He notices my confusion and explains. “ ‘True dat’ has nothing to do with my name. It’s the way we say ‘that’s true,’ only it means something more. Something like ‘I agree with you because we both see things the same way.’ Nowadays it kind of a cliché thang ’cause everybody say it, even tourist.”
Malvina giggles. “True dat, Tru!” she says.
“Now she playin’ with us,” he says, grinning.
We keep going, Mr. Tru paddling in a steady rhythm, gliding us along. After a while I get to staring down at my hands, thinking about my mom and Grammy and how I really messed up this time. Bandy snuggles closer but for some reason that doesn’t make me feel any better. Feeling sorry for myself and not really paying attention to where we’re going until Mr. Tru says, in a voice of wonder, “Will you look at that.”
We’ve come out from among the sunk houses and into an open area, big as a lake. And right in the middle is this giant, rusty red steel box, a great huge thing as long as a city block. Looks like it dropped out of the sky and crushed a bunch of houses that stick out from under it like water-soaked kindling.
Impossible, but there it is.
“That a barge from the Industrial Canal,” he says softly. “Musta busted through the levee, knocked all them homes off their foundations.”
He turns away, as if it is much too painful to see such a thing.
After that I really start paying attention. All kinds of stuff floats by as we glide through the water. A basketball. An empty Styrofoam cooler. Soda bottles, hunks of wood. Plastic toys, cups and bowls. A big old rusty water heater. A red gasoline jug. Parts of a doll. Papers, books, clothing. Precious things and garbage all mixed together, lifted by the flood.
We keep going for a while, nobody saying much, like what we’re seeing is beyond words. Things still have names but they’re different in the water, out of place, and don’t look right. At one point we come upon a long skinny wooden thing that seems strangely familiar. Takes me a moment to figure out what it is: the little wind-vane steeple from the New Mission Zion Baptist Church, floating sideways. A big crow with black glittering eyes perches on the fat end of the steeple, squawking as we glide by.
Despite the muggy heat, I shiver deep in my bones.
Everything looks so strange and wrong and mixed up. Like a bad dream, except that even in my worst nightmare I could never have imagined, say, a huge mass of bugs swarming over the surface of the water, splashing and twirling around like crazy things all knotted together.
“Cockroaches,” Mr. Tru says, steering away from the swarm of insane insects.
“You ’fraid of bugs?” Malvina asks me.
“If they bite,” I admit.
“Roach don’t bite, do it, Tru?”
“Not normal, no,” he says. “Can’t say what a creature might do, flooded out of home.”
We pass another swarm of roaches. No snakes, though. I hope they’re kidding about snakes in the water, but just to be sure I keep my hands inside the boat. Bandy has settled into my lap like it’s no big deal riding in a canoe through a flooded city with crazy birds and clicking bugs and a giant house-crushing barge and a group of garbage bags slowly bobbing in the current.
Something’s wrong about the garbage bags. I don’t know what, exactly, not right away.
“Terrible thing happened here,” Mr. Tru says softly. “We gone steer our way through it all, don’t let nothing touch us.”
He paddles strong and fast, veering left.
“Don’t look back,” he advises. “Nothing we can do.”
Malvina starts to sing “Jesus Loves Me” in a high, clear voice, and that’s when I know that what I’m seeing isn’t garbage bags. It’s the barely floating remains of those who couldn’t get away, who were too old or sick to climb up into the attic like me and Bandy did.
Dead people, drowned by the flood.
Malvina begins to weep and can’t finish the hymn. Bandy crawls out of my lap and goes to her and she hugs him to her chest. “Good dog,” she says, sniffing back her tears. “Good dog.”
The light is fading from the dreary sky when Mr. Tru finally rests his paddle and announces, “We here.”
The canoe nudges up against a flight of stairs that rises out of the oily dark water. The ground floor of the building remains submerged but the second-floor apartment is, as he promised, above the flood. The apartment, he explains, belongs to a friend.
“Della won’t mind,” he says, leaving the canoe lashed to a railing. “She in Natchez with her daughter.”
