Voices of Katrina: A Collection of Short Stories

By Kimball Mayes

These short stories are a mixture of fact and fiction in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Touching all aspects of the social economic spectrum, hurricane Katrina left no one untouched: an out-of-work Mexican laborer, an uptown socialite, a Chalmette grandmother, a lower 9th ward young black woman, and a retarded white man all face the devastating after-effects in their own way. There was very little light during this time of the flood-ravaged city of New Orleans, and the wind and wave ravaged Mississippi Gulf Coast ~ all was seen in one color: brown. Moving from parish to parish (county to county) it was like going from a color TV picture in Jefferson to a brown TV picture in Orleans ~ such was the scene of distruction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098331078

Book preview

Pentameter

Gone

Post-Katrina Golf Coast 3/19/06

It was all gone ~ every vestige of every memorable landmark was wiped off the face of the earth.  I couldn’t even remember what it looked like before.  The sky was dull and overcast, the wind was fierce ~ like it still had more to do ~ the water was dull and choppy: a chill was in the air.  Trees stripped bare of leaves and bark, decorated by an odd type of cloth and plastic adornment left by the storm ~ sometimes sporting tarps, sometimes sporting baby seats. The only things that never changed were the water, the wind, and the sky ~ a sort of symbol of Spirit. 

I will never truly understand why my brothers and sisters were taken, but I was left.  There has to be some divine reason for all this chaos, all this loss, all this pain.  Perhaps this is really hell.  Perhaps I have all my life actually been living in hell from some past sin, and this is my just desert.

I question God often about the whys and wherefores of this life, but come away with the strangest answers, I could ever imagine ~ so strange, in fact, that I have to believe they are Truth:

This is, in fact, only hell if I believe in hell.

The real is not before my face, but beyond corporeal sense.

My sin, real or imagined, is punished moment by moment according to my belief in the sin.

If I stop believing I am a sinner, I will stop sinning, because there will be no reason to do anything but what God wants me to do.

My brothers and sisters are doing a far greater work now that they are gone from my life than they had ever done before.

My job is to tell everyone I know these truths while the telling can make a difference in their lives.

So this is what is meant by seeing through a glass darkly.  I Corinthians 13:12

The Footlocker

Packed full of clothes and a few dishes, on route to the new world, the dull green trunk was carefully guarded by Colin Hampton.  He had grown leery of anyone who showed