LATER, LARRY WANDERED into the the Metairie Cemetery, up to his waist in foul water, to catch the perfect light at sunset while I waited on the interstate and gave directions to lost emergency workers. No one had replaced signs in the city. We drove to the Bywater neighborhood and the edge of the flooded Ninth Ward. The evacuees were gone, and we had the whole place to ourselves. We went to the zoo. I took Larry to Jackson Square. I sat on a highway overpass and looked down into Mid-City at the Rock 'n' Bowl, where I'd spent countless nights drinking Dixie beer, to see the first floor submerged.

As the sun set, we heard a gunshot and decided to drive on.

We stayed nights in Lafayette—an inland town that hadn't been hit. We ate Cajun food in the evenings and by day drove south on Highway 1, hugging the bayou, passing dozens of airboats being used to check downed power lines on crooked poles, and running the marsh to Grand Isle. We spent the day on the little island, populated by fishermen and shrimpers who lived in stilt houses. Even the trailers were on stilts.

There I met Louis Estay, a rough old Cajun whose shrimp company had been destroyed. He and his partner, Mike Oliver, took it all in, looking at the wreckage and smelling the rot of shrimp and lost diesel. They smiled as they talked about the two homes, the ice plant, and the 16 shacks that were all gone. No insurance.

"We're going to clean up and drink a beer, and after that I don't know," Louis said, before leaving the island by truck. "You just kind of have to laugh about it."