#9 : Shelter From the Storm

We'd been hearing rumors during our trip Down the Road, which were confirmed the next day when the parish president announced the closure of the roads from the Alliance Refinery south. Hurricane Rita was likely on a course for the extreme southwestern region of the state, but factoring in tides that had yet to decrease back to normal range and severe levee damage, flooding was deemed unavoidable.

And that's exactly what happened. The storm ripped into the area surrounding the Louisiana/Texas Border, leaving a path of destruction that rivaled the damage in the east. Resources, thin to begin with, were stretched nearly to the breaking point.

Squid had moved to Shreveport a few years previously, after burglars had broken into her New Orleans apartment and held the occupants at gunpoint while stealing what they deemed valuable and destroying most of what was left. We hadn't seen each other much since then (a story I'll leave to her, should she ever choose to tell it), so her offer to evacuate to her house came as a pleasant surprise. One of my fondest memories from that trip is the taming of her Husky (a Siberian, I think).

Nico - told you we were Velvet Underground fans! - had never been people friendly, and often had to be kenneled or put in the back yard when she and her husband were entertaining guests. When we arrived, they tried the pet taxi first. After a night of her growling and barking, all were in agreement that she might do better outside. It didn't make a bit of difference. When she wasn't eating or sleeping, poor Nico stood at the back door barking and trying to claw her way through the glass door. When deep scratches started to appear in it, I decided that enough was enough.

I slipped into the backyard, closing the door on the cries of protest that erupted behind me. I laid in the hammock that was stretched across their back patio, then urged her to come up and take a nap with me. We became instant friends, and she wasn't a problem for the rest of the trip.

(I've always been that way with so called "man-eaters." Some call me the Dog Whisperer.)

We didn't realize by how slim a margin we'd dodged another bullet until we got back to New Iberia. A mere 100 yards south of the RV park was a clear line of demarcation showing where the water had stopped rising.

We were eager to make another trip home. Partly to survey the damage south of where our earlier trip had ended, but also to take comfort in familiar surroundings. It sounds a little schizo, because nothing there was likely to evoke comfort. It matters not. I can honestly say that the zone of destruction, while heartbreaking, still had the magic feeling of contentment that nowhere else in the world was capable of bringing us.

All of that to say that we were homesick. Later, I came to realize that I was quite possibly the only person in my household that felt any desire to return. That's putting the cart before the horse, though. Something else happened before we got the chance to travel again. One of those things that religious people say are a chastening from God.

Like maybe he heard our cries that we'd been through enough, that things just had to get better. His answer was a thunderously loud:

"I'LL DECIDE WHEN YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH!"

Remember my surrogate mother, Tammy? She let a friend move into her spare bedroom after she lost Joseph. Her name was Belinda and she was dying of cancer. If was a grim reminder of her own recent battle with breast cancer, so she cared for Belinda until her passing. Then she went to stay with a friend in Mississippi. The memories of finding Joseph there, then watching Belinda lose her tenuous grip on life inch by crawling inch, drove her out of her own home. She let Brother Fro move in when Belinda became bedridden, and there he remained when she left. Alone, except for the ghostly vitality of Belinda & Joseph, who were so recently departed; and the heaviness of Tammy's absence.

(No. "Went to stay" is putting it far too lightly. She fled. Fled the pain. Fled the crushing grief. Just as we all have, to our own detriment.)

She never went back to see what was left of her house after the storm. The choice was taken out of her hands.

Mama Tammy (as she'd been known to so many of my generation) called my wife after Rita to let us know she was ok. She had gone to Houma after Katrina to be near her mother. While there some flooding had occurred, but they rode out the storm unscathed.

She had bad news as well. During the months following Joseph's funeral, her health began to fail. After a few months, she threw in the towel and went to see a doctor. There her worst fears were confirmed. Her cancer had returned and was now spreading to her liver. Furthermore, she had no desire to go through chemo again. She had given up.

My wife was crushed. This woman, formerly her aunt by marriage, had always been a "go to" when her parents were too fucked up to give a shit. Now she made it clear that we needed to go see Tammy as soon as possible.

... but things that had once been possible slipped out of our grasp without a moment's notice.

My father-in-law had been suffering with a lung disease known by the acronym MAC for several years (and we'll get back to it sooner than you'd like. I promise). His doctor was based out of Charity Hospital in New Orleans, and he had been unable to get in touch with him since Katrina. Eventually he was told to go to the Charity Hospital in Houma, where he was assured his doctor would be located while he was being treated.

He asked us to take him, so we left at 5:00 in the morning to beat the traffic. We arrived at sunrise, parked near the emergency room, then walked right into another of our life's most devastating moments.

Mrs. Lolita, Tammy's mother, was in the waiting room. Awakened by a noise, she had gotten up and found her daughter collapsed near the bathroom door. Unable to revive her, she called an ambulance and had her rushed to the hospital.

After my father-in-law was shown to an examination room and started on a breathing treatment, we went to Tammy's room. Aided by a ventilator, her breathing had become what I'd first heard of in Insomnia as a death rattle. Her cancer-ridden liver had released toxins into her body, turning her skin yellow with jaundice. After informing the doctor that we were family, he told us that her time had grown very short. Once again we had to call family with terrible news.

Her daughter answered the phone the first time we tried, and got there promptly. When she was informed that as next of kin she would have to sign the DNR order that Tammy had requested, she got into the bed. Those minutes that she spent with her arms around her mother, begging her not to go... to keep on fighting....

That is a hue I don't have the ability to paint.

Her son called back shortly after that heartbreaking interlude. He asked if I'd pick him up in Centerville, so I drove there at 110 mph with my flashers on. Reckless, yes, but my fear that she would slip away was more persistent than thoughts of safety.

A friend dropped him off at the exit, and we headed back to Houma. We made a little small talk , but it was for the most part an uncomfortably silent trip.

We made it, but only just in time. One moment she was breathing, and in the next she never took another. My wife went to break the news to her father, who was now more distressed by the fact that he would not be able to lend support to the family. They'd decided to admit him, and there he would remain for several days.

Jeff came back from Florida for her service. He told me that living with her while Belinda had been dying had been draining. When Tammy had gone to Mississippi after losing two people so closely together, it had felt like he was grieving for her as well. The house felt like a tomb. To this day, we sometimes wonder if she slowly lost the will to live during those sad, strange months. Can your emotional weather cause illness to attack? Highly debatable, but it seems quite likely. Especially in light of how things turned out later.

We rented a suite a couple miles from the funeral home, where Fro spent the night with us on the sofa bed. Two memories from her wake are crystal clear as I sit here tonight. My daughter, with a handful of Kleenex, weeping uncontrollably is one of them. It makes one wonder what kind of world we live in, that a 7-year-old can be caught beneath the load of such crippling pain. The other is that damned song. My wife made me buy a boombox and a cd. I can't recall the album title right off hand, but the song she got me to play was "Angel" by Sarah McLaughlin. It was one of Tammy's favorite songs. These days, I turn it off if it happens to come on. All I can see are people falling apart to the strains of it.

Her funeral was the moment that I first began noticing the effects of the antidepressants. Grief-stricken though I was, I didn't shed a single tear. They needed to come, but were nowhere to be found. For the longest time, I thought I had used a lifetime's worth over my brother. I really believed that the well had run dry. Much later, I came to the realization that I had been numbing rather than grieving. Pharmaceutically assisted grief control, dig?

After the graveside service, we got together with her children, her cousins, and all the grandchildren, which turned into a trip to Chuck E. Cheese. Afterward we ate at Outback. That's the last time I remember all of us being together at once.

Jeffrey didn't have to be back at work in Florida for a few days, and was eager to make a trip DTR. We were just as hungry to go, so we all made the trip together.

The flood waters were finally gone, but it was far too muddy to leave the roads. Everywhere we looked, the highway was the only place viable for parking. In Mom's neighborhood, we walked through many of the houses. They were all grim reminders of the destructive force that had plowed through town. At my house, the decision to break all the windows proved foolhardy. Flooding had occurred again just days later, spreading what was left of our possessions all over the neighborhood.

(I finally decided to look in my closet. Being OCD had paid off, it seemed. Exempting underwear and pajamas, all of my clothing had been hanging. When the hanger rod had pulled out of the sheetrock walls, everything had been so tightly compressed that only the items on each end had mildewed. I grabbed every shirt that Tammy had given me - some were gifts. One was hers, but Joseph wouldn't stop wearing it - and my favorite sweater. I still have that stuff.)

Dad's house was such a shambles that we had to climb over debris to get inside. In the living, under piles of unrecognizable garbage, we found a few of Michael's rims.

When we got to Empire, we were greeted by two-story houses sitting in the highway. Bub & Paula's place was gone, along with the boat sheds that had been in front of it. On my wife's grandmother's land, we found no sign of her aunt's or cousin's homes. Some of the siding from her grandmother's trailer was hanging from a tree. We found the rest of it several hundred yards away in the woods. After my wife got her bearings enough to point out where her grandmother's room had been, Jeff and I punched a hole in the roof and retrieved her jewelry box.

Her father's trailer had been nearly flattened. There was just enough room for Fro & I to crawl through it on our bellies. It was there that we saw one of the most astounding images of our entire trip. A small figurine of Jesus, arms upraised, stood illuminated by a beam of light that had found it's way around the debris.

(The number of places that were wiped clean while religious imagery - Christ, the Virgin Mary, crosses - was left untouched is enough to give one pause.)

A cow lay rotting in his back yard. The smell drove us away.

In Buras, my grandmother's place had been crushed like a tin can. My uncle's, directly in front of hers, was accessible but not stable enough for one to safely traverse. Sadly, they looked like a dozen roses compared to what lie a block south.

Her sister's home had been moved over a hundred yards, so my wife made a beeline for it. She refused to set foot in Tammy's yard. That was a job left to Jeffrey and I.

In the vacant lot across from the Pentecostal church, the red Cavalier she had given to her son sat like a liferaft in the middle of an ocean (It's pictured in my previous post. I actually found it on Google.) Her trailer? It looked something like a pretzel, if you can wrap your mind around that. Some rooms were crushed flat. Others were missing a roof or a wall.

The decision to evacuate with us had been last minute for Bro Fro. Tammy hadn't been home to pack anything. We searched high and low for the urns containing Joseph & Belinda's remains. We never located hers, but during a search that yielded nearly a dozen of her angel figurines to be saved for her kids - we spotted Joseph's. The top had come off, but the water hadn't carried anything away. His ashes had hardened like concrete. We took it with us to clean and place at the foot of his wife's tomb.

Looking back, I still get upset. Mama Tammy never got the chance to come see what had happened there.

Mr. Rene & Yale had fared a little better. Their houses had been built raised off the ground on pylons, and only had water in them until the storm surge receded. On the way to Rene's, we had to pass behind the high school. The biggest barge in the world was balanced precariously atop the levee. Driving past, it seemed one could feel it itching to be mischievous. The saddest sight at Yale & Vicki's was Michael's Plymouth. It had sat underwater for over a month, and was covered in debris. I felt my dream of a graduation present for Jaci - and another little piece of my heart - taking wing.

