A Tale of Two Ripples In the Tide of Humanity

BATON ROUGE, La., Sept. 1 -- Two men sit on a narrow strip of concrete, their backs against the wall.

Behind the wall is the Greyhound bus station. It is in a bad part of town, as bus stations in America usually are. Weed-strewn empty lot before them, dilapidated wood houses down the block.

When each man reached that station Wednesday night, at separate times, from different parts of New Orleans, his heart lifted. On this they both agree.

Then they saw the sign: Bus Station Closed Until Further Notice. Now it is Thursday.

Ernest Montgomery, 35, and Toris Hudson, 40, did not know each other before they reached this place. But now, after sitting here for nearly 24 hours, they have had plenty of time to reflect, and they have come to understand that their separate woeful journeys both began with that stupid stubbornness a man can have when his wife begs him to leave a place and he won't go.

"The old lady wanted me to go," says Hudson, a city paratransit driver for the disabled in New Orleans. " 'It's gonna be a catastrophe this time,' she said." Instead, he drove her and the three kids to a hotel in the French Quarter where her mother runs the laundry.

The Maison Dupuy always let his mother-in-law put her daughter up when a hurricane came to kiss the Big Easy. The kids always thought it was a holiday. And a man can look forward to a few days alone with the family gone. A mountain of a man with braids in a blue do-rag, his brown shoes unlaced, he lies on his back, suitcases of clothes around him.

You begin to see the answer to the question that vexes all the people who live life in a different way, the question that the authorities bring up, peevishly, when the public and the media press them, hard, on why this humanitarian crisis deepens every day. They could have left, you hear. Why didn't they leave?

"Listen," says Montgomery, "some people have money and ways to get out. A lot of people are poor. They wait until the devastation hits." That was not his problem; he had a Chevy Suburban -- "So do I! Or, I did" -- interjects Hudson. No, Montgomery's wife wanted to go to Houston, so she put the kids in her Jeep and went. "We men so stupid," he says, and Hudson nods mournfully.

Montgomery went over to hang out with his younger brother.

"We were psyched up!" he says. Even after Katrina came slamming through, "we didn't believe it. We thought it was a little bit funny, went out and walked through the water, watched the people helping themselves." The way he sees it, if you get hungry after a hurricane, you can go "fishing in the water for a can of tuna fish floating by, a carton of milk, and rub it off, or you can help yourself, you see what I'm saying? That is what they are calling looting," Montgomery says. He is a man who believes it is important to look together no matter the circumstances. His head is bald, his white T-shirt is clean, and the Cavaliers jersey over it has not a rumple.

The water rose.