SCAVENGER

by Elaine Menge

Just before noon, Monday, while the wind still whipped, Ernest fell out of bed. His right shoulder bore the brunt against the not so fluffy shag carpet, but at least he’d escaped the giant tarantula he’d been wrestling in his dream.

Someone was banging on his door. He lurched into the living room, fluttered an eyelid against the cloudy peephole, turned the deadbolt. The source of the hullabaloo was Mike Doucet, next apartment over.

“My canoe’s by the fire escape.” Mike’s barrel chest heaved as if he’d just won a gladiatorial bout. “Slide it out and shove off if you have to. Some radio jock says the 17th Street Canal might’a broke!”

Ernest pushed his wiry arms out wide and executed a jaw-wrenching yawn, glad to give Mike a sample of morning breath. “It over yet?” He ran a hand through his dirty blond hair.

“S’what over?”

“This hurricane thing.”

“Hurricane thing?” Mike double-punched the door frame with the sides of his fists. “Your sis and mom’s in Dallas, right? Get your ass there. I’ll ride you far as Baton Rouge. And yeah, worst of the wind’s over, maybe, but this one’s serious. They say the lake’s pouring in.”

Chicken, Ernest thought. Even Mike—tough outdoorsman—was cutting bait.

“Treat my canoe nice if you do use her.”

“I’ll treat her like the best date I never had.” Ernest flashed his most sincere, squinty smile and shut the door.

Despite the habitual squint, Ernest looked years younger than fifty-two. Folks who struck up a conversation often remarked on that, thinking him no more than thirty-five. He always said he still felt like ten. “Best year of my life, I spent as a ten year old,” he’d boast. At that bit of information most listeners tilted away, whether perched on a bar stool or bus seat.

The crazy whistling sounds outside brewed confusion in his head. Ernest popped off the cap of another Corona. Hurricanes didn’t scare him. Lots of wind, but then he’d spent the worst hours three sheets to the wind himself. If not for Mike’s knock, he would have missed the whole thing.

Later in the day, after another deep sleep during which he battled a gorilla, Ernest peered out of his bedroom window and saw that the filling station gas pumps he’d always looked down on were no longer there. Couldn’t believe it. Had he drunk more beer than usual? Then it hit him. The pumps were still there, just not visible under all that stinking water.

So this one—Katrina—wasn’t a “shoo-shoo”—his word for a damp firecracker—after all. It was more like Hurricane Betsy, a cherry bomb. Neat. He’d loved Hurricane Betsy. Dear old 1965—swimming in the street, getting all excited about water snakes and garfish and tales of people being sucked underground where manhole covers were missing. No big deal, especially since the water had only come up to the third step on his family’s house.

He tossed back a few more beers. Slept.

Next day he took a tour in Mike’s canoe. For his purposes, he wished it weren’t bright yellow, but closer to the putrid brown of the water itself. He did appreciate the life preserver tucked inside, though, even if it was bright orange. Ernest couldn’t swim.

He paddled across Robert E. Lee Boulevard, to the lakefront homes where richer beings lived. Though situated near the lake, most of those houses were dry. New Orleans was a bowl, and those lucky mini-mansions were perched on the bowl’s north rim.

He’d heard about looted stores on the radio, people stealing sneakers, flat screen TVs, stereos. He didn’t care about that junk. But gold, diamonds, your better jewelry? He could grab handfuls to hock at a later date. For that matter, he wasn’t all that interested in profit. It was just pretty neat to walk around in those houses, laugh at the walls. His own private way of getting even.

New Orleans was ruined, and he was glad.

New Orleans could have been Houston or Pittsburgh, Seattle or Opelika, Alabama. If any of those places had been his hometown, he’d be equally ecstatic. Way he saw it, he’d suffered a lot at the hands of New Orleans and the people in it, ever since grammar school. If he’d been born in Pompeii, he’d do a monkey dance on the ruins—just so long as he wasn’t home when the mountain blew its top.

He found some choice champagne in one of those lakefront homes. Tuesday night passed in a blur. Wednesday morning, he felt okay. Not great, but up to new challenges.

Once again, he carefully inserted his slim body into the canoe as it bobbed just below the second floor fire escape landing. Ernest held the paddle across his hairy legs and let fly a low whistle as he gazed at what had been Paris Avenue—still was, under all the toxic brown water. He sniffed the air, made a face.

Though he’d chucked his cigarettes two years earlier, Ernest had a smoker’s puckered mouth and squint around the eyes that gave him an eager, inquisitive look. He squinted now, trying to make out what was left of the strip mall he’d frequented for years. Coffee shop, cleaners, drugstore, pizza parlor. Only the long black roof that capped those establishments was visible, floating in the warm water like the inverted hull of Noah’s ark.

He’d never heard a quiet this quiet before. No birds sang. Not even a mosquito buzzed.

The whole damn city had cut out. Sure, on the radio he heard about folks in the Superdome. Their cries didn’t carry this far, not even over water. Here in Gentilly—one of the city’s oldest suburbs, quarter mile from Lake Pontchartrain, or where the lake should start—there wasn’t a creature stirring. This was alone.

