Prologue

Speak About Destruction

October 2005

 

Renée’s voice, warm and folksy, over the phone: “You’ll be

so close. Come see it for yourself, if you haven’t been

since the storm…”

     I exhaled, turned to her daughter standing next to me in the

student center, and I smiled.

 

A few weeks later, far from campus amid the fall quarter, I

drove to New Orleans by rental car. Hardly any traffic, in either

direction, during the hour-plus drive.

     As I passed the airport at the city’s outskirts and went

towards the city’s center, the highway was empty. Eerie.

     When I took the exit ramp towards the Garden District, the

atmosphere shifted. I saw people. I had light car traffic around

me. A constant buzz of industrial noise and demolition ran in

the background. At a main intersection, I saw members of the 

National Guard occupying the scene. One stood in the street,

directing traffic.

     Two months since Hurricane Katrina…

     I crept along driving, my attention drawn to a man walking

from a house to the curb. He carried a dirty, mold-covered, odd-

shaped mass to the curb, and he placed it on a pile of broken

furniture and rusted appliances.

     I saw the exhaustion on the man’s face. I caught a foul,

musty smell. Was this his home? I imagined print photos and

other personal treasures, ruined by soak in dirty water, mixed

with mounds of rubbish.

 

At my destination: The door opened, and I recognized her

warm and folksy voice. “Quintus, excited to meet you! How’s

my daughter up at Dartmouth?”

     Renée leaned down and hugged me. She asked if I needed

anything following my drive, then quickly offered to show me

around the area. She had a plan for us.

     We left the condo. I got into the passenger seat of her car,

and she drove.

     First, Renée took me to a site widely seen in the news: a car

lodged in a tree.

     She explained how Hurricane Katrina had missed the city,

but it caused flood surges in Lake Pontchartrain to the north.

Much of New Orleans is below sea level, so the city flooded

throughout when the levee system burst in several locations.

     So here, at one of the breaches, the violent surge of water

had lifted the car off the ground, and it got wedged in the crown

of the tree.

     Then Renée drove us nearby to her family’s home. Her

husband, Stuart, led the walk-through. The house had been

gutted, stripped down to the studs. Although not damaged

significantly by flooding, it sat for weeks surrounded and

immersed by shallow water. With the summer heat and humid-

ity, mold grew unchecked, ruining much of the house interiors

and contents.

 

Leaving their neighborhood, Renée drove us along a long

boulevard through a wide, industrial-area patch. Awestruck, I

gaped at piles of garbage stacked a few stories tall, the lengths

of football fields.

     She drove onto a highway, heading east. She explained how

neighborhoods had flooded extensively below. I looked out the

window at the fast-moving scene, picturing the enormity of

loss. I imagined flooded homes, wrecked businesses, and

broken infrastructure, as far as I could see.

     Renée took an exit to an expressway. I noticed an empty

theme park with a huge rollercoaster in the distance.

     We came to a checkpoint. Renée showed her press pass, and

the guard passed us through. After crossing St. Bernard Parish,

we entered the Lower Ninth Ward.

     Along the industrial canal, a levee breach hundreds of feet

long had spilled wide, heavy tides that swept down houses on

several streets. Blocks away from the canal breech, there were

vacant buildings, some barely standing. Water stains reached

high on the outer walls. I noted the markings the rescue teams

had made on each house they visited. Renee explained where

the markings indicated dead bodies, found inside.

     We ended the tour of destruction where we had started in

the Garden District.

 

I began the long drive back to the state capital, heading to my

flight back home.

     Honestly, I was relieved to escape the enormous destruction

I had witnessed. It didn’t seem possible for me to make a

difference.

     The road was deserted on the way back, as it was earlier in

the day. Now, the lowering afternoon sun casts long shadows

across the land and hills around me.

     Then suddenly, new thoughts. What if I joined others to

restore just one house on a street? And the house next door and the

next. Until the whole street was done, then the next street and repeat,

until the neighborhood is done!

     I thumped the steering wheel, triumphant.

     I said aloud in the car: “What if I count the houses?”