On the river road, the lot where Tammy's daughter had lived was empty except for the power pole. The satellite dish was still strapped to it. We parked and took a walk through the woods. From the looks of it, the lives of everyone in the parish were scattered over that mile or two of garbage that we walked atop. We found a few items that had been in E's house, but turned around when we realized the pile we were walking on was ten feet tall in some places.

Venice was much of the same. On the levee, the river side had basically become a landfill. Yale had been there first, marking the place that he'd found the cross with spray paint.

Something had changed between the trips by boat and that first on foot. We began to see a lot of animals that had survived. Elk, deer, wild hogs, and pelicans at first. Then lost pets. Cats and dogs seemed to be everywhere. Most of them were too traumatized to approach, but none of them turned their noses up at the food and water we left. The lesson in finding our own cat a few weeks previously had not been lost on us. We carried bags of dry food and water on every trip thereafter.

Back in New Iberia, I finally made it to a parish mental health unit. After filling out some forms, I found myself sitting in a therapist's office. We had maybe an hour long conversation, then he hit me with 2 questions that wound up being the crux of every session (then the only thing we talked about as our sessions grew shorter and we ran out of things to say):

"Are you having any thoughts of hurting yourself, or others?"

and

"How did you feel when you saw what was going on in New Orleans? How do you feel about the hurricane now?"

(Lord Jesus help us! I got so sick of that hurricane question.)

Then he gave me my scrip and told me to come back in a month. I did accomplish something good while I was there. I finally applied for a replacement social security card. The original had gone missing 9 years earlier, and I'd been squeezing by without it ever since. I still half expect my identity theft chip to be cashed in one of these days.

Soon after, I returned to work. The jack up had sustained severe damage to the legs, and was stacked in Fourchon while undergoing repairs. I rejoined my co-workers, and within a few months we were back on the water drilling. I found out while there that the company was giving small donations to the employees that had been affected. Unfortunately, the period allowed to sign up had passed when I returned and all parties that could have helped seemed to have lost interest.

My luck was no better when dealing with the federal government.

Our insurance company had been based in Covington(?), and while not catastrophically damaged, there were issues with power and such. Most businesses in the area were still closed, leaving them unreachable. In time, a hotline was set up to send messages to your insurance company stating that you needed to file a claim.

A few months before the storm, they set up a new insurance package strictly for mobile home owners. Flood coverage was included in the homeowner's policy. It seemed more convenient (and cheaper!) than paying for a separate flood policy, as had always been the norm. We went for it, and it bit us in the ass when everything played out.

Eventually they got in touch, did a phone interview to file the claim, and told me that an inspection would probably not be necessary. Several areas had been marked as decimated, with plans to pay the policies in full.

And pay it is what they'd done. I'd only been in the home for 7 years, and you know how mortgage loans are set up. In the beginning payments are interest heavy, with the percentage of principal slowing rising as the loan matures. They sent a check made payable to myself and the mortgage company. After signing and forwarding it on, we received a refund of just over $8,000 dollars.

By this time, FEMA had stopped playing nice. In the beginning, they granted emergency assistance money in small sums. As time went by, they began giving all applicants a bit of a hard time due to fraudulent claims that had been filed. I've lost count of how many people were called liars (some were called out for trying to claim the city of Plaquemine - near Baton Rouge - when they clearly meant Plaquemines Parish). The looting and violence in New Orleans had further biased them. We all went from victims to refugees to criminals in 3 easy steps.

When my insurance claim was payed out, FEMA wanted to know how much had been payed by homeowners and how much had been paid by flood. This was to determine what damage had been caused by flooding and which had occurred due to storm surge. There was no making them see that where we're from, storm surge and flooding were one and the same. Lots of legitimate claims wound up being denied by insurance companies and government agencies due to the blurring of those lines.

In the end, they denied us any assistance due to the insurance claim. I wrote a personal letter, asking what happened to the assistance the president had stood in Jackson Square promising. According to his optimistic plan, all those affected, regardless of how unlikely that seemed while standing amid the muck, would come out of this even better than they had been before. I knew that all those promises were legitimate as a three dollar bill when he side-stepped right back into the Gospel according to Bush - the war on terrorism.

(He wasn't ashamed to hide his arrogant attitude about it, either. I saw a reporter ask him if he was going to pull troops out of Iraq and send them to the Gulf Coast. He responded that the recovery effort on the coast was going just fine, and he would not let down his guard against terror just because of a storm. Yeah. I facepalmed, too.)

My letter did a little bit of good. Instead of the form letters I'd been receiving, I got a personal phone call. The caseworker told me that I should be able to purchase another home with my insurance payment. When I pointed out that the mortgage company had received the majority of the payout, he said that I still had $8,000. When asked how much money he thought we had left after being out of work and having to completely re-outfit a family that had essentially nothing left but the clothing on their backs - and that's not even taking into account the amount of price gouging that was going on - this smug asshole replied that it was my problem alone, not the government's. At this point, I realized that in the eyes of our federal government, none of us were victims. We were criminals that wanted every free dollar we could get our hands on.

(But it was okay for some of the most powerful people in the country to stay on their taxpayer funded vacations while thousands died; and over a million slept in shelters, in their cars, in tents, in the homes of strangers... Ok, I'm getting angry again. Moving right along.)

That was my last communication with FEMA. When I moved out of their travel trailer some 9 months after the storm, I never even notified them. Just locked the door and never went back.

The Red Cross helped out with a one time donation, but their attitudes were no better. When they told me that they'd have to do a home inspection to grant their measly $500 dollars, I told them they could take one drive-by of our town then call me back and tell me I was a liar again. They hung up on me, but their debit card came and kept us afloat for a few more weeks.

In the end, we wound up worse than before. This is how.

The SBA approved us for a low interest loan in the mid-40s, with the stipulation that they'd be willing to negotiate that amount due to the rising cost of housing that demand would create.

There was also a new program set up, the Louisiana Road Home, that pledged to dole out grants of up to $150,000. It was supposed to pay for the cost of new housing, and if it had been secured already by the SBA or a mortgage company, the grant would pay off the balance and offset any remaining expenses

In the beginning it worked out great. It created jobs for some of those who had been displaced, and grants began to go out immediately. Over time, more and more criteria had to be met. To me the rise in denied claims was just too convenient when laid beside the accusations of mismanagement that were being reported. Some were denied with no good reason.

They called me at work and told me that we'd been awarded a grant in the amount of $77,000. When I got the paperwork in the mail, I immediately noticed a glaring error. They had put the total insurance payout in the blanks for homeowners AND flood insurance, making it appear as though we'd received twice the actual amount that had gone to our creditors. After over two year's worth (yes, long after we actually relocated) of appointments, documents flying back and forth in the mail, and telephone calls, they did what every other federally funded program that ran out of excuses for denying us did: they hit us with some brand new shit.

Now, it seemed that people that had lived in mobile homes were not eligible for assistance.

"Let me get this straight," I said to the caseworker that took my call. "We lived in a trailer instead of a house, so we aren't eligible? What kind of bullshit are you trying to lay on us? Just because we're not rich doesn't mean we aren't human."

"It's a new requirement. Here's the address if you'd like to appeal," said our caseworker. "You'll be receiving a letter in the mail that informs you of our decision and your legal rights in the matter."

Yeah, yeah. Blahdy blahdy bullshit bullshit blah.

I never tried appealing. By then I'd grown weary of it all, and to be honest, I had worse problems and didn't have any fight left in me. Mom gave up trying to have her house repaired because every time they'd make a couple steps toward progress, the zoning laws would be amended and they'd have to start over. She wound up buying a house in Florida to be near Fro.

We'd started looking at houses all over the state after the SBA gave us the go ahead. They had crushed my dreams of moving back home with their first requirement: that we would only be granted assistance if we relocated. That was fine with my wife, though. Her desire to go home had grown cold after our first visit. She'd gone from "we can't wait to go home again" to "we're never going back." And me? Never one to rock the boat, I just went with it. And wound up a train wreck in the end.

We settled on a house in Donaldsonville, LA, a short distance southeast of Baton Rouge. When we neared closing, the SBA informed us that they were no longer interested in renegotiating the loan amount. We'd have to finance the remainder of the balance elsewhere. And to add insult to injury, while the amount had been adjusted slightly upward to accommodate a small percentage of the rising cost of real estate, the original $8,000 left over from our insurance payment would be deducted from the loan amount. My father-in-law wound up giving us the down payment amount out of his FEMA grant money. The rest we financed through a mortgage company. So instead of bettering the slowly dwindling mortgage that we'd had pre-Katrina, we were now stuck with two separate mortgage payments: the larger percentage being higher interest, of course.

Nonetheless, our real estate agent was very friendly. She treated us to dinner one night, and vowed to introduce us to her church's pastor. She wound up doing exactly as she promised after the closing. And that was the beginning of my second, and final, awful experience with a church. And madness. And a few other things as well, but I guess I shouldn't let all the cats out of the bag just yet.

Until next time: brush twice a day, drive carefully, and tip your waitresses. See ya!

part 8

I remember stopping at my dad's house after Hurricane Cindy. While everyone sat around swapping complaints about the lack of power, I thumbed through a hurricane preparedness pamphlet. At the back was a list of storm names for the next 5 years. When I told everyone that there'd be a storm named Michael in '06, Pops - with that glassy-eyed look that's the precursor to tears - said, "I hope it destroys everything."

Those aren't the kind of words that you ever forget, but they bore no fruit. By the time the middle of the next year's Atlantic hurricane season had rolled around, there was little left to sweep away.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in lower Plaquemines Parish near dawn on August 29, 2005. Meteorological buoys at the mouth of the Mississippi River recorded waves at heights of 55 feet. A storm surge of 30 feet was expected. Throw 15 foot waves on top of that, and you're talking about a 45 foot wall of water! The amount of storm surge we actually got has been highly debated, mostly due to lack of data. One measured height was "in excess of 14 ft." I think its a pretty fair assumption to make that the maximum surge did indeed strike our home. The twin levees overtopped, filling the little strip of land between like a fishbowl.

A friend of mine was among a group that stayed aboard a large pogie-fishing vessel owned by Daybrook Fisheries in Empire. He confirmed that when the water came, it was all at once, a 40 foot tidal wave that swept away everything in it's path. He also refuted the claims that it had weakened to a category 4 (or the later ones that it was weaker still - a 3). He told me that sustained wind speeds near 200 mph were measured just before the windows in the wheelhouse began to flex in-and-outward, causing him to cower on the floor in terror. When the eye passed overhead, granting them a temporary respite from the vicious winds, he climbed to the crow's nest with a pair of binoculars. The only things he could see were the tops of the tallest trees. In the canal that ran under the overpass, some boats had been secured with up to 20 ropes. During the initial bad weather, when the northeast quadrant of the storm was passing overhead, most of the boats stayed moored in place. When the southwest portion struck and the wind and current switched direction, nearly everything that hadn't moved before was swept into a pile. One boat that survived had only 3 lines left, of an initial 22. The Empire overpass became a boat graveyard.

When the storm surge finally subsided, those that had remained were stunned at the amount of wreckage left in it's wake. The south side of the overpass was completely blocked off by fishing vessels. Two of the large pogie boats sat atop the median wall at the foot of it. On the river road, the combination hardware store/post office wound up floating in the canal. Houses and boats littered the highway. Every gas main had been severed, their places marked by the mini-geysers that were simultaneously erupting out of the water.

