Appointment Under Water

As Katrina whirled in the Gulf of Mexico, so large that it seemed to cover the entire gulf, and so perfect in its form, like many people who watch such things, I kept being reminded of its closest relative, Hurricane Camille in 1969. I wasn't living here in Nelson County, in the Piedmont of Virginia, but when I arrived a few years later, in 1976, I could still see signs of how Camille, after first scourging the Gulf Coast, then hurried north and for some reason dumped so much rain, 25 inches, on this one small, obscure county in a single night that over 100 Nelsonians ended up being washed out of their beds and out of their coves and drowned.

Those signs consisted of large chunks of naked red and yellow earth scattered along the tops of very high ridges, where I wouldn't have thought there would've been any big streams to speak of. And just down the road from the property that we soon bought was a narrow wooden bridge across a river, right next to some large, ancient stone pillars. Before Camille those pillars had supported the old bridge, and they rose so much higher than the current bridge that they testified graphically to the huge amount of water that had rushed through there, carrying bodies, cars, trees, houses, and everything else from the coves higher up.

My mother and father were born and raised in New Orleans, but they left as soon as they reached adulthood and could elope, moving to the -- slightly -- higher ground of Washington, D.C., as did all my other relatives, the ones who were still alive by the time I was born. They seldom mentioned New Orleans, so I have hardly any idea of what their lives had been like while living there, and it has been many years since anyone was left whom I could ask.

As I watch the rooftops protruding above the surface of the flood waters, I wonder which of those submerged houses, if any, once sheltered my family. I wonder how aware they were of the dangers of living in such a place. I wonder what the attractions were that caused people to pile up together and create a city in a place where they were at the mercy of mere levees day and night.

The only drawbacks of New Orleans I ever heard mentioned were that nobody could have basements, and all burials had to be above ground.

I wonder what the old people would think of the many questions that have suddenly been ripped out of the "soil" of New Orleans, after so many years of good eating and good music, and are now demanding hard answers.

This time the hurricane didn't visit my home county in Virginia. It didn't have anything left after its appointment with my ancestral home, New Orleans.