Alone was his comfort zone. Only dying scared him, and he figured if he quit smoking by fifty, he’d cheat the devil for a long time. Cigarettes killed his dad. His mom, with her bad diet, worse attitude, and her unwillingness even to walk around the block, was still going strong at eighty-five. Her lazy Energizer Bunny act fueled his hopes for a long life.

The lotion he slathered on his face kept him looking young, despite the years of smoking. He also made it a habit not to do much of anything in the sun, or out of it. He showered often. Bacteria could kill you sure as cancer.

Water kissed the canoe’s sides. He sat straight, aware he’d been hunching his shoulders, mouth open. Awe, an emotion he never sought to register, was hardly ever warranted. Ernest shut his mouth.

But he couldn’t help it if his eyes bugged out. The scene was freaking unbelievable. Though he’d ventured forth the day before, he still felt like he was paddling into a movie thought up by Rod Serling.

The water near his apartment building was splotched with gasoline rainbows. He’d never felt good about living next to a gas station. Couldn’t those underground tanks explode?

Didn’t matter now; couldn’t happen now.

He dipped the paddle, pulled hard to escape the gasoline smell, and glided across Paris Avenue, past what had been the grassy neutral ground planted with oaks and magnolias. The upper, visible parts of those trees looked stunned, as if they’d flung their arms up in an old Western, surrendering to Mother Nature. Ya got me!

The heat was also a shock. New Orleans’ summers were hell, but today it seemed like Earth had switched places with Mercury. Good thing he’d lifted the sunscreen he’d found in Missy Golden’s apartment down the hall. Lucky he lived on the second floor too. It’d been worth climbing stairs all these years, because now, unlike many others, he hadn’t lost any of his worldly possessions. The few things he valued, his baseball cards, his coin collection, were dry. His dad always said never live on the bottom floor if you can live up top.

He floated past the Rite Aid—formerly a K&B, and before that, a place called Crown Drugs—where he habitually bought pints of whiskey. How strange, to sit a foot below the building’s roofline. He pictured the bottles inside, unattended. Would they float? Probably not. More likely, they were just waiting on their accustomed shelves, looking for eternity to roll around, or for the City Fathers to get the pumps going.

Fat chance.

Once the water went down some, maybe he’d dog-paddle in, nab a few. They’d be thrown out anyway.

“Today we’ll take a little cruise,” Ernest announced. His voice sounded flat, swallowed up by the universal quiet. He paddled. “A little cruise.” He laughed then, and turned to give the roof of his beloved drugstore a last glance.

On its peak, like a stone gargoyle, perched a huge bird—black, with a bald, red head. Ernest couldn’t make out much detail, but the general shape of a vulture, or buzzard, was definitely there. This was no overweight crow.

He shook his head as if to knock the image of the vulture out of it and began paddling west, down Robert E. Lee, toward Lakeview. He’d never seen one of those birds in New Orleans, though this city, famous for garbage even before the storm, seemed the perfect place for vultures to hang out.

When he was a kid and his parents drove downriver to visit cousins in the country, he’d seen buzzards hopping away from roadkill with impatient gusto as his dad’s chrome-mouthed Chrysler charged toward them. But he’d never seen a buzzard in New Orleans, much less a vulture.

That ugly bird on the strip mall’s roof was the only living thing he’d seen since Mike Doucet bowed out, except for Missy Golden’s aquarium fish, which she’d asked him to feed. And he had, just after he lifted the tube of sunblock—the fancy, dermatologist’s office kind—and several gallon bottles of water, and a few pairs of Missy’s gold earrings, one set with rubies.

He was glad the other tenants had taken their pets along when they evacuated, since he would have felt an inner push to take care of them. More important pursuits might have suffered as a result.

As each tenant left, they expressed the same idea. “Probably another false alarm, Ernie. See ya in three days.” If nothing else, the power would go out, never any fun in August. At worst, it’d be off for a week. They said, “If you’re staying, could you keep an eye on things, Ernie?”

Yeah. Glad to.

Paddling away, he hazarded a last look back at the roof. The vulture was gone. Probably’d been a hallucination brought on by gasoline fumes.

The sun steamed the watery road. “Brutal,” he said. He thought of football practice in high school, that one time he’d gone out for it, late August. It’d been so hot, Ernest was downright pleased and proud not to make the team.

This heat was much worse.

After paddling several blocks, he picked up one of the jugs of water at his feet. He drank greedily, then sloshed some over his head. It trickled through his pale, oily hair, down his neck. Still, he felt the heat. The water surrounding him had an acrid smell, no longer of gasoline. Fishy, with a touch of sewerage, and not a breeze stirred to carry the aroma away.

His sweat made him feel dirty. Ernest showered often and wished he could shower now. But even if the plumbing worked, the water would be full of this toxic crap.

A few more blocks and he’d make it to Bayou St. John, where he could paddle across to reach the low bridge that spanned the Orleans Canal. Maybe the land on the other side would be dry. He could stash the canoe, cross the bridge, walk half a mile, and be back in his old neighborhood, where he grew up.

His mother had sold the house just three years ago and moved in with his sister and her husband in Dallas. Ernest hadn’t gone near the place since.

