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I were floating. I was. The VW was floating off into the west bayou. Verging on panic, I floorboarded the accelerator causing my back tires to descend and grab asphalt. The VW lurched forward like a detailed armadillo humping through a creek. I made it to dry land, but 1 was scared pea-green. Romeo was already nosing into the next pool which sported a sunken bridge right in the middle marked only by abutments rising out of the water. The force of the water flowing over the bridge fishtailed the red car, but it made it to the next rise. Romeo got out of the car, which was blowing water out through its exhaust pipe, smiled, made a very ungentlemanly gesture, got back 1, and then drove away. I watched the red car until it disappeared *rom view.
I	did not dare turn off my moter, so I got out and stood beside the VW which sat there whimpering like a wet hound. Occasionally it wheezed and coughed as though it had pneumonia. The only other sounds were the soft slop-slop of the swamp water running across the road and the loud intermittent “Creeeee, Creeeee” of the swamp crickets. Marie Laveau s wraith glided through the marsh and hid behind a big cypress. I thought I heard a crackle.
For a long moment I considered retreat, but what lay behind was as bad as what lay before me, so 1 decided to die in the pursuit.
I	eased the car into the pool with my heart tucked between my tonsils praying to Jehovah for deliverance. By the time I got between the bridge abutments the car was floating, humping, and floundering, and I was praying to Neptune. The car ricocheted off the abutment. I uttered an oath, truly repenteed, bounced off the fridge again and rolled up on the next rise. The brakes failed so I jerked up the emergency brake, kicked open the door, rolled out on the ground, and fainted for a while.
The next three sheets of water were not so bad, and I was beg-ginning to feel a little better until I looked ahead to see the road disappear into the matted undergrowth and trees of the swamp. The road was not broken. It appeared simply to run into the ground. Edging closer I realized what had happened. A floating island, dislodged by the hurricane, had scudded down one of the bayous only to find itself hung up atop one of the small bridges. There it had simply squatted down burying the bridge and the road as the waters receded. These floating islands, formed by silt covering mats of fallen limbs, can be quite large. Moss draped trees and palmetto covered this one. The road did not run into the swamp; the swamp
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had come to the road. Romeo’s ruts were clearly visible so I followed them. As the VW groaned and spun up onto the muddy mound, I cculd see a big water moccasin draped in a clump of Spanish moss. A possum scampered by my left window. A raccoon sat in the ruts in front of my car. I tried to beep the horn. Nothing happened. I mashed hard and managed to elicit a croupy “weeeeep.” The coon was not impressed. He just sat there, staring at me with his little beady bandit eyes. I wanted to get out and kick him out of my way, but I was afraid that I might “get on a snake.” Besides, he was so cheeky I figured he might just bite me. Reaching into the bag beside me, I pulled out a package of Oreos and threw it at him. As he disappeared in a shower of black and white cookies, I went over the top of the island and rolled down onto the road on the other side. I could see the coon munching on an Oreo in the rear view window.
In front of me as far as the eye could see, hugh trees and logs littered the road. Apparently Betsy’s storm surge had washed the logs to the road and then receded quickly, dropping them across the road at regular intervals like the rungs on a chicken-house ladder. The only way to get around a log was to actually run two wheels into the bayou, while the other two wheels gripped the shell road shoulder. The car could then pass under the log cocked at about a forty-five degree angle provided it did not tip over or hand up on the log. By gunning the engine it was possible to race the car across the road repeating the process at the opposite end of the next log. The power lines entangled in this mess did not help matters. I made it in the manner described, but I saw no evidence that Romeo had.
The log jam ended at Bayou Manchac where five smashed house trailers lay in the road. One of them lay upside down and broken across the road like an egg shell. Portions of the others blocked the shoulders. I drove into the trailer, took a right by the couch and left at the refrigerator, and exited through the back wall just as night fell like a velvet curtain. The ordeal ended. Clear road lay ahead.
Unless Romeo zigged where I zagged around those logs, a red car lies a-rusting on the bottom of a Louisiana bayou to this day. If the Sheriff of St. John Baptist Parish, Louisiana, would like to know, I can tell him within five mnes of wherefore it art.
PART II - GOTTERDAMMERUNG
Five years granulated through the hour glass. On Saturday,
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