Zane and the Hurricane: A Story of Katrina

  My eyes gradually adjust to the dimness. The attic is hot as an oven and really small. In the center, where the roof peaks, there’s barely enough room for me to turn over and crawl. Except for a few boards near the center of the attic there’s no floor over the rafters. Slip and your knee will go straight through the ceiling, just like in the cartoons.

  Bandy barks at the opening. I peek over the edge into the hallway below and see something so amazing and so awful that despite the terrible heat, a chill goes through me.

  The water is still swirling into the house, still rising. Another few feet and it will pour up into the attic.

  We’re trapped, me and Bandy. Trapped in the attic with no way to get out. Then I remember something Grammy said when she was telling the story about escaping the flood.

  Henry brung him a little hatchet in case we had to chop through the roof.

  Too bad I didn’t think of that. Not that I’d ever seen a hatchet around the house. But what if they left it up in the attic for the next storm? What if the hatchet has been laying in the dark all those years, waiting for me to find it?

  I scramble over the rafters, searching for the hatchet.

  Crawling over rafters on my belly, I run my fingertips into every dark corner of the attic, willing the hatchet to be there. Wanting it so much I can almost feel the weight of the handle, the heft of the blade.

  Wanting doesn’t make it so. My desperate fingers find only dust and splinters.

  Meanwhile, underneath us, the house shifts like a weary old wrestler fighting to stay in one place, timbers moaning as the water presses from all sides. Every now and then something heavy bumps into the side of the house and everything shudders.

  I’m worried the old building will twist off the foundation and tip over, drowning us for sure. But the house doesn’t tip over. And despite the gurgling splashes from below, the water hasn’t come up into the attic. Not quite. It gets within a foot of the opening, close enough to reach out and touch. And then it pauses, as if deciding whether or not to swallow us in one big gulp.

  Don’t know how long I’m lying there staring at the water level, but it feels like hours. Long enough to think about all the things I’ve done wrong lately. Flying down to Smellyville in the first place — that was a mistake right there. Only if I never came down I’d never have met my great-grandmother or heard her stories about the old days, or seen the pictures of my father when he was my age. Him and his little brother that ran around with bath towels for capes, pretending to be Superman. And hearing Grammy sing like an angel, that was pretty cool. Her fussing over me and everything. But where did it get me, all that stupid family stuff? Trapped in an attic, that’s where! And then of course the stupidest mistake off all, letting Bandy jump out of the van window. I should have been holding him tight. Dogs jump out of cars all the time, I knew that. What was I thinking? And leaving Grammy stuck in evacuation traffic without even saying good-bye, that was a really terrible thing to do. So terrible I can’t stand to think about it, but there’s no way to stop my brain from going over it again and again, every mistake, every stupid thing I’ve ever done or said. My brain won’t shut up, it keeps going, Zane Dupree you are a fool, you are the dumbest human being on Planet Earth. You left your cell phone in the van and ran away to save your stupid dog and you can’t even save your own stupid self. What were you thinking? Now look what you’ve done, crawled up into an attic to die like some drowned rat. You haven’t got so much as a candy bar in your pocket and no water to drink and it must be a hundred degrees and getting hotter.

  The floodwater smells like when the toilet backs up, only worse.

  Way worse.

  I’m surrounded by filthy brown water and nothing to drink. Nice going you moron, you crud bucket, you dumb-butt dipstick doodlebrain. What’s that rhyme my mom used to read me? Water water everywhere nor any drop to drink? Something about being on a boat in the middle of the ocean and running out of drinking water. That’s sort of how the attic feels, like me and Bandy are shipwrecked on an ocean so hot the water is almost boiling. Like all the hottest days of the hottest summers have combined in that little attic.

  Sweat drips from the end of my nose, from my chin, from my scalp and hair, from my eyes.

  Hot, hot, hot. Unbearably, unbelievably hot.

  Bandy is panting so hard I’m afraid he might die of the heat. Did you know dogs can’t sweat? The only way they have to keep cool is panting, and it doesn’t work as well as sweating. I know because somebody left a dog in a car at the mall last year, when it got to be a hundred degrees in the parking lot, and the poor dog died. So it can happen, I’m not making it up.