Another friend had been on the way out of town the previous evening, only to be stranded in Port Sulphur when his car broke down. Once the water began to rise, he met some people that were breaking into the Catholic church with the balcony on the second floor in mind. Said balcony only proved useful for a short time. When rescuers found them, they were on top of the bell tower, holding on to the steeple in terror as the water raged mere inches below their feet.

Just two streets away, my dad's elderly neighbor had stayed in her two-story house. Eventually she had to seek refuge in the attic, but by the time the storm passed, she'd had enough of the rising water and cramped conditions. She chopped her way out with an ax, and was swimming when the airboats passed through in search of survivors and/or victims.

Yes, the water was that high. Another survivor, from the Diamond area, attempted to swim to the levee on the river side when the water overtook the tree he'd climbed, but was unable to stay there because it was too far underwater. He went to the pumping plant on the Gulf side levee, and clung to the roof until the water went down.

After passing over us, Katrina continued moving inland, making it's third landfall at the Louisiana/Mississippi state line. Still packing 125 mph winds and a 20' storm surge, it obliterated the Mississippi coastline on the east side. On the west side of the eyewall, winds of 100 mph were recorded in New Orleans. Water poured into Lake Ponchartrain, inundating St. Tammany, St. Bernard, and finally New Orleans - when the levees began to fail - with water. It then traveled through northern Mississippi, knocking down most of the trees in it's path, and into Tennessee before being downgraded to a tropical storm.

It didn't stop there, either. Severe weather was experienced as far north as Canada.

Katrina was the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history. Damages have been estimated at $108 billion. Over 1,800 people have been confirmed dead. Many are still unaccounted for.

We sat in Abbeville during the pre-dawn hours - my wife weeping all the while - watching a line of tornadic activity sweep the southern half of Plaquemines Parish on the radar. We heard very little about our home after that, because the reports from New Orleans began to flood the airwaves.

The Superdome had been outfitted up as a shelter of last resort. It quickly filled beyond the planned capacity (people unexpectedly gathered at the Convention Center, as well). Food, water, and toiletries were in short supply. No power or running water added to the air of despair. When the ceiling began to leak, despair was joined by her good friend Hysteria.

The intensity of the storm began to weaken, and the spirit of the occupants were lifted by the thought of returning to their homes. Their hopes proved ill-founded. The hurricane protection levees, poorly engineered at best, burst in several places. Water poured in, flooding 80 percent of the city. The sane cowered in fear. The rest? That's when the looting began. And let's not forget the dying.

Sad as things were there, it got to be infuriating. The war zone that New Orleans had become eclipsed all other news. Almost nothing about the Mississippi coast. Had the beaches & casinos not been there to attract tourists, there would have been zilch. It felt like our community didn't exist, despite being the site of the most intense landfall.

It biased the rest of the nation, as well. These people would watch the mayhem on the morning news, then go to work and encounter us. At the beginning, we were welcomed with open arms. Now when they heard we were hurricane victims, they were more apt to back up a couple of steps and ask, "You're from New Orleans?!?" in wide-eyed half-fear. It was hard enough for me having to go everywhere with my hand out. I'd always been a self-sufficient sort. What did they think we were going to do? Pick their pockets? Shoot them?!? (Pffft! I've never even owned a gun.) It changed the way I felt about New Orleans for several years. I'd always had a good time when there, and furthermore, when asked where I was from, it had been easier to reply with "NOLA" than having to explain about DTR. Now I was quick to point out that we hadn't lived there.

I focused on applying for assistance with grim determination, and went to great lengths getting everyone else to do the same. Some of them were cooperative, while others ranged from apathetic to "Who cares? I'm more concerned with tracking down my next high."

At a Salvation Army thrift store that was giving essentials to victims, we ran into one of Dad's co-workers.

"What are we going to do?" she asked me. "We have nothing."

On her face was the blank, zombie-like look of shock that had been on ours for a year. It was an astonishing reminder of how surreal that time had been.

Dad decided that he wasn't going to wait on the government to pick him up. He left one morning in search of job, and didn't get home until that evening. They were so impressed by his self-sufficient attitude that they left him clock in immediately. His new employers gave Cody a job soon after. One of the managers introduced us to his daughter, who promptly offered to buy school supplies for my children. My dad met a customer there with an apartment for rent. He let them move in right away, insisting that they pay no rent.

The original living arrangement didn't last long for the rest of us, either. My stepbrother & his girlfriend were kicked out by my wife when they invited friends and pulled a loud drunk in the front yard at 2 a.m. Her "brothers" & their parents showed up soon after, bringing more chaos with them. We were desperate to find a place to live.

Mom & Steve offered us the deposit and rent money for an apartment above a dentist's office in Delcambre. He didn't allow pets, but would be willing to let us keep one in a cage on the balcony. We ultimately wound up backing out of the lease because we didn't think it would be fair to make our children give up any of their cats. They had let everything else they owned go to ruin just to hold on to them.

(I'm suddenly struck with the memory of my daughter's grief when her fuzzy kitten was run over by a neighbor one night when she was 5. That's one thing they don't tell you about aging... you become an emotional mess. Some memories drive you to tears - whether they be of joy or sorrow.)

It was nearly a solution, but it caused some family tension. Dad suggested that with he, Cody, & Carol moving out, Jeffrey could stay with us until he found a place.

"Absolutely not!" said my wife, slamming the door on that notion with finality.

"Ok," said Dad. "Just a suggestion. He can sleep on our sofa for now."

But Jeff had heard enough.

"Aunt Debra's been urging me to come to Florida. I think I'll take her up on it. I can tell when I'm not wanted around. She did the same thing she did to Michael."

And that's just what he did. My brother gave me his pocketknife, left his car at Aunt Linda Kay's house in Youngsville, and boarded a flight east.

I saw him very infrequently over the next four years.

Our prayers were answered when FEMA began setting up 30-foot travel trailers at the RV park that Mom & Aunt Betty had evacuated to in New Iberia. We were supposed to call in and be put on a list of families that were waiting for shelter, but my mother and stepfather pled our case, rationalizing that they could rest easier knowing my family would be next door so they could look after them when (or if) I could go back offshore. My rig - a jackup - had been moved to Main Pass, right in the path of the storm, when I was last there.

It was frustrating during the first few weeks. All traffic was prohibited from returning home, and we were hearing nothing but "New Orleans" on the news. We finally found WWL radio, the only media that seemed to know - or give a damn - that other parishes had been affected. The first news that we heard from home was disheartening. The reporter was standing on the levee in Port Sulphur. It was littered with everything from household appliances to coffins. Yes, coffins! Our worry over our loved ones that were confined there eternally had just increased tenfold.

Mom went back home first. Steve had brought pictures from flyovers he'd made, and her stories were no better. Nothing, however, could prepare us for what we saw when we got there.

We began to see tarps on rooftops in Jefferson Parish, and it was more of the same in Belle Chasse. We stopped at my cousin's house, where we left my car and loaded one of his pirogues in the bed of the truck. When we got south of the Alliance refinery, boats littered the top of the levee. And the broken places! I don't know how many their were altogether, but I counted 15 on that first trip.

The damage began to increase in Point a la Hache, but when we got south of the ferry landing we finally realized how catastrophic it had been. Our first indication was a house floating in the canal.

I don't think there was a dry eye in the truck for the rest of the trip.

Lower Plaquemines appeared to have been bombed. Most businesses had been washed away, leaving little more than metal frames. Neighborhoods differed greatly depending on the cause of damage.

In those affected by storm surge, houses and mobile homes were scattered like bowling pins. Some were piled together, others littered the streets and the woods.

Then there were those that had been struck by tornados. In most cases, they were 50 foot piles of wreckage from one end to another.

On the southern end of Port Sulphur, the main highway - built up somewhat higher than the rest of the landscape - was the only area passable by automobile. Being so far below sea level, our community had many drainage pumps. Most of them would take months to repair. By the time we were able to go, some 3 weeks after the storm, only two of them were up and running. With all the levee breaks, water continued to pour inside of the levee protection area, and the working pumps could barely keep up.

We got no farther than Homeplace, where the roads were still blocked.

Dad's house was sitting on top of a Dodge that Michael had been tinkering with the previous year. I stepped out to speak with a former neighbor. He'd been under the impression that my dad had stayed behind and drowned.

I happened to look into the street, which was a regular thruway due to the police, National Guard, Red Cross, and news crews that passed ceaselessly. For a moment, I saw Sheriff Hingle through the polarized glass of a four wheel drive SUV. He looked quite haggard.

(... and rightly so. I won't go into the poor planning, mismanagement of funds, & finger pointing that went on. This post would turn into an entire book. All of that's been documented countless times anyway, so I'll just illustrate a few points pertaining to Plaquemines Parish. During and just after the storm, all Federally-appointed responders were sent to New Orleans. No one came to lower Plaquemines, so police deputies were dispatched on airboats for rescue and recovery. I don't remember how many, but I think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 11. Alone they scoured the southern half of the Parish. One of them called my stepbrother's girlfriend on his Nextel(?) 2-way to break the news to her about her house. He stated that he currently had 2 survivors & a dozen casualties aboard his boat. All the people I've known personally that volunteered said that only a small fraction of what was going on in the affected areas was being reported. Our Parish recorded 3 deaths, yet a family member claims to have bagged 6 himself. Another reported 12. One story, be it truth or fantasy, was that someone was bringing fuel, generators, and shrimp for the officers to eat, when FEMA stopped them at the Parish line. The supplies were confiscated and sent to the city. This much is true: when the Feds finally stepped in to offer assistance, they were politely told that their help would not be needed. They could turn around and leave. Soon after, the New Mexico national guard showed up unsolicited, and were welcomed warmly.)

We rode back up to Mom's street, where we met Yale. He was pretty irate that they wouldn't let him past the roadblocks. His home and the boats (his livelihood) were down there somewhere. He simply had to find them. He resigned himself long enough to go with Mom to her house.

Nothing in her neighborhood had gone unmoved. Some lots had no houses. Some had three. The roads and canals were littered with homes. Hers sat in the street. The power line had stretched nearly to the point of snapping. A four-wheeler hung from it like the victim of a lynching.

She was pretty upset when she came back. They'd forced her French doors at the rear of the house, where she found things she was sure she'd taken. Family pictures, bronzed baby shoes, our schoolwork... Those things you can never replace.

Yale was drafted to come with me as well. Our progress was impeded not far from the remnants of Duece's house. We had to detour through the woods, which were also blocked. A house that had originally been next to Mom's (my brother rented it for a time) had crossed two streets through the woods, and now sat across the ditch from my place. I couldn't fathom how high the water had been.

Until I got inside.

As we crossed the drainage ditch, I noted that our mobile home had been pushed southward into the lot on the next street, and turned at a 90 degree angle. It canted drunkenly toward the trailer hitch due to being knocked off of the blocks. At the highest point, the master bedroom, the water was still up at the window line. Towards the hitch, at my daughter's bedroom, it was much higher.

