Hurricane in the Swimming Pool (A Story)

(Officially posted on December 2, 2005 @ 4:14 am.)

———

End of August – Beginning of September

The day your city floods, you drink a beer, track the storm and jump in the pool.

Just two days prior, Hunter and Seattle stocked up to ride out the coming storm — water, beer and snacks, everything you need for a hurricane party — while girly cleaned the kitchen and you did the laundry, and then the four of you decided to leave. You moved everything to higher ground, packed clothing on beds; electronics on chairs set in closets, and moved all the musical equipment to the apartment upstairs.

You got in the car and waited. Waited for Hunter to stop talking about his previous night out in the quarter and for Seattle to stop hitting on the girls next door. Then you all drove east.

You were calm; you’ve been trough this before and it never ended up being serious anyway.

You track the storm path and the hurricane is only three hundred miles south of the coastal line.
T-minus thirty-two hours.

Now you sit and wait in Hunter’s family home watching CNN, NBC, The Weather Channel, FOX News even.

Girly sadly remarks that the bunny you left behind will be fresh gator meat. It will probably starve to death before it’s eaten anyway.

You grab an Abita Amber from the ice-packed cooler you all took with you instead of the precious musical instruments, the bunny, your family pictures or your journal. Your memories.

Beer is more soothing then memories right now, so you don’t regret the choice.

You all drove east, ate fast food, passed cities, not realizing most of the structures will not be standing in a few days, broke every speeding limit, and ten hours later you arrived.

Hunter cusses, paces around, claps his hands and says: “you know what?”

“We need to go out” he says. “We need to get drunk and party” he cheers.

And you, still wrapped in a towel and smelling like bleach from the pool, just look up at him.

“C’mon Dutchboy, get changed” he orders.

And you’re just happy someone is taking charge.

T-minus thirty-one hours and before you all go you are channel-flipping the news; evacuating people stuck in traffic. Rats trying to abandon ship, desperate and mutinous.

And besides feeling happy you all decided to leave in time, you mostly feel like you’re living someone else’s life.

* * *

The college girls smoke cigarettes on the lawn, plastic cups of beer balancing on the hood of parked cars, while the guys are running the keg and the liquor cabinet inside the house. People hand you a cold Coors and ask, “aren’t you one of the guys from The City Care Forgot?”

You just nod. You don’t want to talk about it.

You drink, even start smoking after quitting months ago, all accompanied by party music for a distressed mind.

And then you drink even more, till you are oblivious.

* * *

T-minus nineteen hours and you wake up by the smell of breakfast quiche.

T-minus ten hours and you’re all climbing the football stadium to spot the distant hurricane. You jump from bench to bench, past the sign saying Welcome to the Swamp, past the orange and blue skyboxes, higher and higher, until you can see a enormous formation of clouds surrounded by a halo; the clouds reflecting the sunlight, mixed by the gloom of thunder deep within the storm system.

T-minus zero, D-day, and you’re fast asleep while the storm marches through what once used to be the city of your heart.

D-day plus three hours and the 17th street canal levee has breached. But you all just heard that “the city has dodged the bullet” and you start celebrating with more beer, celebrating that your life will soon be back to normal again.

D-day plus six hours and you see the aftermath on TV. The cars parked in swimming pools, on fences, on top of other cars. The houses, stripped away of most walls and flooding in toxic soup. Rampage, looting, disaster.

You see the city on TV and it’s like seeing Asia after the Christmas tsunami, a South American village after a landslide or an earthquake, like a war torn town in Africa.

The swamp? It doesn’t look anything like your backyard.

The swimming pool? It doesn’t look anything like the campus you went to school.

The catfish swimming down that river? It can’t be Canal Street.

No, it can’t be, nor does it look like it, not even remotely.

You’ve all seen it before, on the news, on Oprah, in blockbuster Hollywood movies staring Tom Cruise or Morgan Freeman. You’ve seen it before so many times that it desensitized you. You adapted to the footage even before it happened to you. And all those evacuees, all these refugees, people like you, well, you don’t feel like any one of them. Not really.

You don’t want to feel like one of them anyway.

* * *

And again, you all go out, go on the next binge to pass the time just so the news footage stays news, an episode of Oprah, a movie… anything but your life.