The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

Author:Wally Lamb
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780732288709
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-09-01T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

MOSES AND JANIS MICK WERE a handsome couple, mismatched in intriguing ways.

Moses was a big guy—biracial, blue-eyed, blue-collar. He had an easy smile and a slow, deliberate way of moving that was in sync with his Louisiana drawl. Janis, a petite, wide-eyed academic, was Type A all the way—and cute as hell. She had a cute little body on her, too—not that a guy whose sex life was on hold for five years would notice. That morning at the bakery, I put down Modern Man and Ancient Myth and listened to the details of the Micks‘ Hurricane Katrina ordeal.

Their shotgun house was on Caffin Avenue in the city‘s Ninth Ward, they said—flanked by a beauty parlor and a Family Dollar. Fats Domino‘s blond brick place—a palace in comparison to the rest of the neighborhood—was half a block away.

―What‘s a shotgun house?‖ I asked.

―Narrow but deep,‖ Moses said. ―Bedrooms up front, kitchen in the back. No hallway.

You want something to eat, you gotta walk from room to room to get to where the food‘s at.‖ He gave a nod to Janis. ―House drove her crazy at first. California girl.‖

―I love that house,‖ Janis said. Stroking his arm, she turned to me. ―Moses was born there.‖

At first, they had planned to stay put and ride out the storm, they said, but sometime after midnight on Sunday, with the predictions so dire and the TV showing live shots of the necklace of headlights inching along I–10, they‘d relented. ―My mother kept calling from Sacramento and begging us to leave,‖ Janis added.

―Begging her,‖ Moses corrected. ―Her mama don‘t have much use for the black guy who kidnapped her daughter and dragged her down to the big, bad Lower Nines.‖ It jolted me a little to hear him put it that way. When they‘d entered the bakery, I‘d just been reading about Persephone‘s abduction to the underworld and the creation of the seasons.

―My mom‘s pretty conversative,‖ Janis said. To which Moses added, ―Big Limbaugh fan.

‗Mega-dittoes, Rush. It‘s an honor and a privilege to speak to a bigot and a drug abuser such as yourself.‘‖

―Moze, stop,‖ Janis said. ―We don‘t know what this guy‘s politics are.‖

I assured her they fell well to the left of her mother‘s.

―We‘d already boarded up the windows, so that was done,‖ Moses said. ―I figured the rain gutters and some of the roof shingles‘d go. Maybe even the roof itself if the chinaberry tree fell the wrong way. Figured a category four or five might uproot that ole boy.‖ He stopped, swallowed hard. ―I thought we might get some flooding, but I was picturing a foot or two. I didn‘t calculate the levees‘d fail and the whole damn Lower Nine would go under. We left everything there, pretty much. Packed up her computer and my molds and tools and drove off.‖

―What kind of molds?‖ I said.

Moses said he was a sculptor, angels and gargoyles his specialty.

Their cat, Fat Harry, had probably drowned, Janis said. They‘d delayed leaving for over an hour, calling him and shaking his box of treats.

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