NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.
The America Diaspora is a sequel to The Chinese Century.
Despite everything Mark Cuban had done for New Orleans, a warrant was still out on him
When he learned it would still be exercised, he was off in his private jet, first to Mexico City, then on to Brazil, and finally back to South Africa.
I stayed behind. I wasn’t as notorious. I wasn’t as rich. We spent time with Jenni’s family in Texas. Then I called Atlanta and came “home.”
Tommy Bass, my one-time handyman, my one-time Webmaster, and my long-time friend, had moved in after we left. The home was still owned by Virgin-Maverick. There had been no bids the firm considered worth pursuing, and Tommy had even taken the “For Sale” sign off the lawn, placing it near the door, where we store cardboard for recycling.
The block didn’t look too bad to me, as we walked off the MARTA train, dragging an old wheeled suitcase and carrying backpacks with PCs and office supplies. There was a little more garbage on the ground than before. There were a few more people hanging out by the MARTA station than before, and some looked at me sort-of squinty-eyed. But one look from the bicycle cop who was now always on duty and they looked away.
There were some sad stories to tell. One neighbor who had been heavily invested in real estate committed suicide. A landlord on the other side had gone bankrupt. But the tenants over there had made a bid on their place, and despite the fact that it didn’t pay off the old landlord’s note Tommy thought it would be accepted.
My other neighbors were as they’d always been, getting on as best they could. Friends one-and-all, I’d known them since they were in their 50s and 60s. Now they were in their 70s and 80s, one was in her 90s, but they were all hanging in.
Jenni checked in with her church around the corner, which she hadn’t been to since my kidnapping. They had taken in many Katrina victims. They were collecting to keep them safe, and rebuild a few lives.
Tommy had kept up the bills on my old DSL line, and made himself at home in my son’s old room. (Actually, he’d been living in our bedroom room, but as soon as we said we were coming, he booked to what he’d been using as an office.)
There was a ton of e-mail traffic waiting for me, once I plugged in my laptop at my old desk in the dining room. One was marked urgent, and was dated Johannesburg.
It was from Cuban. He had an idea. He wanted to accept some storm victims, based on applications. A representative sample – some skilled and some unskilled, some white and some black. We would take 10,000, barely 2% of those who’d left New Orleans, barely ˝% of those left homeless by the storm. But we would pay their way.
And it would be enough to make a demonstration. We’d turn their move into a reality show, one Branson was already lining up buyers for. My job would be to ride herd on the applications, to hire people who would interview the applicants, and to make the final selections. From Atlanta.
This is not what I signed up for, I told Jenni. But she was smiling. “You’ll need help,” she said. “I’d like to bring two helpers in especially.”
The smile told the story. The kids would be coming home, too. At least for a while we’d be back where we were, together in our old home. And we’d all be working in the same direction.
“What about school?” I asked. “What about their work? Will they even want to come?”
She was on the phone within minutes. Johanesburg is 7 hours ahead of Atlanta. It was lunchtime here, a beautiful sunshiny day. Robin answered on the second ring. It was night, she was getting ready for bed. She was doing some office work for SOAR-SA, preparing for the summer season that would launch in a month, and they had just finished a dinner of store-bought goodies straight from the microwave. We had hired a housekeeper before we left, a Motswana woman who had brought a family into the guest house behind our pool, so traveling would be no problem.
John came on, said he could get his finals in early. Robin came back, and said she would seek some time off from her job as well. I told them who to call at the V-M offices to arrange transportation – a car to the airport as well as air tickets. Robin said she’d pack a bag and that was it.
Jenni took MARTA to the Airport to meet them. I was absolutely deluged with paperwork from applicants. I would read forms, horror stories, things written by relatives, social workers, church leaders. We’d put out our “casting call” on the Internet only, figuring the Administration wouldn’t let us on TV, but that was enough. We were flooded in electronic ink.
We’d have 10 applicants for every position, at least. And ever applicant had a family – sometimes 3 more as with our family, sometimes up to 10 more, including some relatives I thought fairly distant.
Mark Cuban was kind about it. He had been considering the problem himself. Bring 10,000 families then, he said.
Now you’re talking of upward of 50,000 people, I replied.
We’ll find work for them, he responded in an IM session. Don’t worry about it. You could feel the joy and energy over the Internet connection. OK, I figured. I’ll get 10,000 families.
Do you have any idea how big a number 10,000 is? I didn’t, not really, until I began this project. Since arriving home I’d gone through 6 applications an hour, worked 10 hours a day, which meant even if I took them all I was just 1% of the way home.
When the kids got in we dropped their bags in their old rooms, and they said goodbye to Tommy, who said he was going back to his old home in Americus for a while to check up on things (and stay out of our way). We walked to a nearby restaurant, once overrun but now half-empty at peak hours and happy for the trade, and the first thing out of Robin’s mouth after we sat down was “what’s wrong, dad.”
So I told her. And instead of being freaked or failing to understand, she smiled and turned to her brother, and her mother. “Think the Church can help?” she asked. A strange question, since she’d been as un-churchly as I had before leaving.
“Are you getting a budget for this?” John asked. Strange question for a 14 year old. Not the kind I’d ever associated with him before. I’ve been gone a while, I thought.
“You need to go through 100,000 applications and approve 10,000,” John said, doodling on a napkin. “Surely that’s going to take at least $5 million, even if it costs just $50 per applicant.”
“Since you’re looking for Katrina victims, why not start with the folks we took in at Oakhurst,” said Jenni then. “Between the adults there and some people from the church, we ought to be able to get at least 100 workers.”
“Who’ll train them?” I asked.
“We will,” the kids and Jenni said in unison.
And so it went. The church became a nerve center, our home a headquarters. Church members and Katrina victims worked together to interview and approve families. Jenni and I worked with Johannesburg to arrange transportation.
It wasn’t easy. The FAA had canceled the landing rights of South African planes. Families had to be smuggled out of Hartsfield, on planes sent to Mexican resorts, to Costa Rica, to Canada, or to Europe, with round-trip tickets whose value would be lost when they failed to make connections.
They needed cover stories, agencies to give them vacations, sham donors arranged through George Soros and his network of contacts. One planeload of exiles was even sent on a supposed Church Mission to China, and why they weren’t stopped the Bush people never knew. Instead they were waived on, to Hong Kong, then Singapore, to Bangalore, and finally south.
And then there were the Blankenhorns. Shouldn’t we be arrested? But on what charge? We were helping people, we weren’t helping anyone defined as an enemy of the United States, we were citizens.
Then, late one night, there came a knock on the door.