Orphans of the Storm

The other soldier wasted no time in hurrying down the ladder with the supplies, and Demmy wrapped one blanket around Remy's slouched shoulders, gently leading his friend toward the other man.

"OK, Remy - go with him, he'll help you into the chopper, there's food & water in there. Don't you worry none, I'll see to Charmayne, we'll get you both to a hospital, they'll fix you up right quick! Easy, now - that first step's a bitch!"

Remy managed a brief, weak laugh as Mac got him onto the ladder and managed to haul him aboard. The huge black man took the hypo and - after feeling for a pulse - carefully administered some into Char's right arm. After a minute or so, she coughed into spasms until her dark eyes finally opened, their lustre dimmed somewhat.

"It's Demmy, Char - hush now, baby, don't try to talk! We're back from the war, and here to help rescue you & Remy, honeychile!"

He didn't waste any more time, just wrapped her up securely in the blanket, and then effortlessly picked her up & carried her, fighting back tears, as tenderly and lovingly as a proud mother her newborn child, towards the waiting helicopter.

XXXXXXX

Up, up, and away ... into the sweltering night sky, starlit , yet bible-black.

The roar of the rotor blades intensified, almost deafening, as they took off from the rooftop of the apartment; yet they provided a cooling breeze. Remy had never ridden in a 'copter before, and he was pretty damn certain that Char had never either. It was a pity that she was missing out on the novelty of it all, only half-conscious. Like being in the palm of a gentle giant as he lifted you upwards into the sky.

Over the din of the engine, he could hear the crackle of the radio static as the pilot called into home base.

"Angel One-niner to base, Angel Nineteen to base - do you copy, over? Just rounded up a couple more strays, put the E.R. at Charity on alert, they're in a bad way, we're gonna call it a night with this one, over!"

It was then that Remy finally thought to look out the main door window at the side of the craft, and what he saw ... made him let out with a low, dry chuckle at first, gradually building in volume until he started convulsing into a sick, helpless laughter, climaxing in tears finally running down his face. Demmy Henry only held onto his old friend, supporting him, whilst shaking his own head in pity. Poor Remy - he was headed for a total breakdown.

"It's okay, bro - it''ll be OK! Next year at Mardi Gras, for damn sure!"

For on the hull of the chopper, just behind the pilot's windshield, stenciled over the bright orange paint scheme of the aircraft, visible even in the inky night, was the following legend:

Angel Flight 19, Air Station New Orleans, C.G.A.S. -

"We Go Where Others Fear To Tread"

XXXXXXXX

There was a saying in old New Orleans from those days: Life is for the living; save your tears - and your prayers - for the dead.

After the reclaiming and the counting of all the dead that Katrina and Rita had left in their wake, it was soon determined that there just wouldn't be - couldn't be - enough time, caskets, and mourners for all of them to be sent to their final reward in a proper funeral for each & every one.

And so it was, on the following Labor Day weekend, the first anniversary of the disaster, they held the biggest, longest, grandest, most elaborate Dixieland jazz funeral for all of the lost sons & daughters of the Big Easy. It stretched for ten city blocks of the French Quarter, easily matching any Mardi Gras celebration in recent memory. The many professional mourners and attendants marched in solemn procession behind a single horse-drawn casket, symbolizing the roughly 1,300 or so dear departed souls, as the funeral band, decked out in all their somber finery, played an appropriate dirge, while most all of Christendom watched on via live satellite feed. It was if the nation had paused in their annual summer's end holiday to remember those that were lost, one final time.

As on cue, when the caisson reached Bourbon Street, they stopped - paused for a moment - then, the band broke out one more time into "When the Saints Go Marchin' In", the assembled seemed to instantly throw off their collective shroud of mourning , and jubilation was the order of the day once again. The high-steppers and 'bumber-shoot twirlers carried on like never before, street dancing with each other and any of the thousands of onlookers who chose to join them, chasing away the Angel of Death and replacing him with the joy and the celebration of Life itself, ushering in a new era for the rebuilding of the Crescent City, better than before.

XXXXXXXX

III "Too many cooks ... " / The future (and beyond)

"Oh, man, Dad, you gotta be fucking kidding me - what a crock!"

