THE EVACUATION

After the announcement, I rushed into her room and shook her awake, trying not to raise my voice but mostly failing, saying “We gotta get out of here, Sweet Pea. Get up, let’s go!”

She rolled over, so I picked her up, blanket and all, and carried her to the car. She stirred, fidgeted in my arms, but I placed her in the back seat then doubled checked the trunk. I already had it packed: canned goods, a suitcase with a few changes of clothes thrown into it, a flat of bottled water, a thick black flashlight, a jar of moonshine, our toothbrushes.

Lily woke up when she heard the seatbelt click.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“We have to evacuate,” I said, as I took my wallet out of my back pocket and my Glock out of the small of my back and put them in the center console.

“I have a math test tomorrow,” she said.

“Schools are closed, Sweet Pea,” I said. “The hurricane is coming.”

“We’ve rode out hurricanes before,” she said, taking the seatbelt off.

“Not one this big or this fast moving,” I said, putting the seatbelt back in her hand.

We looked at each other for a moment, at an impasse.

“I will die for this house,” she said.

“You won’t have to,” I said.

“I’ll go on one condition,” she said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“You forgot to pack my Switch, didn’t you?”

I sighed.

“Hurry up,” I said.

She ran back in the house as I got into the driver’s seat.

Dave, my neighbor, heard me start the car and came out on his porch, the motion sensor lighting coming on, illuminating him in the dark. I hated Dave. He was way too liberal with his leaf blower, for one thing. And he was nosy as hell, always asking about us, and never at an opportune time.

He lumbered to the edge of the porch and leaned on the wrought iron railing. He was wearing grey sweatpants, and a ratty old Saints t-shirt, and had a white, unkempt beard, yellowed by cigarillo smoke.

“Leaving us, huh?” he said.

“Well, the evacuation order came, so.” I said.

“Oh, they’re always making us evacuate,” he said. “I ain’t going, I’ll tell you that.”

“It’s supposed to be the big one, they’re saying.”

“How many times I heard that before?”

What could I do but shrug as he shuffled back into his house?

I waved to Dave as Lily hopped back in, Switch in hand. Before we left, I took one last look at my dark house.

The neighborhood was silent and pitch black as we drove over Bayou St. John and through City Park to I-610, but once we got onto the onramp for the interstate, there were red lights as far as we could see. I kept the radio low so Lily wouldn’t wake, but even still I could hear the evacuation orders, which came in a calm, robotic voice.

The notice came too late to start contra-flow traffic, so the roads were going in both directions with a surprising amount of people still coming into the city. Police were posted here and there, trying to direct the whole thing, but it was a frustrating mess and as time passed, more and more drivers honked and laid on their horns, and that’s when Lily looked up from her game.

“Are people really coming into town?” she asked. “Don’t they know?”

“I guess not,” I said. “It intensified really quickly and shifted towards New Orleans without time to anybody to prepare.”

“Where are we now?” she asked.

“Just outside the city,” I said.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Just get some rest, nothing for you to do right now.”

“I could navigate,” she said.

“Go to sleep,” I said.

She shrugged and laid back down.

We were on I-10 now, going west. It was weird watching people still buying drinks from the drive-thru daiquiri shops, still stumbling out of strip clubs, still buying road side Po Boys, going to the casino.

Then the rain came. It started slow at first, sprinkling down, only needing to signal the wipers every minute or so. But then the drops that fatter and came faster and before I knew it the wipers needed to be on full, and still I could barely see the red tail lights in front of me, slow as I was going.

We passed by Louis Armstrong airport, Lake Maurepas, the swamps.

It was then, right as the traffic started to ease and the rain abated a bit, that my gas gauge turned on.

“Shit,” I said.

“What?” Lily asked from the back seat.

“We need gas,” I said.

We passed by one station near Brittany that was shut down dark, a handmade sign that read “NO MORE GAS”. The next station near Gonzales had a line over a mile long. I couldn’t go any longer, I got off the interstate and onto 61 and found a little mom and pop shop with the lights still on. I didn’t even see the name of the town.

The clerk was a tired old obese woman missing teeth and manners. When I came in to pre-pay, she held her hand up as I approached the counter and said, in a thick accent, “If you came for gas, I can’t sell it to ya.” There was a local playing the lottery scratchers, talking to himself, laughing at our interaction.

“Why not?” I asked, exasperated.

“You from Nawlins, I reckon?” she asked.

“I am.”

“Well, this here gas, what’s left of it, is for locals only.”

“That’s illegal,” I said.

She snorted. The local did too.

“I need that gas,” I said.

“You need to get the hell out of my store and you need to find yourself another proprietor.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

I went back to the car, blood rushing in my ears, my face hot.

I sat back down in driver’s seat and slammed the door, waking Lily.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“They won’t sell me any gas.”