Would their old house be flooded like all the empty, gaping houses he was passing now? Big deal. He wasn’t interested in taking a walk, or a row, down memory lane. His goal was to get to old man Wartburg’s.

Wartburg. “Mean old German,” his mother called him, even though he wasn’t first generation. Still, he looked like he could be one of those retired SS soldiers that those Nazi hunters used to track down.

Wartburg lived four houses down on the corner. The old German’s wife—silver-haired, always incredibly placid-looking, only venturing outside to smell her roses—died several years back, but the old man was still kicking, had to be at least ninety. He would have evacuated like everyone else, gone to his daughter’s, most probably.

Breaking into Wartburg’s would give Ernest more joy than had strolling into any of those rich lakefront castles he’d visited yesterday.

Nasty old cuss. If you were riding your bike and cut across the tiny triangle of grass that defined Wartburg’s corner, he’d turn a hose on you. Fat cigar in his mouth, he was always lurking. His hair, a mean wiry gray; his slate blue eyes, opaque, stubborn. Some people frowned; Wartburg taught Ernest what a genuine scowl was.

Maybe he’d never really hosed anyone for cutting across that bit of grass. Maybe he only scowled. The message came through: You were dust, and one of these days, Mr. Wartburg would get you. No one visited his door on Halloween. If he gave out candy, it’d be poison for sure. No one dared play a trick on Wartburg, either.

Ernest had been forced to wear braces on his legs until he was ten. His mom’s doing: She got the idea that Ernest’s legs were turning the wrong way and found a quack doctor who fitted Ernest with orthopedic shoes and clunky braces that circled his legs to the knees. His dad used to help him with them, clamping them on in the morning before school and pulling them off at night. Ernest sensed his dad knew the braces weren’t necessary, but he was such a wuss, he did whatever Ernest’s mom said.

The kids at school treated him like a polio victim. No, worse than that, since Robert Kaufmann, who had a brace on one leg and the heel of that shoe built up like one of Frankenstein’s clodhoppers, already filled the role of the school’s polio victim. And the other kids liked Robert Kaufmann. They thought him special, regarded him with awe. But Ernest—not even the bullies paid him any attention. He was a crip not even worth beating up. Those damn braces. They cut the flesh just below his knees, too, if he tried to walk fast.

Ernest and his dad used to work on several collections: stamps, baseball cards, and coins. Documenting those items was one of the few things Ernest did with his dad. When they worked on the collections, his dad would smoke. Sometimes, he’d turn the pages of their stamp album and bestow an appreciative smile upon the rows and rows of identical Abraham Lincoln profiles.

Ernest preferred the coin collection. His dad would bring change home from work that Ernest would sift through, searching for dates they lacked in their blue cardboard books. How he loved plugging the empty round holes with the correct penny, nickel, dime. Even quarters they did, and half dollars.

One of the few aphorisms his dad ever uttered was, “Don’t clean ‘em. If you do, they lose value.” So Ernest kept looking until he found the cleanest, best preserved coin of each category. The dirty leftovers, he threw in a jar to be traded off later to some stupid coin collector kid.

Mr. Wartburg had heard about his neighbors’ interest in coins. That had to be why they’d been invited over. Ernest had stepped into Mr. Wartburg’s house only once in his life, but that day was just about the most memorable occasion of Ernest’s life.

Wartburg’s house had a windowless room at its very center. He boasted to Ernest’s dad about how he’d taken a little off of every other room to create this inner sanctum. He’d done all the work himself. The door to the windowless room melded with the den’s paneling.

Mr. Wartburg unlocked the camouflaged door, pushed it open. A light clicked on, revealing a square space the size of a small guest room, but which seemed more glorious than any Ernest had ever seen. A desk with a big round magnifier clamped to it bordered one wall. The other three were laddered with shelves full of coin books, even coins from Europe. Lower down, long, narrow drawers housed the real prizes of his collection.

An arrogant glint sparking his eyes, Mr. Wartburg showed them many amazing coins that day, coins Ernest had studied in his Directory of U.S. Coins with longing, knowing he’d never find these rarities in his father’s pockets.

A measly nickel impressed him most. Mr. Wartburg actually owned one of those 1937 D buffalo nickels that got stamped out with only three legs on the buffalo.

“D’ja see that, Dad?” he said after they left. “He’s got the three-legged buff. Never thought I’d see one of them in my whole life.”

His dad smiled a sad smile and pulled a red cellophane ribbon to liberate his pack of Lucky Strikes. “He’s got the 1916 double die obverse too.” He squeezed the words out, as if this observation gave him great pain.

Mr. Wartburg never invited them back. He scowled just the same whenever Ernest rounded the corner on his bike. Ernest’s enthusiasm for coins had made no difference. Wartburg wasn’t interested in trading with the likes of them; he’d only invited them over to show off.

With an angry spurt of energy, Ernest shoved the paddle in the water. “That was not Mr. Rogers’s neighborhood,” he said aloud. His laugh immediately died against the ugly water and cruel, hot, baby blue sky.

Didn’t matter how hot it was, how bad the water smelled, how much Ernest hated sweat, or even how tired he’d be of rowing by the time he reached his destination. He was going to Wartburg’s, and he’d pocket all the coins he could manage, the ones from those slim, slide-out drawers, including the ancient gold dollars with the Seated Liberty. Above all, he’d nab the three-legged Buffalo.

