Journey to Sand Castle

Leslee Breene Copyright @ 2013

Chapter One

Monday, August 29, 2005

Wailing wolves—that was the sound of it. Then louder—like a mammoth jet hovering in the turbulent skies. Katrina.

Tess Cameron stood riveted behind a boarded window of her empty Jefferson Elementary School classroom. Peering through a crack in the boards, she saw ragged rooftops and debris hurled through the streets. A shattering sound from the floor above her sent chills along her arms. Shards of glass whipped past the window like jagged missiles.

Showing no mercy, torrents of rain beat down from the angry sky. She imagined other parts of the city near the levees where flood waters would climb quickly to heights above a man’s head. Her skin flushed clammy to the touch. Her legs went weak beneath her.

How high would flood waters climb here? She didn’t know how to swim. Fear pumped her heart like a sledge hammer until it felt like it might pump right out of her chest.

Hours later, a gray watery silence smothered the city.

* * *

Tuesday, August 30

Tess rubbed her eyes, gritty from lack of sleep, and faced the tide of new evacuees streaming into Jefferson’s gymnasium. Wet and bedraggled, their bodies as well as their spirits were devastated by the deluge. Masks of anxiety covered their faces. Now homeless and separated from their families, they had nowhere else to go for shelter but here.

It was a miracle the two-story school was intact. Perhaps because it was built of brick, built to withstand strong winds. Although all types of litter covered the grounds and several windows on the second floor were shattered, the interior had not been flooded.

When she’d arrived Sunday afternoon, offering what aid she could give to her neighbors and young students, Tess had had no idea Hurricane Katrina would leave such destruction behind. But then, just beginning her second year in the New Orleans area, what would she know about hurricanes? A former Air Force brat, she only recalled survival skills which involved adapting to wherever her family was transferred around the globe.

“Can you help us?” A young woman with disheveled brown hair and haunted eyes hurried toward her, a toddler straddling one hip. On her heels followed two young boys and a small, almond-skinned girl. There was something familiar about the girl.

“Over here.” Tess pointed to cots set up against a gymnasium wall. “You can have these. There are blankets and some snacks for the children.”

The woman’s face crumpled. “My cousin is missing—her car was washed away. Can y’all get any information about her?”

“I’m sorry. We haven’t been able to contact the local authorities yet. You know the power’s out—” Tess stopped in mid-sentence. A rambling explanation would not make this anxious woman’s situation any better. “What is your cousin’s name and address?” She slipped a ballpoint pen from her clipboard. “I’ll pass it along as soon as I can.”

“It’s her mother, Carrie Pearl,” the woman said in a low voice, referring to the small girl with large, red-rimmed eyes who hovered behind her. “They’ve been livin’ with us until she could find a place.”

A strange tingle darted along Tess’s spine as she jotted down the information. “Carrie’s a teacher here at Jefferson, isn’t she?”

“Yeah. That’s her girl, Crystal. She doesn’t know what happened.” The woman shifted the toddler in her arms. “I haven’t told her yet. I don’t know how to tell her.”

Although Tess didn’t know Carrie well, her reaction to the bedraggled child now climbing onto one of the cots was one of immediate sympathy.

“And what is your name?”

“Winona Bingham. My husband’s in Houston lookin’ for a job.” She glanced around at her two boys, their grim faces revealing the nightmare they’d lived through. “I wish we could have got out with him, before the storm hit.”

“I can understand that.” Tess set the clipboard down on a folding chair and passed a few bags of chips to the hungry children.

The toddler on Winona’s hip, scantily clad in T-shirt and diapers, began to whine, grasping at her mother’s arm. “Do y’all have any baby formula?” Near desperation tinged Winona Bingham’s request. “All I had time to bring was a few diapers and a change of clothes.”

The agony of what this mother had suffered was one more notch on a belt of misery, her plight similar to other evacuees Tess had talked to during the last twenty-four hours. They had lost everything. “We don’t have baby food. But we do have some bottled water back in the locker room. Wait here.”

Taking up her clipboard, Tess maneuvered through the crowd of arrivals to the locker room at the rear of the gym. “Carrie Pearl is lost in the flood,” she told the assistant principal, John Lincoln, a usually jovial black man in his late thirties.

John’s lower lip curled downward. “No way. Carrie’s a teacher upstairs in the music department.”

Tess shook her head in dismay. “Her cousin just came in with her three kids and Carrie’s little girl.”

