Chapter 7
The cramped rental car was streaking along I-180 south of Greenville. As the trucks passed him the wind pushed the little car out, then sucked it back in. Chance vowed for the hundredth time never to rent a tiny car again.
He was already on his way to Atlanta. There he could decide to go either I-65 or I-40 all the way across the country. His excuse for not already having headed north was that the mountains of North Carolina would be slower going than heading out of Atlanta and hitting I-40 in Chattanooga.
“What do you need to check out? What happened? Did you and Paul have a fight or something? You sound a little – strained.” Katie’s voice was bereft of its normal range of tone. Cell phone technology always seemed to strip out as much information as possible. It was little better than email as far as the ability to project or detect emotions.
Chance hadn’t had time to think about what he was doing properly himself. Well, that wasn’t strictly speaking the truth. Some of these questions first came up in 1975 – when Dad was arrested. Somehow, he never found the right time to have Pop explain his contradictions. How could Dad reconcile virtually everything he had taught Chance – about morality, government, work, self reliance – and yet violate it in such a flagrant manner?
Chance had absorbed a very strong ethical sense. He had been downright puritanical in his twenties; looking with distaste and contempt at alcohol drinkers, marijuana smokers, and unemployed homeless bums with equal measure.
It wasn’t until his thirties that Chance had pulled apart the ethical taffy and chewed on it long enough to elicit the different flavors. There is a vast difference between moderate drinking, and being unable to hold a job. Smoking marijuana imparted no worse moral effect than smoking cigarettes. Smoking either was none of his business.
Chance shifted in the uncomfortable compact car seat. “Katie, I, I can’t explain it. But this whole thing dug up some stuff that I’d buried for a long time.” He winced at the unintended metaphor.
“What’s it all about?” Katie asked.
Chance sighed, “Well, it’s a long long story. And, frankly, it sounds ridiculous. Even to me.”
“It has to do with your father?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve told me a little about your father, but I married you anyway.” Chance could hear the grin in her voice.
“And I thank you for that. But, um, something has come up. And I think I need to look into it. It’s bothering me.”
“I see. What happened there. Paul tell you something?”
“No. Well yes.”
“Chance, you’re not making any sense.” Her voice was taking on an edge. “You’ve always been very cryptic about your father. Maybe now is a good time to tell me everything?”
Chance paused a long time. He took the long ramp toward I-85 and Atlanta. “I just don’t think talking on a cell phone while driving is the right time. It’s really complicated.”
“You want me to just accept that you’ll wander around New Orleans for a couple of days after you’ve been gone over a week already? Chance, we’re behind on Sentinel and a couple of other projects!”
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
Silence. For a second, he thought the call had dropped. “OK, Chance. Do you want me to book a hotel? I doubt you can just waltz in, it’s still pretty torn up in New Orleans.”
Tension ebbed, “Yes, that would be great. Thanks, Honey.”
“When will you be there?”
Chance glanced at the car clock. “Make it for tomorrow night. I’ll be on the road all night tonight.”
“OK Chance. I only want to remind you about Sentinel. They’re looking for something around the first. Everything else can wait.”
“OK, great. Anything coming up?”
“I think we’re going to get Firensys, and probably ScyTech, too.”
“Katie, you’re a miracle worker. Not doing anything I would want to know about, are you?”
The laugh was quick, “Nothing that you would want to know about.”
Chance chuckled in return, and closed the phone. He fiddled with the radio, and upped the cruise control.
The only stops were for gas and food. The scenery changed very little. Southern sugar pine forests, very lightly rolling hills, or completely flat. Farms and billboards merged into one long advertisement for the next McDonald’s playland, Gigantic Truck Stop, and catfish house.
Atlanta, Montgomery, and Mobile passed by. Once in Mississippi, he intentionally detoured onto US 90, to witness Hurricane Katrina’s devastation. In 1971, the family had moved from Ft. Myers to Baton Rouge.
At the time, I-10 was incomplete, and the main route through Mississippi was US-90. ‘90 was a narrow two lane road that hugged the gulf coast, going through Biloxi, Gulfport, Bay St. Louis, and Slidell, before finally reaching New Orleans.
Chance was ten years old. The VW bus’ middle seat was his noisy domain. There was no radio to listen to, and Chance found it almost impossible to read books as Paul did. The motion of the van, buffeted about seemingly by any stray breeze, and his ear problems produced powerful nausea. Therefore his only option was to look out the windows and study the world as it slowly crept past.
The impressions that the Gulf Coast left with him seemed oddly different than his Florida experience. The road was much bumpier. It seemed older, somehow, than the spiffy new bridge on US41 in Fort Myers. He had never noticed large tar covered cracks on the newer roads in Florida.
In the two years since Camille, much debris was still visible. He remembered with a smile, the sight of a shrimp boat, far inland, that had been turned into an impromptu seafood restaurant. That was Biloxi.
The first trip from New Orleans to Travelers Rest had been – with Pop. In 1975 – just before Dad had been arrested. They were living on the West Bank in Algiers. Grandfather had just died, and Mom was with Grandma. Somehow, they ended up with two cars and one driver.
