He is someone's loved one. He may have said a prayer as he flailed against the tide, or cried for help as he heaved his portly frame through the rising torrent, searching for high ground. But no one answered.
Now his body floats in the fetid floodwaters of New Orleans, rocked by passing rescue boats that speed back and forth. Their priority is to save lives; there is no time to lay the dead to rest.
So the man in blue jeans and maroon polo shirt who bobs face down in 2 metres of water on Airline Drive will remain just another harrowing feature of this city's apocalyptic landscape. There are undoubtedly so many more, uncounted and unseen. The air is rank with the smell of decay.
Perhaps the survivors - some waving away the rescue boats, refusing to leave in the mistaken belief that the water will disperse in a day or two - will finally realise the enormity of their predicament if they could only see the corpses.
As we skim along Airline and onto Tulane Drive in an airboat, we pass over the roofs of sunken cars and through a sea of waterborne refrigerators from an appliance store. We are level with the tops of road signs and lamp posts.
We encounter survivors by the dozen, lolling at their first-floor windows, perspiring in the heat. Many are grateful to jump into the boat, or swim through their front doors to reach us. But others shake their heads and shrug, unable to grasp the fact that evacuation is their only hope, unable to contemplate the months of upheaval that await them if they leave, oblivious to the fact that eventually they will die if they don't.