On our way to my room, we stumbled across the cinderblocks with our paddles. I noticed that the upper window pane of one of our windows appeared to be the only one broken. I kicked the bottom one out with my boot and climbed through to tie the boat off.

Yale refused to go in. He sat at the bedroom window the entire time, screaming, "Don't go in there, cuz!", then "Come on out, man! This place is shot! It's done for! Something could collapse! Or there could be snakes!" He could have saved his breath. I had to see.

Every surface was covered with mud & oil. I got an answer as to how high the water had been before taking a single step. The twin box springs stood against the wall, and judging by the clean imprint of the ceiling fan on the king sized top mattress, it had been trapped firmly against the ceiling for a longish portion of the 3 weeks we'd been gone. The same proof stood to reason in the kitchen. The refrigerator was balanced neatly across the center island countertop. There was a hole in the sheetrock where it had been pushed through the ceiling. I made it through the living room to the hallway and my children's rooms. There I stopped. The water at my daughter's end was waist deep.

The only way I can come close to explaining was that it looked like a tornado had come through our home. We had taken one television and a DVD player. The rest of the tv's had all migrated to the living room. Our sectional sofa was seeded throughout the house - a piece in every room. The coffee pot lay on the kitchen floor, full of some foul black substance. The sugar cannister sat atop the kitchen cabinets, near the ceiling. The last thing I noticed before I left was the soggy pile of goo in the corner of my bedroom. It had been one of my bookshelves, full of first addition hardcovers. It appeared to have melted.

We were only interested in going to one other place that day: St. Patrick Cemetery. In the center alcove of the mausoleum lay the mortal remains of friends, classmates, acquaintances, and - most important to us - Aunt Iona, Uncle Richard, & my younger brother Michael. He'd been there a few weeks shy of a year. It may seem a little selfish, but most were worrying themselves sick with wonder about where they would live now. My immediate family were definitely concerned, but our minds (and hearts) were mostly clouded with the fear that we'd finally make it home, only to find that Michael was gone. We simply couldn't let him go yet.

But it seemed our need to know would be thwarted. The word had been making the rounds that cemeteries were off limits due to the alarming number of open tombs, and that anyone caught going back there would be arrested. I told all interested parties that I was going to find out if my brother was there before the day was out. They could lock me up. I did not care. I had to lay my nightmares to rest.

As it turns out, the stars aligned and we picked the perfect moment to be standing at the roadside contemplating our trip past the church to the gravesites. The priest and a sheriff's deputy approached us to see if we had a boat they could borrow to check the tombs. Earl's other two boats sat at the side of the road in front of his property.

Mom and I blurted the same phrase together. "We have three. Let's go! My brother (son, for Mom) is back there!"

Mom and Aunt Betty jumped in a pirogue, closely followed by the police officer and the priest in the second. Yale flat out refused to come this time, so I wound up bringing my sister-in-law with me. She wasn't very skilled at maneuvering with a paddle, so we wound up being the last to arrive.

When we rounded the corner, they were sitting just outside the mausoleum with their arms around one another. Each sob was a stab in the heart.

"Oh, Mark! They're gone," said my sister-in-law.

Mom looked up and called out, "They're fine. Be careful. We saw a snake in there."

This was news to me. We hadn't seen so much as a fly. The water had mixed with oil, natural gas, sewage, & gods know what else, creating a toxic sludge. The reflection of the sun on this foul soup caused a greenhouse effect unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Ask something that was there during those first weeks, and more often than not they'll tell you it was surely 200 degrees.

We paddled around the right corner, then entered from the back. There was a light current running through the corridor. I snapped a picture to show to my father, then tossed her the camera and let my hands slide across the surface of Michael's tomb as we drifted past. Others that had opened littered both sides of us like missing teeth. One - the oldest tomb, if memory serves - contained a horror. A wooden casket lay shattered. From the stuffing that had burst out of the liner peered a blue sleeve, and beneath that the glaring ebony of bone.

It seemed that all our loved ones had remained in their resting places... right until the moment we went around the left corner. Her mother-in-law was one of the missing.

When we got back to the road, everyone split up for a while. Aunt Betty went to her house, on the northern end of Port Sulphur where the water had gone down. My wife wanted to go to our house and see if there was anything we could salvage. Mom had the same thing in mind. And Yale? He parted company with us then, once again giving us his word that he would get to Buras that very day - or go to jail trying.

As we approached our house, she did something that had never crossed my mind. She began to call for our lost cats. To be honest, I thought she was wasting her breath. I didn't see how anything could have survived.

That's what I get for thinking. A cat began to answer. We managed to get the boat turned around and returned to the house in front of ours. The cry seemed to be coming from the back yard. And so it was. From tree that hugged the exterior of the house, Kiamaya (so named by our daughter before she had many words in her vocabulary), our oldest, came down the tree at an Olympic sprinter's pace, jumping the last few feet to my wife's open arms.

Dehydration had reached critical stage. Her white coat, once a blinding white, was a dull, flat grey. It stretched taught against the bone. She had grown light as a feather. The pads of her paws were burned by 3 weeks spent on a rooftop.

We brought her inside and sat her on the kitchen counter. My wife found a can of Vienna sausage, then cleaned a bowl with a disinfectant wipe to dump it into. She ate ravenously, but turned her nose up at water. I think she was a little afraid to after being forced to drink from the poisonous flood waters. It took her a few hours to find the courage to try some.

In an attempt to let a breeze in, I kicked out every window in the house. I threw a television at our rear sliding door 3 times, but it was double-paned and reinforced by steel between. I could only break the inner glass that day.

With that, we turned our attention to finding anything that might be salvageable. Not that there was very much, but having come in a small boat, we were forced to take even less. She wound up with a few knickknacks. I salvaged maybe a dozen records that I couldn't bear to part with. Everything else was useless. Our cookware was probably unsafe to use. My bass had been twisted into an unrecognizable shape, then left in the living room. I'd had my turntable repaired two weeks before we left. I might've listened to 3 records.

When we got back outside, we were greeted by our next door neighbors. Regarding the paltry items we were loading into our pirogue, Mr. F said, "It's a goddamned shame to be forced to take a boat to your house, only to find that what's left of your possessions fits in a pillowcase and a laundry basket."

No argument from me on that point. What a nightmare!

We eventually got back to Mom, then ate a quick lunch, delivered by a Salvation Army van.

After that, we stopped at Aunt Betty's on the way up. Her house, a two-story built by Freeport McMoran that had survived Hurricanes Betsy & Camille, now sat in the middle of her street. The garage, a long addition that ran the length of the house, was gone. The living room wall was now a makeshift ramp.

She turned down the offer to follow us up, assuring us that she'd return to Matt's house in Jesuit Bend before dark.

The trip back to New Iberia was a quiet one. There was so much to take in, so many decisions to consider.

The next day, Hurricane Rita entered the Gulf. Due to the levee breaks and the abnormally high tides, the water rose another ten feet. We were unable to return for another 3 weeks.
--------------------------------------------------

I'm going to stop here for now. The road to recovery was a long and often frustrating one. I intended to keep going until I got to that point, but something pretty traumatic happened this week. My brother was seriously injured at work. He's on the mend now, but it's been quite exhausting shuffling the job, the hospital, and helping him due to his limited mobility. That much being said, it's probably the 8th wonder of the world that I got this much out.

A pause may be just what the doctor ordered, anyway. Truth be told, I'm afraid to write the next part. What I'd like to do is "unwrite" it. To put the words on the page and alter history. Erase the pain. Is that kind of magic too much to ask for?

part 7: help me i am in hell

   Grief and guilt can destroy you. I learned that the hard way, but by no means did it happen immediately. Entirely too many things occurred one after another before my sorrow ever really had time to surface. By then, it had built up so much pressure inside that it was more akin to blowout than release.

   When someone dies, one of the worst feelings is knowing that you're only going to see them that one last time. Not that you really do. When you're sitting in that funeral home, you're only viewing a shell that once held a soul. But you look anyway, because all that's left after that are faded photographs, a dimming memory, and your dreams (or nightmares, if you aren't lucky). It's the life cycle's only true goodbye. The final one.

   The first real day of my life as one of three sons began with me arriving on a drilling rig in the Green Canyon sector of the Gulf. I'd always worked on the smaller workover rigs, and I'd gone out the previous hitch as part of a skeleton crew. They'd wanted to make sure I was up to speed on the holding tanks and my pumps. No problem. You just trace your lines as needed until you have the system by heart. Then there was the derrick. Not only was the pipe 2" larger in diameter, a stand was also 30-ish feet taller. When you're handling it at that height, there's the bowing to contend with. It's trickier, so more often than not a winch is used instead of handling it with a rope. I'd gone home nearly three weeks before adequately prepared for the kickoff of this job.

   There was only one problem now, albeit a major one. That briefing had occurred in another life. Now drilling operations were underway. I had to learn everything on the run. The frustration at not understanding my job blended with my sorrow and yielded poisonous results. I began to lose control of an emotion that I hadn't succumbed to in nearly 15 years: that of anger.

   Before the two-week hitch was over, I was called into the Rig Manager's office to address my issues. He told me that I needed to reign my emotions in for my own safety and that of my crew. He wasn't beyond giving me a chance to do better, but insisted that my brother would have wanted me to move on.

   My brother hasn't been gone two weeks and you want me to get over it?!? How could you be such an asshole? I screamed on the inside.

   Nights were no different. The seventh and (at the time) final Dark Tower book had been released six days prior to the accident. I'd waited so long for it that I'd read the entirety of it's 800+ pages in less than two days. No matter, though. It - along with nearly every other bit of information I'd absorbed over the years - was gone. I took the series to work with me so I could experience it (once again) for the very first time. For those of you who aren't in the know, the story's protagonists only deal in lead. I saw each death that occurred through a new set of eyes. Every loss pierced me deeply.

   Unfortunately, torturing my already raw emotions with some book was the least of my worries.

   During the week leading up to the funeral, I'd sworn to stay closer to family than I'd previously done. Most of that agonizing time was spent visiting family and leaning on one another for support. I decided once offshore to call them as much as my phone privileges would allow. I talked to several of my aunts, Yale & Vicki, my brothers, my dad...

   And then I called Mom. I expected what we were all grasping at straws for. You can call it comfort, or support, or just fill in the blank. It doesn't matter in the grand scheme, because I got none of those things.

   What I got was fury.

   She came right out and told me that she was reserving a large part of the blame for me, because I should have put my foot down. I should have controlled my wife. So what if I hadn't been there. I should have done something.

   "Don't you see that if she hadn't had him arrested when he came to get Jane, he would have been on the boat that night? And regardless, his license wouldn't have gotten suspended. He'd have been driving his truck. It's too late now, but I still have to lay part of the blame on you. YOU should have stopped her!"

   Needless to say, I began to fear telephone calls a little. I don't know what I was more afraid of, though - bad news or the accusatory finger being pointed.

   It isn't very hard to begin blaming yourself. Another step down the ladder, and you start to think it would have been easier had it been you. I began to think of situations that could have been fatal to me. The head injuries during my childhood; the car that had hit me in front of the student parking lot when I was in the fourth grade; the van that had nearly run over me at the shoe store across from the high school during my senior year (damn, that school was pretty hazardous to my health!); the time I was coming down the hallway and Michael - barely old enough to walk - had Mom's .22 pointed at me.

