Free Salvation Row by Mark Dawson

now there was jungle. The vegetation had all sprouted since Katrina. Trees that did not exist before the storm now stood taller than the broken-backed street lamps. The asphalt was buckled and twisted with spreading roots. The inhabited lots, about one per block, looked out of place. Their owners kept their lawns mowed, the fences painted, the houses well maintained. But they were fighting back the wilderness on all sides.
    “What you doing down here, then? You just come to look around?”
    “No.”
    “Reason I ask, we got people coming here now just to look. You saw that sign, right? Tourists, can you believe that? They got buses and shit running around here like it’s some sort of freak show.”
    “I’m here to help.”
    “You got a billion dollars?”
    “I read about the Build It Up Foundation. The new houses.”
    “Yeah,” the man said. “They’ll do a good job, if the city let’s ’em.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Lot of bureaucracy. Lot of people trying to line they pockets, take advantage of others’ misery. You see. Same old N’Awlins, buddy. Same old, same old.”
    It wasn’t difficult to find the plot of land that had been purchased by the Build It Up Foundation. It was a wide expanse of several acres, bounded by Reynes Street, North Galvez Street, Caffin Avenue and North Derbigny Street. It was, Milton saw, very close to where the Solomon house had once been. He recognised the junction where Ziggy Penn had been taken out by the Irish, and remembered the configuration of the road, but, beyond that, everything was different. The rows of houses that had formed the roads and avenues had all been demolished. Wide swathes of the vegetation had been cleared and, as they drove through one block, they watched workers as they cut back the worst of the overgrowth.
    And then they turned onto a new road. A sign, bright and clean, read SALVATION ROW. Beyond it, he saw a line of brand new houses. Jaunty and bright, a snaggle of sawtooth angles in various vivid colours.
    “Here you go,” the driver said.
    Milton handed over a twenty, told the man to keep the change, and got out. The humidity slapped down at him, a broiling heat that made him wish that he was wearing something on his head. He reached back inside for his pack and hauled it out.
    The car rolled away as he turned to the nearest of the new houses. It was not just a slapdash replacement. It was well built and substantial, a mustard-yellow, four-bedroom house perched on seven-foot-tall stilts with a roof that slanted up from front to back and leant to the side. It was very impressive.
    A black man came out of the house and made his way down the neatly tended path to the sidewalk.
    “Can I help you?”
    “I hope so. I’m looking for Isadora Bartholomew.”
    “Izzy?” The man laughed. “You in the right place, brother.” He turned and pointed down the street to where several new houses were being built. “She’s over there. Up on the roof.”

Chapter Nine
    MILTON EXAMINED the new house as he approached it. It was built on concrete pilings and elevated to the same seven feet above the ground. The fibre-cement sidings were reinforced, and the window and door frames were built of hurricane-resistant Kevlar.
    A sign planted in the lawn outside the front door said “JUST $1,500 CASH DOWN.”
    He turned off the sidewalk and walked up to the house.
    He saw Isadora Bartholomew before he was halfway to the front door. She was up on the roof, wearing high-cut, frayed shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt that exposed her slender midriff. She was wearing a tool belt and a yellow safety helmet, her long hair tied up in a tail so that it poked out of the back. She was affixing a solar panel to the shingles, the last unit before that aspect of the roof was covered with them.
    Milton cleared his throat.
    The electric drill that she was using was too loud, so she didn’t hear him.
    “Hello,” he called, careful not to surprise her.
    “One minute,” she said,