Cajun Adventure, Post-Hurricane Rita
(continued)
“I want to finish this today,” Anna said. She was a scraping machine. So I explained to Walter that I had to give my shoulder a rest, and I took off for a walk through the neighborhood. I passed many houses as tidy as Walter and Marian’s, and then came to a church cemetery. I looked at the small above-ground crypts, some of them toppled from the water surge. Finally I ended up at Walter and Marian’s little church, St. Martin de Porres, whose bells Anna and I had been hearing peal all day. You can see the steeple from Walter and Marian’s house. I thought sure the church would be locked, as churches usually are nowadays, but the front door was open.
I walked in. The church was beautiful, simple, Gothic, blue and white. A lady knelt in on of the front rows, part of a “perpetual adoration” team I guessed, like the group at St. Mary’s church back home in Menomonee Falls. They take turns praying in the church 24 hours a day. (Imagine all that good energy going out into the world, just like my Grandma Hoerig praying Rosaries all day.)
I went into a pew a few rows behind the lady, glad she didn’t turn around to see the dusty woman with a ponytail sticking through the back of her baseball cap.
I knelt to say a prayer. One prayer came to my mind instantly:
“Thank you.”
Never in my life has that prayer come so easily.
Usually I have to remind myself to say “thank you.” Not today.
When I returned to Walter and Marian’s house, Anna was still going full-steam. There was no stopping her. My shoulder pain was beginning to scream, so I knew I wouldn’t be joining her that day. Walter told me where I could go see the shrimping boats nearby. I jumped into our car and drove there. The boats were beautiful in their functional and funky way, all lined up along the moorings.
I wasn’t sure if the shrimpers were home for the day, or idle because of the hurricane. I’d heard that Rita destroyed the shrimp grounds and oyster beds, but I wasn’t sure about that. Someone had also told us that Rita’s swell brought salty sea water onto farmers’ fields 30 miles inland. Since it hadn’t rained much since then, the salt remained and farmers hadn’t been able to plant. Some scientists were working to develop a rice strain that could tolerate the salinated soil, but no luck so far.
At 5:00 pm I was back in the house and Anna had finally killed the stripping project. She turned to us, arms flung out, as if to say “Ta-da!” Freeman, Walter and I clapped. The wood was smooth as a baby’s butt.
First stop on the way home that evening was Walgreens to find Ben-Gay and Ibuprofen for the ailing baby geezer with the sore shoulder. Back at the dorm, we ate a quick supper. Then Anna the massage therapist kneaded and pressed my sore spots for almost an hour. She slapped a Ben-Gay compress on top, I took four Ibuprofen pills, and went to bed for the night at 7:00 pm. I slept hard for the next 12 hours.
Thursday: Delcambre and New Orleans
I was still in shoulder shell-shock, so I knew I couldn’t do any heavy work on Thursday. We easily found Walter and Marian’s home in Delcambre – navigating was finally getting simpler on our sixth day there! Sheesh.
When we arrived, Walter and Freeman had a good old soul station on the radio. I wished I had found that one yesterday when I couldn’t get good reception for KBON. Freeman told us that he used to play out a lot as a musician, good old soul and R&B. He doesn’t like the “new stuff .” Neither do I.
I went to work sweeping sawdust and doing a little paint-priming on trim boards. Walter painted near me, usually sitting on a wheeled stool. However, once I caught him standing on his one good leg, painting away as smoothly and firmly as could be.
“When I saw you do that, I thought ‘I bet that man dances,’” I told him later.