Sixty Chairs

I got there at five to set up chairs. The meeting was at seven but the coffee machine takes forty minutes if you want it hot enough that people won't complain, and the chairs don't walk themselves out of the storage closet. I've been doing this for every public meeting in the parish for fifteen years. Elections, zoning, the speed bumps on Bayou Road. You learn how many chairs. You learn who sits where.

Tonight I put out sixty. That's optimistic. The sign-in sheet has lines for forty.

The woman from the state arrived at six-fifteen in a silver rental. She had a projector and a laptop bag and a box of printed materials and she was polite about everything. Asked where the outlets were. Asked if the screen worked. Her name was Lauren. She had a lanyard with a state ID and she looked like she'd done this before, which she probably had. Vermilion, Lake Charles, Denham Springs. Her job was explaining the offer. Somebody else had made it.

I helped her find the extension cord behind the stage curtain. The curtain's been there since I was a kid. It used to be red. Now it's the color of something that used to be red.

By six-forty people started coming in. The Guidrys. Three of the Naquins, the ones still on this side of the bayou. Dale Verdin came alone, sat in the back row, didn't take his cap off. Mrs. Billiot came with her daughter-in-law, the one who works at the Dollar General in Montegut. They sat second row because Mrs. Billiot doesn't hear well and won't admit it.

I knew every name because I'd handled every one of their property records at some point. Transfers, liens, assessments, the flood elevation certificates that nobody used to need and now everybody does. I knew the assessed values and the sale prices and the gaps between them. I knew which properties had clear title and which ones had been in the same family so long that nobody had filed the right paperwork when somebody died. Which is most of them.

My house is on the list too. I'd printed the list myself.

Lauren started the projector at seven-oh-five. She had a slide that said LOUISIANA OFFICE OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT across the top and VOLUNTARY PROPERTY ACQUISITION PROGRAM underneath, and below that the parish name and tonight's date. She said good evening and thank you for coming and she meant it, I think.

The first slide was a map. Our parish, the flood zones marked in blue. The blue covered everything south of the highway. Which is where we live. Which is where everyone in this room lives. Nobody looked surprised. Everybody already knows what floods. The map is for the paperwork.

She explained the program. Voluntary. That word came up six or seven times in the first ten minutes. The state would purchase the property at current appraised value. The structure would be demolished. The land would be deed-restricted to open space in perpetuity. She had a slide with the relocation assistance broken into homeowners, landlords, and tenants, though she moved past the tenant line quickly and nobody in the room was a tenant anyway. The tenants are at the processing plant or they're home with their kids or they don't know about the meeting because they're not on the property rolls. The property rolls are the list I printed. The list is who gets a letter.

She had a slide about the timeline. Application, appraisal, review, offer, closing. She said the average was eighteen to twenty-four months but it could be longer. She said it like that was a reasonable amount of time. In this room, twenty-four months is two more hurricane seasons. Ricky Guidry's phone lit up in his lap. The parish flood alert. He glanced at it and put it back in his pocket without reading it. His wife used to read those. Now it's just him and the phone and whatever the bayou's doing tonight.

Dale Verdin shifted in his seat. He didn't say anything.

The slide about what happens to the land after purchase had a list of prohibited uses. No structures. No paving. No storage. No cemeteries. Lauren read through the list evenly, the way you do when you're being thorough. She didn't pause on that word. I don't think she knew to.

Mrs. Billiot's daughter-in-law leaned over and said something. Mrs. Billiot didn't respond. She was looking at the screen. Across the aisle, one of the Naquin women looked at Mrs. Billiot and then looked away. She didn't say anything either.

The Prevost Cemetery is three miles from the church. Mrs. Billiot's husband is buried there. The parcel it sits on is on the list.

Lauren moved to relocation options. She talked about the housing market in Houma, in Thibodaux, in Gray. She had median home prices. She had school district information. She mentioned the new development near Schriever where some of the Isle de Jean Charles families had moved, years back. She was careful and organized and she was not wrong about any of the numbers.

Ricky Guidry raised his hand before the question period. Lauren said go ahead.

He said what about the boat.

She asked him to clarify.

He said his shrimp boat. It's docked behind his house. The boat and the permits and the ice machine he'd put in himself. He said the boat's worth more than the house, probably, depending on who you ask. He said he wasn't being difficult. He just wanted to know where that goes on the form.