  Finally I get sick of waiting for the smelly water to go down — it hasn’t budged an inch either way — and decide to crawl over to the little vent at the end of the attic. Slants of sunlight streak through the vent, but maybe it’ll be cooler over there, that’s what I’m hoping, and at least Bandy can pant fresher air.

  “Hey, Bandy, follow me,” I urge him, my voice hoarse.

  Bandy doesn’t want to move. That’s when I really start to worry he might die if I don’t do something to help.

  Taking the dog in my arms I wriggle along the rafters on my back. The poor little guy is so overheated he can barely whimper, but seems to understand that I’m trying to help him.

  Peering through the slits of the vent I can see, what else, lots and lots of water. Water water everywhere, and all of it hot and stinky and disgusting. Sun glinting off the water feels like a hot nail pressing into my forehead, but the air near the vent is slightly cooler. Or maybe that’s my imagination, hard to tell.

  “Hey, Bandy? Feeling any better? Keep panting, boy. It’s good for you.”

  My mouth is so dry I can hardly talk, but Bandy understands and squirms closer to the vent. There’s a little air moving through the slats, but not enough to make much of a difference. Bandy watches me through one heavily lidded eye, like he can barely stay awake. He’s not even bothering to pant very much.

  That can’t be good.

  “Hey, boy. Stay awake, okay? Keep me company. That’s your job, right?”

  Exhausted by the heat, Bandy stops panting and closes his eyes.

  Do something! I urge myself.

  The idea that Bandy might not survive makes me scared and furious at the same time. I try yanking at the wooden slats, but my sweaty hands keep slipping away. I’m so mad and frustrated I want to cry. Not that it would make any difference, because my eyes are so full of salty sweat that it’s hard to see.

  My mom is always saying don’t be mad, be smart.

  Think. What’s the strongest part of the human body? Legs, Zane, legs. You know that. Use your brain. And your feet.

  I swivel around on the boards and gather as much strength as I’ve got left. Then I kick the vent slats with both feet, hard as I can.

  The slats crack.

  I never knew breaking wood could sound so good.

  Three more kicks and all the slats are cleared from the vent.

  Right away I can feel slightly cooler air flowing into the attic. I position Bandy so his head is sticking out of the open vent and he perks up a little, his pink tongue hanging down. They say dogs don’t smile, but I swear that little dog is smiling at me.

  In a few minutes he’s even got enough strength to bark.

  After all the flooding, the water has become perfectly still, like a dirty mirror. In the reflection me and Bandy are looking down from the open vent to the surface of the water just below. Has it gone down at all? Maybe. Or is that wishful thinking?

  Bandy barks again.

  What’s he barking at? From this angle the only things clearly visible are the peaks of other roofs sticking above the water and floating branches and hunks of junk that might be parts of ripped-apart houses, and the terrible hot reflection of the sun, burning like a blazing white fire in the water. And far away, in silhouette against the sunlight, something gliding by.

  Might be a boat.
r />   Might be people in the boat, one big, one small.

  It’s there for a moment, way out beyond the roofs, and then gone, swallowed up by the blazing sun.

  I try to shout, but my throat is so dry and raw that nothing much comes out. I croak a pathetic little “help help” that sounds more like a whisper than a shout.

  No one could hear me, certainly not that far away. But Bandy keeps barking, regular as clockwork, and finally I get so tired of trying to shout, trying to make my voice work, that I fall asleep — or maybe I pass out.

  In my dream I’m back in my own room in New Hampshire and the air feels like molten syrup. Syrup so hot and heavy that I can’t move. My mom is in the next room, but she can’t hear me because the shout is deep inside me and it won’t come out. I try panting like a dog but that doesn’t work because my tongue is so dry it feels as crispy as a slice of fried bacon.

  Somewhere far, far away a dog is barking.

  “Yo, boy! Hey! Wake up!”

  My eyelids are sticky, but I manage to crack them open. There in the opening, holding the edges of the vent with both hands, is a skinny black girl with big dark eyes and wild hair.