   Gun. Shit.

   Recently I'd gone to grease the crown block, some 200 feet above the main deck. It's fairly safe on top. The entry hatch closes, and the sides are enclosed by handrails. Getting to the snatch blocks for the tongs and winches on the underside was an entirely different story. You had to tie a lanyard to a steel rod that had been welded overhead, then walk out onto a crossbeam. The beams were extremely slippery with excess grease spillage. After doing my business with the grease gun, I turned to leave and discovered that my lanyard was frozen in the open position. It had come off with ease, and was hanging uselessly behind my back. One slip and I'd have fallen all the way to the steel deck below. The people below me looked roughly the size of action figures. Would they have gone into hysterics when my body exploded on contact? I would have, had I been in their shoes.

   All of that to say that death - that senseless, tragic, final machinery - began to cloud all cohesive thought. My mind was crumbling.

   Since early adolescence I'd written hundreds of poems, a handfull of short stories, a novel that I never showed to anyone, and several essays (one traced the roots of punk rock). I might've had a small glimmer that I needed to write about what had happened to us, but I slammed the doors on such a notion and ignored it. I didn't write one original thought for years.

   I met my brother and played music from time to time. One night we brought acoustic guitars to the mausoleum, then played until the sun came up. But for the most part it was unsatifying to me. That sort of release seemed barred as well.

   One thing we all became very passionately dedicated to was visiting Michael. Dad would stop by on the way to work. During the first few weeks, I'd more often than not run into someone at the cemetary. More condolences (or someone pointing a finger and screaming "J'accuse!" - hmmm, how prophetic) was the last thing I needed. In record time, I was coming after dark. Soon, I began drinking when I'd get there. See, we all vowed to celebrate and remember his life each and every day that we had left. We'd visit daily, and go to the cross at least once a week. We kept the grass cut so the Parish Rec Department wouldn't knock it down with their bushhogs.

   It was a way for us to carry a torch, but for me it was also penance. It's a terrible thing to have to do this and live with the fact that your own blood relative went to the grave estranged from you.

   To begin to hate yourself for your inaction.

   I stayed busy. Yale called one day to see if I could meet him at an old dock. One deckhand had quit, and the other one had gotten sick. He had a net full of mullet, and the sun was beating down. I drove to Buras, helped clean the net, then Yale saw fish and made another set right outside of the cut. We loaded them in the back of two trucks and raced to Empire to sell them. I wound up fishing with him every night I was home for the next month or so.

   It was a strange time for us. Alongside the usual adrenaline rush (when we'd suddenly have the boat flattened out with fish) & the frustration (when we'd be stuck, or have a breakdown of some sort) was the grief. They had been so close that they were more brothers than they were cousins. We spoke of him when we were out on the water. How he would have been working alongside us. But to me he really was. When we were side-by-side pulling a net with several pounds of fish onto the back of the boat, we could feel another set of arms lifting the load. Sometimes we'd tie up at a dock, put on our slicker suits to keep the chill and the damp out, then take a nap while we waited for the moon to rise. Once again, it felt like he was lying there beside us. No matter what was going on, his presence was strong.
 
   At the turn of midnight on New Year's, as we all sat in the Other Place (the old Balliviero's. My aunt had rented it and took up managing a second club) merrymaking, I couldn't help but notice how Tammy & Joseph looked at my brother and I as we screamed our triumph at the worst year ever being over. It's something I remembered with such bewilderment a few months later, when it became apparent that 2005 was the worst year for them.

   Tammy was married to my wife's uncle at one time, so they were family. When we first started dating, she would sometimes stay there to babysit her younger cousins. Tammy took an instant liking to me and I was welcome to come over as well. I watched her children grow up, just as she watched us grow up. She was a surrogate mother to a lot of us during our teens and early twenties.

   One night in early March, Tammy was shopping in New Orleans. She called home to tell Joseph that she'd be there in a few hours. He said that was fine. He was picking at his zits, then he was going to take a bath, and relax until she got home.

   We had gotten the kids into bed and laid down to watch a movie. Fifteen minutes after it started, Tammy called us in hysterics. When she got home, the house was deathly quiet. Maybe she thought he had been too tired to even turn on the tv. When she got into the bedroom, he wasn't in bed. I'm guessing that the bathroom light was still on... because that's where she found Joseph, drowned in the bathtub. I don't know if he merely fell asleep, or took the wrong medication, or someone came. She wasn't in Plaquemines Parish very much after that, and unbeknownst to all of us, we were rapidly running out of time to talk. She did tell us before his funeral that she suspected foul play. His backpack, which contained his licenses, certifications, money, his vitamins, and medications had disappeared. And the Caller I.D. on the home phone had been erased. I don't even know if the matter was ever investigated, because we were nearly out of time for that too.

   In the months after Joseph's funeral, I continued the process of trying to heal. Work, while still stressful, was somewhat better. I'd begun to adapt. I only had one week that was particularly hellish.

   On the day before I had to go to work, Mom called and asked me to come help her hang a wreath on Michael's headstone. When I got there, it was already up. She rolled her window down and asked me to come talk to her for a few minutes. She was quite visibly upset.

   Over the next hour or so, my mother never stopped crying, most of what she said was shouted, and all of it was bitter.

   She started with the same song and dance we'd gone through the steps of countless times.

   "Do you realize what kind of woman you're married to? She has destroyed our family! If she hadn't had Michael arrested, he wouldn't have had to go to court. He would have been in the bayou with Yale that night. And regardless, his license wouldn't have been suspended. He would have been  driving his truck, on the highway."

   I tried to interject with something about God's plan - how He alone knows when your appointed time has come, and maybe something would have happened no matter where he had been - but she was having none of it. She quickly went to work on my wife's character.

   "You think you know her, but you don't at all."

   She proceeded to tell me about things she and Steve had seen, alluding to instances of videotape and pictures. Supposedly my aunt had witnessed some things at a local bar. All pointed to infidelity.

   "Michael saw some things, too. But he said, 'I'm not gonna be the one to tell him, Mom. He needs to know, but every time you try to help someone it gets turned back around on you.'

   "They really got him good this time. And no one can take it back. You should have stuck by family. When it all boils down to it, she's really just some girl you hooked up with. You can replace a piece of ass any day of the week, but you can't replace your brother! He's gone! It's final. For that I can never forgive her. And neither will you. Your marriage will end... but I'm not going to be the one responsible. I'd hate for it to get turned around on me, too."

   For someone who wasn't trying to end my marriage, it seemed like she was trying awfully hard. Needless to say, I went back to the rig in a terrible state of mind. Things got so bad that I nearly got into an altercation with a co-worker. For this I was written up - the first time in my working life. At one point, the rig manager asked if I had ever considered taking time off to deal with my problems.

   By this point, my journey of healing had turned into a near-90 degree slide in the opposite direction. I was sinking (but no time to hit rock bottum yet).

   We'd had a few minor hurricanes and tropical storms during our lifetime. Nothing like what our parents had gone through as children during Betsy and Camille. So I thought nothing of driving to work as Tropical Storm Cindy came ashore. Besides, I was going to Intracoastal City, far west of the weather.

   After landfall, analysis showed that it had in fact been a Category One hurricane. I believed it, too. Man, that weather was nasty!

   I drove toward New Orleans through blinding sheets of rain. I don't think I got above 25 mph much (or stopped riding the center line, for that matter). When I got to the GNO toll bridge, I had to take a detour back to Woodlawn Highway. The foot of the bridge was underwater, rendering it impassable. On Woodlawn, trees were down in the road. Inmate laborers were out in the early-A.M. monsoon with chainsaws, moving the debris. I finally got back to 90W, and then the bottom fell out of the sky. There was a traffic light dangling a foot from the road at Manhattan Blvd. Once I got out of Westwego, I saw no other traffic. I crept along at my still sedate 25, hugging the center line. But it was still nearly too fast to see the tree that a tornado had dropped across the highway. Or the next, flung like a torpedo almost completely into the opposite shoulder. This horrific drive didn't end, either. At the St. Charles Parish line, the roads were closed. I crept towards home, back through the same weather. Either from the sideways rain, the patchy flooding, or both, my car was an electrical failure waiting to happen. The idiot panel was glaring an angry orange and red, and the lights and air-conditioning were flickering. I stopped at the gas station just north of the Belle Chasse tunnel (what a leaky venture that always is!) to call my boss and tell him that I couldn't make it.

   "It's calm here," he said smugly.

   "You're 3 or 4 hours west of me. There are trees down and the roads are flooded. Impassible. My car is fucked. I'll try to get home, then I'll have it looked at by a mechanic tomorrow. I'll have to come out the next day, after the electrical system's dried out."

   He accepted, after telling me I'd lose two days worth of pay.

   No mechanics were opened the next morning. Almost nothing was. I finally found a hardware store that was just getting set up. The power was still off, but a cash transaction was no problem. I bought electrical cleaner, then unplugged everything and soaked it down. That did the trick, and soon enough I was back at work.

   My wife had been watching my downward spiral for nearly a year. Several times she had sent me to doctors, intent on having me discuss my depression. I would come back with sinus meds every time. One day in late August, she told me that she'd had enough. She was coming with me.

   "We've both learned to live with the OCD behavior. At least you're still functional with it. But this has got to stop. When you're here, you do nothing but sit around sighing all day and looking through the blinds in paranoia. And the disappearing acts you've been pulling, Mark! I don't know what to tell our kids when they ask me why Daddy jumped in the car and left without saying anything. You're falling apart, and I don't want to have to explain to them later that I did nothing to help you... when you could have been saved."

   That's how on Friday, August 26, 2005 I found myself at the Azhar clinic in Buras talking about depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I tried to go into the usual spiel about my sinuses and the allergies (which is very true; this humid climate has always played hell with my respiratory system) and throw the emotional/mental/whatever issues somewhere in the middle. My wife was sitting there listening, so I had to.

   "Stop! Let's talk about the depression and we'll come back to your sinus congestion later," said the intern.

   (She never did. Fool me twice?)

   "OCD, huh?" she continued. "Does any of this sound familiar?"

   She opened her mouth, and out poured dozens of little routines, numeric sequences, phobias, tics like cracking your knuckles and picking at every little bump or scratch. All things I'd been doing since I was born.

   "I was worse off than you, you know. I would pull my hair out when I'd get nervous. And I was clawing every little blemish into ugly scars. I had to wear socks on my hands for a couple of weeks."

   "Well, it's not all bad," I said in my defense. "Although it weirds people initially, they wind up respecting me because my work is meticulous."

   "Yes, but this depression you spoke of won't help anyone. Is there anything that's bothering you?"

   Then my wife spoke up.

   "He lost his brother less than a year ago. What I see happening to him is terrifying. He has no appetite. He barely sleeps. He gets in the car and leaves without saying anything to us. Sometimes he'll be half an hour. Sometimes all night."

   "I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm going to either the cemetery or the cross when I leave."

   "Did you say there's a cross?" asked the doctor. "Was it an automobile accident?"