Remy Lamar Julienne II had finished his story, but was taken aback by this outburst, and regarded both his son and grandchildren, the captive audience that'd been eagerly listening to his story up till now. It was currently the year 2027, on the eve of yet another Mardi Gras, and while the young 'uns had been following his recounting of the ordeal of the Great Storm of '05, they'd since turned their attention to the televised accounts of the annual parade of krewes through the French Quarter. This was made all the more irresistable by being shown on the new 3-D TV set that they'd just purchased to replace the now-obsolete plasma flat-panel unit, in the living room of their grandparents' comfortable suburban home.

It was his & Char's only male child, Lucas - a.k.a. "Lukey" - who's uttered this brash yet honest opinion of his old man's recounting of how both of his parents had met, courted, and survived the aftermath of the terrible Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the namesakes of his two older sisters and mothers of the little tykes, leaving the two older males in the den. Luke, unmarried, and bearing a close resemblance to Remy, was an active young buck much like his father at his age, thus unaccustomed to both the joys & responsibilities of parenthood. He continued to stare at his father incredulously.

"You mean to sit there and tell me, that - you were actually so close to starvation that you were preparing to kill, cook, & eat Mom?! What'ya take me for, anyways? I never - "

He didn't get the rest of his sentence out, as - purely on instinct, both because of & in spite of his fatherly affection, Remy's left hand shot out again like so many years before, and backhanded Luke across his open mouth. The stinging impact got his son's immediate attention.

"Hey - what the fuck?! Why the hell'd you do that for - "

"Watch your tongue, bub! Your grandaddy wouldn't take that sort of sass from me, and neither will I, you! I'm trying to teach you something important here!"

"Yeah, but - what'd ya' expect? Tryin' to sell me a whopper like that!"

Charmayne Bouviér Dupüis-Julienne, Lukey's mother and Remy's better half, stood in the hallway just out of sight of the two argumentive men. She had been listening in on the approximate second half of the tale, brushing a wisp of her still gloriously dark hair from her unwrinkled brow & wiping her hands on the apron she was wearing while whipping up a batch of her husband's special polk salad in the kitchen, when she'd decided to check on her two "boys". She'd alternately laughed quietly, sighed, and even a tear or two had threatened to fall as she re-lived those last fateful days of Old New Orleans through her love's storytelling gifts. But this latest development had caused her lovely, unlined face to flush with both embarrassment & alarm.

Ohhh, that man! He should've known better! I know he always means well, but the boy was still too young to understand. Will I never be able to live this down?

This seemed her cue to intercede; she entered the room smiling warmly. Best to nip this in the bud by offering her version of recent history.

"So - I go looking for my two favorite men, and I find your daddy, offering up one of his patented Cajun tall tales, huh, Luke?"

Remy glanced at his wife inquisitively; she only gave him a sideways warning look that he'd come to know all too well by now. Their son turned to his mother the way countless children for eternity had, for verification of the incredible.

"Mom, you wouldn't believe the yarn Dad was spinning me - "

"Oh, yes I would!" she countered. "Don't forget, Son - I've known him a lot longer than you have! You should know by now not to take seriously everything your father tells you. Don't you realize when he's just been 'funnin' you? He just loves to exaggerate and expand on the known facts - it runs in his family, telling stories like that!"

She sat down on the arm of the easy chair Remy was occupying right across from their son, gently elbowing him in his arm, irregardless of whether Luke noticed, as she continued.

"Let's start over from the beginning, shall we? First of all, we weren't stranded in the old Ninth Ward near as long as your father let on. We were rescued by your Uncle Demmy shortly after the rains from Rita quit, so we were there - oh, if I recall correctly, just about two weeks, tops. Yes, we ran out of food long before that, and yes, we were powerfully hungry, but - starvation? Enough to consider actual cannibalism? Oh, Remy!" She glanced down at him reproachfully. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" He seemed, at least, to assume a sheepish _expression. She looked at her son expectantly. "OK - next?"

"Crazy Aunt Elyse - was she really all that bad?"

She gave Remy a wry, somewhat contemptuous look. "Wasn't 'Eliza' her given name? And, didn't the city close down Storyville around 1914?" Again, she regarded Luke. "Your father had his own reasons for demonizing her that I never quite understood. Actually, we both went to visit her in the rest home in her last years; she seemed more like just a harmless old eccentric by then, poor dear - all 'bark', and no 'bite'. Personally, myself - I don't think she weathered menopause very well."

"Papa Dee, the Ramirez' - Toní Tolouse?"