But the door is locked.
“Course it is,” he says softly, and turns to Malvina. “Can you climb in through that little window, dawlin’?”
She squints at the small window. “No problem!” and in less than a minute she’s opening the front door with a mischievous grin. “There’s a big TV an’ a AC!” she announces as we step inside.
A big TV and a new air conditioner, but no electricity. Not a surprise, really, since most of the power lines have been blown down or carried away by the flood. Mr. Tru says we’ll have to make do.
“Della keep a nice kitchen,” he says. “We ain’t gonna starve.”
“Is there a phone I can use?” I ask. “Sometimes a landline phone will work even when the power’s out.”
“Everything down,” he says, shaking his head. “Ain’t got my cell but even if I did, I doubt it work. Day after a bad storm the phones always out and this weren’t no regular hurricane. Tomorrow we find us some dry ground, wherever it at, and get you back with your family.”
Bandy is sniffing every corner of the small apartment, including under the couch and the bed, and keeps making little happy yelps like he’s discovered something interesting.
“Did the owner have a cat?” I ask.
“Queenie,” Mr. Tru says, surprised. “But Della never leave that cat behind. No way.”
Doesn’t matter that the cat is gone, Bandy can still smell it everywhere. He’s wagging his tail and looking for a friend because Bandy is one of those weird dogs who likes cats and wants to play. But he comes running fast enough when I locate a can of cat food and pop the lid.
Turns out a hungry dog will eat cat food, no problem. And humans will eat canned spaghetti, no problem there, either. Me and Mr. Tru share a can of spaghetti and some stale bread while Malvina has a bowl of cereal and the last of the milk in the refrigerator.
“You children drink up what’s left,” he suggests. “ ’Nother hour or two, everything in that fridge start to go bad.”
Malvina pours the rest of the milk into a glass and offers it to me. I shake my head. She eagerly drains the glass and wipes her mouth with a paper napkin. “My mom always say don’t leave nothing in the glass.”
“So where’s your mom?” I ask, thinking of my own mother.
Malvina stares down at the table and frowns. “In a hospital,” she says.
“Oh,” I say. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Did I say there was something wrong with my momma? Did I? Don’t you be sayin’ there is.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t you be sorry! Don’t need no sorry from no stupid boy!”
She glares at me so hard it makes my face hot.
Mr. Tru takes off his hat and places it carefully on the kitchen chair beside him. Without the jaunty hat he looks older. His dreads are a little thin and have some gray in them, although it’s hard to see in the fading light. And when he removes his black-framed glasses to wipe the sweat from his brow, his eyes are puffy and the whites are kind of yellow.
“Malvina’s mother left her in my care,” he explains. “It a temporary kind of situation and I am happy to oblige.”
“Where’s your mom, huh?” Malvina says, her chin jutting out. “How come she ain’t here?”
So I explain about visiting my great-grandmother and how our flight got canceled and how I jumped out of the church van to look for Bandy and all.
Mr. Tru nods along with my story.
/> “Beatrice Jackson that sing in the choir? Miss Trissy? That was her place we found you at? Oh my. That woman a legend in the neighborhood! Drop so much as a cigarette butt on her street and you in trouble. She still go ‘mmm, mmm’ all the time?”
I nod.
“So,” he says, super casual, “what your daddy’s name?”
“Gerald.”
“Uh-huh. You say he passed?”
“Before I was born. You knew him?”
He hesitates and says, “Knew of him, you might say. Not personal.”
I like it that he doesn’t make a fuss about my father being dead, even if he does know something he doesn’t care to share. Fine by me. I mean, what does it matter? My father and his got-hissef-killed brother are ancient history, okay? Water under the bridge, or over it, or whatever.
Except it turns out Mr. Tru is not quite finished with the subject.
“Comes to me that both of you have that in common, that your daddies passed before you was born,” he says, folding his arms and looking from me to Malvina.
