1 Dead in Attic (12 page)

Man, that really chapped me. So, in the middle of the night, I borrowed a friend's dolly and I loaded up the fridge and I dragged it back to the offender's house and unloaded it at his front steps. Since they hadn't picked it up, I was sure he was going to want to do the neighborly thing and take it back.

Now, I ask you: Was I wrong to do this?

Don't answer that. First, let me tell you another story, as reported to me by a very reliable source who shall remain nameless for his own protection. (Me, I'm not circumspect enough to perform my urban civic warfare anonymously.)

Over in another part of Uptown, several neighbors were working together to roll their refrigerators out to the curb. Everyone explicitly agreed to tape them shut to lock in the stink and foulness and take the necessary precautions to prevent widespread dysentery.

Often, as you probably know, getting a full refrigerator out to the curb takes a couple of people, but one guy got restless and refused to wait and he wrestled out his appliance to his driveway alone. He had attempted to tape it shut but had done an obviously inferior job and he wouldn't wait for help.

Then he tied the dang thing to his car to drag it down to the curb. And it fell open. And your mama's seven-week-old casserole spilled out. And it stank. And he left it there, an open and stinking invitation to all manner of biblical-proportion infestations and plagues.

Naturally, everyone on the block got ticked off. And then one got even.

When a contractor drove by later that day, a guy on the block offered him $20 to use his Bobcat to grab ahold of the offending refrigerator, move it into the middle of the offender's driveway, and drop it—thereby blocking ingress and egress to said driveway.

The contractor accepted the offer and moved the fridge into blockade position. Now the neighbors all eye one another suspiciously and goodwill is withdrawn and there you have it. This is what it has come to.

Now, I know what a lot of you are thinking: There are people in this town who lost
everything.
Their loved ones, their homes, their jobs, their pets, their precious photos and memories.

And their refrigerators.

And all that you rich and idle Uptowners on dry land can find within your hearts to do is bicker over appliances?

You're thinking: You people didn't have a right to survive this storm.

Maybe you're right. Maybe we should go back to fighting one another over Wal-Mart and Whole Foods and college bars. But consider this:

Maybe this signals a return to normalcy. Maybe this is even a healthy sign of the human spirit.

Or maybe we're all just a bunch of petty ingrates.

Really, it's not for me to decide. I am merely the chronicler of events and, okay, a minor participant in the civic unrest.

I am willing to share the blame. But I also view this story as a cautionary tale, a call for civility, a cry of help to the community at large before we tear ourselves apart.

And while we're talking about civility, one more thing:

Keep your stinking fridge to yourself.

In Refrigerator Town there was a Council Full of Clowns

And a tall and savvy king as bald as Cupid.

In Refrigerator Town, while all the poor folks drowned

FEMA and Mike Brown were stuck on stupid.

In Refrigerator Dome, which was temporary home

To the terrified and downtrodden masses,

In Refrigerator Dome, the people waited all alone

While the buses showed up slower than molasses.

In Refrigerator Village, some coppers loot and pillage

And we still don't know how many won't come back.

In Refrigerator Village, they'll have to pass a millage

Just to pay for all those stolen Cadillacs.

In Refrigerator Town, not a child can be found

And the classrooms are as empty as the Dome.

In Refrigerator Town, School Board antics still abound

And you wonder why you'd ever move back home.

In Refrigerator Void, all the houses were destroyed

And you get a sense of widespread fear and panic.

In Refrigerator Void, all the folks are unemployed

And everyone you meet is taking Xanax.

In Refrigerator City, Congress seems to take no pity

On the businesses that cease to operate.

In Refrigerator City, there's a VIP committee

To which nobody can possibly relate.

In Refrigerator Parish, the bickering is garish

And the politicians seem to have no clue.

In Refrigerator Parish, it really got nightmarish

When the sharks showed up on Cleary Avenue.

In Refrigerator 'burbs, the trash is piled up on the curbs

And the neighborhoods are ugly and they smell.

In Refrigerator 'burbs, folks are getting quite disturbed

That their quality of life has gone to hell.

In Refrigerator Land, we have no leg on which to stand

While the politicos can't seem to do a thing.

In Refrigerator Land, it seems the only helping hand

Is the signing bonus at the Burger King.

On Refrigerator Planet, if you can't bag or box or can it,

Just push it out your door onto the street.

On Refrigerator Planet, pick up the garbage, dammit!

'Cause the whole place smells like fetid, rotten meat.

In Refrigerator Wasteland, you have to dress up like a spaceman

Just to rescue your old family photographs.

In Refrigerator Wasteland, stretched from Chalmette clear to Raceland

We're in misery while Halliburton laughs.

From the Refrigerator Pulpits, the preachers said the culprits

For the storm were all the lesbians and queers.

But Refrigerator Church was left in quite a lurch

When it turned out to be the Corps of Engineers.

In Refrigerator Dome, the Saints no longer call it home

No more runs or kicks or punts or touchdown passes.

In Refrigerator Dome, no more famous cups of foam

And Tom Benson's heart's as cold as Minneapolis.

In Refrigerator Land, the levees all are made of sand

And there's no gas, no food, no water, and no sewage.

But in Refrigerator Land, we will make our final stand

Because anything beats rush hour in Baton Rouge.

People ask me: What do you cover now that the entertainment industry has fizzled away? After all, for the past ten years, that was my beat.

My answer: Basically, I spend my days like everyone else, lurching from one “episode” to the next, just trying to live, just trying to survive, just trying not to crack up and publicly embarrass myself, my family, and my newspaper.

It's hard, man. It's hard, just to live. I don't mean to be overly confessional here, but sometimes I feel I am no longer fit for public consumption, no longer fit for publication, and definitely no longer fit to operate heavy machinery.