Though not the most precious of the collection, the lame buff drew him. Some coins were valuable not only because so few existed, but because they were anomalies. Mutants interested him. The buffalo’s missing leg made him special.

Ernest was so lost in thinking about the visit to Mr. Wartburg’s house that he was surprised when the canoe bumped into the rising slant of the Orleans Canal bridge. The bridge’s smooth concrete arch poked three feet above the water. He disembarked and slid the boat over the bridge’s top section. Even before he climbed out, he saw the destruction on the other side. Lakeview was flooded as well. Miles of ruined homes stretched before him.

Cars must have floated for a time, since many had landed in cockeyed positions. A silver Camry that looked brand new see-sawed over a Quaid fence. Another car, one of those outmoded Oldsmobile Supremes, was stuck in a mimosa tree.

“Holy moly,” Ernest exclaimed. He knew this street well, but could hardly get his bearings. At the intersection of Fillmore and Argonne, he recognized a home on one corner. The couple who lived there always kept its terraced lawn neatly mowed. At Christmas, they put up tasteful decorations, nothing like the ratty wreath and limply strung lights his parents used to come up with. Now, a huge leather sofa was wedged in the picture window that used to frame their Christmas tree.

Whenever Ernest passed that house, he’d think about what a completely different person he’d be if he’d grown up there, where everything was clean and made sense.

His mom fussed about keeping a clean home, but rarely did a lick of housework. The garden was full of weeds. His dad hardly ever mowed. Neighbors gave them dirty looks.

He squinted at the house and let out a moan. He hated New Orleans, but seeing this particular house ruined didn’t make him feel very good. More acutely than before, he felt he was the only human being in the world.

Just as he was ready to long for the sight of another living creature, a green canoe rounded the corner a block down. A skinny guy was paddling, and a boy about twelve sat on the seat behind him.

“Hey!” the man called.

“Hey there.” Ernest wished he could go back to being the only person on earth again.

“Nice day for boating, what ya say.”

This guy, late thirties, was an affable type who wanted to talk. Ernest gave the required chuckle, ready to cut it short.

“You stayed,” the guy said.

Like duh. Ernest smiled and said, “You too.”

“Me and my son. Wife left Saturday with our daughter. I figured Roy and me’d stick it out. We got a two-story, so no problem when the water came up. But never in a million years did I think anything like this would happen.”

The man was just twenty feet off. Ernest wasn’t keen on him coming closer. Not that he had anything to hide: just three gallons of water, the life preserver, and these big old rubber waders he’d found in Mike’s closet. And most important—not one, but two flashlights.

“I got a two-story too.” Ernest wiped his face with a handkerchief. “This heat’s bad. Can’t stand it.”

The man nodded. “Roy and I are getting out tomorrow, one way or another. People’re being rescued, flown out on Coast Guard copters. But they’re being damned slow about it. Folks with only one-story houses—the ones who stayed—they had to chop out their attics with an ax. They’re stranded on rooftops. Once in awhile, you’ll hear a helicopter. If one comes this way, I’ll flag him. Or I can always paddle to the parish line. Did’ya hear? Metairie is fine. No flooding over there. Least, not in most places.”

“That so.” Man, was this guy a talker.

“I don’t want to leave,” the kid piped up. “Hey, mister, we fished in our back yard this morning,” he called to Ernest, as if this were some great feat he should be congratulated on.

The father said, “If no one rescues us, I’ll take him to Metairie. That’s a few miles paddling, to the 17th Street Canal. Cross that bridge and then we’re on dry land.”

“Right,” said Ernest.

“Only, then what? No transportation. I guess somebody would help us get to Baton Rouge. That’s where my wife is.”

The kid said, “Let’s stay and tough it out, Dad.”

“Sure,” said Ernest. “Someone’ll get you to Baton Rouge.” Yeah, like what did this guy expect, limousine service? Ernest said to himself, hoping this dope would move on.

“Let’s tough it out,” the boy repeated, no doubt imitating something his dad had said days ago.

“Can you believe this?” the man said, looking around.

“Yeah. Pinch me.”

“Roy here thinks it’s a lark. The whole first floor of our house is a loss, and he’s loving it.”

The boy grinned. “No school.”

Ernest said, “He’ll have stories to tell his grandkids.”

“Live around here?” the man asked, slitting one eye.

“Used to. I’m on the other side of Orleans Canal, but I told my mom I’d come out here to check her house—my old home, where I grew up.” He put on a nostalgic face. “Maybe get some old pictures out, whatever I can.”

The man nodded. “I asked, ‘cause you know, you can’t be too careful. I heard there’s guys going around in boats, stealing from flooded homes.”

“Yeah?” Ernest tilted his head sideways. “What’s to gain? These houses are ruined.”

“Heard it on the radio. Coast Guard’s going house to house, marking every door with a big orange X, checking for bodies. They put a zero in the lower quadrant if they find no bodies, put other numbers in the other segments. Don’t know what those mean. While they were doing this, house to house, they said they found a guy in a kayak paddling around Lakeview, not two miles from here. Guy says he’s a veterinarian come down from Connecticut to save pets. Connecticut, yet! Turns out he was nothing like that. They found all this jewelry in his kayak. Confiscated it.”