She doesn’t react, not giving anything away. Then I shrug and she shrugs back, like we’ve both heard all we can stand about absent fathers, and there’s no need for further conversation. She holds that blank, you-can’t-touch-me expression for a while and then goes, “Why you talk so funny, huh?”
“Don’t be rude, dawlin’,” Mr. Tru says in a warning tone.
“It’s okay,” I say. “In New Hampshire we think you talk funny.”
Malvina grins and shakes her head, like she approves that I came right back at her. “Everybody talk funny, I guess,” she concedes. “So what they do in New Hampshire?”
“What they do everywhere else, I guess. The usual stuff.”
“Like what?”
I shrug. “Nothing special. The grown-ups go to work, mostly, and the kids go to school and like that.”
“And when you not in school?”
“We, um, play video games and hang at the mall or whatever.”
It sounds so lame but I really miss it.
“Uh-huh. They do procession in New Hampshire?” Malvina asks.
When Mr. Tru sees me looking puzzled, he explains about funeral processions, which in New Orleans are a kind of solemn celebration. The city is famous for them. “Some tourists call it a jazz funeral. We make a parade through the neighborhood, so folks can pay respect to the one that passed. But with music. Everything in this city about the music.”
“And dancing in the second line!” Malvina adds.
“Oh yeah, that, too. See, the first in line is the family and friends of the deceased, and the line that follows after the band is everybody else. We call it the ‘second line.’ ”
Malvina says, eagerly, “Second line dress up and do this special step-walk dance you only do for funerals. And all the fine ladies dab their eyes with lace handkerchiefs and twirl their umbrellas, everything to the beat of a drum. Slow kind of beat, real mournful, all the way to the cemetery. Whole neighborhood come out to watch. You know somebody special passed if Tru blowin’ his trumpet! On the way back from the cemetery he play ‘Saints’ and everybody dance, might be you don’t even got to know the deceased but you dancin’ ’cause Trudell Manning be playin’ his high sweet music.”
Sounds pretty weird to me, dancing at a funeral. I’ve only ever been to one funeral, when my mom’s cousin died, and believe me nobody thought of dancing. They had these nasty little sandwiches they passed around on plates, and some people told stupid but kind of funny stories, and the only music was this dreary organ at the church and a couple of creaky hymns. Nobody danced, not even close.
“Be lot of funerals,” Malvina points out. “Them that drowned.”
“Never mind none of that now.” Mr. Tru turns to me as he changes the subject. “So, how you get up that little attic?”
After I describe what happened, the water chasing me and Bandy inside, and how we climbed up on the table and chair, Mr. Tru tells how the flood caught him by surprise, too. How he and Malvina just barely made it out of his home and into a canoe he had stored behind the house.
“House went under but my little fishin’ canoe, it pop up just in time,” he says. “Floodwaters come so fast it was all I could do to grab Malvina and get out. Left everything behind, including my phone and wallet and all my brass.” He shudders a little at the recollection. “What happen, I fell asleep with my hat on. See, I stayed up all night, listening to that hurricane wind, and when it finally stopped howling I must have relaxed and nodded off, there in my best chair. Thought we’d come through it safe and sound, you understand? Next thing, my feet are getting wet.”
Malvina chimes in. “I was sleeping. Thought it was a dream. Like me and my mom was at the pool and she was teaching me to swim.”
I make sure not to ask nothing more about her mom and Mr. Tru gives me a little nod, like he approves of me keeping my mouth shut on that particular subject.
“Gone be dark soon,” he announces, standing up from the table. “Malvina, dawlin’, maybe you can find where Della keep her candles. Me and Zane take care of the canoe.”
While she hunts eagerly through the cupboards, me and Bandy help him drag the canoe up the steps and into the apartment, where it suddenly looks much bigger than it did outside.
“Better safe than sorry,” he says, satisfied. “No matter what else happen, we got our transportation.”
Which makes me wonder, what does he mean? We’ve been blown down by a hurricane, flooded over our heads, lost our homes and everything in them, been baked by the heat and nearly drowned in the filthy water, paddled through swarms of flying cockroaches, seen houses crushed by a giant ship, and steered away from the terrible sight of floating bodies.
