Hurricane Katrina arrives.....(Exposed part 3)

A week or two before Katrina arrived, Bill and I made the leap from online chatting to a phone call. That call is in my mind as if it happened only yesterday. The first time I heard that deep, soft southern drawl made my knees weak.That call lasted 5 hours. 5 hours where we talked non stop. 5 hours that changed my thinking about Bill Moyers. There was more to this guy then shyness and stroke. I had never met anyone I could talk to about anything and they knew what I meant. If such a thing as a electrical current can happen from a phone call, I had just experienced it. We were still at the stage where it was "safe", we weren't a couple yet and no one had expressed their intentions. For me it was a diversion. I thought it was the same for him. Afterall he was still living on the family estate with a wife who was always drunk and made him miserable. Whenever I got online if I couldn't sleep, he was always there. I often wondered when he ever slept. So after that call, the next few weeks were spent online or on the phone with him.

For the entire day of August 28, 2005, the tv was warning of the approaching storm. I wasn't sure where Bill lived in relation to New Orleans.He assured me he was 70 miles away and on higher ground and he had lived threw many other storms on the Gulf Coast and he had no intentions of leaving for Katrina.
I was worried but didn't say much, what did I know about hurricanes? I haad never lived in a place where there was one. I begged him to hop in his truck and come on up to NY. He declined.
Instead we stayed on yahoo together for hours. Somehow when it was getting to the wee hours in the morning and the storm was coming in at his house, I forget who said it first, we admitted we loved one another. I got off the computer then and went to sleep with a smile on my face. I figured in the morning I'd catch up with him somehow.
In case you need a refresher about Katrina:

http://www.nola.com/katrina/
I woke up and turned the TV on and saw the devastation to New Orleans and surrounding Mississippi areas. I kept myself busy all day, telling myself he would contact me and if I didn't hear a thing from him I could suspect the worst.
I finally got a phone call from him around 4:00 P.M. He was without power and it had been more then what he bargained for, staying while the eye of Katrina went right over his house. He was looking for news of the area. I told him that the keevees broke in NO and it was a flooded mess. He was planning on going to OKlahoma to stay with his cousin. He said he'd call me from there on his cell. I was so relieved he was ok. He wasn't sure how long it would take for them to get electric back. As it was over 115 degrees in his house, they couldn't stay there.
He drove to Oklahoma and it should have been about 9 hours took him 19 hours. But he made it safely without running into any downed trees. That was his first experience with the far reaching devastation Katrina had left behind.