“No kidding,” said Ernest, glad that the jewelry he’d stolen was stashed under a flap of his bedroom carpet.

“What else I heard, they saw a rubber raft tied up in front of another house and found a guy inside taking stuff. Know what they did? Punched holes in the raft. Sank it. Stranded him.” The man laughed.

“How’d they know he wasn’t the owner?”

“They knew. Don’t you worry. Served him right.”

This was good information to have. When Ernest got to Wartburg’s he’d be sure to hide the canoe well out of sight.

“I’m hoping to meet up with those Coast Guard boats. Maybe they’ll take us out of here. It’s not good being around this water. They’re talking hepatitis, say the water’s full of toxins.” The man’s expression had initially been bright, but now he looked melancholy. “All our picture albums were on the first floor. I forgot to bring them upstairs. My wife’s gonna kill me. I mean, is this the pits or what? I have a pool-cleaning business. Who’s coming back after this? Who’ll need a pool cleaned? My business is flooded. Might have to declare bankruptcy.”

“Jeez,” said Ernest, “the whole place is a pool now.”

“I heard this water’s going to stand for weeks, maybe months. They can’t get the pumps going.”

“That so.” Ernest nodded in woeful sympathy while feeling none of this information had any relation to him ... Though, come to think of it, how had his uncle’s grocery made out? That’s where Ernest worked, stocking shelves. If the grocery flooded, would his uncle close down?

Another thought hit him. What if the owner of his apartment complex decided to bulldoze the place?

Ernest blinked hard. No point worrying about it now. He wasn’t going to be a crybaby like this guy with the pool-cleaning business.

“Well, good luck, man,” said Ernest. “I gotta go pass by my mama’s.”

“Hey, look at that!” said the boy.

Ernest turned around to see what that brainiac kid was pointing at. His heart thumped. Thirty yards off, claws gripping the broken-off stump of a creosote telephone pole, was the big black bird. He didn’t perch like a normal bird, but held his huge wings out wide, like Dracula showing off his cape. His bumpy bald head looked like a chunk of red gristle.

The father whistled. “He’s a big one. Turkey vulture. See the red head? I’ll bet that’s a six-foot wingspan.”

Roy’s eyes bugged out. “Is he ever ugly. Let’s shoot him, Dad.” The boy bent down to grab something. When he came up, Ernest saw he was shouldering a rifle.

“No, son,” said the father. “He ain’t pretty, but that bird performs an important service. Scavengers are good. The bird kind, anyway.”

Ernest didn’t know what surprised him more, the vulture or the sobering sight of the rifle.

The father eased the gun back down in the boat. “This here’s for the human kind.” He laughed. “I swear, anybody tries to loot my house, I’ll blow his head off.”

“I didn’t know they had vultures in New Orleans,” said Ernest, ready to drop the subject of looters. “I never seen one before.”

“Can’t say I’ve seen one in town, but they’re all over, on the outskirts. These birds have an impressive range. Could be it’s attracted by—you know—dead animals floating around. You might have noticed. I try not to look.”

Ernest nodded. He’d seen a cat, all wet and drowned.

“They don’t usually eat dog or cat carcasses, though. They don’t eat carnivores. Most folks don’t know that. They like veggie eaters.” The man winked. “Cows and such.”

“No cows around here.”

“Something’s attracting him. Did you know, vultures are the only birds with a sense of smell? See how he holds his wings out? That’s how he disperses body heat. Know why their heads are bald? When they stick ‘em up in a carcass, if they had feathers, all that blood and tissue would cling all over. But since they’re bald, that crap just crusts up in the sun and flakes off.”

Mr. Encyclopedia, Ernest thought. “I’m hearing everything I never wanted to know about them animals.” He sailed a clipped wave and began paddling. “Good luck, man. Gotta go.”

“Name’s Jeff. Look, one other thing. Clean forgot. There’s an older couple—Memphis Street—just a few blocks, the way you’re going. They have the windows open on the second floor, on the lookout for help. They need water. I gave them two gallons, but I only have so much. If you could spare one of those bottles, drop it off, it would be great.”

“Sure,” Ernest called over his shoulder. “Will do.” As if. He’d steer clear of those morons. If they were dumb enough to stay behind, they should have stocked up on water.

He pulled hard, eager to get out of sight of the green canoe and that bird with the gristly red noggin. He wet a handkerchief with the drinking water and slapped it on his head to ward off the sun. Dumb, not to have brought along one of Mike’s caps. His destination was less than a half mile away, but he felt weak.

He neared a crepe myrtle that had fallen across the street, put out a hand, and grabbed one of its smooth branches. He pulled the canoe under its canopying leaves and retrieved from the canoe’s bottom a PowerBar he’d taken from Mike’s pantry. Resting in the shade, he munched the bar, mulling over what Jeff had said.