“Why not?”

“Locals only, I guess.”

“What should we do?”

I sat there for a moment, looked back at Lily, then opened up the center console.

When I went back into the store and approached the counter, the clerk’s whole demeanor changed when she saw me. The local stopped with his scratcher, eyes wide when he saw what was in my hand.

“Back again?” she said.

“That’s right,” I said.

In my hand was three one hundred dollar bills.

“Does this change anything?” I asked.

“I think it just might,” she said, and accepted the bills in her fat red hand.

“Pump number 2,” I said.

“Fill ‘er up,” she told me, and the cash register dinged when she closed it shut.

**

Back on the road, the sun was just starting to come up, and Lily was fully awake now and in the front seat. She had my phone, and was looking at the weather map.

“Which way is the storm going now?” I asked.

“Does it matter? Just drive.”

“Yes, it matters. I want to go the opposite way from where the storm is going.”

“Yes, it looks like it’s heading east, into Mississippi.”

So we continued on for Baton Rouge.

I stopped off at the first motel we could see, right before you hit the river, just off I-10.

“Any vacancies?” I asked the purple-haired young woman at the counter.

“Sorry, no,” she said.

“Evacuees like me?” I asked.

“Oh, bless your heart,” she said. “LSU is playing Texas A&M tonight.”

I had completely forgotten about football, it was the last thing on my mind. I thanked her and got back in the car.

I realized my mistake when we got into town and saw all the RV parked around Tiger Stadium, and I knew we were sunk.

So we kept driving, past the stadium full of tailgaters and campers parked as far as the eye could see, on to Lafayette. If we couldn’t find a place to stay there, I wasn’t sure what we would do. Drive right into Texas, I guess.

In the meantime, I had Lily search for and call ahead at as many motels and hotels as she could, asking if any of them had vacancies. None of them did, some of them even laughed at us for asking. Only one, a sweet-voiced woman named Alexandra, offered to call us back if there were any cancellations. Frustrated, Lily set the phone down.

“I’m bored,” Lily said. “I wish I had remembered to bring Mario Kart.”

“Ah, you don’t need that to have fun. Let’s play a game.”

“Really, Dad? Like what?”

“Like, um…” I said. “How about ‘I Spy’?”

“That’s for little kids!” she said.

“Well, do you have a better suggestion?”

“No.”

“OK,” I said. “Then how about ‘The Rainbow Game’?”

“What’s that?”

“We used to do this when I was a kid. You find a car or truck of every color of the rainbow, and whoever spots all of them first is the winner.”

“Fine,” she said.

After she wiped the floor with me, she announced she had to pee.

We were in the middle of nowhere, with no gas stations and no rest areas for miles. There was no place to go.

“Just pull over and I’ll go on the side of the road.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“I’ve done it before,” she said.

“When?” I asked.

“OK, I haven’t. But I’ve seen it in a movie.”

I pulled off into Henderson, into a little neighborhood, so at least she could do it by the side of the road, and not on the shoulder of the interstate.

When she got out, she furrowed her brow and warned me, “Don’t look.”

“This was your idea,” I reminded her.

As she peed, I turned up the radio so I wouldn’t have to listen. There were reports of looters in our neighborhood. My heart sank. My mind raced. I thought about turning back. I thought about that $300 I paid for a tank of gas. We should have stayed in New Orleans. We should have just gone to Smoothie King. All of a sudden I realized how tired I was.

I realized then that I heard a dog barking and Lily shouting, and I looked back.

Her pants were at her ankles, and she was pulling up her underwear as she stumbled back towards the car, screaming and pointing. A dog was chasing her, its teeth bared.

It was a grey pitbull, muscles tight, collar dangling. It was gaining on her, coming from the far end of a yard that she had just been pissing in.

I jumped out of my seat and grabbed the Glock from the console and ran around to the passenger side, opening the door for Lily. I noticed how utterly terrified she was, her hair askew, her eyes wide. I yelled at the dog to stop, but it kept coming, so I fired a warning shot in the air.

I hadn’t shot my gun in a long time, and I forgot how loud it was, how big the kickback could be.

The dog stopped in his tracks. I thought I heard him whimper a little bit. He was only a few feet from me by that point. He cocked his head and walked back the way he came.

I shut Lily’s door.

“You OK, Sweet Pea?” I asked.

She nodded, her lips pursed. I knew we’d laugh about this some day, but it wouldn’t be for a while.

Before the dog’s owners came out to inspect the source of that shot, I jumped back in the car and peeled away.

**

Back on the interstate, Lily was breathing hard. I tried to teach her box breathing, something I had learned back in my Marine days: in your nose for four counts, hold for four, out your mouth for four, hold again for four, then repeat. The technique is meant to help calm you in a stressful situation.

