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TwitThisThe Smell of Death
The Red Cross had finally worked out a serious supply-chain problem, and business was now booming at Spirit of America.A pre-law student named Tim had come down from Memphis to offer his energies wherever they were needed and ended up with the Veterans for Peace. He now joined me at the Red Cross hub, working in the yard. Tim leaped into the job as if possessed. Like the rest of us, he had come hoping to work on the front lines with victims; now he was reveling in the thankless behind-the-scenes tasks I had taken for granted.
That afternoon, we drove back to New Orleans. Reggie and José guided us to a neighborhood called Algiers Point, where we met a community leader named Malik, who was housing a handful of activists hoping to come up with a plan to feed locals. When I mentioned the Red Cross, one of them snorted and cursed the organization. "Where have they been? What good have they done?"
I felt my hackles go up, thinking of my friends, good people toiling in a sweltering parking lot. "In St. Tammany Parish," I said, "they put out 17,000 meals yesterday."
"What's 17,000 meals?"
"It's 17,000 more than zero," I said, fuming. I wanted to leap off the porch and break the guy's nose.
But I calmed down and continued to talk with Malik, who was outraged that 18 bodies were baking on the dry streets of Algiers. "Why can't the soldiers pick them up? I'll show you one right around the corner."
He took us to the health clinic where a man had been lying facedown in the parking lot for six days. Someone had put a white cotton throw over him, and a windblown piece of tin roofing over that. Nearby was a leafless sapling with several pairs of latex gloves hanging from its branches like surreal fruit. Malik pulled on two of the gloves and peeled back the body's crude covering. Above us a helicopter thwupped as we stood numbly with our hands over our noses and mouths. "If this had been a white man," Malik asked, "would he still be lying here six days later?"
It was almost 6 p.m., curfew time, and we could feel the city starting to change. In the fading light, more troops began patrolling, from the National Guard to the elite 82nd Airborne. And helicopters flew lower, washing us with wind.
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