The first plan was to make a hitch behind the Mercedes to tow the little BMW 1600 (with German tags). Unfortunately, in the parking lot, Pop forgot to turn the key in the steering wheel, and the locked wheels held, causing the smaller car’s bumper to twist crazily in the first turn. Pop’s reaction to this dumb mistake was almost hysterical laughter, directed at himself.
After that, Chance’s job was to be in the BMW behind and steer and help stop. This was an interesting job, since the little car drifted from side to side on the uneven hitch. Stopping was an even bigger adventure as the big Mercedes didn’t slow down at the same rate, and they ended up playing tug of war with the connecting ropes, and jouncing back and forth amid disconcerting crunching and grinding noises.
It took eight hours to get to the outskirts of Biloxi before Pop gave up and handed the Mercedes keys to Chance. At fourteen, Chance’s job was to drive from Mississippi to South Carolina, sans license, with almost no experience.
And that they did. All night and the next day. Chance, being too young for a license, and obviously not wealthy enough to drive what amounted to a limousine, refused to exceed the posted speed limit of 55 MPH.
Pop kept falling back, and doing his Flipper invitation of waving at Chance, and then speeding up – beckoning for more speed.
But Chance would not risk a cop stop. 55 and cruise control. He never wavered. He didn’t have a clue why his father was so impatient to see mother.
On the west side of Georgia, Chance’s paranoid and repeated inspections were rewarded: a tail light was out. They went into the store to get a replacement bulb. Looking at the bulb, Pop asked, “We’d like to get a fifteen watt rear light bulb.”
The man behind the counter removed his cigarette and his yellow eyes looked bored. “We ain’t got no watts. We got volts, but no watts.”
Chance, who at fourteen was already a seasoned amateur radio operator, suppressed a snicker, and was prepared to correct the man. Chance’s father laid a hand on Chance’s shoulder, and shook his head. Chance remained mute.
Somehow, a new bulb was found, and as it was being replaced, an odd bit of Pop’s unconventional wisdom was bequeathed to Chance.
“Son, I think that God put stupid people on the planet to amuse us.”
Though superficially arrogant and condescending, in actuality, what Chance saw was a kind of patient benevolence with the situation. Pop could have antagonized or ridiculed the man for his idiotic statement. Instead, he merely reformulated the query to something simpler, and took away an amusing anecdote.
Years later, Chance, building upon this tidbit of wisdom, added his own somewhat cynical corollary: “Yes, but stupid people get to vote, too, thereby negating any amusement value.”
Outside the windows, it appeared that he was passing Biloxi. Back in 1971, Camille had pushed shrimp boats 10 miles inland, and entire housing developments had disappeared. 35 years later, it had happened again with Katrina.
Slidell was a mess. The twin spans of I-10 were now only one, and there were several narrow metal links between the giant concrete piers. Off to the side, it was eerie watching the jutting supports of the other span pass by, interrupted by an occasional linking segment.
Then the road settled down into the long, flat arc that curved into New Orleans itself. The area was replete with hyacinth choked swamps, and flat bridges. The late afternoon sun, off to the left, put the entire area under a harsh spotlight, somehow emphasizing contrast. Even the trees seemed daunted under the onslaught, their colors showing more browns and blacks in between the greens.
Knowing something intellectually does not necessarily prepare you emotionally. Chance had followed the Katrina disaster – pre and post – with a morbid curiosity. He had the advantage of viewing it from a thousand miles away, safe and quiet.
Over a span of ten years, Chance had lived in eight different places in New Orleans. He’d heard that three no longer existed. That knowledge did not help in the least when he was greeted with the sight of the Kenilworth Mall on Read Road. He’d hung out at the games arcade for many hours, frequently going there to use up time if he missed the bus and had to skip school.
Taking a detour off I-10 in East New Orleans, Chance drove down Morrison Road to look at the very first place he’d lived back in 1974. The Georgetown Apartments had over 1,000 units. As he looked, slowing down to a crawl, Chance saw that the entire complex was abandoned.
Most of the windows were broken, curtains shifted hopelessly in the stifling damp air. The same air was redolent with mold and stink, smelling more like a swamp than a garbage dump.
Everywhere were clumps of sticks and trash, some piled two stories high. The rows of houses in the mostly abandoned streets still had shattered cars. Garages, sans their doors, revealed their ruined contents like half chewed food, vomiting out onto the driveways, landing on top of filthy, windowless automobiles.
Nostalgia wasn’t what haunted Chance. He wasn’t prone to that. But the sight of these desolate places, once called home created a melancholy that threatened to drag him into depression. The smell didn’t help. And of course the similarity to the destruction at the hands of the police was uncanny. It seemed as if destruction and Louisiana were always inextricably linked in Chance’s life.
The tornado in Baton Rouge in 1971. The search warrant Pop’s arrest in 1975. The resulting chaos and demise of his family. And now Katrina creating the capstone.
Chance climbed back into the miniature rental, and turned the air conditioner on maximum. For a moment, he sat in the glaring sunlight, and watched as several seagulls flew overhead. Even they did not stop to forage for food here. Garbage dumps provided more sustenance to them than this vast, incomprehensible destruction.
He turned back onto I-10, and hoped that the local court house had faired better.