credibility with the
Something to shove up the ass of the IRS, next time those fuckers questioned his
But it didn’t play out like that.
New Orleanians are no strangers to weather, and while Katrina remained a category three storm, there was much talk about who would be hosting the hurricane party on each block. But as the storm passed through the Gulf, she gained strength, and talk turned to evacuation.
Trinity never seriously considered leaving. He owned a six-thousand-square-foot stone mansion in Lakeview, and he could ride out anything nature cared to send his way. He did urge his congregation to evacuate, and they did. But before they got out, he conscripted a half dozen of their strapping teenage boys. The boys hauled 120 jugs of Kentwood Springs water from the neighborhood Rite Aid to Trinity’s mansion. They boarded up the massive ground floor windows and helped him secure the storm shutters on the second and third floors. They sandbagged the front of Trinity’s three-car garage. When the boys’ parents picked them up, Trinity gave each a thousand dollars in cash, for “traveling money.”
On August 28, 2005, Katrina was upgraded to category five. At ten a.m., just twenty hours before the storm would make landfall, Mayor Ray Nagin held a press conference and made the evacuation mandatory. The National Guard was being called in, and the Louisiana Superdome was being set up as a shelter-of-last-resort for those who couldn’t get out in time. About ten thousand would take refuge there, and many of them would later wish they hadn’t.
It would be a bad storm, but the roads out of town were already jammed, and Trinity’s mansion was thoroughly battened down. In addition to the stormproofing, Trinity had Robert Fresh Market deliver enough non- perishable food to feed a family of a hundred for a week. He had a portable shortwave radio and a waterproof flashlight and a ton of batteries, a Colt .45 semi-automatic pistol and seventy-two hollow point bullets, if it came to that. He was ready.
During the long night that followed, Trinity buzzed with anticipation, unable to sleep. News reports suggested that maybe one hundred thousand people would be unable to get out in time. There would be plenty of hungry mouths to feed when he re-opened his soup kitchen in the Lower Nine.
The wealthy of New Orleans had long since evacuated and Tim Trinity was the only soul left in Lakeview. But the “Hurricane Party” is a venerable tradition, so as the black sky lightened to gray, he mixed a very large Sazerac —to the original recipe, with real absinthe, and cognac instead of rye—and proceeded to get thoroughly drunk in preparation for the show.
Katrina made landfall at 6:10 a.m. on August 29, 2005, with sustained winds of 140 miles per hour. For a while, the radio said she was veering east and everything would be OK. But then the radio announcements changed, and Katrina slammed into the Crescent City with a storm surge of twenty-two feet.
People say a hurricane sounds like a freight train. It doesn’t, not exactly, but the analogy is close as dammit. Tim Trinity ambled through his mansion, from empty room to empty room, listening to the approach of nature’s freight train, sipping Sazerac and congratulating himself on his place in the world.
His dad had been an ineffectual door-to-door salesman—vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias, aluminum siding, whatever he could get a job peddling—and his mother had been a poor housewife, because Dad wouldn’t cotton to a wife who worked outside the home, even though he never earned a decent living. Tim and his little sister Iris never knew real hunger, but they knew red beans and rice, not just on Mondays but sometimes three, four days a week. They knew the shame of having to lie to bill collectors on the phone, saying, “My daddy ain’t home just now,” while Dad stood quietly to one side, grinning like it was a game. And they lived their childhood in threadbare clothing that had been worn hundreds of times by older kids and donated to the VOA thrift shop. They grew up, cheek by jowl, in a cramped Uptown shotgun that Mom kept ruthlessly clean.
Young Tim grew to hate his father for how easily the old man resigned himself to failure. He vowed to make a million, and he had, many times over. The rickety childhood house on Ursulines would probably not be standing after today. But this place would shrug Katrina off like a bad idea.
Trinity refreshed his drink, wandered downstairs and faced the front door, which rattled a little against the gusting wind and lashing rain. But the door was three-inch cypress and it wasn’t going anywhere. He raised his glass in a toasting gesture.
“Fuck you, storm,” he said. “Do your worst. You can’t touch me.”
He took a long swallow from the glass and realized that he was drunker than he’d intended to be. Walking back upstairs required some concentration.
He missed the rest of the storm. He’d passed out, fully clothed, atop leopard-print silk sheets on his king-size bed in the second-floor master bedroom.
But he dreamed the fury.
In his dream, Trinity lay on his back, lengthwise in the middle of the railway tracks just riverside of Tchoupitoulas, while a freight train thundered over him, inches from his face. The sound was earsplitting and the turbulence threatened to jostle his body against the wheels. His heart pounded against his ribs, and he forced himself to breathe. Then there was another sound, like an elephant groaning, and he turned his head to the right, looking through the blur of rushing wheels toward the mighty Mississippi. A wave rolled down the length of the river, cresting the banks. Then another, and another, and with each wave the river swelled over the embankment, and now water flowed steadily into the basin of the rail yards, toward the track where Trinity lay. It seemed the train would never end. He guessed that maybe twenty cars had passed over him, but he couldn’t raise his head to look down and see how many more cars were still to come. The water was flowing fast now, splashing against his side. If the train didn’t end soon, Trinity would surely drown.
And in a flash, he knew. The train would not end in time, and he would drown. And he knew why. Trinity knew this was God’s punishment for his unbelief.
He woke from his nightmare in the silence that followed the storm and realized it was the silence that woke him. The storm had passed. He shook off the dream’s residue, grabbed the flashlight, and staggered to the bathroom, his head pounding. There was a box of BC headache powders in the cabinet, and Trinity fumbled a couple out of the box and poured the bitter powder onto his tongue. He spun the faucet and stuck his mouth under the tap. Nothing.
Then he remembered.
The house was like a sauna. Out in the hallway, he aimed the flashlight down the stairs, expecting to see a little water. He saw a lot. The entrance hall was waist-deep and rising. He watched as a chair floated by the staircase.
The sky was a solid sheet of blue, the sun white-hot on his face. The air was thick and heavy and smelled of salt and mud. Aside from the soft murmur of moving water, there was no sound. No barking dogs, no chirping birds, no human voices, and no machinery of human civilization. Nothing. Most of the trees on the street were down, and those that stood were stripped of their leaves, naked limbs hanging down like broken arms. There were no power lines, and the poles stood at odd angles, like drunken sentries guarding the abandoned neighborhood. The entire street was a lake, and the muddy water flowed so quickly he thought he could see the level rising as he watched.
So much water.
Trinity craned his head to the left. The water was about chest-high against the doors of his garage. Behind the doors, his tricked-out Cadillacs would be underwater, ruined.
He turned away from the window, switched on the shortwave radio. The radio told him that the worst had indeed happened. The Seventeenth Street Canal levee had given way, and Lake Pontchartrain was now fulfilling its