“Geez. That’s tough. Keep a list and we’ll turn it over to the police. . .whenever we can reach them. All the lines are down. The cell phones don’t work.” John’s dark-eyed gaze roamed the room while several volunteers rationed food supplies, salvaged from the school cafeteria, to take back to the gym. “Hey, remember that stuff is scarce as hen’s teeth. Make it last.”

Tess reached for four bottles from a locker. “How’s the water holding out?”

John raked a hand through short black hair, sweat beading his upper lip. “Not much left. And there’s no way to run over to the market for more with flood water up to your elbows.”

A knowing sigh escaped her. “I’ve got to locate some baby formula.”

His shoulders sagged. “Haven’t seen any. I’ll keep my eyes open.”

“Thanks, John.” Carrying her precious water bottles, Tess returned to the gym and its occupants rife with grief and uncertainty. No food, no power, no running water. A roof overhead and a cot was all the school had to offer.

And, from the looks of the crowded gymnasium, available cots were running short fast.

Chapter Two

Later in the afternoon, Tess located a few jars of apple sauce in a cafeteria cupboard. “It’s all I could find,” she said, handing Winona Bingham the jars and a plastic spoon.

“Thanks.” Exhaustion pulled Winona’s features taut. Her baby slept fitfully on the cot next to her, miniature fingers clinging to her mother’s hand. “You don’t have a hamburger stashed somewhere, do you?” The sudden sharp laugh belied her obvious hunger.

“Sure wish I had a stack of them.” Winona’s question stood heavy between them. When would help reach these people, bring food and medicines? Some of the elderly were in wheelchairs, desperate for medications they’d left behind in their families’ immediate effort to escape the hurricane’s wrath.

Small hands tugged at her pant leg and she glanced down into wide eyes, the shade of amber topaz, in the face of Winona Bingham’s ward. “Do you have anything to eat?” The child gazed up at her with such trust as if all she had to do was ask this grown-up person and her request would be granted.

A mixture of regret and sadness bunched up inside Tess. Whatever edible food was left in the cafeteria kitchen had been handed out. The vending machines had been pillaged, with Principal Skeller’s permission. No food deliveries could be expected while most of New Orleans’ streets lay under water.

But Tess did remember one thing. The chocolate nut bar hidden in her school room desk drawer. Only to be recovered for an extreme hunger attack. It looked like now was the time.

Bending down to Crystal’s eye level, she said in a soft voice. “If you come with me, I think we might find something.”

The topaz eyes lit up with a hopeful spark. “Okay.”

She nodded to Winona over on the cot, took the child’s hand and led her down a dim hall. “My name is Ms. Cameron and I teach at this school,” she said as they walked.

“My name is Crystal. My mommy teaches here too.”

An uncomfortable twinge jerked Tess’s insides. “Oh, she does? What does she teach?” she asked in a gentle tone.

Crystal looked up at her from beneath a tousle of mahogany curls. “She teaches music. Mommy’s not here.” What must have been a quick flashback of fear sent a tear trickling down her cheek. “She drove the car away.” The child forced a smile. “But she’s coming back.”

Tess swallowed over a lump in her throat. “We all hope she will come soon, honey.”

Entering her neat first grade classroom, Tess went to the front, also hoping the candy bar was still in the desk. That no sneaky-fingered thief had bypassed her locked upper drawer and found her buried treasure. With bated breath, she opened the lower drawer and slipped her hand inside. Crystal watched with fascination. “What’s in there?”

“We’ll find out.” Tess’s fingers skimmed over a story book she’d been reading to her class, around several glue sticks, a box of paper clips, and back toward the corner. She felt the slick paper wrapper. A little thrill skittered up her fingers.

She grasped the found treasure and held it up to Crystal. “What does this look like?”

Crystal let out a shriek of delight. “A candy bar!”

Her own stomach growling from its forced two-day fast, Tess ripped off the wrapper. The aroma of milk chocolate and salty peanuts invaded her senses. She looked from the candy to Crystal’s expectant face. “Can I have just a bite?”

Crystal’s brows lifted. “Okay.”

Breaking off a small piece, Tess popped it into her mouth and gave the rest to Crystal. The sweet reward disappeared inside rounded cheeks followed by chewing pleasure. A gulp. Then a pink tongue licked dusky lips. “That was gooood.”

Tess smothered a wry laugh. “We’re like two mice scrounging crumbs from the giant’s table.”

Crystal grinned, showing perfect white baby teeth.