Ernest hadn’t seen any of the orange X’s Jeff claimed the Coast Guard was painting on houses. He doubted there could be many. This time, though the hurricane had come up fast, people had taken the warnings seriously. Anyone with a car skipped town when the mayor said to. The only ones left behind were poor folks who had no wheels. Most of them were at the Superdome. And then there were people like himself, and this Jeff guy. Jeff had stayed to protect his property. As for himself, he just hadn’t given it much thought one way or another.

“Oblivious,” his mother used to say. “A bomb could go off on your head.”

Ernest laughed, proud of that trait. But he’d never been as clueless as his mother thought. He just paid attention to different things. Like back when he was eleven and started the paper route he kept until his late teens. He knew the neighborhood better than the mailman, knew everyone’s routine. He didn’t break into homes often, and he didn’t steal a lot. He never got caught: He got even.

At age ten, once the braces came off his legs, his life took a turn for the better. Ten. Best year of his life. He found he had no trouble pedaling a bike. Ernest felt liberated, on top of the world. Trouble was, the kids at school went right on treating him as if his legs were still encased in steel. Getting the paper route made a difference. He earned some money, and he felt like he had power. So he trespassed.

“Time to resume our little cruise,” Ernest said to the boat. He pushed off from the crepe myrtle and wielded the paddle. “Time to resume our journey of discovery.” He paused and tried to remember some words: “Come my friends, ‘tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off—uh—it may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.” That was Ulysses, setting out to get his share of the world’s treasures one last time. Neat, that he still remembered that bit from high school.

Quiet. Weird. No car motors, leaf blowers, not even a wimpy breeze. Nothing but the steady plunk of the paddle. And then—wow—before he expected it, there was Marsha Creel’s house. Only its top half was visible. Marsha thought she was hot stuff. Two years older than Ernest, she’d sit on her front stoop and flirt with him—pretend flirt, since no way would she ever go out with him. She always had a book open in her lap. Later on, she went to Newcomb, the girls’ part of Tulane. Her senior year she got a Phi Beta Kappa key. Her mother went and told everyone that Marsha’d been “elected” to Phi Beta Kappa. Like, what did that mean? Had she run for office?

In one of her slumming moods, Marsha showed it to him, herself. She was sitting on her front stoop reading a fat book, the squarish key dangling from a gold chain around her neck when he rode up on his bike.

“Neat,” Ernest said, and asked why the key had an imprint of a hand on one side that pointed to three stars.

“It’s for scholastic excellence,” she said. “I wish I could wear it out.” She threaded her fingers through the chain with an air of proud ownership. “But I can’t. People say it’s tacky to show off.” She sighed. “I guess I have to hide my light under a basket.”

Ernest relieved her of that moral quandary two weeks later. The Creels went to A&G cafeteria every Friday night. Ernest entered their house through an unlocked window, made it in and out in ten minutes. Marsha’s Phi Beta Kappa key had rested in a white box on her dresser. The box had cupids on top that looked like they were made of wedding cake icing. Like a good girl who knew her etiquette, she hadn’t worn it to the A&G.

Weeks later, Marsha sported a new Phi Beta Kappa key. “I lost the first one,” she told him. “Don’t know how that happened. The people at PBK were so nice. They sent me another, but I had to pay forty dollars! The first one was free. I’m wearing it when I go out too. I earned it.”

Yeah, sure. If getting one was so hard, how come they mailed her another so fast? He could probably get one mail order, himself. But he had hers. He was Phi Beta Kappa without even going to college. Marsha wouldn’t have gone out with him in a million years, even if they were the same age, but he’d listened to her self-promoting drivel for years. For that alone, he figured he’d earned his key.

Ernest smiled at the memory, but then the paddle plunked the water and sent up a drop that hit his cheek. His cheek immediately began to itch.

The next house he took notice of was his own. The water came up to the middle of the windows. Ernest floated just above the living room, then glided around to his old bedroom. Hunching over, through the narrow window he could just make out a mattress in there, floating. Did some other kid call this room “jail” now? Well, no more.

He felt an ache come to his throat. The room in which he’d taken the leg braces on and off so many times was rotting in this putrid water. Maybe the house would be torn down. Nothing would be left.

“Get a grip, girl,” Ernest said to the yellow canoe. He smirked. His legs were strong now, if fifty-two years old and knotted with varicose veins. “So long, you old hellhole,” he said to the house as he shoved off and paddled down the street to Mr. Wartburg’s, on the corner.

Not smart to tie up out front, he reminded himself. As if he’d been invited over one last time, the gate in the rear was propped open. Ernest glided through its posts and backed the canoe up beneath the branches of a magnolia tree that had fallen in front of the back door. One huge branch had bashed the door down. Convenient. If the tree hadn’t performed that little service, breaking in might have been a pain.

The one-story house was raised on piers a bit higher than the others in the neighborhood. Inside the water would probably come up to his chest. He yanked Mike’s waders to him. Tired and sweaty as he was, how would he ever be able to get his legs into them and pull the rubber pants and bib up without tipping the canoe? He leaned back and, slowly, laboriously, worked his way into the waders, shooting a hand out to grab a magnolia branch whenever he sensed the canoe might roll.