She stopped in the middle of it and looked over at me.

“Dad, are we going to die?”

I had to laugh.

“No, Sweet Pea,” I said. “We’re going to be fine.”

“Can I tell you something?”

“Anything.”

“If we do die, can you bury me with my Switch?”

“I told you, we’re not going to die.”

“But if we do, will you promise?”

“I promise,” I said.

“Pinkie promise?” she asked.

“Pinky promise,” I said, and we twisted our pinkies together, which immediately turned into a rousing game of Thumb Wars.

After I wiped the floor with her, I handed her my phone and told her again to find us a place to stay.

She googled and called motels and hotels and looked at Airbnbs all along our route for the next hour, striking out at each one. No vacancies.

“What are we going to do?” she asked. “There’s nothing.”

“We’ll figure something out,” I said.

“Are we going to have to sleep in the car?”

“We’ll just keep heading west,” I said.

“Are we going to Texas?”

“Is that better or worse than sleeping in the car?” I asked, and for the first time today, she laughed.

I looked at her, her face just like her mother’s, the same lopsided smile, the same blue eyes the color of the sky on a clear day.

I grabbed the phone out of her hand.

“I have an idea,” I said.

I scrolled through my phone, down the list of numbers, and called one again.

“Hello,” said a faintly familiar voice. “Best Western, this is Alexandra.”

“Hi Alexandra, my name is Ray Hammond. We called earlier to check any vacancies, and I just wanted to call back and see if there’s anything you could do for us. We live in New Orleans and we had to evacuate this morning, me and my 10 year old daughter, and I was just hoping —“

“Hi Mr. Hammond, I was actually just about to call you back! We actually just had a cancellation, so you’re in luck. We’ll save the room, get it cleaned up, and have it ready for you whenever you arrive. I just need a credit card number for the deposit.”

I put my hand over the phone’s receiver and looked over to Lily.

“Get my wallet,” I said, as I made a very illegal U-turn.

There were a few cop cars at the intersection as we arrived at the hotel, setting up roadblocks for the game that night. We got there just around suppertime, and the thought of plopping into a freshly-made bed felt better than just about anything I could imagine. I realized again just how tired I was as I leaned on the counter, credit card in hand, Alexandra coming in from the back room to check us in.

“Mr. Hammond,” she asked with a bright smile.

“That’s me,” I said.

“Welcome to Best Western,” she said. “Thank you for choosing us.”

“Not much of a choice, it turns out,” I said.

“Nevertheless, it’s nice to have you with us,” she said as she swiped my card, her smile fading.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by that, it’s just been a long day.”

“It’s OK, I understand. You evacuated from New Orleans this morning?”

“That’s correct.”

“You hear the news?”

“What now?”

“Levees broke about a half hour ago.”

“Oh God,” I said. I stood there in shock. Not again.

“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you,” she said. “Is your home near…”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Hammond,” she said. “But I’m glad you’re safe with us here for now.”

She handed me the keycard to the room.

“You’re in room 504. Elevator is to the left, breakfast is from 6:30 to 9AM, wifi code is on the back of the card holder. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, thank you,” I said, and walked back in a daze to the car, idling with Lily in it.

She was playing Tetris on my phone.

“You get the room?” she asked, not looking up.

“I need my phone,” I said.

“Just a second,” she said, tapping away at the screen.

“Now,” I said.

“I’m in the middle of a game,” she said.

“Lily,” I said, in a voice that was louder than she was used to.

“Fine, fine,” she said, handing it over.

“Thank you,” I said, quitting out of the app.

“What’s wrong, anyway?”

I took a deep breath. “The levees broke,” I said.

“No,” she said.

I took another. I nodded.

I called Dave.

It went straight to voicemail.

I texted him: Hey Dave, it’s Ray. I am in Baton Rouge with Lily, and we just heard the levees broke. Did you stay? Are you OK? Let me know.

“What are we going to do?” Lily asked.

“Check into our room,” I said, pulling the car over to the only open spot on the far edge of the lot.

**

I set the bags down on the bed and turned the TV on immediately. Every channel had live coverage from helicopters, circling over parts of the city now engulfed in water.

Now my phone was vibrating constantly with text messages and DMs from friends and distant relatives all over the country who were just hearing about the disaster, making sure Lily and I were OK. I would answer one and another would come, and I’d take my eyes off the TV to look down again to see if I heard back from Dave yet.

Then I did.

“Hi Ray. I’m in my attic, and the water is coming up. Your house is flooded, sorry. I can’t get ahold of anyone, no cell service, just text. My phone is going to die soon. Please help.”

I texted back immediately:

“Ray, I’m getting you help. Keep calm. Stay frosty.”

I called 911, but the line was busy. I googled the number for the New Orleans police department but it went to voicemail. I called our neighbor across the street but there was no answer.

