As I waited for Wallace, I met two young guys from the Oregon National Guard who had come up to the house, thinking that we were holdouts and intending to encourage us to leave. They were very sweet and I offered them cigars, a recently acquired vice, which they initially declined. They had both signed up for the National Guard before Sept. 11 to help pay for college. While I could tell that they both had their hesitations about the "war on terror" and their pending deployment to Afghanistan, they were patriots, in the best sense. One of them, a lieutenant, told me about their temporary barracks in an old neighborhood high school. He told me that he was disgusted that kids ever went to school there and that in Oregon the place would have been bulldozed and rebuilt so that kids could have a proper place to learn. He seemed troubled that all of this was happening in America. He realized that many of the problems that he was seeing in New Orleans existed before the storm and wanted to know why people had put up with it and why they hadn't voted the people out of office who let this happen. I told him I didn't know but that maybe we could change things in New Orleans in the future. He seemed hopeful. I felt less certain.

I introduced them to our new dogs, who were happy to have a little attention. One of the guardsmen told me that there were dying dogs everywhere, and it made him incredibly sad. He said, blankly, "These starving dogs are the saddest thing ... after the dead bodies." They quickly changed the subject.

After being yelled at by holdouts, the police and their commanders, they had made their first friend in New Orleans. I told him how to pronounce the street names properly and what each neighborhood was called and what they were like. I stressed that Esplanade Avenue is pronounced like "lemonade" and that they should correct any of their superiors who say it otherwise. They both laughed. I offered the cigars again and they accepted. As they were walking away, one of them accidentally bumped my leg with the barrel of his M-16. He was embarrassed, as though I might not have noticed the massive guns that both of them were carrying. To ease the tension, I said to them, "You're the only two 22-year-old men to ever come to New Orleans and not get drunk or laid." They laughed hard and started walking away again.

"What we wouldn't give," they said.

I told them to come back and visit when it was a city again and that they would surely have a better time.

Wallace and I got back in the van and started to head out of town. Before we left his neighborhood, Bywater, we came across some scrappy-looking guys and we pulled over to see if they wanted any of the water or food that we had left in the van. They introduced themselves, saying, "They call us holdouts." They turned down the water and food, saying they had plenty of canned food and that they had gallons of water in their hot-water heaters. They explained that they had been bathing in the Mississippi but that "it was beginning to get nasty." They wanted bleach to keep things sanitary, but we didn't have any. They settled for some Orange Clean, cat food that we had brought for strays, and a five-gallon can of gas for their generator. They told us to tell others to come home: "Bring people back. Tell them that it is OK. That you can make it here."

We drove off and left our occupied city. I slept most of the drive back as Wallace, still solid, drove. I woke up as we were approaching Oxford and told Wallace to pull into a convenience store so that I could get some beer. It was around 8 at night and we had been on the road for a full day. I brought a six-pack of Budweiser to the register, and the cashier told me that they couldn't sell beer on Sundays anywhere in Lafayette County. Broken-hearted and shocked, I told her my sad story, but she was inflexible. I thanked her and left, with new resolve to return home to New Orleans as soon as possible.

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