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“I thought you must be some old geezer,” he says, merlot on his breath, Mardi Gras beads wrapped around the stem of his glass. “When people say your name, they shake.”

“I doubt that’s true,” I say, laughing.

“No, really,” he insists. “You have the power of a thousand bulldozers.”

I leave the bar and go to my room. I can’t get the image out of my head: a thousand bulldozers. I don’t think it’s true, of course. I don’t like to think about my job that way. I’ve never paid much attention to the business of news—who is watching, how big the audience is, what time slot I am in. That information always seems to take away from the work. Katrina, however, is different. So many times in Africa I wanted people to know the suffering of others, but I long ago gave up believing that it would really change anything. Now people are watching, and I feel that maybe I can be of some help. I see it in people’s eyes; they talk to me on the street: “Hey, Anderson, somebody’s got to do something about what’s happening over in St. Bernard,” they’ll say. Or: “You gotta do something about the bodies. Why aren’t they being picked up?” I don’t want to let these people down, this city, down.

I WORRY I’VE forgotten what’s important about my brother, what’s not. I recall looks, images, arguments. There was the time Carter punched me when I was an infant. The time in high school when he screamed at me, “You’re not my fucking father!” and stormed out of my room. The day I scrawled, “I HATE HIM!” in a diary.

“Were you close?” Inevitably I get that question. Sometimes it’s right after a person finds out about my brother’s death; sometimes it’s only after weeks of their knowing me. Were we close? Not so close that I knew he was going to kill himself. Not so close that I understood why he did.

I knew his laugh, his smell. I knew the sound he made when he walked through our front door, the jingle of his keys, the particular way his shoes scraped on the floor. We didn’t talk, however. I didn’t ask him deep, probing questions. Do any brothers do that sort of thing? I knew what I observed, I knew his surface, but clearly that was not enough.

I still dream about him, and in my sleep he seems so real. They’re not happy dreams, however, because I know he’s going to kill himself, and there’s nothing I can do to stop him. I wake up believing for a moment that he’s alive. I wake up filled with dread.

I found a Polaroid of my mom, Carter, and me celebrating his birthday. It was the first one after my father’s death. The cake is small and has twelve white candles almost a foot and a half in length. Carter bends sideways in a half hug with our mom. She’s smiling, and I’m next to her. I find these photos from time to time—frozen moments, I can’t remember. Every time I do, the violence of Carter’s death shocks me again. I keep the pictures, as well as his scribbled notes and magazines—the things I found in his apartment. I tell myself that one day I’ll go through them and perhaps discover some clue that will help me understand, help me answer that question: Were we close?

“THEM BODIES SMELL like some stanky ass pussy,” a Border Patrol agent tells me. Behind him a stripper in a cop’s uniform hangs upside down from a pole. “That shit gets in your clothes, you can’t get the smell out. Goddamn stanky ass pussy.”

We’re in Déjà Vu, the first strip club to reopen in New Orleans. It’s just over three weeks since the storm. Beneath some colored lights, a handful of girls bump and grind on the bar, rubbing their breasts in patrons’ faces. The place is filled with the storm’s flotsam and jetsam: cops and soldiers, National Guard, Border Patrol, Customs—you name it, they’re all here, their badges and guns badly concealed. They’re clutching dollar bills, horny as hell and twice as bored.

I’m here to meet a New Orleans police officer, but he’s not around. I call him on his cellphone, and he answers in the middle of a fight. “Fuck you, get the fuck out of here!