They both looked at each other as a shared thought passed like a dark cloud, momentarily. Remy spoke. "Never saw 'em again - and, never cared to! Though, I did hear that Toní found his - er, her - way to Frisco, when they legalized gay marriages."

"And that girl ... the one you both saw?"

There was a short silence, till his mother said, gently: "I only wish we could say we didn't see that happen, dear."

"Uncle Black Jack?"

Again, they conferred with their eyes, till Char broke away with a slight shudder. "Let's not go there."

Luke seemed somewhat mollified, but persistent. "OK, then - what exactly was this whole yarn about? Just an exercise in storytelllin' for its' own sake - or, what?"

Remy and his pretty lady looked at each other a long moment, each daring the other to go first. He finally broke the silence.

"Look, youngster - I'm sorry I hit you, it was just a reflex alone, alright? Do you remember when you were just a little sprout, we sent you to catechism class, and you came home one day in tears askin' about the sacrifice of Abraham? That old guy in the Bible who God asked to prove his love for him, by killing his oldest son? And we told you not to take it literal-like - that it was just a fable n' such?"

"Yeah ... " Luke chewed this over a bit, still not sure of its' intent. "I know that you always loved Mom, but, still - "

"You asked me a while ago to tell you about local history that we both lived through, about the past. Well, history, like life itself, Lukey, is nothing more than a mixture - a gumbo, if you will - of facts, the truth - well, truth's all in the viewpoint - and, a bit o' fiction as well, thrown in for seasonin'. Each person's past is a part of the larger truth, of history. Hell, I remember when folks used to rely on the Internet for truth, all in futility. And belief plays a large part in it as well."

He paused long enough to lean over, and point at his son. "Maybe the only real truth is what you know and believe it to be, yourself, based on what's gone before - there, in your own heart, and head. Each person has to decide for themselves what is right, and true."

Luke still was mulling this over too long for his mother's ease. "Lukey, honey", she reached over to take his hand in hers, smiling tenderly while ruffling his thick hair, "do you know how a diamond is formed, from an ordinary lump of coal?" She showed him the twinkler of a wedding ring that Remy had placed on her slender finger some twenty-odd years ago.

"Think of a whole pile of black coal, under intense pressure, continual, for an indefinite time. Some lumps will eventually crumble, some might give off a bit of temporary heat and light, till they too will break apart. But out of all those ugly, common black rocks - one piece will stand the tests of both time and pressure, till it eventually becomes a sparkling diamond, reflecting light in all directions, illuminating everything around it - and that one, son, is what you'd call, 'a keeper'!" She leaned back, draping her arm across her husband's shoulders with a triumphant smile. "That's how I discovered what your father was made of, when the odds were greatly against us even surviving that terrible episode in our young lives."

Remy was proud of how his better half had improved her own storytelling skills. "Yep, that's me - a true 'diamond in the rough'!" She elbowed him again, not as gently, groaning at his weak pun.

"Yeah, but - I mean - I guess I never realized what an - um - adventuresome sex life you two shared, all these years." The boy regarded them both a bit curiously.

"Oh-ho! Is that so?" His daddy relished the opportunity for this. "So, the pot calls the kettle black, eh, youngster? And, that wasn't you with a cat-ate-the-canary smile sneakin' your pretty lil' Jolene out the back door of the kitchen the other night, dressin' yourselves in an all-fired hurry, then?" He leaned back in his chair smugly, while Char hid her surprise.

Luke was in imminent danger of losing his composure yet again. "Um, don't know what you mean by that, Dad? Anyways ... " He hesitated a moment before continuing. "Uncle Demmy told me a somewhat different version couple of years ago, when we went fishing out on Lake Ponch."

Remy & Char's expressions turned serious just for a moment; he was first to take the bait. "Oh? And just what, exactly, did my good and trusted friend Demetrius Henry have to say?"

Lukey again waited a bit, collecting himself. "Well ... he said that he'd never forget that night when his air rescue crew paid you that visit. When he looked in on you - the both of you - and what he saw in your bedroom ... "

Both his parents waited with no small interest, his daddy the most. "Yeah?"

Their son decided to just blurt it out. "He had a grandma himself who practiced santorìo, and said that he knew a 'hoodoo room' when he saw one; figured you'd both gone loopy from thirst and drank some bad water. When they had you checked out at the hospital, you were both severely dehydrated and suffering from malnutrition."

