WE LEFT BILOXI and followed the Gulf Coast to Long Beach, Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, Waveland, and Clermont Harbor—Gulf communities that for days we'd heard nothing about. Biloxi and Gulfport were all cracked wood and rubble and high piles of debris. Long Beach and Pass Christian—small towns to the west—were a clean wash of everything. They smelled of fresh salt air, not the sickly sweet decay of food and bodies that pervaded Biloxi.

Ankle-high waves rolled ashore. Occasionally a helicopter passed, but we were pretty much alone to stop the car and walk the ground of the lost communities. The only things left were ghosts—torn bedsheets and clothes and plastic trash bags that hung in leafless trees and flapped in the wind. The pine trees still standing had needles the color of burnt copper.

Down the road, I met a newly formed pack of dogs, family pets left to fend for themselves. Purebred animals, mostly Labs with collars. In the noonday heat, a couple of the unneutered males started growling and circling. A scroungy mutt bitch had come between them.

They reared up on their hind legs and tore into each other, until one lost and hid under my Jeep.