I was at my local Circle K the other day, sitting in my car in a borderline catatonic state, when I witnessed a guy in a truck in the parking lot wadding up a ball of trash and throwing it out his window.

I have silently witnessed this sight a million times over the past twenty years. On Broad Street, on Magazine Street, in the French Quarter, everywhere. We all have. It's almost as if litter is a part of our heritage.

Well, I snapped. I got out of my car and approached the offending vehicle and I tapped on the guy's window.

During my walk to said vehicle, a very loud voice inside my head said to me: Don't do this. You are not well. It's none of your business.

But there are lots of voices in my head these days. You can probably relate. So I wrote this cautionary device off as just so much cacophony and decided: It is your business. The guy rolled down his window, and I asked, “Are you from here?”

I expected him to say no, and I had this thing in my mind that I was going to tell him, this thing about the sanctity of my city, about the care he needs to take, about how delicate our balance is right now.

But he said yes. And I lost it. Completely. Stark raving mad, if you must know the truth. “You can't do this anymore,” I said to him in a voice that wasn't particularly loud but in a tone I hardly recognized from myself and that was probably laced with just enough tonic to catch his attention.

We looked at each other. And then I said—or maybe I screamed—“You can't do this anymore!”

I'm not sure who was more frightened, he or I, but I kept going. I said, “You can't just throw stuff out of your car window anymore. I realize that there is garbage everywhere—all over our streets—but, still, you can't just throw stuff out your window like it doesn't matter.
It matters!
”

The guy was frozen in his seat. He was no doubt wishing he had gone to Winn-Dixie or the Stop-N-Go or anyplace else but this Circle K. But here we were. I laid it out on this poor sap. I said, “We've got to change. We can't go back to the way we were, and the way we were was people just throwing crap in the streets like it doesn't matter. We need to do better. We need to change.

“It matters!”
I said again—as if he hadn't heard me the first time—and then I just stood there in a forwardly lurched position, and I can tell you: I'm tired of lurching. I want to stop lurching. But I can't stop lurching.

Needless to say, I freaked the guy out. His eyes got wide, and I think he wanted to answer me but no words came. He mumbled something like “All right,” and then his arm got busy rolling his window up and he nodded to me in a fashion that said something between “Don't kill me” and “Seek professional help” and he backed out of the parking lot.

Slowly.

And he was gone. And I was standing there.

Lurched.

He probably got on his cell phone to his wife and said: “We're moving to Houston.”

I don't know. I don't mean to push my existential dread on complete strangers, but there I stood, now in an empty Circle K parking lot, thinking: What the hell are you doing? I lurched back to my car. I lurched home. And I'm sitting here at my desk—lurched, I might add—wondering where all this comes from.

There is no lesson here. No moral. Other than that we have to erase all the bad things we used to do around here—big and small—if we want to survive. We need to be civil. We need to be clean. We need to change. We need to respect ourselves and our city.

Otherwise, some disengaged crazy guy is going to accost you in a parking lot someday and make you wish you'd never gotten out of bed that morning. It will leave you in one serious lurch, my friend.

Ellen Montgomery's house near Audubon Park was already almost invisible from the street before Hurricane Katrina shattered the massive cedar tree in her front yard and left a tangled, camouflaged mess that now obliterates the view of just about everything.

If anything, that helped her hide from the National Guard during the tense days—now ancient weeks ago—when word came that they were forcing those who had remained in New Orleans to leave.

“If I was out walking in the neighborhood and I heard the Hummers coming, I would duck down behind a porch or some broken shutters,” she said. “I felt like a Confederate spy in enemy territory.”

Montgomery was a holdout. A straggler. The resistance.

She stayed behind without power or running water or even a generator. The simple reason: “My babies,” she says. Thirty-four cats. (It was thirty-three for several weeks, until one that had gone missing returned home last Saturday night, “to say hello,” Montgomery says.)

She knows what you're thinking. It used to bug her but not anymore.

“Years ago, I said to my vet, ‘But I don't
want
to be a cat lady!' ” Montgomery recalls. “And he says to me, ‘But you
are
a cat lady.' So there you are.”

And so, for thirty days, what has she done?

“Well,” she pauses. “I sleep late. Let's see . . . and then I feed the cats. I read
The Journal of Beatrix Potter.
It's a lovely book. And then I have my cup of coffee. And that usually lasts a couple of hours. And then I paint and—I don't know. The days just fly by. I'm in another world here. I don't feel the heat. I don't feel anything. I am very able to exist on my own. I just paint, and that's what keeps me from going bonkers. That's my therapy.”

Montgomery has been painting since 1977, when she read the book of  Vincent van Gogh's correspondence,
Letters to Theo.

“I read it and I said, ‘I want to do that,' ” she says. “So I got down and did that and have been doing it ever since.”

Indeed. She sits on the floor in the front room of her house—it would be a stretch to call it a “studio”—and she fills canvas after canvas, board after board, paper after paper. If you stood still in front of her for long enough, she'd probably paint you.

Her home is filled with thousands of paintings she has made over the past three decades. Admittedly, she has sold few works, so mostly they line her walls, floor to ceiling in every room, and then they fill stacks and piles randomly assigned through her cluttered 1890s cottage.

And, having recently run out of canvases to work on, she is now working a medium that only a hurricane could provide: she has gathered scores of slate roofing tiles that were scattered off the roofs of her neighbors' homes into the street, and now she paints them.

“They're so beautiful,” she says. “I couldn't bear the thought of the National Guardsmen or some contractors trampling over them, so I collected them. I won't have enough time in my life to paint them all.”

Over the years, she has painted various abstracts and florals and faces and landscapes, but now her work is fairly dark and muddied and swirly, work clearly influenced by the monstrous forces that have visited her life this past month.