Plenty Enough Suck to Go Around. Cheryl Wagner

      “That’s crazy. That’s crazy,” Jake said. “Are you serious? That’s crazy. I don’t know, man. I don’t know.”

      “What?” I said. “What?”

      Jake shushed me. “I don’t know about that, man. Well, yeah…maybe. I hope not. I don’t know. So you say. I don’t know. Be careful.”

      “What?”

      Jake made a gun with his hand and cocked his thumb.

      Dave kept calling and talking about guns and mean dogs, which was strange. Dave used to play occasional percussion in Jake’s band and, in his own band, sang sweet falsetto Cuban songs of love. He lived a block away in Mid-City and was getting together his own Rush cover band. He was a very convincing Geddy Lee. What did he need with a gun?

      He and his new wife, Marcelle, had evacuated to her parents in Baton Rouge. The television news was whipping people up and now Baton Rougers were spreading rumors that people from New Orleans were raping and looting their mall. Dave was saying he was going back to his wreckage with a gun and some mean dogs.

      “No one’s raping anyone at the mall in Baton Rouge,” I said.

      Unlike people whose every family member and friend lived in the greater New Orleans or the Mississippi Gulf Coast area, we were not without short-term options. A music video director friend called to say he wanted, no needed, some hip Katrina refugees to accessorize his couch out in L.A. Old roommates materialized from the ether e-mailing that they could keep one or the other of us for a few weeks. But what about after a few weeks, and what about Buster and Clo? People kept saying there was no New Orleans and there wouldn’t be for at least a month until they pumped the water out and then what was left would be dregs. How could a city be dregs? It did not seem possible. I refused to believe it.

      Jake and Paul kept puzzling about insurance on the phone. Paul and Helen were friends of ours in Mid-City. Paul was from Canada and Helen was a filmmaker from South Carolina I had met in the late nineties at a film festival in Charleston. She had shown a charming, handmade film about her grandfather who could do handstands and where loved people go when they die. She told me she used to live in New Orleans and was moving back and would look me up when she returned, and she did. Later Jake and Helen taught a video class together for teens. They and the kids made a stop-motion animation of squirrels that smoked cigarettes and fell from their tree.

      Jake and Paul both were in bands. We were similar, but different. Paul and Helen were cheery freebirds who dressed colorfully and as they pleased. The jobs I’d had required me not to wear most of the clothes I wore the rest of the time. We were just vegetarians; they were vegans. We had chubby Buster; they had Rosie, a miniature pig who loved cookies and had swelled to a snorting, barnyard size that Buster feared. My backyard chickens-and-compost-phase lasted only a few months until my neighbors complained about the crowing. They invited their neighbors over for cotton candy parties. I usually avoided mine.

      But once Paul and Helen bought a house in Mid-City, they always had an open door. My mom and I sometimes strolled over to Helen’s while Paul was at work to see what was germinating on her cluttered animation table or admire her towering sunflowers or trial lettuce patch. Strolling to Helen’s house with my mom reminded me of Saturday drives we took to the settlement when I was a kid to see what vegetables or berries or pecans relatives had ripening.

      A radio show I had done work for previously called, and I did a flood story that I was surprised my fingers could still type. I knew Helen liked the show and was marooned, too, so I told her to listen. She e-mailed back.

      Just now I heard your piece. How could I have forgotten on Sunday…oh yes, that hurricane has me quite scattered…you sure state my predicament. Our friends in California are trying to lure us over there to some vegan animation paradise, but I don’t want to leave the south. My mama’s heart is already nearly broke that I don’t live in Columbia and I don’t want to move way way far away from her.

      Paul left this morning to drive to Baton Rouge, hoping to get into New Orleans tomorrow and see if our cats made it. Lolis Elie rescued cats from 2 or 3 houses in Mid-City yesterday and they were all ALIVE. I sure could use a hurricane mirâcle. I am absolutely dying to see it all…but I’ve got a nursing baby attached to me and I don’t want him anywhere near the city. I’ve been waiting and hoping Paul would go, and he’s finally gonna give it a try. I’m afraid he has quite an aversion and is not one to want to row around and look but I’ll see if he could have a look at your house…They say it is easy to get in, but it may be hard to get out!?

      I couldn’t believe it. That was it. The final straw. Nothing against Paul, but Paul was from Canada. A naturalized Louisianan would be back in my city before I was? No way. If Paul was going, I was going.