I’m thinking it can’t get any worse. Until night comes, and the guns start firing.
Malvina?” Mr. Tru says. “Blow out that candle.”
We sit in the dark and wait until the next gunshot makes us jump.
“Sound like some distance away,” he says softly. “Likely young men showin’ off, or lettin’ folks know they there. Nothin’ to worry us none. But no reason to advertise, so we keep the candle out.”
After a while the shooting stops and things get quiet.
I creep up to a window to have a look outside. Only thing I can make out is something burning in the distance, orange flames roiling like a thing alive. Doesn’t seem right that a house half-submerged in water can burn, but burn it does, and nobody to stop it.
“No fire department,” Mr. Tru points out. “No police.”
“How come?” I ask. “Where is everybody?”
He shrugs. “They ’vacuated with the rest, or don’t care to enter this particular neighborhood, or ain’t got here yet, or maybe all three. Whatever the reason, we on our own and that’s the troot. Nobody look out for us but us.”
“You look out for us, Tru,” says Malvina, who hasn’t moved from the kitchen table.
He nods, very serious. “Do my best,” he says.
We sit in the heat of the night, the three of us, watching the fire light up the dark horizon. The house burns like a flaming wooden match dipped into a glass of oily black water. When at last the fire goes out, the dark of the world comes upon us. There are no stars in the sky, none that I can see. No streetlights or house lights. Nothing but black night and the faint sound of the flood lapping at the steps like it wants to come in.
Bandy has hunkered down in my lap. He whines a little now and then but mostly he’s being good, as if he understands that he shouldn’t make trouble at a time like this.
“Long day,” Mr. Tru says. “Best rest while we got the chance.”
Malvina won’t go up on the bed near the window because she’s afraid of the gunshots, so we drag the mattress to the closet floor. She crawls onto it, one skinny arm curled over her head, and falls asleep almost at once.
We leave the bedroom door open — she insisted on that — and retreat quietly into the living room. Mr. Tru
settles into a big stuffed chair, stretching out his legs. “I might sit up for a spell,” he says, glancing at the door. “You take the sofa.”
“We could take turns,” I offer. “You stand watch, then I’ll relieve you, like they do in the army.”
He chuckles. “No need,” he says. “Get you some rest.”
Bandy curls next to me on the sofa.
“Good boy,” I whisper, scratching his ears. “We’re gonna be okay. We’re gonna be just fine.”
Feels good saying so, but I’m not sure I believe it.
Bandy drops off, running in his sleep. I’m exhausted but can’t sleep, no way, not with the air so hot and muggy, and all the thoughts racing through my head like crazy pinballs. Me and Grammy and the pastor and the hurricane and Mom on the phone, sounding so far away, and me following this little dog that keeps disappearing underneath cars, and my father and his brother flying like Superman, and dark clouds chasing our canoe, clouds we can’t get away from, clouds that want to swallow us up, clouds with gunshots inside them, popping like sparks of lightning.
I wake up with Bandy licking my face and the faint light of dawn slanting through the curtains.
After breakfast — saltine crackers and peanut butter — we load some bottled water and canned goods into the canoe.
“Where we go if everything underwater?” Malvina wants to know. “Maybe we should stay, wait on your friend.”
“Ain’t a safe place round here,” Mr. Tru says, looking warily out at where guns were shooting last night. “We got to find us some dry ground. Leastways get us to a workin’ phone. Then maybe I try call my cousin Belinda, she got a place over to Algiers, might be it was above the flood. Might be.”
“Might be,” Malvina says, making a face. “Huh.”
Mr. Tru gives her a look. “This a might-be world we livin’ in, dawlin’. That just the way it be.”
“Sorry,” says Malvina, looking apologetic. “You right, Tru. Naw, I mean to say you might be right.”
Then she gives him a big, triumphant grin.
He snorts and shakes his head. “I ain’t never win with you, dawlin’. I got the music, but you got the words, no doubt.”