Recovering Charles by Jason F. Wright Page A

existence of whom was a fact I’d forgotten until just then—could wait.
    Across the street two women siphoned gas from a powder-blue Grand Prix into a red, five-gallon gas can.
    Just a few yards from them crows pecked at what looked like a squirrel. When I passed by, I realized it was a cat with a collar.
    Almost every home’s windows were boarded up. Some streets had debris pushed to the side, others hadn’t been cleared yet.
Helicopters flew overhead almost constantly, a welcome noise in the eerie quiet of the near-deserted city.
    I stepped out of the road as two National Guard Hummers chugged by.
    Amazingly, sometimes only a block separated the dry streets from the streets under four feet of water.
    I walked toward the torn roof of the Superdome. It was as dramatic and as unsettling as it had been on my television set in New York. I recognized the I-10 overpass that had been home to so many live reports, and one of the favorite images for news helicopters to send around the globe. I hadn’t expected this double vision: my eyes and mind struggled to process the same scenes and specific geography I’d been seeing on television since the storm.
    I took a few pictures of my own.
    A blue landscaping tarp that I knew must be shielding an innocent body from the blistering sun.
    Children’s shoes. A broken megaphone.
    I weaved my way to the edge of the French Quarter. Very few of the doors to the clubs and restaurants were open.
    Then I heard faint music from the next street up. I picked up my pace and rounded the corner to the right. Three blocks ahead I saw a small group of people moving toward me.
    A funeral procession, I thought. The first since Katrina?
    I noticed immediately that it was not quite the kind of jazz funeral I’d heard or read about. It was a ragtag group, with only a few instruments, no caisson, just a single casket being carried by a couple of men.
    I wonder if it’s empty.
    Along with the casket, there were another half-dozen people moving down the street in their own odd rhythm. I recognized the tune: “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” A few curious National Guardsmen watched from the sidewalk.
    I walked halfway down the block, stood in the center of the street, and took some pictures at the highest resolution possible. I couldn’t tell exactly how many people there were, or even see their faces very well. Toward the rear of the procession, a woman appeared to be twirling a tattered purple parasol. Even from my distance I could tell they were all dead tired.
    I took a few more photos of the surrounding buildings and moved on.
    Back on Canal, I marveled at the number of satellite trucks decorated with every network logo on the planet. They hummed with the sound of generators and air conditioners. A reporter prepared for a live shot by scribbling notes on a folded piece of paper, standing on one leg and using his thigh as a desk.
    I introduced myself to a man from Pakistan, a resident of St. Bernard’s Parish, who’d been selling hats and T-shirts from a table on the street near Harrah’s Casino. Now he scavenged for half-empty bottles of water along the curb. He told me the only thing he owned were the shorts on his legs, the sandals on his feet, and a white T-shirt emblazoned with an image of a classic, multicolored Mardi Gras mask. He offered to sell it to me. Instead I took his picture and gave him twenty bucks. His name was Muhammad Saleem.
    I walked to the Riverfront Marketplace, a collection of shops at the end of Canal. This was one place where the flooding had been kept in check, but looters gutted many of the stores anyway. Some stole to survive; others stole to stay together. A few stole because they could.
    I read the tourist markers along the river. The history of jazz. The food. The swamps. Creoles. The great flood of 1927 and the intentional, controversial explosion of levees that flooded St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes but saved the rest of the city.
    I wondered how long it