He snapped the suspenders up and over his shoulders. The waders reached just below his armpits. He slipped a flashlight into a front pocket. Thinking again, he stooped and picked up the second flashlight, slipped it into a lower pocket on the other side. Backup, just in case he dropped the first one.

He took a last long swig of drinking water, and then looped the canoe’s tether line around a branch.

How to get out without tipping over? He grabbed a branch above his head and swung above the boat Tarzan style. Just as his arms were giving out, his feet found a foothold on a branch deeper down, just under the water. He eased his weight onto it and inched out, closer and closer to the threshold of Wartburg’s house. Soon, he found himself standing on the collapsed door, hands wedged against the jamb on either side, peering in.

His plan was to get in and out as fast as possible. That wouldn’t be easy. It was dark inside, and it smelled bad. This back room, the den, was stacked with obstacles. Chairs and end tables had floated in front of the door. He pulled out Mike’s flashlight and waved it across the interior. To his right, he could see the opening to the kitchen. There, on its side, door flung open, was what his mother still called the icebox—in this case, a huge white Moby Dick of a refrigerator. Its liberated contents had floated into the den. Plastic containers with yellow and green matter fermenting inside bobbed before him, as did packs of ground meat, grayish-brown and mushy. Ernest winced at the smell. Too bad Wartburg wasn’t a veggie eater.

The coin room should smell better than in here. If he remembered right, its door was directly ahead, in line with the back door. When Ernest and his father visited the Wartburgs, they’d been ushered in through the back into the den, as if they weren’t good enough to come in the front way. At least that visit helped him to get his bearings today.

Ernest tightened his stomach muscles and held his arms high. He stepped off the door into the room and pushed a package of rotting chicken wings out of his sight. He bobbled, nearly fell. The floor was slippery. If he did fall in, just touching any unprotected part of his body to this polluted water would be horrible enough to make him want to croak on the spot. He balanced between a table that was none too steady and a huge sofa, then he moved forward. The waders felt silly, as the pressure of the water pushed in against his torso and bare legs. The water came to just below the waders’ top edge at mid chest. If he moved too quickly it would pour in. That must not happen. He had to concentrate hard to move forward into the den, flashlight in one hand. This was work, tough work. He would surely be earning the coins he meant to take.

As he moved away from the back door toward the paneled wall, the house grew darker. A second sofa blocked his way. Black, furry mold was already growing on the brocaded upholstery that showed above the waterline. He stepped around the sofa, glad it hadn’t landed against the wall, sealing off his entry to the coin room. He shined the light around, and was happy to find that the paneled door was open, if only wide enough to let him in. He hadn’t even had to search for it.

Arms still held high, Ernest sucked in his stomach and slid sideways into Wartburg’s inner sanctum. It was the same, coin books crawling up the walls, desk to his right, big magnifying glass clamped to its top. He guessed the heavy swivel chair he remembered must be tipped on its side behind it.

Realizing that he’d been holding his stomach muscles tight, Ernest relaxed and took in deep breaths. The air smelled no better in here, maybe worse; but he’d made it in. The canoe was hidden out back under the downed magnolia, though now he sensed that precaution had been unnecessary. He felt no need to rush; he had time to select the treasures he coveted and stick them in the waders’ zippered pockets. Or at least he had as long as he could stand the heat and smell. He could always come back tomorrow, clean the whole collection out if he wanted. Ernest could make a nice chunk of money off these coins. And he’d have plenty of dough without even having to sell his favorite, the three-legged buffalo nickel.

Now, to find it. He stepped forward, too quickly. A trickle of water slid along his right leg, clear down to his socked foot. Slowly, slowly, standing on his toes, he inched ahead, finally reaching the back wall and the long narrow drawers there. The topmost drawers were above water, chest high, the others hidden in the depths. The buffalo nickel had been in the center, top drawer. Had Wartburg changed the arrangement since then? If so, Ernest would have to search every drawer. He closed his eyes, made a wish. Taking care not to make waves, he pulled the drawer out.

Ahh. There it was, neatly sandwiched in its glass display square next to other nickels of outstanding value. With the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, Ernest lifted the 1937 D three-legged buffalo nickel. He brought the flashlight up with his right hand and let its trembling beam shine on the treasure he’d pined for for over forty years. If he dropped it in this black, foul water, he’d never find it again. The very idea made him stiffen with resolve.

He stuck the flashlight under his left arm, then with his right hand unzipped a slanty pocket in the waders over his heart. He transferred the coin in its holder from his left hand to his right, and with his thumb tamped the thing down in the little pocket, then pulled the zipper closed.

Eureka. The three-legged buffalo, after all these years, was his.

He was panting. So hot, so hot. He’d collect a few more coins, then get out of this freaking room. This was coin collecting, real coin collecting. More strenuous than prospecting for gold. He opened another drawer, and there, gleaming before him were all the Seated Liberties he’d ever hoped to see. He grabbed a handful. Some sank into the water. Didn’t matter. He pulled the spongy neck of his T-shirt open and stuffed what he could down there; he could feel them falling to where the waistband of his cutoffs kept them from falling further.

He’d been holding his arms above water for so long now, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He could have stuffed those gold coins into the open pockets of his waders, about thigh high, but that would entail getting his hands and arms wet. Every touch of that water made him shiver and itch. He couldn’t hold his arms up much longer.

