the cleanup

With a storm bearing down on the Gulf of Mexico, large work boats involved in the cleanup again flee up river to escape threatening weather, while boats like mine, inexplicably, prepare to go offshore. Just days ago, the air stood still, and a brown cloud of burn-off was visible from Venice above the Mississippi delta. It's a cloud most commonly seen above mankind and his settlements--I used to look out of the window of airplanes back and forth to Asia, and it would alert me to land, a continent approaching. For days that phenomenon has swapped around coastal Louisiana, as oil collectors offshore burn the sea above Mississippi Canyon block 258.

At the fuel dock taking on 8,000 gallons of diesel, 12,000 in water, I notice four zodiac inflatables secured vertically to the deck of a work boat at the south end of the dock. I used to manage a fleet of Mark V's, so I slide down to inspect, wind up in conversation with a mate onboard. They've got stacks of boom and absorbent pads, so I ask him about the cleanup.

"Cleanup?" he says. "If you can call it that." He tells me the coast guard or navy guys drive the zodiacs to place or collect boom. He shows me some of the material, some of it inflatable itself up to 5 feet in diameter. "By the end of the day, they're all over the place from wind and sea." Even in calm, he says, the fierce delta current itself will push oil beyond the boom, and at slack tide, it will come from underneath, seeping up the seabed, to freshly coat the beach and marsh.

Back in slip one in Tiger Pass and under the crane in late afternoon, the old Mary Jean pulls alongside. It's Rick on deck, and he says they're looking for a place to hide, looking forward to a few days at the dock. Of course, the cleanup suspended. He gives me an update on the fish-turned-skimmer-boat operation. He says they just made a grocery run with boxes of the same stuff they carried out two days ago: frozen fries and pork chops, chips and little debbies, an abundance of condiments: ketchup, mayonnaise, tabasco.

"They don't even want half the stuff," he says. "They've got these little propane cook stoves. I see 'em tossin' fries overboard!" His voice is drowned out by two apache helicopters, national guard, probably their last run for the day. The slip's as busy as ever now, the boat parade of day-workers returning. "These fishermen are askin' me," Rick continues, "'What am I suppose da do? Make tabasco soup?'" He does a good coon-ass imitation. He pulls on a cigarette, turns into the wind. "Let it blow," he says, and I must produce a frown. "Oh," Rick notices, "you must have to go out." That is the case, and soon we'll prepare for heavy seas.