Sonny moved reluctantly toward the body.
When he fought beside American GIs in Vietnam, death had been familiar and unavoidable. But decades in America had conditioned Sonny to leaving death to others. And now, thanks to Katrina, the roads were impassable, the phones didn’t work, and the police... Sonny shrugged. No doubt the low-lying Versailles District Police Station was also underwater. And anyway, the NOPD would be too busy with the problems of the living to worry about the welfare of the dead.
There is no one else to rely on, Sonny told himself.
So he took a deep breath and went down into the water again, this time deliberately opening his eyes. Trying to peer through the muddy water. He sought the dark shape of Charlie’s body, used eyes and hands to discover that Charlie’s legs — clothed in loose-fitting jeans — were caught beneath the car door. Sonny freed the body, let it float to the surface, came up beside it, and gulped air. Charlie was face down in the water, and Sonny scanned the length of his friend’s back, seeing nothing that indicated how his friend had died. Comforted by that, he rolled Charlie over. Briefly and against his will, Sonny recoiled at the sight of the distorted, waterlogged features. But he could see there were no marks of violence on the front of Charlie’s body either.
Almost relieved, Sonny considered a more natural cause of death.
For a moment, he ignored the body floating beside him and looked carefully around. Noticed, for the first time, a few leafy branches jutting from the water not too far from the front of the car. He glanced upward at the canopy of trees shading Calais Street. Easy enough, now that he knew what to look for, to spot a splintery wound on a storm-battered magnolia. To guess that the thickest part of that fallen limb was now underwater, blocking the street. Blocking the car.
Obviously, he reasoned, Charlie had been driving away from his house in the hours just before Katrina made landfall. Too late, really, to be evacuating if the wind had already grown strong enough to tear away tree limbs. Sonny wondered now if the older van had failed mechanically. Stranding not just Charlie, but his entire family. Delayed for some unknown reason, they would have hurriedly piled into the Cadillac with the storm breaking all around them. Then, still within sight of their home, a tree limb had crashed to the pavement, blocking their way. Charlie was middle-aged, extremely fit, and one of the most determined people Sonny knew. Instead of turning around and taking the slightly longer route to Michoud Boulevard and Chef Menteur Highway, Charlie would likely have hurried from his car, intent on pulling the branch out of his way.
Suddenly, Sonny found significance in the power lines dangling in the water. The city’s electricity was still on when Katrina made landfall. If Charlie hadn’t noticed a live wire making contact with the wet ground nearby or if a power line tore loose just as he stepped from the car...
Charlie would have been electrocuted.
And if there were passengers...
Now Sonny was imagining a car full of victims. People he cared about. Charlie’s five-year-old twins, Magdalene and Michael. Agnes, who was three and nearly as tall as her brother and sister. They would have been strapped into their car seats. And Nga. A kind woman who had moved in with her son-in-law after his wife died. To help with the children.
Maybe she’d tried to help Charlie during the storm.
Sonny’s stomach twisted with dread as he pictured all of those bodies inside the car. Or floating somewhere nearby. Bloated after days in the water. He shook his head, thinking that this was too much to ask of any man. That nothing — not even the war — had prepared him to face this horror alone.
That’s when Sonny began praying to the Virgin again.
Not to the statue on the roof of the car, but to the sainted ancestor who had once been a flesh-and-blood woman. A woman who had remained quietly and steadfastly brave in the most horrific of circumstances.
“Please, give me courage,” he said aloud.
Then, without giving himself an opportunity to lose his nerve, he went below the water again.
He couldn’t see well enough to search the car from the outside. So Sonny crawled into the front seat, felt around for a body in the passenger seat. No one. He left the car, stood long enough to drag in another lungful of humid air, then resumed. Quickly, he ran his hand along its frame and located the rear door handle. Locked. So he went in again through the open driver’s side door, struggling to hold his breath as he leaned between the bucket seats. Real leather, Charlie had told him — not really bragging, simply pleased. Sonny kept his eyes open, seeking small shadows, his outstretched arms moving through the water that filled the rear compartment, bracing himself for the moment he would feel a small body.
He found nothing. After thanking the Blessed Virgin for his courage, Sonny decided that Nga and the children must have evacuated in the van after all. Maybe only Charlie had been delayed. The jewelry store he owned was no more than two miles away. It was possible that Charlie had spent too much time securing the store, then foolishly returned home for one last look or to fetch one last possession. That was when fate must have dealt him an unexpected and lethal blow.
It took Sonny only a moment to decide that he owed it to his friend — to his friend’s family — to secure the body until it could be claimed and properly buried. It took a little longer to figure out how, exactly, that could be done. In the end, he decided to return Charlie to the Pham house. There, he would find some dry place to lay the body, say a final prayer for his friend, and then turn his back. Walk away. Return to his own high-and-dry attic — to the now almost irrelevant task of moving the statue — until the water receded and civilization returned to Village de l’Est. Then he would contact the authorities and make sure that Charlie’s family was notified and his body taken care of.
It didn’t seem like enough, but that was all he could think to do.
He grabbed a handful of Charlie’s sodden shirt, ignored the unnatural coolness of the flesh below the fabric, and waded down the center of Calais Street, towing the body behind him. He guided it up the front walk that led to the Phams’ big white house with its wraparound porch and pretty green shutters. Once on the porch, Sonny was left standing in water that was little more than calf deep. His friend’s body, no longer anchored by Sonny’s grip or buoyed by several feet of water, rested on the porch floor with the water nearly covering it.
The door was locked, but Sonny knew to tip back one of the terra cotta lions to retrieve the extra key. He unlocked the door, bent back down to take hold of Charlie, and dragged him inside. Left him stretched out on the tiled foyer floor as, more from habit than necessity, Sonny closed the door behind them. Time spent in his own devastated home had prepared him for the sight of Charlie’s. Except for the children’s toys floating in the water.
Almost angrily, he grabbed Charlie’s shirt again, grunting just a little as he slid the sodden weight across the foyer and into the flooded living room.
He heard Nga gasp as he came through the entryway. Heard her gasp and then let out a sound that lay somewhere between a sob and an abruptly muffled wail. With his eyes, Sonny searched for the source of the painful sound, saw her sitting halfway up the staircase to the second floor, illuminated by the light coming in through a broken window.
She was dressed, as was her custom, in a traditional ao dai. Her flowing black trousers were topped by a fitted gray-and-white patterned overdress whose long front and back panels were slit to the thigh. Sonny recalled how Tam — who was short and round — had always been good-naturedly jealous of Nga’s beauty. But now Nga’s large brown eyes and bow-shaped lips were stretched wide with shock. Her long, glossy hair — which Sonny had never seen except wrapped tightly in a bun — was caught in a limp braid. And there was nothing graceful in the way she moved down the stairs.