I told Lily to stay put, but her eyes were already glued to the TV.

I walked out past the front desk, past Alexandra doing some paperwork, across the parking lot, and over to the intersection where the police were, all clad in yellow neon vests, directing traffic.

I approached one, who put his meaty hand out in a motion that signaled for me to stop. I did.

“Sir, you can’t be here,” he said.

“I need your help,” I said.

“Sir, if you need assistance, please call 911,” he said, waving a few cars through.

“I tried that,” I said, holding up my phone.

“Then there’s nothing more I can do, I’m in the middle of this task,” he said.

“My neighbor is stuck in his attack in New Orleans,” I said.

The officer stopped waving traffic through to look over at me. A car drove by with purple LSU flags out the windows, honking their horn.

“Are you from New Orleans?” He asked.

“Yes, and I just heard from my neighbor that the flooding has reached our neighborhood. He’s stuck. Can you help?”

“Just a minute,” he said. He waved over another officer from the corner to take his place in the middle of the intersection, then met me in the little strip of grass by the sidewalk.

“Sir, there’s nothing I can personally do at the moment, but I can make a call.” He fished out a little notebook from his shirt pocket, made a quick remark on the radio attached to his shoulder.

“A call?” I said, incredulously. “The man is going to die!”

“Sir, please calm down,” he said.

“If you don’t help me, I’m going to drive down there and rescue him myself,” I said.

“There’s no way into the city, sir.” He said. “They’ve set up contra-flow.”

“I’ll drive on the shoulder,” I said.

“Let me make a call and try to get him some help,” he said, then handed me his notebook. “Write down your name, his name, the address, your phone number. I’ll see what I can do.”

“If I don’t hear from you in the next 15 minutes, I’m driving down there. Understand?”

“I get that you are trying to help your neighbor, but you’re only going to make things worse for the first responders there. So if I see you get in your car and head that way, I will detain you. Do you understand?”

I finished writing in his notebook and handed it back to him.

“Yes, I understand,” I said. “Thank you, officer.”

As I walked away, I heard him sending out our information over his radio.

When I got back in the room, Lily was sitting on the floor, crying.

I ran over to her and wrapped her in my arms.

“What’s wrong, Sweet Pea?” I asked.

She pointed to the screen. There, I saw a shot from a helicopter, Dave on the roof of his house, frantically waving a white towel. Our own house, just next door, wave almost completely enveloped in water.

It was a shock to see it, and I couldn’t take my eyes away.

My phone vibrated in an almost constant clatter, and I threw it across the room.

Another helicopter came on the screen with a rope and harness. We watched as Dave enveloped himself in it and the helicopter pulled him up to safety, away from his house and up into the confines of the helicopter’s cabin.

Then, as the chattering of the newscaster remarked on the rescue, we watched as both of us houses, through a new gust of water, tore apart, dismantled, and were carried off into the stream.

I looked over at our suitcase. That was all that was left of our lives now. Hard to believe. Even when evacuating, part of me didn’t believe that whatever I took with us would be all that would be left of our lives. I thought ahead to the long months ahead full of finding a new place to live, to seeing Dave again and telling him about watching his rescue, about rebuilding our wardrobes, about all the pictures of Lily’s mother we had hung in the hallway wall that we’d never see again.

I stood up and grabbed my keys from my pocket.

“Where are you going?” Lily asked.

“You hungry?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said.

“I’m going to get some of those snacks from the car,” I said.

“OK,” she said. “But come back soon.”

“I will, Sweet Pea,” I said, and kissed her on the forehead.

I went out to the car to see the intersection even busier, people streaming to the big game, the sun going down, the lights from the stadium on now. Life went on.

I grabbed a bag of protein bar and trail mix and, for good measure, my jar of moonshine from the trunk.

As I entered the lobby, Alexandra looked up from her computer.

“Hello again, Mr. Hammond. Anything I can do for you?” she asked.

I stopped and set down my bags and my jar.

“Would you have a drink with me?” I asked.

“I’m on the clock,” she said.

“I know it’s wildly unprofessional,” I said. “But I need a drink, there’s no one else around, and I just watched my house float away on live TV.”

“Oh my God,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Can I take a raincheck?” she asked. “I’ll definitely need a drink when my shift is over. But for now…”

She bent over and reached into a lunch bag. She pulled out a can of sparkling water.

“…Will this do?” She asked.

“That’s perfect,” I said.

She grabbed two plastic cups in their little plastic wrappers and poured two servings from the can.

She handed me one and we touched the cups together.

“What do we drink to?” she asked.

It was a good question, and I had to think about the answer.

“To New Orleans,” I said, and then we drank the water.

Dedicated to the residents of Altadena and Pacific Palisades.