Lauren said the program covers the residential structure and the land. She said she could look into whether there were other programs for commercial property or equipment. She wrote something down. She was being honest. There probably isn't another program, but she was going to look, and she'd get back to him, and she would. It just wouldn't change anything.

The room was quiet for a second.

Ricky's cousin, who wasn't on the sign-in sheet because he'd come in late through the side door, said something from the back that I didn't catch. A couple people laughed. Dale Verdin almost smiled.

I don't know what he said. I know the laugh, though. I've heard it at every meeting in this room for fifteen years. It's the sound people make when somebody says the thing that everybody already knows and nobody was going to put on the agenda.

Lauren continued. She had a slide about the appraisal process. She had a slide about the closing process. She had a slide with phone numbers and a website and an email address. She said applications were open for ninety days. She said it again. Ninety days.

Outside, it was getting dark. You could hear the frogs starting up in the ditch behind the building. The ditch that used to be dry in summer and now holds water year-round.

Mrs. Naquin, the oldest one, stood up during the question period. She didn't raise her hand. She said she had a question but it was more of a statement. She said her family had been on this bayou for four generations. She said her grandchildren were in Baton Rouge and Houston and one was in Atlanta. She said she wasn't asking for sympathy. She wanted to know if the state had thought about what happens to the road when enough people leave. Because the road is the only road, and when there aren't enough people to justify maintaining it, the parish stops maintaining it, and then the people who stayed can't get out.

Lauren said that was an important concern and she'd make sure it was communicated to the program office.

Mrs. Naquin sat down. She'd said what she came to say.

I was standing by the coffee machine. I'd refilled it once. I had my clipboard with the sign-in sheet. Twenty-three names. Sixty chairs.

The empty ones. I could tell you who most of them belonged to. The Chaissons sold last year and moved to Thibodaux. Marcus Dardar is on a rig, two weeks on, two weeks off. Some I won't name. Some just didn't come.

Darlene Boudreaux rents the blue house on the corner. She didn't get a letter because she doesn't own the house, and her landlord lives in Baton Rouge and didn't come either. There's a line on Lauren's slide for tenants. There's no Darlene in this room. There's no Darlene on any form I've ever printed.

The waterline on the east wall of this building has been painted over twice. The paint doesn't quite match. You wouldn't notice unless you knew where to look. Everyone in this room knows where to look.

Lauren asked if there were any more questions. There was a pause. Then Dale Verdin, from the back row, still in his cap, said how long do we have to decide.

Lauren said ninety days from the application opening, which was today.

Dale said no. He said how long do we have.

Lauren was quiet for a moment. She said she understood the question and she didn't have a good answer for it.

That was the most honest thing anyone said all night.

People stood up slowly. Some went to the table where Lauren had laid out the application packets. Manila folders with the state seal. I watched who picked one up and who didn't. Mrs. Billiot took one. Ricky Guidry didn't. Dale Verdin took two, which meant he was bringing one to somebody who wasn't here. Mrs. Naquin walked past the table without looking at it.

Lauren was packing up the projector. She thanked me for the coffee and the extension cord. She asked if I had any questions myself. I said I was still thinking about it. She said that was completely understandable and to call the number on the sheet anytime.

I started folding the chairs. Sixty chairs, twenty-three names. The frogs outside were loud now. The coffee machine was still on and I'd have to come back tomorrow to clean it.

The application packet was in my bag. I'd picked one up when Lauren wasn't looking, which is stupid because she wouldn't have cared. But I didn't want to pick it up in front of everyone. My house is on the list. I know exactly what it's appraised at because I work in the office that appraised it. The number is correct. It covers the structure and the lot. It doesn't cover the fact that I know which road floods at six inches of rain and which one holds until eight. It doesn't cover the cemetery. It doesn't cover what Mrs. Naquin said about the road, which is true, and which nobody is going to fix by putting it on a slide.

I turned off the lights and locked the door. Three cars left in the lot. Lauren's rental, my truck, and Dale Verdin's. He was still sitting out there in the dark. I didn't go over.

Ninety days. I figured I'd know something by then, or I wouldn't. Either way I'd still have to come back and clean the coffee machine.