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work on a Ph.D. A mind would be a terrible thing to waste, especially mine. Besides, just once I ought to get to cheer for a winning team. Southern had been whipped by everybody but Duck Hill High in my years there. I made bold to say that the hurricane was bad enough and implored Him not to trot out anymore tornadoes.
In the midst of these supplications I fainted.
I woke up around 3:30 when someone moved and ground a boot in my face. The wind was down to just howling along at a paltry 100 m.p.h. or so. The water was flowing away. By 4 o’clock the L.A.R.C. rested once more in the slab. I heard someone cuss. At 4:30 one last great howl straight out of the bowels of hell shook the building and then silence. It was over. We climbed unsteadily to the mud covered floor and formed up for orders. The VW lay against the wall like a dead cockroach. All four wheels were up and oily swamp water bled out of it on the floor.
At roll call the lieutenant’s voice broke a little when he got to “Corley, Joseph Robert.” All the helmets came off and everybody developed a sudden interest in the floor or ceiling or looked out the north door. I looked out the door. Everything over six inches high and been leveled for a quarter of a mile. I could see the profile of a battered figure with a rifle stumbling through the wreckage headed our way. I pointed him out to the others as the roll call proceeded. As the helmetless apparition drew nigh with a decidedly studly gait and one cheek pooched out from the load of Beechnut therein, 1 knew Joe Bob had returned from the dead. We wanted to kiss him, but we beat on him and rassled with him instead. He gave us an “Aw shucks, twern’t nothin” tale about how the wires had shorted out when the pole knocked the truck off the road. Everyone in the truck had floated down the bayou and then taken refuge in a house which had floated around all night. The rest of them were out there waiting to be picked up.
The aluminum Tyrannosaurus Rex thundered through the door into the gloaming. We were appalled by the destruction to be seen on every hand. D’lberville looked like a Dutch city after the Germans blew the dikes at the end of World War II. Cars lay scattered and overturned in the brimming ditches. Six horses with broken bridles trailing ran across the road. I stood up to get a better view. Sometime later I awoke to water dribbling in my face and hands slapping my cheeks. I had elected to stand at the precise moment the L.A.R.C.
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passed under the only limb left on one of the few remaining live oaks in town. Someone handed me a very dented helmet.
After picking up our other men, we went out looking for someone to save, but the whole city appeared to be abandoned. A man hollered for help. The L.A.R.C. driver stopped and backed up.
The man said a woman needed help. A damsel in distress was just what we were looking for. She must have tipped the scales at 350 pounds, and she was not hurt, just scared. Since she could not fit on the ladder, seven of us hefted \ ~r up and five more pulled her over into the cargo hold. She lay there until we found a refugee center where we repeated the aforementioned procedure. That was my only rescue.
Orders came for my troop to be divided into two groups - one to search for dead bodies and the other to guard against looters. For the first and only time in my life, I volunteered for guard duty.
We were posted to an exclusive subdivision facing Back Bay. A yacht driven ashore by the storm, blocked the only road leading into the area. Joe Bob stood at the p ow of the vessel to check identification of returning property o ,ners, and I walked on in to take up a position about a block away to guard against any looters coming in by sea.
Most of the houses were just stacks of lumber. Naked concrete slabs marked the sites of others. Some roofs were still held aloft by a few 2x4 studs. Silver cutlery, cameras, appliances, and all manner of personal effects littered the yards and the road. A small dog lay dead in the front yard of one of the houses. I dug a hole with my bayonet and buried it, marking the grave with a cross of iron. ^
Couples began to trickle through Joe Bob’s checkpoint at me yacht prow. In every case the man cursed, and the woman burst into tears as their eyes swept the evidence of holocaust.
At 2:30 in the afternoon a fiftyish woman in shower shoes and a mu-mu passed through the checkpoing and headed my way. Cradled in her arm was a bag which read “Jim Dandy Self-Rising Flour, TM. reg., 5 lbs. ” That struck me as a bit odd. She walked up and wailed that her house had once stood on the concrete slab behind me. I sympathized. She asked if I had seen a small dog. I broke the news of its demise as gently as possible. She took it hard. After thirty minutes of weeping and gnashing of teeth my nerves began to fray. She looked up the street and saw another slab upon which
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