  The girl with the wild hair says, “Hey, you stupid or what? Wasn’t for this little dog nobody know you in there.”

  I try to answer back, but the words get stuck in my throat.

  Another voice, much deeper, goes, “Don’t mind Malvina. She a little wasp that keep on stingin’.”

  My eyes slowly come into sharper focus. A battered green canoe floats in the water just below the vent opening. In one end, waving her thin arms, is the girl with the big eyes and the wild hair. About my age but smaller than me, and wicked skinny. In the other end, keeping balance with a paddle, sits a calm-looking, light-skinned black man with clunky, black-framed eyeglasses and scrawny dreads poking out from under a straw top hat. Like a Mad Hatter kind of hat, the kind with a curvy brim. There’s a pink feather in the hatband, sticking up like an exclamation point.

  “It was Malvina heard the dog,” the man explains in a rumbly, musical voice. “The child got ears like a bat.”

  “I ain’t no bat!” she protests, folding her arms across her skinny chest.

  “All it mean, dawlin’, you got good ears,” he explains. “Bat can hear a pin drop.”

  “Ain’t no dawlin’, neither!”

  He smiles and shakes his head as if to say, see what I have to put up with? but in a way that makes me think he doesn’t mind. “Best get you down,” he suggests, paddling the canoe alongside the building. “Must be hot enough in there to boil yo brain.”

  Getting into the canoe proves to be difficult. I back out through the vent with my legs kicking air. Bandy barks and whines and licks at my hands like he’s worried he’ll be left behind. Strong hands grab hold of my feet and guide me down as the deep voice of the man in the funny hat tells me to keep calm, that I’m doing fine.

  “There now. You good.”

  All of a sudden I’m crouched in the middle of the tippy canoe, holding on for dear life.

  The skinny girl, Malvina, she’s grinning at me, showing the gap in her teeth. “Don’t fall in,” she teases, full of mischief. “The water got snakes.”

  “Snakes?”

  She nods happily, as if snakes in the water is her idea of a good time.

  “Don’t worry about no snakes,” says the man in the funny hat. “All you gotta do, stay in the boat.”

  “Ain’t a boat,” Malvina insists. “This a canoe.”

  The man shrugs and says, “The young lady happy to point out any mistake.”

  Bandy is barking like mad, wanting to follow me into the canoe. The thing is, now that I’m sitting down and holding on to the sides, I’m worried that reaching for the dog will tip us over. And the idea of snakes, even snakes I can’t see, has me spooked.

  The man in the hat seems to understand and goes, “Let me think what we can do.”

  He’s trying to maneuver the canoe alongside the edge of the roof when all of a sudden Bandy gives a mighty yelp of frustration and launches himself through the air.

  The little dog hits me square in the chest. I catch him and then we’re tipping over. Me and Bandy and the girl and the man with the hat, we all splash backward into the water as the canoe slips out from under us.

  Bandy, totally freaked, climbs onto my head, pushing me under, into that dark, snaky water.

  When I come back up, coughing and spitting, I’m more scared than the dog. Because I can’t see the girl. And all that shows of the man with the rumbly voice is the funny top hat with the pink feather, bobbing in the water like a toy.

  Later, when I’d had time to think about it, the thing that impressed me most about the man with the hat was how he kept so calm. I was all frantic, convinced I’d drowned two people, but by the time my eyes cleared he’d already lifted the girl up to the roof and was reaching out a hand to help me.

  “No big thang,” he says, shaking water from his dreads. “We gots a little wet is all.”

  Like it happens every day, being tipped out of a canoe. And the weird thing is, the cause of it all, my stupid dog Bandy, he’s balanced on the peak of the roof with his tail wagging. Shook the water off and doesn’t even look wet. It’s only us dumb humans that are soaked to the skin.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, spitting out dirty water. “Really really sorry.”

  The man has got hold of the swamped canoe and pulls it under the eave. “Accidents happen,” he says. “No apology required. Okay, next thing I’m fixin’ to get my hat and then bail out our transportation. You children keep hold this roof till I’m done. We good?”

  He’s looking firm at the girl.