   "It happened on a four-wheeler. He used to tell me that he was going. He doesn't talk to anyone anymore."

   "Just how bad is this depression, Mark? Do you ever have thoughts about harming yourself? Of dying? Do you ever feel like it should've been you?"

   "Oh, you have no idea."

   "So you're saying that it wouldn't bother you much if a train came through the side of this building and took you out?"

   "I would welcome it. I must admit that sometimes I think about running off the road into a tree or an electrical pole."

   "Do you ever think about it when your family is in the car with you?"

   "I try not to, but sometimes it comes to mind."

   "I'm going to tell you what happened to me. I tried to take my own life. I wound up being hospitalized, and they tried several different medicines on me. Once they figured out exactly what I needed, I've seen nothing but improvement. Here's what I think: If taking a pill every day will make me function normally, then so be it. I'll pop pills.

   "I'd like to write you a prescription for Zoloft. I also want you to get in touch with the Parish Mental Health Unit. If you feel comfortable talking to me, I'll be opening my own practice in Belle Chasse this winter. But get in their system for now. My other advice to you is this. Start eating right. To help you sleep, I'll give you Lunesta. It's the newest sleep-aid on the market. One other thing that helps with depression is to get some sunlight. Once a day, I want you to go sit outside for half an hour and relax with a cool drink in your hand. Preferably not alcohol, but I'm not exactly forbidding a little."

   She wished me well and we headed home, stopping to fill the medicine on the way. My wife objected to the sleeping pills, so we left them alone.

   I never made it to the Plaquemines Parish Health Unit, and I never saw that young doctor again. That night, we sat down to watch the weather and got a shock. The 11th named storm of the year, a small tropical storm named Katrina, had made landfall in South Florida a day or so previously. Everyone wrote it off then, but I guess all the swampland in the Everglades did nothing to weaken it. It became a hurricane while on shore, had intensified quickly, and now covered almost the entire Gulf of Mexico.

   I have never, before or since, seen meteorologist Bob Breck look so grim. He traced a route straight through the southern end of Plaquemines Parish and said, "Things don't look so good for Buras."

   We started packing our pictures, medical records, and 5 days or so worth of clothing the next morning. Shortly after lunch, my wife called her father in Empire to see if he was preparing for evacuation. He told her that he was sitting outside, enjoying the view.

   "You know your lungs can't handle the smoke from the pogie plant. Why are you sitting out there?"

   "You should come have a look, too, because you're never going to see it again."

   So we went over and talked to him. He hadn't left for a storm since the 60's. This man, who had laughed as tornados destroyed the boat sheds at the foot of the Empire bridge during Ivan the previous year, told us that he had every intention of leaving. He could always read the weather. He'd walk outside and KNOW that it was time to go shrimping. He'd been expecting the total destruction of our community all year long.

   He called us the next morning at dawn.

   "Are you guys packed yet? We need to leave now!"

   My wife turned to me.

   "As sick as my daddy is, he's up and moving this early? We need to go, Mark!"

   My Camry was already loaded down with boxes, luggage, and water. We put all the frozen goods we could fit into the ice chest and somehow made room in the trunk.

   We woke up the children and asked them to pick a few of their favorite toys. Their reaction was the clearest indication of how we'd done as parents.

   My daughter looked up at me and said, "Daddy, we've been talking about it, and we don't want to bring any toys. We want to bring our cats instead."

   (Talk about making a person cry! - which is exactly what a friend of mine did when I tried to tell her about this last year. She wouldn't even let me finish.)

   So we narrowed it down to which cats were coming. My wife was a cat person her entire life. She always had at least one. Hell, at one point she had 22! That day there were 13. We narrowed it down to 6, but while she was inside grabbing something she'd forgotten, my daughter started crying for our long-haired tabby, Sassy.

   "Uncle Cody will never forgive us if we leave her."

     I'd been wrapped around her finger from the moment she was born, so I snuck Sassy into one of the cardboard boxes we had taped them inside of after making breather holes. We had to leave the rest of them outside so they would have at least a fighting chance of swimming to safety.

   I stopped at my dad's house to see if he was ready to go. He told me that he was staying.

   "I have both vehicles loaded down. If it looks like it's going to get bad, we'll get some gas and get out."

   "Everything's going to be closed. How are you going to fuel up? You'll be stranded. Is it a money issue?"

   "Well... I have twelve dollars, but I'm not going to spend it unless I'm forced to."

   I looked at his Suburban, my stepmother's car, Jeffrey's car, Cody's...

   "Look. Come with us. I'll buy fuel for everyone. I'd rather see you all get out safely."

   That's how we all wound up in a 13-person wagon train headed west, to Abbeville.

   (My stepbrother, Kevin, and his girlfriend took Carol's car.)

   Highway 90 westbound was a parking lot. A trip that normally took me three hours lasted a whopping 13. There were points when I got out of the car and walked around for 15 or 20 minutes. There had been an accident in Morgan City, and once we finally got past there, the traffic began to move a little. As we exited near Houma with a bathroom, a walk for the cats (who had clawed their way out of the boxes long ago. My cat was perched on my shoulder like a parrot for most of the drive), and oil for the leaky Suburban in mind, the first bands of the storm were beginning to inundate us with rain. The weather report on the radio didn't ease our minds either. Hurricane Katrina had just been upgraded to a Category 5.

    We didn't choose Abbeville out of any affection for the place. We wound up there because my wife's sister-in-law let us stay at her dad's mobile home. He was a welder, and not due back from a job in Colorado for 6 months.

   We had lived Down the Road all our lives, but that was - for the most part - at an end.

6

   I've had a bit of a block. A tough year can do that to a person. So I won't gild the lily by saying things like, "Here. Enjoy!" All I'm going to do is run through a chain of events that changed a few people forever. I'm going to tell it as quickly and precisely as possible. In other words, as if something's out to stop me - because, let's face it, that is in fact what a block intends to do. Maybe people work better with a deadline, with someone (or something) riding their ass to just get it over with. It lends a sense of frantic urgency to the proceedings, that's for sure.

   I'll start with a message from an old friend. Then I'll plunge in. The waters are very deep...

   "My dad taught Michael for a bit in high school. He says he was one of the few people in this world who lived every day to the fullest and got the most out of life he could. He left us far too soon, but he really made a positive impact in this world greater than most folks who live til old age do. I am so sorry for your loss. The entire Tournear family is intelligent, loving, and witty. You will help each other through. Much, much love, Mark."

   -Laurie

  

   Sometimes the best intentions can have the most disastrous outcomes. How that phrase bit me when I thought of it for the first time a couple of months ago. Maybe a few pages from now, you'll agree that it does slip sharp, venemous fangs in.

   I guess I didn't bring up Michael very much before this because I've still had a lot of grieving to do. It washes over you like the sea crashing onto a rocky point. The water runs right across you, contouring itself to your body. But it takes time and maybe a little effort to dry yourself. Your lighter and your phone are shot, and with wallet photos it's hit or miss. You heal, but things are eternally altered. There are scars.

   (I wound up going through a lot of therapy later, but they always wanted to gloss over this part and get back to the topic of the hurricane. Maybe it was a directive issued by the American Psychiatyric Association. It's no wonder I dropped the treatment, huh?)

   We won't spread a coat of varnish and call it good today. I'll open the floodgates and let this vile soup out.

   I've heard Michael referred to in conversation as the black sheep of our family. Was it because he was the first of us to smoke? Or that he always seemed to be part of the sort of crowd that trouble gravitated to? Hearing that today, it seems a little rude. But I'm biased. Monday morning quarterbacking is my only remaining option.

   (I'll admit he was pretty sharp at the art of swindling. At 12 years of age, he was the most clever shoplifter I'd ever lain eyes upon. He came out of a store this one time with maybe 20 cartons of cigarettes and a bottle of Wild Irish Rose stuffed down his pants. Not a fairy tale.)

   But people that say those sorts of things always forget to mention the amazing things about him - like how he'd wring every drop of enjoyment out of each day, as if in a race with time (man's only natural enemy); or how quick he was to smile at you, to tell you that he loved you, or to give you a hug. Most people are lacking in those qualities.

  

   His legal troubles began when he was still in school. He began dating the daughter of a police detective. Her father, knowing exactly what crowd he was a part of, laid down the law. They were not to see one another. They decided to run away together, across the state line to Mississippi.

   I don't remember all of the details: whether he asked someone to come get him, or if they were caught while there. The end result was the same. Michael was sentenced to his first go-round as a ward of the state. It was juvenile detention that first time.

   I'm not trying to build the impression that the local police department was out to get an innocent. I've already stated that he was always up to something, but things eventually deteriorated to the point that they were always looking for a bust - even when he was playing nice.

   I found out for myself one night when he asked me to take him for a ride. He wanted to show me a '66 Plymouth Fury that he was thinking of buying. He kept going on and on about how that model was a V.I.P. Edition, so I agreed.

   My car was brand new, and my temporary plate had come untaped from the rear windshield. It was only a 15-minute trip, but as luck would have it, a deputy pulled me over to check it out. When he saw my license, he asked me if I was the one that had run off with the cop's daughter. And you wonder why the Tournears buckle their seatbelts and drive the speed limit? ("Heh heh heh," sez the Crypt Keeper.)

   Naturally, more troubles followed. He wound up going to jail several times. But who's to say that he wouldn't have done his stretch that first time, then did his best to be a good boy? I just wonder if always having that black mark against him made him think he had no other choice but to live outside of the law.

  

   His newly acquired classic was the beginning of an obsession with older vehicles. If it was sitting in front of someone's house with a big For Sale sign on the windshield, he'd be in touch with them pretty quickly to discuss price. Then again, if your old clunker was sitting in the backyard under a coat of dust with tall grass growing up around it, Michael would eventually try to persuade you to sell it to him. He could get any engine to run, but was equally adept at taking whatever parts were compatible with another vehicle if they'd be more useful elsewhere. That was a talent that went all the way back to childhood, when he'd take apart motorized toys and rig the motors to run little gadgets of his own design - I remember a few handmade boats and cars. He later learned a lot by spending time with our cousin Yale - who was already on the way to his career as a commercial fisherman, and had been working on Uncle Russell's boat and tinkering with old junked-out cars since he was big enough to pick shrimp or change an oil filter (which in our little neck of the marsh, comes at a young age. We still scratch our heads at some of the kids today, who remain unemployed until they begin college - our little fishing community was built on a strong work ethic). I saw Michael go through many cars & trucks, but I still believe that the Fury was his favorite. Eventually, his skill with auto mechanics caught someone's eye, which led to a job with a local towing service that had a junkyard (can you say spare parts?) and needed someone to do mechanical & body work. Before long, he was working on stock cars for friends that were into racing.

   (Just prior to this, he worked for a contracting outfit as a wireline/pipeline construction helper. During one of his trips to jail, I worked part-time in his place. When he got out, they kept both of us working long enough that we got sent out to a few job sites together. In the years since, I've spent so many hours in a deep blue funk, trying to recapture every detail. Every minute. Every word.)

   What happened was this:

   Michael began an affair with a young lady that lived in Grand Bayou (said affair resulting in the birth of my beautiful niece, Jaci). He would routinely come over, then leave his girlfriend - whom we'll call "Jane " from here on out, in an effort to avoid using the impersonal "girlfriend" 4,000 times or so - at our house while he'd head off for a tryst with this other woman.

