yelled the same kind of shit. But once you were square in the middle of a real scrap, words like that didn’t mean a thing. They were just more noise in the background.

Pop opened his gig book and started calling off the names of clubs he’d played and people he’d jammed with. Uncle Roy and Fess had something to say about almost every one, like they were watching home movies.

“Here’s a gig we did with Fess close to thirty years ago,” said Pop, showing my uncle the page. “Look how he signed his name for me—Mr. Lonnie Easterly.”

“You stuck-up bastard.” Uncle Roy grinned at Fess. “Is that what we had to call you by back then?”

“I probably said to myself, ‘Look at these two genius boys. They can’t remember who they’re playing with ’less somebody writes it down for ’em,’” Fess crowed.

Pop pulled a pen from his shirt pocket. He turned the gig book to the first blank page, and at the top wrote, August 29, 2005—Superdome—Funeral March for Cyrus Campbell.

Uncle Roy signed it, too. Then I watched Pop write out his own name, and study all three signatures sitting together.

“That might be the last gig that gets into this book for a long time,” said Pop. “But it’s the first with Miles on board.”

So I grabbed for the book like it was a joke. Only Pop let it go, without fighting me. I couldn’t believe how my hands were trembling once I had it. I held it steady and signed my name neat, so nobody would ever mistake it.

But when I picked the pen up off the paper and gave the book back to Pop for him to see, something inside me started to breathe a little easier.