Previously: Our friend KK come back crying after going out to check on his grandma Miss Mary and his cousins. He tell us they all shot up and stabbed up, bloody and dead and that Miss Mary’s safe was now empty. Missy Mary like a grandma to all of us. We feel that pain, and we had to go see what was going on. My homeboys put all kind of tools in the boat in case the killers still be there. Inside her little house you think she just laying on the couch watching her daily stories, like “The Young and the Restless,” the way she always do. Except now you see blood all down the front of her grandma dress. Next I had the hardest thing: to follow KK upstairs and see them kids all bloodied up.
I worried the murderers might still be in the house. So five of us stayed close together and tipped upstairs, holding each other by shirts, quiet as we could. I was scared and stayed right in the middle of the line.
After we went step-by-step, KK led us to the room where the four kids was, three boys and one girl, ages 9, 11, 13, and 14.
It was a horrible sight, them children stabbed up like that. Why you gonna kill these kids? Whoever did it knew the kids, because they must be afraid the kids know their faces. That’s how it registered to me. The kids didn’t do you nothing; the lady didn’t do you nothin’
We could see the stab hole in the clothes and blood splattered everywhere. It had to be more than one person who entered the house and did that terrible thing.
Two kids on the bed, one layin’ on the floor by the closet, one by the tv, spread out like . . . y’know. There was no mercy. All I could do is bend my head and say Lord.
Now we gotta stay more focused.
After leaving poor Miss Mary and her grandkids all bloody in that sweet house I used to go to, now like a haunted house, we paddled toward a poor downtown neighborhood.
Nearly every house had signs saying things like, “Help! Need food!” We were about to stop and pass out meals the helicopters had dropped when we saw a family in an old wooden shack with wind screens hanging out and broken windows and the stairs completely washed away. They had no way to get out.
I said, “Stop the boat.” We paddled up to where the steps had been and I stood— balancing in the boat—and knocked on the door. They open the door but they was really scared at first. They asked who we was.
And I’m like, “We ain’t troops or nothing. We just helpin’ out.”
The lady like, “Oh ya’ll out there just helpin’ people?”
The kids in the house, they so happy to see someone come. They too was like, “Who is y’all?”
One kid say, “You see all that water comin’ in there? Can you help us get outta here?”
I’m like, “We can help you get outta here but we gotta bring you to the Superdome.”
He say, “Anywhere but bein’ inside here, because we don’t look like we gonna make it.” He around eleven years old, but he talk grown, like grown talk.
After we done takin’ the people to the Superdome, we pass a National Guard truck with K-9 dogs and officers wearing orange vests on them.
They ask, “Where y’all goin’? What y’all doin’?”
I say, “We just helping families as much as we could. We ain’t doin no crime, Sir. We ain’t tryin’ to do no violence or nothing. We helpin’ escort families to the Superdome.
They say, “Y’all see any other families around here?” I tell them they got people all in the projects and in they regular houses here too.”
One guard ask me, “You ever been in the military?”
I say, “No, but I been a junior lifeguard comin’ up, y’know?”
He say, “Well this water gonna be gettin’ more higher till y’all under the water. If ya need anything there’s just look for those the orange vests. You got a lot of robberin’ goin on and people getting robbed up on the Interstate by gunpoint.”
And then he say, “Ya sure y’ain’t got no weapons, no guns or nothin’?”
“Well,” I say, “I be honest with you. We ain’t got no guns, but we got screwdrivers and hammers, because we just left a house with Miss Mary, a fine lady that like a grandma to us, and she be shot dead in her house.”
He say, “Can y’all show where that house at? That’s the kind of thing we looking for.”
I say yessir and he say, “We gonna follow behind y’all.” They follow us in their motorboat.
We get to the house and they say, “Y’all know anyone ya think mighta did this here?”
I say, “No sir. Honestly? If we’d a seen faces, y’all ain’t got a chance to bring them to jail ‘cause my homeboys woulda finished them off right here.”
After he say we can leave, we go back to the projects. Upstairs a grandma come running to tell us her little grandson gone missing.
To be continued . . .