The two adults sat back and breathed an almost audible sigh of relief, which Remy masked with his usual cocky, triumphant grin. "See? What'd I tell 'ya? Same difference, right?"

Looking from one to the other & back again without a discernible clue as to what was true anymore, Lucas had apparently heard & seen enough. He folded up his holo-video camcorder, packed it away, and shook his head. "Why do I get the idea I'm the one been 'hoodooed' here? When Mr. Willoughby in Media Arts assigned us this living history project on our elders, I had no idea what a can of worms I was gonna' open up! This is going to take some editing to get this by 'em!"

His mother got up, smoothed out her apron & dress, and looked at them both a bit ruefully. "I could've told you, Luke - didn't I warn you ahead of time to take everything your Dad tells you about '05 with a grain of salt? And, perhaps just a pinch of cayenne as well!" She looked down at her hubby. "Zombie dust, the Angel of Death, Uncle Jacques the cannibal - really, Remy! This was a tale best saved for Halloween, don't you think?" She exited the room with a disparaging look.

"I'm gonna go out and get some family footage of my nieces and nephews, Dad - see you at supper. And, uh - thanks for the story. It was, um, entertaining ... "

Remy only smiled, nonplussed. "Anytime, Lukey. Glad I could help!"

As his son & fruit of his loins left him alone in the family den, Remy had time to reflect on just how far they'd come - he & Char - since those fateful September days ...

XXXXXXXX

After they were both checked out at Charity Hospital's makeshift triage center, they were re-united first with her folk out in Metairie who'd managed to ride out the storms in relative safety, and were so glad to see their only daughter that they even came to forgive & accept Remy into the family. Upon getting back in touch with his own kin, the two relocated temporarily to one of the "trailer cities" that FEMA had planted all over the southeastern part of the state, till they could find & afford a proper place to call home again. Sadly, though, they learned that feisty Granny Julienne and Char's great-aunt Minnie Bouvier hadn't survived out in Jefferson Parish and Bayou Lafourche, respectively, each living alone and thus unable to get herself out of harm's way.

Remy never made it to Paris and cooking school in the City of Lights or apprenticeship to Emeril or K-Paul. Instead, with a federal assistance grant, Char both helped him enroll, and tutored him at Louisiana State U., Baton Rouge, which had a decent enough culinary department specializing in local cuisine, helping him further refine his already considerable native talents. Graduating with a 2-year degree, he got an assistant head chef position at the newly renovated Bayona Restaurant in the French Quarter, where he continued to experiment with spices, condiments, and other ingredients - both before, and after hours, with his beautiful Creole lady by his side all the way. Soon he was promoted to chief head chef, which kept him busy inventing new and delightful daily menu specials, to unanimous praise from both the locals and tourists, while Char was made assistant maitre'd.

In the meanwhile, a storm of a different sort was brewing once again - this one of righteous fury among those most affected by both the hurricanes; the other "storm orphans". A former Ninth Ward New Orleans city councilman by the fated name of Lincoln Jefferson III, who could trace his lineage back to the third U.S. President by way of a certain comely female slave, found himself in the hurricane's eye, so to speak. He had lost both of his paternal grandparents in a tragic bus accident during the ill-managed exodus immediately following Katrina, and soon became a tireless victims' rights advocate and liaison between the state and federal governments.

When the latter overruled the former with respect to the fate of the district, trying desperately to rebuild itself, and the bulldozers moved in to level it, a great hue & cry was raised among the poor & dispossessed. Councilman Jefferson quickly organized a group of devoted volunteers - Remy & Char among them - to circle the planned demolition zone, linked arm-in-arm-in-arm, blocking the path of the 'dozers. Singing & chanting every song & slogan from the past, from "Dixie", to "We Shall Overcome", a group of fifty ordinary, common folk successfully stared down the might of the U.S. government - and, the birth of a populist movement, the likes of which had not been seen since the heyday of Huey "Kingfish" Long, was born.

The wealthy & powerful Delacroix family, Louisiana political king-makers, knew an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when they saw it. Tired of years of government whose operating style was "asleep at the wheel", they took L.J. under their wing, grooming him for first the state Senate, and then - a race for the next Presidential election as the first viable, believable third party candidate in many decades. Resurrecting the modified Federalist Party for the 21st Century, with a true "dark horse" if there ever was one, there were a few roadblocks along the way, including a failed asassination attempt by a wacko white supremicist whom many believed was a stooge of the powers-that-be.