Hurricane
For some reason, Sheena Ann got paranoid that I would not come with her, but I wouldn’t let a small thing like sleep deter me. Besides, I had to give the directions, knowing all the backwoods shortcuts through Northern Ohio. We took the drive, stopping for cigarettes and snacks, with not too much to report until we got off the turnpike.
We had known the exit was coming up, but we didn’t slow down enough. Somehow, the road turned more sharply than it should have. Whatever the reason, we lost control of the car.
For all intense and purposes, we really shouldn’t have lost control of the car, but I guess we were going too fast for the curve of the exit. We pulled a complete 360. The car spun in a prefect circle.
Not knowing what to say, we merely looked at each other. Though there was a cement wall on one side and a guardrail on the other, the car had hit nothing. We were both okay.
After the fact was when we both began shaking. “You need to drive, because there’s a car behind us,” I ordered. Just drive off the exit like normal.
“I’m scared to drive anymore,” her voice quivered as her foot pressed down on the pedal. “Can you believe that? I can’t even fucking believe that; that so did not just happen.”
“That was luck, but that’s also a sign of something. Natives Americans are big into that; therefore, I’m big into that. That means something, a whirlwind of sorts, but we’ll be fine.”
“You and Wayne were talkin’ about that last night, huh? What was that all about? What did he say to you?”
“He said not to give into the French. He said the Trail of Tears was much more respectable than giving into the French. For some reason though, that makes me think of Bradley, because he still really wants to get with me, like marry me even.”
“No,” she said astonished. “What do you think you’re gunna do?” She lit a cigarette while waiting to pay the toll, “my nerves are shot.”
“Mine, too, and I don’t know what to do about Bradley. He is French, so I guess giving into him would be like giving into the French, huh? Wayne says I should take the Trail of Tears.”
“Look where that’s gotten Wayne though. He’s on the Trail of Tears himself. What do you think, because you know him and the situation more than anything else.”
“I don’t know. I mean, he has helped me out more than anyone else, and he has always been there for me, ya know. That counts for something, ya know, when it comes to the heart.”
“That counts for a lot,” she agreed. “A whole lot,” she took a drag off her cigarette. We merged onto the next road.
As we came around the curve, a huge black crow stood in front of our car, fearless. It seemed to be staring me in the face. Just when the wheels of the car started to swerve, it flew up and out of the way.
“That was a huge fucking bird,” Sheena Ann looked at me. “Did you see him? He wasn’t even movin’.”
“That was a crow, and that’s another omen. Something bad is going to happen. Crows are a sign of death, but we didn’t hit it; it flew away after lookin’ at us.”
We were unsure what the sign meant until later that night. After we drove and got lost, time inched passed, as I learned how to put in dreads. A tiny hippie girl showed me how to rat the purple and pink extensions in Sheena Ann’s almost black hair.
Held captive in the chair for ten hours as I ran to get lunch, took a nap and helped with the dreading process, eternity slipped by us in the Heartland of America. It was maybe 7 o’clock when my mom called, frantic. “There’s a hurricane heading straight for New Orleans.”
I had heard that there was a hurricane, but I had not paid attention. As I was no longer down there, I thought it did not concern me. Besides, the hurricanes usually spin up at the last minute.
“I just got off the phone with Brad, and he’s been trying to call you. It’s bad,” my mom said without question. “It’s really bad, and he’s down there with his family, even his 96-ear-old grandma; you need to call him.”
“Wait, didn’t he evacuate? You’d think he’d be smart enough to evacuate. Where is he?”
“His family decided to stay with the restaurant to try to prevent looting. He’s got a room at the Hotel Monteleon. He’s fine, but he says he can’t get through to you.”
“My phone did not even register that he was calling,” I glanced at the absent phone history. “What category is it? How soon until it hits?”
“It’s a category five, and it doesn’t look like it’s turning like Ivan did. They would’ve said by now if it was going to, but I don’t think it will. Call him at the bar, because he said that cell phones are not working; all the lines are jammed up.”