But the bite hardly satisfied. It only made her more ravenous. What she wouldn’t give for a double cheeseburger or a plate of calorie-bursting fried chicken!

She curled her fingers around Crystal’s firm little arm. “Please don’t tell anyone about our treat, honey. You know there are a lot of hungry people out there in the gym. I don’t have any more candy for them.”

Crystal bowed her head slightly, ebony-fringed eyes staring at the floor. “Okay.”

Fighting morose feelings, Tess retrieved the story book from the drawer, spied several others stacked beneath the windows. “Let’s go see if anyone wants to hear a story before it gets too dark,” she offered, heading over to the books.

In a corner of the gym, under windows letting in the best afternoon light, Tess gathered a group of children around her at a low table. She read from several illustrated books, until her voice became scratchy and her head bobbled like a helium balloon. Even with the windows opened, the air in the gym was cloying. Heat and humidity weighed heavily over her and the nearly one hundred people crammed together in frustrating proximity.

Winona Bingham’s two boys interrupted Tess with frequent outbursts of “I don’t like this book,” to “When can we leave this place?” Too tired to run off their natural energy, they occasionally pounded the table or each other.

She responded in brief sentences, trying to keep order amongst the other restless children, until the afternoon light dimmed.

If only we could give them a nourishing meal, a promise of returning to their homes.

Finally she sent them all back to their parents or guardians and sought out the principal. Entering Ken Skeller’s office, she found him slumped over his desk, running his hands through disheveled, thinning hair. After sending his family off to relatives in South Carolina, he had been at the school all weekend directing volunteer efforts. Even though she wanted to turn around and leave the overworked man alone, she couldn’t. “Any word on when we’ll get these people evacuated, Ken?”

Like an athlete biking up a steep mountain, he looked at her through glazed eyes. “I wish I could tell you. No agency has gotten back to me yet. Cell phones aren’t working. The flooding is far worse than we all first thought.”

She nodded, commiserating with his obstacles. “Anything I can do, just holler.”

“Sure thing, Tess.”

She picked up a flashlight from the front desk on her way back down the hall. Hunger gnawed at her shriveled stomach as it pushed against her spine. Stars shifted in front of her for a moment and a wave of nausea sent her down on one knee. She reached out and leaned against the cool wall. So this was what those poor orphans and refugees in third world countries had to put up with, most days of their lives.

Perspiration moistening her face and neck, she took a deep weary breath and pulled herself to her feet. Got to check on them once more before I crash on my cot.

Smells of stale sweat and sounds of crying babies mingled with the raspy moans of elder adults held captive in their wheelchairs filled the darkening gymnasium. Fresh tears pricked her inner eyelids. These people were growing more anxious by the hour.

When would help come? Would it be too late for some when it did?

***

Wednesday, August 31

The day passed slowly like a train engine running out of steam. Tired and growing short-tempered, Tess attended to the senior evacuee’s needs as best she could. Finding a pillow for someone’s back or helping another to one of the restrooms, which were now running over and reeking of human waste, was all she could manage.

Gagging and choking on her own dry heaves, she went to find refuge in an empty class room to pull herself together. No shower for three days, no food of any substance for almost that long. No clean clothes. She hugged herself in misery and stared through a cracked window. Although this middle-class neighborhood was farther west on higher ground than the flood area, the surrounding streets resembled a war zone.

Dear God. Where are you?

She straightened her stiff back and wiped moisture from her eyes. She must fight off the cynicism, the urge to make a run for it. The grapevine had it that many survivors had found shelter in the city’s Superdome. More victims, more chaos—still no food. There wasn’t anywhere to escape. Unless she could find someone with a motor boat. Fat chance.

The growling pain started in her stomach again. Images of food drifted before her eyes. A huge plate of bacon and scrambled eggs. A stack of giant blueberry pancakes running over with butter and syrup. Orange juice. A man-sized cafe latte.

* * *

“Y’all have got to help us. My baby’s very sick!”

Tess looked up from the table where she’d been reading, in a grating voice, to a rag-tag group of children into the despairing face of Winona Bingham.

“She’s got a terrible fever.”

Winona’s plea jolted her. Another sick child.

Light-headed, Tess pushed up from her chair. She went over and felt the child’s forehead and found it warm and clammy. Her eyes, though puffed from crying, looked clear. “I’m not a nurse, Winona, but it could be she’s just getting a cold.”

“We need help—now!” Winona glared at her from desperate eyes, then burst into sobs. “Our home is gone. I can’t reach my husband—“