Why hadn’t he brought a bag along, a simple bag? Well, he’d get what he’d collected to his apartment now, then come back with a big plastic bag tomorrow.

A noise sounded—a faint creak. He whipped his head around. Since everything was so quiet, he was extra sensitive to the least sound. Was it the Coast Guard going house to house? Had they landed, this very minute?

Slowly, carefully, to prevent any more water from invading his waders—a plausible story already forming in his mind to feed the Coast Guard, in case those heroes really did show—Ernest moved to the funny paneled door that had stood open just wide enough to let him in. He stuck his head through the opening and craned around.

Directly ahead, through the den to the back door, was the opening that showed Mr. Wartburg’s backyard, but the bright light pouring in was blocked by the bulky form of an immense black bird.

Ernest gasped. An answering hiss greeted him. The turkey vulture. Claws anchored on the magnolia limb just outside the opening, the bird was peering into the den, gnarly head slung low, black feathered shoulders hunched high.

Ernest jerked his head back and pushed the door shut with all his might as if to lock out the bogeyman on the other side. That bird wasn’t cruising for packages of ground beef or chicken. It was looking for him!

Hands shaking, he dropped the flashlight.

“Shit,” he said, making an exaggerated effort to open his eyes, forgetting that the room was pitch black only because the flashlight was gone, and not because his eyes were closed.

Ernest’s quick movements caused more water to pour into his rubber waders. For moral support, he patted the buffalo nickel in its square glass case just over his heart.

His breaths came fast, then slowed. He had to lower his right hand into the water to lift the backup flashlight from the pocket he’d slipped it into earlier. He gave the on button a forward push. Thank God, it worked, even though it had been soaking since he’d entered Wartburg’s house.

“Stupid bird,” Ernest said. “Just a stupid bird.” Why had he reacted like that? If he’d merely waved his arms in the air, the bird would have taken off. But it had caught him off guard, scared him.

He let out a snorting chuckle and thought of the yellow canoe waiting outside the back door. “Call it a day,” he muttered. Grimacing, he reached his hand down into the water again. He found the knob and pulled.

The door wouldn’t budge. He hiked his shoulders, then relaxed, let his head drop backward to loosen the muscles there. He gave it another try, pulling hard. Nothing.

Slowly, as if to think this latest development over, he backed up to the desk. The flashlight’s intense beam buzzed around the small room. He didn’t want to touch the desk, but he was so tired, he needed something to lean on. It gave some, then settled to the floor under his weight.

Everything had gone so smoothly, the doors being open and all. This setback was just a little wrinkle. He could break the door down if he wanted. On a bad day, he could break it down.

Without turning, he pushed an object away that had come out from behind the desk when he’d leaned his weight on it, floated out and bumped his hip. The object boomeranged, bumped him more insistently.

He shined the flashlight down to reveal a pale, freckled scalp, gray hair fanning out around it like a halo. The head was connected to a bloated body. Mr. Wartburg’s.

Ernest lunged for the door. More water poured into his waders, water Mr. Wartburg had been preparing for him. The door wouldn’t open. He held the flashlight in one hand and banged with the fist of his other. “Let me out! Hey Jeff, Mike. Hey you, Coast Guard!”

Wartburg’s body tapped the small of his back. Ernest flattened his stomach against the odd, paneled door. “Let me out. I’ll do anything. Sorry, sorry,” he chanted, addressing a god he’d always believed was as much a nonentity as his own father. He remembered Missy Golden’s aquarium. “I fed her fish,” he said, capping that last word with an apologist’s whimpering question mark.

“I’ll give it back, give it all back. Earrings too.” He plunged the hand that didn’t hold the flashlight beneath the T-shirt’s collar and grabbed at the coin holders that rested against his waistband. He flung them into the acrid water as if they were so many leeches feeding on him. He lowered a shoulder and bammed it against the door. “See, see? I’m tossing ‘em back. He pulled and pushed on the doorknob.

Hot, thirsty, he thought of the canoe under the magnolia, the water bottles waiting for him. If the Coast Guard, or even a low-down thief passed out front, they wouldn’t see the boat, wouldn’t hear his yells. He was in Mr. Wartburg’s crypt, along with a bunch of old coins, many of them so old that no one alive today had ever touched them.

Wartburg’s corpse nudged him again. He gave it a kick that should send it into the next parish, then popped the door another good one with his shoulder. His waders took in more overflow, making him feel like a kid who’d wet himself.

“I’m giving the coins up,” he said. “I’m leaving them be.” His hand patted the zippered pocket over his heart where the 1937 D three-legged buffalo nickel nestled. All but that one, he’d given back.

“That one too,” a voice deep inside him demanded.

Hand over heart, one of the sharp corners of the square glass case jabbing his chest, Ernest answered: “No.” He couldn’t unzip that pocket and toss the precious nickel into this wretched gumbo. Not the three-legged buffalo. Never.

Instead, he beat against the door with his backup flashlight. Kept beating until it, too, flew from his hand, and struck the water with a matter-of-fact plunk. Then it was just him, the three-legged buffalo, and old man Wartburg, in the dark.