“Okay, I’ll call him right now,” I hung up. Explaining to the girls what happened, I tried frantically to call, only to get a busy number. After a few tries, it went through.
We could only talk for a moment, and my gut told me things were very wrong. Something strong was brewing, and the situation was growing grim. Bradley’s voice expressed it all to me in between the words he spoke.
“I gotta go,” he regretted. “I’ll call you as soon as I can. I love you.”
My stomach was in knots. What I hadn’t known was that he had sent me e-mails last night, practically cursing me, but now he was only a scared child. When nature takes on man, nature will win every time.
The forces of the divine were at work, and the course was already set in motion. It was passed the point where evacuation was possible, as the routes had been shut off. Bradley would merely have to wait it out, and he did.
In between getting lost again on our drive back to Michigan, I got clips of phone calls from him. When I wasn’t on the phone with him, Sheena Ann and I were talking about him. I gushed our entirely complex situation upon her while she drove.
She dropped me back off, and I sat on the phone with Bradley, who had somehow managed to get his cell phone to work. “You should see the iron grates that go around the trees on the sidewalk. The wind is so strong that it’s pulling them up.”
That’s one of the last details I recall before there were no more cell phone. None. No matter what.
Hours passed, and we fretted, my mother and I. What could we do? What was there to be done?
The hurricane hit, which was bad enough, but then the levy broke. I knew it would break. People had told me that before, “it just was never constructed right, so if a storm ever hits, this city is fucked.”
They were right. The television was our witness. The Weather Channel did not turn off.
When we least expected, the phone rang. The hotel somehow got the phone lines temporarily working. My mom urged, “just get out of there; come up here, but you have to get out of there.”
And he did. He came in time for my brother’s birthday. His gift was shock-filled stories of tanks going up the wrong way on Bourbon with guards holding machine guns, shooting looters without question.
“If it was food, they didn’t care, but if it was a television or something, there were no questions and no warnings, just shot dead. It was like a war zone, and it turned racial, white against black. The gangs even fired back and shot down a rescue chopper, now how much sense does that make to shoot down somebody who’s tryin’ ta save ya?”
Total anarchy, with no order and no running water. Bathrooms were backing up, and there was no more sanity. The war zone was like Marshall Law.
As days went by, the worst of the stories were still to come. Brad’s grandmother broke her hip in the travel to Dallas with his parents. Hurricane Rita followed a similar path and fucked the city up worse.
The guy who got Liz knocked up at Mardi Gras was picked up for public intoxication the night before the hurricane hit. He should’ve been out in the morning, but when the levy broke, the last concern was on the prisoners. This six-foot seven man told of the water rising up to his neck.
“I jus looked aroun’ an’ saw all the people ‘round me drownin’ and there wasn’t a thing I could do. We were all locked in these cages with thick metal bars, surrounded by water that we couldn’t drink. Bodies floated in cells next to me.”
Days went by with no food nor water, no recognition until rescuers moved them up to Baton Rouge almost a week later. All that he suffered for public intoxication. Think he learned a lesson?
The houses I used to live in were all damaged. My last roommates’ home was under 25 feet of water, losing everything from WWII collectibles to flat screen TVs. I guess that means that the stuff I left was gone, too, though I had written it off long ago.
Chris Klein lost his house, having the newly finished basement and remodeled home traded in for a FEMA trailer. Ross lost everything, too, ass did too many other people I know. There’s still people I’ve not heard from, like Trey.
They found one of my teachers’s from high school, Mr. Kunkle, face down in the Mississippi, barely alive. His body was bloated, and fish had begun nibbling on his flesh. I think he died shortly after.
Somehow I had gotten out just in time, been spared from enduring the situation. I don’t know how or why, but I was. All I could do was be thankful and not ask the types of questions like how would I have gotten out of there without a car.
Does Black Widow have a future with Bradley?
No, continue to Grandmother’s Scar Promise
Yes, read Bradley’s Black Widow
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