   She and my wife became best friends (some people claim they were lovers, but in light of what happened, there were so many different stories being told, and I just didn't have the strength to listen to every tall tale that was making the rounds). They remain close to this very day.

   We'd already been clashing a bit over the fact that she thought my mother judgmental, and didn't like the lifestyles my brothers were living. Family time became one-sided. I'd bend over backward doing favors for her entire family, but we couldn't even take the time to see mine. Whether it was refusing to suffer the wait while I looked through the records at the thrift store where my grandmother worked, or generally avoiding my mom, whom she thought too judgmental and controlling. There was always a perfectly acceptable reason for staying away.

   It's a shame about the thing with Mom, really. What mother doesn't think she knows best for her children? We lived two streets over from one another. There was no excuse.

   With her new friendship, things got worse.

   When they were fighting, my wife would try to shield and protect her from Michael. With alarming frequency, the instances of him not being allowed in the house because Jane didn't want to see him increased.

   My stepfather's family had a Christmas party at a lodge in Buras. Michael wound up being ejected from the party after they got into an argument.

   A few nights later, we were exchanging gifts early, because I had to be back offshore before the 25th. She was still angry about the party, so she begged my wife and I to keep him away. Eventually I bent to pressure and went on the back porch to talk to him. He chastised me pretty harshly for choosing friends over family. I persuaded her to talk things out with him, and we asked them both to spend the night with us. It turned out to be one of the last times he was at my house.

   But not the very last. That happened in January.

   My sister-in-law's youngest son came to visit for a few days. On the day she was due to pick him up, she called to ask if we could bring him home. As usual, we had a houseful, so I gathered his things and brought him to Buras alone...

   When I got back, I was informed that the police were on the way to pick my brother up. Apparently, he and Jane got into an argument on the front porch, and she tried to go inside. He attempted to restrain her. My mother-in-law, who was outside smoking, tried to help and a tug-of-war war ensued. Then, according to their claims, he raised a hand as if to hit her. Feeling threatened, she told my wife to call the police. (She later told my mom that she didn't really think Michael would have hit her. Once things had gone irrevocably wrong...)

   Michael had no desire to go to jail again, so he disappeared quickly.

   My wife called my mom and told her that the police were on the way. Mom rushed over.

   Meanwhile, I was stuck with the indignity of having to write out my wife's statement for her. How I cursed the fact that I had the best grammar that night.

   We'd expect no less than what Mom delivered. She skipped the pleasantries and went straight to nuclear.

   "Did you bother to think about the fact that Michael is on probation, and he could go to prison for 7 years?!? You never get the law involved when it's family! You handle it on your own."

   Right about that time, we heard Michael yelling for Jane to come outside and talk to him. Mom and Steve ran outside to see if they could do anything before things got out of control, as they are so often wont to do.

   The rest of the conversation I only heard, but I might as well have been out there. I've been hearing the words in my dreams ever since.

   That parts that are always the same are the police officer ordering Michael to approach slowly with his hands in the air; Michael refusing and stating that he isn't going back to jail, he just wants to talk to Jane, he can't be brought in for that; Steve telling the deputy to put the gun away if he didn't care to have his fucking teeth knocked out.

   Then the horrors begin. In some of the dreams Michael is shot dead in my front yard. In the others, my stepdad gets between them before the gun goes off. In either case I wake up praying for sanity. I imagine I'd be sitting in a rubber room right now had either of those things occured.

   Mom ran back inside screaming "I need to use the phone, now!"

   "Michael has a gun?" asked my wife.

   "Of course not! The deputy pulled a gun on him with no provocation. Steve jumped between them.

   "Wait! He's picking up now...

   "Jiff, this is Remonia! Your deputy just pulled his weapon on my son, and my husband stepped between them! You better come get him before sombody gets killed!"

   Fearing a reprimand, the deputy holstered his firearm. Michael was never one to ignore opportunity when it knocked. He took to his heels and disappeared back into the woods. Without a moment's pause, we all followed.

   I guess it was a foolish thing to do. Any of us could have been shot, but we didn't care by this point. We were worried sick.

   By the time we came out on the other side (in my mom's neighborhood), backup had arrived and there were half a dozen or so policemen combing the street with flashlights.

   Michael was at Mom's house, trying to get into her front door. One of the deputies asked him to come down so they could talk.

   "No! I told you I'm not going back to jail."

   When one of them came onto the porch and tried to grab him, Michael turned around and threw a punch at him.

   "You motherfucker!" he said, and dove at Michael like a torpedo, knocking both to the ground. There was a short scuffle, but soon enough he was handcuffed and taken away.

   Mom let me have it the next morning. It didn't matter that I was gone when things went down. I think she was mostly lashing out because my wife wasn't going to face her.

   Substantiated or not, she was afraid of what my brother might be capable of. Her fear, coupled with the evening's events, had rubbed off on the kids. So instead of leaving bad enough alone, she decided to file a restraining order against him.

   My brother was no longer allowed at my house. Would in fact be arrested if he showed his face there.

   ... and there was nothing I could do about it.

   Our relationship with my family went from strained to almost nonexistent. I didn't have a clue, but the after-effects of that night would alter the landscape permanently. There's still something there, but one must circumnavigate the craters left by the quakes.

   As if the arrest wasn't enough, now everyone was even angrier. Sure, I could go somewhere and see him, but - as stated - he wasn't allowed at my house, and under no circumstances could he approach my wife or my children.

   This is the point that estrangement occurs. Your options - avoid everyone with your partner, or make an effort to see them and be overwhelmed by the outpouring of vitriole - both stink.

   I finally realized how angry he was at me when she had another death in her family. She asked me to call Michael's house and ask if she could speak to Jane. He told me no and hung up.

   This poisonous cake was definitely done, because here came the icing.

   We went to the Mississippi coast to attend a Prince show and have a little honeymoon (we never had a first, so we can't call it a second). Jane and my stepsister stayed at the house to watch the children.

   At some point during the weekend, my sister called to tell us that Michael had come to the house to pick Jane up. He had grudgingly accepted their friendship, but to honor the restraining order, had been coming only halfway down our street to pick her up. This time was a direct violation. My wife urged my sister to call the police, and he was picked up again.

   Yale put up the bail money, so Michael signed his truck over to him as payback. He got his hands on a four-wheeler somewhere and began using it to travel all over the parish. This, to bring your mind back to beginning of this passage, was when good intentions - sure, we'll call them good no matter how misguided they were - led to complete and total destruction.

  
   During the last month or so of Michael's life, he seemed to be making peace - with himself, yes, and with others that he'd burnt bridges with at some point. He spent a lot of time studying his bible and talking with my cousin while working on his shrimp boat. He told me later that my brother was constantly showing him passages that he found inspirational. He approached my father-in-law in a bar one night, apologized for the disturbance at our house, and said that he missed his niece and nephew very much.

   The last time I was with him, we had just gotten back from evacuating for Hurricane Ivan. A spider bite on his leg had left him feverish.The wound was not healing. He spent the evacuation with my dad. The pictures they took wound up being his last. My "brother-in-law" and I visited him at Dad's house. They had a pretty animated conversation. He didn't speak to me much, and still seemed rather delirious.

  

  
   On September 27, 2004 he skipped a trip on the boat. He had to go to court for the restraining order violation. He rode up to Grand Bayou to see Jaci, after which he stopped at Fremin's to see Dad. They took a ride across the levee to see a dock that Dad had been building.

   When he dropped him off, he said, "Dad, Carol is one of the best things that ever happened to you . Don't worry about any of those skirts you've spent the last ten years chasing. Just stay with her. She's really settled you down. She's good for you."

   He then stopped at Aunt Betty's to tell her goodbye. We always wondered whether he meant that he might be going to prison, or if he'd had a premonition. He stopped at Mom's and soberly told her that he was tired of fighting. He just wanted to find out what court costs he'd have to pay and serve whatever time they gave him.

   "I'll start over with a clean slate after that. I don't want any more trouble."

   Then he changed the subject and told her there were some places he wanted to take her riding. He said he'd been back there with a lady, and that the ruts they had to navigate drove her wild. Said if he brought her back there, she'd have Steve back there riding soon enough.

   That evening, as I was packing to go back offshore, my wife told me that she'd been talking with her dad, and that they felt that Michael wanted to make amends with people, and seemed to be making an effort to straighten out his life. She'd decided to drop the restraining order when they appeared in court the next day.

   "But we'll tell him that he can come over as soon as the kids are comfortable with the idea of seeing him again," she said.

   I'm sorry, my dear. It was too little too late.

   At 8:00, I cut my hair, showered, and laid down for a nap.

   The phone rang at 10:30, jarring me out of my mini-coma. It was a habit I'd conditioned myself to as preparation for long road trips. My wife got up and answered it.

   "It's for you."

   "Who is it?" I mumbled.

   "The police."

   "What?"

   I took the phone.

   "Am I speaking with Mark Tournear?"

   "Yes, sir."

   "This is Dale Pelas with the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office. Do you have a brother named Michael Tournear?"

   "Yes, I do."

   "We need you to come to the hospital. Your brother's been in a four-wheeler accident."

   "Okay."

   "You should call your mother, too."

   "Yes, sir. I will."

   I hung up and told my wife what had happened while dialing Mom.

   When I got her on the line, she asked - herself more so than me - why these things kept happening and what could possibly strike us next. I assured her that we'd meet at the emergency room.

   I didn't get right out of bed. Part of it was weariness, but maybe somewhere inside there was a growing certainty that "next" had teeth. Sharp ones.

   My wife finally broke the silence by asking me, "Are you going to the hospital?"

   "Yeah. I'm going."

   I got up, turned on the coffee, and got dressed.

   I drove over there imagining him on the examination table, arguing with the doctors that they couldn't put a cast on his leg. He had too many things to do and couldn't afford to be slowed by crutches. That was my last thought before the film exploded, then drifted down in a thousand smoldering fragments.

   (While I was on the road, Mom called the house in a panic. Where was I? I needed to get there now. My wife tried to reassure her that I was on the way.)

   When I walked into the emergency room, the police officer came out and asked me to follow him. An Indian doctor led me to a consultation room where Mom was sitting.

   "Your brother sustained multiple injuries. We did all we could. I'm sorry, but he didn't make it."

   He came out and said it so bluntly! His tone was so calm that he almost seemed cruel about it. Maybe this was something he had to do all the time. I turned to Mom, and realized that I'd never seen a real case of shellshock before. The face of that sensible young woman had shattered , revealing a new one beneath it - the face of a woman embarking upon the first moments of being old. It was a face I came to recognize looking at me from the other side of the mirror.

   "I want to see him again," Mom said.

   The doctor led us to an examination room.

   ... and there was my little brother. He had a tube down his throat, one eye was swollen shut, and there was a trickle of blood that had run down his nose to his moustache. His eyes were half-open. Other than a small cut on the back of his head, he looked like he was fine. Like there was still hope.

   But all hope was already gone when they called me.

