Damon Harrison lingers on a stool near his locker for an extra 20 minutes after practice, scrolling through his iPhone while he waits for the call from his mother, Brunella Narcisse.

Down in Lafayette, La., Hurricane Isaac is closing in Harrison’s grandfather, Clifton, and she is pulling him out. Clifton is a thin, wiry man, Damon says. He’s stronger than he looks, maybe stronger than the house he’s lived in for more than 40 years without a single renovation.

If it weren't for Brunella's insistence, he probably wouldn't go back to her and Damon's place in Lake Charles, La., near the Texas border to wait out the Category 1 hurricane with 75-mph winds. He tells Damon that he's been through worse. He'll still be standing.

"God'll protect me," Harrison heard his grandfather saying one day.

The Harrison family, especially Damon, a rookie free agent defensive tackle, doesn’t scare easily, but it’s something that’s tested often. As Hurricane Katrina raged seven years ago, he was separated from his mother, grandfather and immediate relatives for months. He was 16 then. Harrison had no telephone and no way to find out if his mom was alive, or where she was staying. When the disaster finally cleared and his family reunited, he was still in a section of Lake Charles that made him uneasy; a guy trying to do things right in a city section loaded with gangs and drugs. Now, he deals with another storm threatening to tear them apart again.

What does frighten him, though, is the prospect of going back and mulling through a life he doesn’t want. Four years ago, he was a night-shift shelf-stocker at the Lake Charles Walmart after getting cut by a junior college team. He started in cosmetics, but was moved to the pets section, hauling industrial bags of cat food and dog food from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.

“The first night I fell asleep in the middle of the aisle,” he said. “They tell you when you’re stocking the bottom shelf not to sit on the floor, and I sat on the floor and fell asleep.”

Thursday night, the Jets take on the Eagles in a preseason finale and Friday, they will cut 21 more players to shave their roster down to 53-man regular-season count. The 6-3, 339-pound Harrison, like so many others, is on the bubble and views this as his last opportunity to show he’s good enough; to show that he doesn’t have to go home.

“Every day I walk into the locker room terrified, not knowing if that guy is going to be by my locker cutting me today,” he said. “I just don’t want to go back to Walmart, or even go home.”

Harrison was cut from two different middle school teams and was not allowed to play football until his senior year of high school — his coaches wouldn’t sign him up because he preferred basketball and had turned them down in the past.

He stumbled upon an opportunity to go to William Penn University, an NAIA school in Oskaloosa, Iowa, after being cut by a junior college team and decided that this was his last chance. Walmart, after all, had offered to extend his hours and make a full time commitment.

His talent was raw as coaches scrambled to get him into a regimented weight training program. Todd Hafner, William Penn’s head coach remembers walking through the gym after a few years had passed, seeing more than 550 pounds on Harrison’s back during squats. He would do sets of 335 pounds on the bench press. He developed an NFL-ready body and skill set after less than five years of playing.

On the field, other teams had stopped running the ball against him altogether. He would turn the line of scrimmage into a gridlock, forcing his massive body into the backfield. They relied on short, quick passes — the only way to get around Damon.

“After his junior season film got out, we had 28 NFL teams come and visit,” Hafner said. “Some guys came through a couple times. Once word got out it didn’t take them long.”

When the Jets called him on draft day to offer him a spot in camp, Hafner said Damon was in a quiet place on campus. He is soft at heart, the coach said, and likes being alone sometimes.

He came to see the coach later with a smile, the look of a man who felt like he was going places; one that didn’t have to go back home just yet.

“I just don’t want to get that feeling again,” Damon said. “Being told ‘no, you’re not good enough, we got to let you go.’ ”

Conor Orr: corr@starledger.com; twitter.com/ConorTOrr