  “Good,” she says with a nod.

  He scoops up his straw top hat, takes the feather from the brim and holds it in his teeth, and uses the hat to bail out the canoe. When he’s done he slips the feather back in the brim band, puts the hat on top of his head, and shows us how to slide down the roof into the canoe while he holds it steady.

  When we’re safe in the canoe, the girl in the front and me in the middle holding Bandy, the man hoists himself into the stern of the canoe, making it look easy. After he’s settled he opens the latch of a little storage compartment, takes out a plastic bottle of water, and hands it to me.

  “Sip at it slow,” he suggests. “Maybe po’ a little in yo hand, let that dog lick it up.”

  Warm water never tasted so good. I nod thank you and Bandy makes a grateful whimper.

  “There now, we good to go,” the man says, straightening the clunky, black-framed eyeglasses on his slightly bent nose. “Keep a sharp lookout for my paddle. Can’t have drifted too far.”

  That’s another thing for me to feel sorry about, that the paddle got lost when we tipped over, but before I can really get to worrying about it the girl shouts, “Yo! Over there!”

  The man dips his hands and arms into the water, like he’s swimming the canoe along, and slowly strokes over to where she’s pointing. Sure enough he finds the paddle, barely visible in the dark water.

  “Just like Christmas mornin’,” he says, picking it up. “Okay, we back on mission. Next stop, someplace dry.”

  “Where we goin’, Tru?” the girl asks.

  “Place I know.” Then he turns to me and says, “I’m Trudell Manning. Some folks call me Tru. Miss Malvina Rawlins you already know. Me and Malvina, we family, most. Not blood, but family just the same.”

  “You my blood, Tru!” Malvina pipes up.

  “Whatever you say, dawlin’.”

  Then he looks at me patiently, as if waiting for me to respond.

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry. I’m Zane Dupree.”

  “Dupree? That a local name, but you ain’t.”

  “No, sir, I’m not from around here.”

  “Makes no difference,” he says with a shrug. “You one of us now.”

  He dips the paddle and the canoe begins to move along, gathering speed. We glide away from what’s left of Gramm
y’s house and into another world, or so it seems. A world of rooftops poking above the flood like little black islands, and trees clawing up through the water like the gnarled hands of the drowned. A world where the water and the sky melt together, until you can’t tell where one begins and the other ends.

  The air feels wet and heavy and stinks of sewer and oil and smoke. Somewhere, something is burning, but we can’t see what, only the smoke like a gray smear in the sky.

  We glide along for a while and then the skinny girl, Malvina Rawlins, she turns to me and announces, out of the blue, “Tru a famous musician.”

  “Oh yeah? Cool.”

  “He play trumpet, cornet, tuba, trombone,” Malvina says, ticking the instruments off on her fingers. “Anything brass, Tru play it real good.”

  “Not trombone,” he says, chuckling.

  “I heard you!” she exclaims.

  He pauses to rest his paddle. “For your amusement, dawlin’. But the fact is, I’m not a slide man. Trumpet, cornet, pocket trumpet, yes. Tuba in a pinch. But not trombone. Not really.”

  “Could if you wanted!” she says, expression triumphant.

  He seems pleased by the notion. “No doubt.”

  “Tru jammin’ with all the big names,” she says proudly. “He down with Wynton, Kermit, Junior. Everybody!”

  Mr. Tru smiles indulgently. “Studio work,” he explains to me. “Wynton Marsalis, Kermit Ruffins, Harry Connick, Jr., Randy Newman, the Neville Brothers. Anybody needs a horn, I’m there. But backing up famous musicians don’t make me famous. Wish it did.”

  “You famous to me!” Malvina insists.

  He grins, dips the paddle into the filthy water, and says he doesn’t know how far we’ll have to go, exactly. “Flood change everything,” he explains, glancing around at the landscape of submerged buildings. “We got to feel our way along till we get to a place I recognize.”

  “So we lost?” Malvina asks, teasing.

  “Naw, naw,” he says. “We not lost. No suh. Got a compass in my head always points me right.”

  “True dat,” says Malvina, nodding.