   Mom handed me her phone and asked me to call Aunt Betty & Dad. Aunt Betty began to cry when I asked her to come and hung up. Dad was already on the way.

   When my aunt walked in and saw Michael on the table, she cried for God to strike her blind - to negate the truth that eyesight was cursing her with. At the sound of her voice, Mom realized that someone else was here and it wasn't a nightmare. She promptly fainted. We didn't get to her fast enough to stop her from hitting the floor, but we did slow her enough to escape needing stitches in her head.

   Soon, all of my aunts and Cody were there. I called Jeffrey, but he broke down by the cemetery in Nairn. I sped off to get him after giving Cody the phone to call my house. That seemed easier. I had no idea what to say.

   We'd stayed until the people from the funeral home had come and gone, then I went to Dad's house. We met Yale and Vicki there. Aunt Peggy had called him on the boat with the news. He brought the boat to the dock blinded by a haze of tears. We sat on the porch and talked all night long.

   When I finally went home, it was nearing 5 am. My mother-in-law and Jane were there. To their queries about my well-being, I responded in a small, thin voice that I was ok.

   After her mother left, my wife took me aside and asked, "Do you hate me now? Do you want to hit me? Because right now I wouldn't blame you or try to stop you."

   "No, I won't hit you, and I could never hate you."

   I had no idea how wrong I was. I don't hate her today. I've made that much peace with it, but the seeds of resentment were planted and growing roots now.

   I decided to go back to Mom's, despite her pleas when we'd parted for me to get some rest. There, I began a week-long diet of coffee and cigarettes. By our estimation, Steve and I smoked 5 packs a day. None of us really slept.

   Mom alternated between despair and anger rapidly. She reserved a large portion of that anger with which to chastise me. She was mad at Jane and my wife, but I was the one sitting across the table from her, so I got flogged in their place. She told me that my wife could go ahead and drop the restraining order now. When I told her that she had meant to drop it that very day, she called me a liar.

   (Yale got it worse than I did. He had a court appearance of his own to make that day. After arguing with his lawyer about not being fit to make an appearance, he was hassled a bit for wearing shorts. He swore at the judge, shouting that he was in no shape to be there at all, much less dress himself. He told him that if he needed more punishment for his grief than he was already getting, then they should go ahead and handcuff him. Then he told them that they were so full of shit that they'd probably issue a bench warrant for his cousin, who was unable to appear in court by reason of death. He was right, too.)

   After someone called to offer Michael a steady job with good benefits, one of my aunts forced Mom to take something that would help her sleep and got her to lie down. Faced with the evils of either drugging her or watching her grieve herself to death that very day, I'd say that the appropriate choice was made. I assured her that I'd get some rest, then went straight back to Dad's. At that moment I was certain I'd never sleep again.

   The people from the deli where Dad worked brought plate lunches. The food they brought; their arms around us; the tears in their eyes - it's overwhelmingly awful that you must endure such hardship to realize just how much people care about you. Hour after hour, I'd been struck with the absolute certainty that a particular moment was the nadir of my life - only to be hit even harder by something else. This was another of those moments. I walked around the house, leaned my head against Michael's truck - more like hung on for dear life - and cried for an hour. My tears didn't stop for weeks.

   When I'd calmed down enough to go back inside, Dad and I went through the backpack Michael kept packed for trips on the boat and divided his things amongst ourselves. We sat his bible aside for my mom. Inside the cover, he'd written his name and birth date. Mom later wrote in the date that bookended his time with us. I kept his travel-sized tube of toothpaste. I never used it, but have it still. Even waded through flood waters to get it at one point. My father kept his shoes, his jeans, and all of his t-shirts. He wore almost nothing else for the better part of the next year.

   The next day, the owner of the wrecker service - a former classmate and friend of Michael's, who'd worked on his stock car - took us to the place where it happened.

   A local man had sustained damage to his roof in the recent storm, and had been doing repairs. He'd seen my brother pass by on the levee several times throughout the day. Just before dark, he heard an engine and looked up to see Michael passing yet again.

   (According to what we've been able to piece together, he'd gone down there to visit a girl. He told her he should be heading home while there was daylight left to spare, stopped at the bar at the front of her street, grabbed a beer for his ride, then hit the levee.)

   They waved at one another, then he reached down to get another nail. When he looked back up, the four-wheeler was rolling down the side of the levee with no one on it. It crashed harmlessly into the back fence of the old Marathon property.

   By the time he descended the ladder, several of his neighbors were running up the levee to offer assistance. Fearing what he might see, he stayed behind to call an ambulance.

   By all accounts, one of the first to arrive was a volunteer firefighter. Michael was lying facedown, but trying to get up. CPR was administered until the rescue unit (which had to approach from the long way around due to the wet post-storm conditions) arrived.

   I don't know how long he remained in that waiting room, between the light and the dark, that terminator. Maybe he only had seconds. It could have been an hour. The only thing that was ever made clear to me was that he had sustained a fracture to his skull (something that I survived when I was but a tyke. What irony...), and the resultant hemorrhaging ended his life.

   We were left with the assurance that he "didn't suffer." He suffered plenty!!! Mom would say when recounting it later.

   Mom, Aunt Betty, and I went to make the arrangements. I picked his casket because no one else wanted to. My only non-hysterical moment of the entire time we were there. We got him a spot close to Uncle Richard so he wouldn't be alone.

   The next day, Jeffrey built a cross, I painted it, and Cody labelled it, complete with his trademark Chevy symbol.

   We rode to the spot on the levee and planted his cross. Cody was with our stepbrother, Steven, and he seemed rather peeved that I was drinking.

  
   When I got home, my wife asked if I was ok. I told her that I was, then slipped into the darkness of the laundry room just as despair rose from the depths to engulf me. She came in right behind me and held me up while I floundered. Crowning this black comedy, the cat that had claimed me as her "daddy" because neither of us were very sociable came in, wrapped her paws around my neck, and wept with me.

   When we left for the visitation, I literally had no idea how I was going to make it through the night. I didn't have long to wonder. We'd only been there a few minutes when Mom volunteered Jeffrey's girlfriend and I to make a montage of photos, and a display of his drawings and the model commercial fishing boats he had handcrafted from scratch. Then during the visitation, my old friend Daniel Parker showed up. He was always one to keep me laughing. His company coupled with Mom's busywork assignment had, like magic, enabled me to keep my cool.

  
   The next day was an entirely different story.

   We all met that morning, and complained of our weariness with condolences. It's true, people. When you hear enough, you grow to hate them. We half-seriously began a list of the ones we hated the most. I'm sure that every one of you that have been there have your own.

   We went all out for Michael. Aunt Debra bought four gold doubloons, meant to represent brotherhood. We carried them in our pockets throughout the services, then left them with him in the end. During the morning visit, people put cigarettes, money, and various other (un)mentionables in his suit pockets. He was inundated with cards and pictures. I put pictures of my children in his hand. I'd made copies of the keys to his Plymouth, so Jane put the originals in his pocket. We planned to restore it for his daughter. A future graduation present.

   I went outside just prior to the benediction. Dad was sitting on the steps alone. I told him how scared I was.

   One of my cousins collared me on the way back in and asked me to be strong for my mom. He said that we could do whatever we needed to do when we got home. I'm sorry, Mom. I guess I didn't do such a good job with that one.

   The minister gave us a textbook sermon about mourning, prayed, then invited friends and family to speak. Aunt Cathy read a poem. My stepdad spoke of him buying an old drivable RV, getting it running, then driving it illegally all over town.

   "I told him he was going to be in trouble if he was caught. He asked me how they were gonna stop him in this."

   Bless Steve's heart. He's always capable of getting a chuckle out of you when one is most needed. I continued with a story about the day he decided to take my children on an adventure called "Let's clear a trail through the woods to Grandma's house with my truck." The ditch proved too steep. One of them got a bruise on their forehead. Dad wound up pulling him out.

   Mom spoke at length about her concerns for his soul; how she'd known she was going to lose him since January; and how although we were all hurting, not one of us could comprehend how wrong it was to have to bury one's own child... to have to say goodbye to someone that they had carried for nine months.

   It was a statement no one felt the urge to follow. We wrapped things up with my aunts singing while Jeffrey played guitar. I was asked to play, but was incapable. It would be years before I felt any passion for music again (or anything else, for that matter).

   I'd had no control over my emotions since we were seated. When the casket was closed, another of those moments occurred - the ones when you realize that the pain is only beginning. I had to put one of Dad's shoes back on his foot, then Jeff and I helped him up. He'd aged 20 years over the past week.

   During the trip to the mauseleum, we talked about how he'd have wanted to be driven to the cemetery in the back of his truck.

   When we got there, the minister instructed us to remove the casket, carry it to the appointed place, lift, and slide it into the open tomb. I tell you now, it was the hardest thing we ever did, the heaviest load we ever had to carry. In our grief, Michael weighed at least a thousand ponds.

   There is no sound on earth like the screech of a casket sliding into a tomb. It will rip your heart into jagged tatters.

   When I let go, my vision blurred and I fell. Someone caught me and held on very tight. I still don't know who it was. I went back to Michael and laid my hand back in the place from which it had fallen. No one else had moved. Dad came over and held on, too. We stayed there until it was time to go.

   Afterward, there was a gathering in the fellowship hall of the church. We attempted to eat, but it proved too difficult a task. Jaci was walking from table to table, and while her vocabulary was limited, she had no trouble with the one word guaranteed to twist the knife a little more. That word was "Daddy." This beautiful little girl would never know her father.

  
   After everyone had eaten a little, we walked back to the mausoleum. The burial crew had already sealed the tomb. Uncle Buddy got everyone's attention, then pulled out a harmonica. He claimed he'd been driving one day, when the urge to stop and buy one came to him. It had seemed a foolhardy notion, because he had a desk drawer full of them at home. He followed his intuition regardless. The harp had called out to him again when it was time to make this trip, so he put it in his pocket. This was Michael's harmonica, and it had a song to play for him. He lifted it to his lips, and out came a blues meant for no other time or place. When he finished, Aunt Peggy asked him to do another one.

   "I'm sorry, but this harmonica has played the song it needed to. I'm afraid it has nothing else to say."

   Back into his pocket it went. The ladies politely picked up the reigns and sang a few more hymns.

   After a brief nap at home, we all went back to the cross.

   Yale and I had sat in Michael's truck for a few hours on the morning after the accident talking about him, and we had decided that we were going to finish the case of beer that they had opened together. It wound up being the only thing the two of us drank that night. Kenneth got very drunk and wanted to go the bar. I took him home instead. My aunt cried with relief when she saw us. She was so worried that one of us might do something to hurt ourselves.

  
   I chose to skip the benefit that was being held at my aunt's bar the next night. I had to nap a little so I could head back offshore in the morning, but wound up going anyway because Jane asked me to come get her. She couldn't handle being there anymore.

   The next day, on a helicopter back into the Gulf, I saw what could have been a vision from the Almighty. That or delirium. The kingdom of Heaven, with it's streets of gold and vast mansions, was there in the clouds . I took it as a sign that Michael's soul was with God, and that everything would be ok.

   I'd love to see him there one day. To know that part is true.

   As for things being ok? They were going to get much worse before they got better, and I was just hours from the first indication of that.